Web 2.0 summit - the Monday

The event kicked-off with Eric Schmidt, CEO at Google. In talking much about the Google approach to openness he also showed NFC. Whilst not being first with this it is interesting to see that the technology is making its way into the Android stack and consequently on to Android devices.

Eric showed NFC as a way of tracking location, but more importantly as a way for the Android devices to provide a more secure way of allowing monetary transactions.

When it comes to Android the next focus for Google will be on the applications layer.

On GoogleTV the obvious questions were asked, but I think the one sentence that stuck with me was the para-phrasing from a television executive who had said: "Do you realize that you take a dumb TV and making it smart?". The edge of the network is where the evolution and innovation will happen, making your screens at home smarter is an obvious way to allow for even more interaction.

Another thing that struck me was Zynga in that they now have some 1300 employees, 13 studios in 6 countries and soon if not now 400 people working on new IP (new games that is). Looking to leverage more of the social dial-tone in that they want to make you play more by letting you know who else in your network is playing any of the Dog (a play with their logo) games at the moment.

There was a mix of presentations and discussion on the value of data and I think that Steven Berlin Johnson had some interesting input in that we now see a trend in data that is locked into apps and thus making it un-linkable. The URL and the fact that you can point to data is what is crucial to allow for an even greater rate of innovation. If data starts to be locked-in innovation may suffer.

I think the app trend will go away. Right now, apps are a very convenient way of packaging access to a service. We will soon be able to do the same packing in terms of the user experience for full web applications and soon the data will be linkable again.

Bing is also interesting in that is taking on the role as a task oriented engine rather than pure search. It is a huge undertaking but one that I think is really worth following. I say that because if I could have Bing accomplish my seat-changes and on-line boarding without having to go to four different sites when travelling on a given European trip that would really help.

My take-away for the day is that branding is becoming even more important as is the data that we all generate. The services that can make the best use of your available data will certainly have a good time.

On the theme of Points of Control: Now we only need good mechanism to allow for personal control of that data so that it does not continue to end up in controlled silos.

on geo-blocking

I have just returned from a business trip in Europe. This is obviously nothing unusual, however, I have become attached to watching The Event as it is aired in Sweden (where I live). Now, when I was in France I discovered that watching the latest episode would not be easy.

My first attempt was by trying SVT Play. This was met by a simple message informing me of the fact that I was trying to view this content from the wrong region of the world. OK, fair enough, I suspected that this would be the case. Now, off to NBC in a foolish attempt to try an catch up with the latest episode from the official website. Result, wrong region again.

I am not sure that The Event is aired in France or put another way, my futile search attempts could not reveal what television station it would be and if so what their web streaming offer would be... No, I am not fluent enough to do the searching in French..

So, in trying to stay with the official offerings I am left without thanks to the wonderful world of geo-blocking content.

This strikes me as odd as I would have thought that series such as The Event would get a following and a steady fan-base (well, including me) that would want to watch it wherever they are in the world.

A simple ID service would have easily verified that I am actually a Swedish citizen and regardless of where I am in the world I would be able to access and view SVT Play as if I was in Sweden. This way, content is still region blocked but as a member of that region I get the freedom to take the viewing with me as I travel.

I would obviously prefer for geo-blocking to go away completely.

The webinos research project

Web in OS.

Brings the Web closer to your operating system, is one way of interpreting the name of the EU funded research project with the name Webinos.

There has actually been quite much written about the project lately, for instance by the BBC, since the news got out that the project got its funding and is now kicked-off.

My feeling was that, to a large extent media picked this up as, yet another apps platform. This is not quite the case. Webinos is about solving problems that the Web is struggling with today.

The research project is set to push technology beyond its current state in a number of areas, from how we merge web technologies with native platforms to how we deal with identities and fundamentally making your device a part of the cloud.

Being a research project it has a very hands on side as well in that all the ideas and inspiration that is thrown in now at the start will end up in open source code.

The project brings together industry experts from manufacturers to academia in a great mix that I believe can really make a change.

Being part of the cloud

There is an endless flood of data covering the volumes of smartphones that will be on the market by the end of this year and what the market potential is actually like. One thing is for certain, the smarter phones are eating up market share at the cost of the feature phones.

Some platforms are performing better than others (nielsenwire). Some platforms attract more developers than others (Appcelerator), which is a key indicator for where innovation will happen.

Troed Sångberg wrote, about a year ago, about the fact that the new form factor of some devices and the software architecture of these devices actually made them into Mobile Internet Devices. As in, the Internet is the primary use-case, making a phone call is just another application.

As such, they became your window to the Internet. You expect an all-in experience when you interact with the web using these devices, if something does not work you think that there is something wrong with your device. Here we can, at length, go into the options manufacturers have in terms of including technology but we can also talk about the options that service (web) developers have. But I will not. 

