9 posts tagged “cell”

With the extreme popularity of Twitter, and the talk of how it should be acquired soon, it only makes sense that similar services emerge and gain traction as well.  Jaiku is Twitter's most relevant rival, and I can clearly see why.  I first mentioned Jaiku here, as an offering to those looking for a Twitter alternative. My favorite aspect of Jaiku is the ease with which any feed can be added to your account, for your own purposes as well as your friends'.   And with Jaiku's growing buzz in the blogosphere, I'm happy to have had a chance to catch up with Jaiku's co-founder Jyri Engestrom .

How did Jaiku come about?

In 2006 the two founders - Jyri Engestrom and Petteri Koponen -realized we both wanted a better way to share what we were doing in real life with our friends online. Although we spent a lot of time on blogs and Web services built by our friends, like Flickr, we felt they were too cumbersome to update and difficult to read on our mobile phones. We decided to make a service that regular people would use every day, that was quicker to update on the go and would enable all of us to see what our family members, friends, and colleagues were doing simply by glancing at our handset.

Last summer we met Mika Raento and Teemu Kurppa, two talented mobile developers who shared our passion to bring people closer together by enabling them to share their presence on phones. Mika had already written pretty ingenious code for Symbian phones, that solved some the hardest technical problems related to always-on client-server communication (such as power consumption) as part of his PhD studies. Teemu was one of the key developers in Nokia's Core Applications team, where he had written parts of the Calendar and other core Nokia applications. With Mika and Teemu on board, we decided to build a mobile client and a Jabber back-end for Jaiku.

Later in 2006, we raised seed funding and hired two great Web developers: Andy Smith from Flock, and Juha Törönen, who joined us from the leading Helsinki Web design company. With Andy and Juha we started developing the Web components, support for text messaging, and the ability to embed RSS feeds from other services to your stream of Jaikus. We put an early beta version out quietly last year, and formally launched Jaiku at the O'Reilly ETel conference in March this year.

Where do you see online behavioral trends going, considering your service really allows for the constant updating of user behavior?

We believe that online social behavior as a whole is moving towards groups who are in a state of constant connectedness. This means shorter, more frequent, more personal updates that assume the recipients already know a lot about the sender and context of the message. The amount of communication increases but it contains less noise because we know more about the context of our peers. For example, in trials of the early research prototype of Jaiku Mobile, the amount of missed calls between the users dropped by about 15 percentage points, because on Jaiku the caller can see when the recipient is busy already before they try to reach them.

Just as a recap, the posts on Jaiku are simply called Jaikus. They are shorter than blog posts. Because their content is usually about what you're doing, how you're feeling, or where you're going right now, their value typically also degrades more quickly over time. On many Web services the interval between new updates from a user is a day or more, but on Jaiku the updates are more frequent. When you browse the profiles of Jaiku members, you'll notice that a Jaiku that was posted an hour ago can already be outdated by several newer ones. The content of Jaikus is also often more personal than on blogs. Although many share their Jaikus publicly, a lot of people prefer to share them privately with their friends.

Oh, and a short digression on the name: We came up with the name Jaiku because the posts on Jaiku resemble Japanese haikus. A haiku is a short poem about the moment that a person is living through even as they are writing it down. In Finland too the nomadic Lapp people share stories by singing Joikus. We liked the name Jaiku mainly because it had a fun sound to it. Those who want can also read in it a little reminder that actually the need we're addressing isn't anything new. The basic desire to tell others what you're up to, and have a sense of what they're doing, has been around forever and in all cultures.

Jaiku can really be seen as an aggregator as well as a distributor of personal information.  What are the main directives you were aiming for with Jaiku?

Our general aim is to bring people closer together by enabling them to share their presence (what they're doing, how they're feeling, where they're going). Jyri calls this social peripheral vision: the ability to have your finger on the pulse of your friends, family, and colleagues. Once you know what the people you care about are up to, you notice opportunities for social interaction that you would probably otherwise miss. Even just the simple knowledge that your loved ones are ok can have a lot of emotional value in an increasingly unstable world.

We think our key discovery has been to find an interaction model for posting and commenting across different channels. Jaiku posts can include embedded media like icons and photos. The service supports threaded conversation, and works smoothly from Web, to IM, to SMS, and clients. It integrates automatic updates like changes in your location, availability, etc. from the phone with Web feeds and manually posted Jaikus.

Our accomplishment especially on the mobile has been to bring the contact list to life. Presence information can be used to turn static, "dead" contact lists into dynamic, live ones. Some of our users have remarked that Jaiku Mobile makes the traditional S60 phone book obsolete. Once you start using   live contact list and seeing what your friends are up to, it can feel pretty lame to return to using a standard phone. It's exciting to imagine how presence information from Jaiku would enrich other Web services and desktop applications.

How is communication facilitated between users? Can you get a feed of someone else's Jaikus, or even a feed of your own Jaikus?

You can get feeds of your own and other people's Jaikus in RSS and Atom format, or using our APIs. In a few weeks, you can also use your IM client t  follow your Jaiku contacts and post new Jaikus.

Also, the next release of Jaiku Mobile for both S60 and Java phones will display the Jaikus from your contacts and support commenting. Commenting has become a central part of the service, so making that work smoothly across all clients is very important to us at the moment.

You've recently introduced your beta version for the Nokia S60.  How's that going so far?

Starting with S60 was a conscious decision for us. It was the best platform for developing an application that enabled people to share their presence from their phone on the Web. There are over 100 million Nokia S60 handsets out there,  and we knew we could do something that most people though  was impossible. We're now working on a Java version that is compatible with a lot more handsets. It is currently in private beta.

That said, our interest is not to monopolize the clients. Rather, our vision from the start has been to use open protocols like Jabber and develop APIs so it'll be easy for other people to write clients and connect their own Web services to Jaiku. Large chuncks of the S60 client have been open-source  and we're going to continue contributing to relevant open source projects. We think it'd be cool if in the future people could also write their own visualizations etc. for mobile handsets in e.g. Flash or Python using our client APIs.

Did you have to break a deal with Nokia in order to create this beta version?

Jaiku Mobile does not rely on any proprietary Nokia APIs - the nice part about Symbian and S60 is that it's much more open than just about any other major mobile platform. Aside from that, Nokia has shown a lot of positive interest in what we're doing, and we try to keep in as close touch as possible with our contacts there. One of our developers, Mika, was recently appointed a "Forum Nokia Champion" due to his pioneering work in building the Symbian development community. Quite a few Nokia employees are Jaiku users, and their feedback has been invaluable to us.

What complications did you have in creating a mobile application for Jaiku?

Making a back-end that can support mobile clients is a lot more complex than building your average Web site. It makes developing some features slower, but it's also a competitive advantage because we've solved some pretty hard problems that enable efficient client-server communication. On  the S60 side, porting for S60 3rd Edition took longer than we expected. We found quite a few bugs in the S60 platform and had to work our way around those.

What's next for Jaiku?

The next step is to open a developer section with documentation on how to use our APIs, so the independent developers who are working Jaiku desktop clients, making mashups, and developing mobile clients for other platforms get better support. This will be released by early April.

In addition to the APIs we plan to introduce a bunch of new features in the next couple of months. These include connectivity to existing IM services, a Java client, and support for groups. We've also been experimenting with media sharing and SMS notifications. Once the basic feature set is ready, we plan to start working with our local user communities to offer versions of Jaiku in different languages. We'll also be working to improve our integration with the coolest other online services.

Twitter is keeping up with the new feature roll out, and during the great week for mobile apps too.  They've launched their API for SMS command queries today, enabling the use of command queries to be text to a twitter username in order to retrieve information.  Now you can send a query to "weather" in order to have the latest weather updates sent to you via SMS. And as expected, Twitter's announcement is seemingly correlated with their slow page loads.