In short, there is still much to be wanted in terms of a truly great mobile web experience.

What is more interesting is that we are now at the point where we can expect these devices to transform into not only being a window to the Internet but being a fully embraced node in the cloud. 

You carry around a device today that is a truly converged technological phenomena with audio, video, cameras and connectivity at your fingertips.

There are developments in standards (W3C) where specifications like Powerbox are being discussed and evolved. This is one way of, in a generic kind of way, connecting resources to the Web. When such technologies have established themselves in our devices we will see services building on the fact that they can get access to your local resources be it your microphone, camera or your brand new stress sensor. 

Another initiative, within the EU FP7 research program, called Webinos, aims at evolving the current state-of-the art in web technologies and introduce any missing pieces to truly make the web the platform of choice for services and applications. A web, where you as an individual is at the center.

As your device is gradually transforming into a local network of sensors, some of which will reside in your clothing and others built into accessories such as your glasses, the mobile device will be the focal point of connectivity ensuring that your resources can be included in the cloud.

When this connectivity is in place we can truly start to talk about the next generation of context awareness, with services that truly augment your life and perhaps also makes you rather than the device smarter.

We are now moving from carrying a window to the Internet to a reflection of you in the cloud.

Getting a new drivers license

Getting a new drivers license in Sweden, or updated I should say, requires me to go somewhere to get my photo taken.

Given that most people already have either a digital camera or a "web cam" on their laptop/desktop why can I not use this to get my new license?

I guess that what I am really asking is why is this not a web service? I can upload my avatar to all other sites, why can I not upload a photo for my drivers license. The service could easily check that the submitted photo it is of required resolution and that all features of my face shows properly. 

My signature can easily be scanned with my multipurpose printer/scanner and uploaded in the same manner as my photo. 

I would identify myself with a proper online ID (for instance, we use BankID as a valid form of identification for many services already) and be good to go.

Blocking competition

My favorite weather widget is now updated. I know this because my Android told me there was an update to it. Now this is nothing strange, what bugs me this time is that HTC has sent a letter to the developer since the widget, in its design, included a flip-clock.

For some reason HTC, by the wording in their letter, persuaded the developer to remove the flip-clock component. Apparently it will not come back.

I may be naïve but I did not think you could own this design concept or at the very least that HTC was the originator of the flip-clock.

I just think the behavior, from the part of HTC, is below expectations. I can understand the rational for some legal department to pursue this, but from a publicity point of view it is just wrong. To my knowledge, the flip-clock weather widget from HTC is only available on their products and it is not available on the Android market. 

HTC, compete with your product not by pursuing developers.

Web Of Things - Discovery

In the web of things discovery is everything.

Once you start to think about connecting every thing to the web, you also quite quickly realize that finding the thing that you are actually looking for may be hard.


No, I am not talking about search. The technology for finding documents is already in place, the technology that now needs to be made available is the function of finding things that you can interact with, quite often things of a physical nature.

For me, internet of things is often mentioned in the same sentence as smart grids. That is one novel application for internet connected devices. But, once you start to think about the web of things, and my definition here is that everything now has an API, it becomes a different game.


Discovery is about finding the things you want - fast. You want to make sure that the discovery is seamless, if you want to interact with a printer (like with Google Cloud Print) you really want the system to narrow down the choices you have.


The other aspect of this is that things will be made web (or cloud if you like) aware. By this, the edge of the network will be far more intelligent than it has been before. We will see clusters of API:s being developed for different types of things. Manufacturers will start to implement, natively, the functions behind the API for their devices.


What needs to be common is how you find them - by common I also suggest open, in that you should be able to supply your own context into any discovery request, regardless of the host of the discovery service.


Your pointers and suggestions for making open discovery a reality are highly appreciated.

Web 2.0 Expo - On Social

Another obvious trend at the expo is that of social. Pretty much the fact that we are only at the verge of understanding what this can and will do for us.

Once we get to grips with the always connected approach to this we can start to harvest the social circles that we are part of. People have long been talking about how you can make use of your social graph for providing suggestions on what apps to download or what books to buy.

We see social platforms such as Facebook becoming gaming platforms for people that not associate themselves as gamers. The trend here is that we are seeing more and more games where you play with your friends directly. We are also seeing the whole entertainment and gaming business going from selling a game to selling a service.

Now, Charlene Li (co-author Groundswell) mentioned something that I think is far more interesting. When we can tap into social data sets at any time from any given application we can also start to use the information to apply another layer of intelligence. One suggestion was to enable the ability to sort your inbox according to the influence that the sender has.

Think about that for a second.

I think that is a fundamental shift in how we will approach things going forwards.

The HTML5 discussion at the web 2.0 expo

During the expo over the last couple of days it has been evident that there is a fundamental change going on. There have been so many words written about HTML5 vs. Flash. This is not about Steve vs. Adobe.
It is fundamentaly about being open.

My favorite example right now is the investment that Scribd has done in their platform to go from Flash to HTML5. They basically ditched a $3 million investment in Flash technology for an idea that they did not really know if it would work.

At the core, and this is important, is the fact that they realised that they had put all their content into an application platform. Being dependant on a particular runtime was not a dependency they wanted to have.

As a real bonus was the fact that they got mobile access for free.

You can then go on and argue about what Adobe should and should not do... I'll leave that to others.
Most people here, when asked, put their money on HTML5. Still, there are some companies such as Tiny Speck that base their innovation on Flash. It will be very interesting to follow their game, Glitch.

Web 2.0 Expo - take aways from Tuesday May 4:th

First day at the #w2e has been very good. It is hard to choose from all the very good tracks but I have tried to stayed tuned to the strategy track. There are so many things to pick up on but I will just quickly give my thinking on the general theme.


Mobile is not an additional strategy, it is the strategy. What strikes me is all the examples of companies that just do not get it, as in they do not have a site designed for mobile. Not even Apple. Similarly, companies seem to not look at device types. This strikes me as odd coming from a mobile operator in a previous life, where it was all about identifying the device.


Think about simplicity when thinking about mobile design. But as Jason Grigsby (@grigs) said, this does not equal dumb. Do not take away core functions just because you are trying to make the mobile site simpler.


I learnt a bit about API:s today. Not much news in that session but still very important. If you do not have an API you are missing the whole trend where data is king. Your API is how you will be selling through to your customers. Somewhere in the realm of 80% of traffic will come from beyond the browser.


API:s are the glue that binds mobile, social and cloud. It is a mechanism where you can get people, not on your payroll, to carry your experience and product to consumers. This is key to understand, because of the exponential change rate we are in, it is impossible to plan. The market is constantly changing. In order to make this happen, make sure you are re-mixable, look at your adjacents.


Being an advocate of open standards I got a very good insight into OAuth 2.0 and the upgrade that has been done to the protocol. It shows great promise and is already adopted by Facebook and Twitter (@anywhere) basically because it is so simple to get started for any developer.


The keynotes where of great standard. Loved the TED presentation and how it has evolved from conference to a platform for sharing ideas. Completely embraces crowd sourcing, free and open.


Last but not least, smule, have to love them. Impressive demonstration of their products and research.

HP buys Palm

So, HP buys Palm. I think this interesting in many ways. For one thing it will help us people that believe in the web as a the platform. 


If you intend to get serious about making mobile internet devices and you do not want to give up control to, say, Google then the Palm WebOS is a good bet and may prove to be a winning strategy for HP.


The trend is clear in that the web application model is evolving by the minute. There is a huge amount of activity going on in W3C and in the buzzing communities around on the web.


With the WebOS, HP is very well positioned in this landscape. Not only do they get a web savvy architecture built from the ground up to cater for performant web applications they also have a very powerful developer environment in Ares 1.0.


I think this was a good buy for HP and I think it will only help to speed up the evolution of the web platform.

Enablers vs. Web

Whenever I hear the term 'enabler' I think of telecom and the overwhelming number of enablers that have been defined over time. There is the location enabler, messaging enabler and presence enabler and the list goes on.

What most often fails to happen is the applied use of these enablers for anyone but the operator that have put them in place. This has obviously changed over the last couple of years with developer programs (such as Orange Partner), general openness and competition. Still, enablers are standardized components designed to fit into an operator service architecture and if you are lucky to actually work across operators in a roaming fashion.

Adding more enablers would, in theory, get you more functionality, more developers and more innovative services. This rarely happens. It rarely happens because the enablers tend to only work with data hosted, or owned if you like, by the operator.

Now, the other model is the Web way of doing things. The rough consensus and running code, beta, previews, launch quicker than ever paradigm. This model is also different in that is based on de-centralization. Each added service is a new opportunity.

The way things are added to the Web today is by, more or less, first understanding that you need to be accessible, you need to have an API that others can build on, interact with and link to their service. The Web of Data that this enables is as important as the service you can see and touch with your browser.

The API is generally not standardized because it is not needed. In comparison, anything that gets added to an operator network needs standards by definition so that you can source the component from multiple suppliers, secure a low price and be sure that it talks to all the systems already in place.

The Web model promotes something else that is key - I get to choose which service to use, how they link and what they share (as far as my data is concerned).

I think that in the race we are in, the Web model will prevail and continuing to standardize enablers is a waste of valuable time and resources that can be better spent on other things.