The technology was already in place for replying to twitter messages from other users.  Now it's offering web access.  This command code can be used in a variety of ways, and it really only marks the beginning of the latest chapter in Twitter popularity.  There's already much speculation that Twitter could be used heavily for ecommerce or marketing purposes.  Some would argue that their model fits nicely with a classifieds system, or anything regarding mass distribution, really.  While I can see the value in all of these features, their decided direction remains to be apparent.

Twitter's last API release was their Twit This function, allowing websites to be bookmarked.

ZenZui, launched today, is a Microsoft-backed product for mobile phones that lets you browse the web better through their widgets.  These widgets (36, so far), are pre-determined and sponsored by a variety of companies, including epicurious, Zillow, and Traffic.com.  Meaning, ZenZui is really a better way to browse their web with their widgets.  It's another sneaky way to circumvent at least some of the overlords of the mobile world, but will this ad-based, limited model work for Microsoft and ZenZui?

Getting more companies to sponsor their own widgets probably won't be hard.  Businesses are clamoring to get the best marketing strategy possible for the mobile realm.  What better way than to sponsor a ZenZui widget?  It's branded, highly specialized, works across many platforms, and incentivizes the end user by subsidizing their browsing costs.

But how will the consumer really feel about it?  We early adopters may or may not like it.  We may marvel at the design but scratch our heads at the short-term goal of ZenZui.  But the consumer will probably eat it up.  They've been locked in on so many fronts when it comes to mobile options; from ring tones to wallpapers, the average person will most likely love all that ZenZui has to offer. 

Most websites have yet to be optimized for mobile use anyway, and the cost of using the internet via your mobile phone is very costly.  So offering services that help you find a recipe while you're at the grocery store, or help you navigate through traffic during your evening commute could prove to be valuable for users.

Long term, consumers will eventually want more options.  If ZenZui can't find a way to maximize the number of widgets they offer, they could be in trouble.  Just like with traditional models for music distribution and news dissemination, people will eventually stop listening to the experts and want to find more on their own.

Bebo has added Veronica's Moco, a widget that lets you accept text messages from your friends.  It's free for them, but not for you.  It's another way of promoting half of a feature in hopes of getting lots of users.  It's very useful, don't get me wrong.  And perhaps if Facebook were to re-skin their own mobile alerts, they could promote it as something similar to Moco.  But I still don't like paying for text messages that I didn't send.

Veronica's Moco is powered by UK based Moco Unlimited.  Now if there's ever a place that has fully leveraged all uses for text messages, it's the UK.  So it's no surprise that this kind of feature is coming from across the pond.  That being said, the use of the Moco widget is most expensive here in the U.S. topping off at $7.99 per month for unlimited incoming texts.  Is this in addition to whatever text message plan you've got with your provider?  Sure.  Will you heavily encourage your friends to go online and use the Moco widget to send you a text?  How do you write them back?

Either way, I like the evolution of the many ways in which we're finding to circumvent the restrictions we constantly run into with cell phone makers and service carriers.  And gee, I can't wait for Google to make an ad-supported device that lets me make phone calls.

If you're a twitter fan, you may have noticed that the feed over-loader is running a bit slow today.  Yah.  Even slower than yesterday.  We'll safely assume that it's because of all the great traffic they've gotten lately, and hope it's just one of those "good" problems to have.

In the event that you'd like to find a great alternative to the Twitterific website, check out Jaiku.

Very similar in function to Twitter, but they've incorporated more of a community and additional customization features.  Jaiku is also more intuitive when it comes to interacting with others on the site, seeing what users are up to, and adding multiple feeds outside of those you've added from Jaiku members.

If you just need more ways to jack up your cell phone bill, try WidSets.

They let you add a pre-formated widget to your cell phone, or create one of your own.  WidSets offers a handy way of keeping up with the big blogs, and your friend's too.  Other widgets included are for Flikr, eBay Wikipedia and the BBC.

Nevertheless, once Twitter gets back into the swing of things, be sure to check out some of my favorite Twitterers:

Mashable
CenterNetworks
Rex

MyStrands is a social music discovery site that has been in the press quite a bit lately.  Their most recent announcement was the launching of their Social Player yesterday, which makes their service available through their Symbian mobile platform.  A good portion of their core functions found on their website have been optimized for their mobile website.  They have included a powerful search function that still allows you to search for and discover music and friends, wherever you go.  The mobile app is still fully integrated with the MyStrands API and truly brings social networking and entertainment to the cell phone.  With the current trends, it's important to note the increasing capabilities of mobile devices as well as the web-based solutions that are being rather opportunistic when it comes to this expansion. 

Gabriel Aldamiz-echevarria, VP of Communications for MyStrands, gives great insight to this expansion during our phone interview, shown below (see video here).

So tell me a bit about your recently released Social Player.

It's a music player for Symbian mobile devices. The Social player is a music discovery tool and has a strong community component. We can see  the strong evolution in mobile industry. Right now we use the mobile phone to talk, and early adopters use mob phone to do work (send email on their Blackberries). Some years ago we used the PC to do office work and now we use the PC to do fun stuff.  Soon the mob phone will help us stay connected but also be a gateway to entertainment.  That's why we're buidling the MyStrands Social Player.  It helps you discover music and stay connected with friends.

And how does the Social Player work?

Every time u listen to a song it gives you a recommendation of songs that are similar. Then you can get more info about the song and artist on our mobile website. We have over 6 million songs, and not just with the big recording labels but from independent artists too.

Then there's the community component. It helps you discover new people with similar music taste to yours, and tells you who else is listening to that song. You can see their profile and see what they're listening to as well.

And does this include what theyre listening to at the same time, or does it include their entire playlist?

It shows their entire playlist in real time. So it will show who listened to it when, whether they listened to it 2 hours ago or 2 days ago.

What challenges did you have in creating the Social Player across cell phone platforms?

It's very tough to deal w/them.  You have a different handsets, and different technologies. Not all services work on all technologies. One of the things with the MyStrands social player is that you don't even need to be with an operator.  You just need a cell phone with connection to Internet. 
To be realistic, if you want your technology to reach millions of users, you need a partnership with an operator.  Or u need a lot of marketing.

Do u have a partnership?

There's not much I can tell you but we're in talks with a lot of people.

And where do you see some of these mobile trends going?

This is just the beginning of the mobile revolution. We'll see more and more cool things you can do on the phone. for example with the iPhone, they'll sell who knows how many units, but it will open the eyes of the end user and let us know that the phone is capable of doing more cool things.  Until the iPhone we didn't use the phone to do things like listen to music or see Google maps. But w/the marketing from Apple, it will be a behavior changer.

How are you planning on leveraging that?

At the end if you think about it, this is a product that we've announced and what we've seen is that people that have used it talk about it to other people.  We've been getting a lot of feedback.  What we're missing is time to put into effect all those ideas.  We'll offer more and more solutions. 

What 'm saying is that there are a lot of initiatives like the iPhone, and PartyStrands, and the MyStrands Social Player that are suggesting that the future is mobile. People are getting more familiar with the possibility of the phone. 
...

Imagine you're going to school and you're on the bus, and you have 20 minutes to get to school. What do u do? Maybe talk to your friends. With MyStrands, you can listen to music and know what your friends are listening to at home or even at school.
We're approaching a wonderful age and music and mobile are made for each other.

Tappity is a mobile phone service that has formed a community around sites that are optimized for mobile use.  It also serves as a frontpage of sorts, for your mobile phone.  It's got a pretty high level of interactivity through mobile phone usage, as users can submit and vote for sites they like.  In this sense, Tappity becomes much like a social search engine for your cell phone.  It's apparent that technology and culture are moving in the direction of centralizing the mobile device, but it's companies like Tappity that take the initiative to create applications ready for today that provide a great deal of value for our current lifestyles.

I got a chance to chat with Scott Robbin, the creator of Tappity, regarding his first start-up from his parent company Halobrite.

So tell me about Tappity. Is it more of a hub for sites that are optimized for mobile phones?  Or is it a mobile search engine?