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4 March 2010

Choosing intermediate mobile platforms

Filed under: applications, developer experience, fragmentation, runtimes, smartphones — David Wood @ 12:55 am

Over the last few months, one thing I’ve noticed is the increasing number of companies who are offering mobile intermediate platforms and tools, that are designed to hide differences between underlying mobile operating systems.  For example, I heard about several new ones (that is, new for me) during Mobile World Congress at Barcelona.

I’d like to mention some of these companies.  But first, here’s some context.

People who want to develop applications (or provide content or services) for mobile devices face two levels of decision about platform choice.

The first decision is: what should developers do about the fact that different mobile devices run many different mobile operating systems (such as Symbian, BlackBerry, iPhone, Android, Palm webOS, LiMo, Maemo, Series 40, Bada, Windows Mobile…)?

In other words, should developers:

  1. Prioritise one operating system platform above all others, and attempt to become an expert in that?
  2. Try to become experts in all the major operating system platforms (including different UI families and other platform sub-variants)?
  3. Rely on third party experts who can deliver “mobile applications as a service” across a wide range of relevant operating systems?
  4. Try to find an intermediate platform and/or tool, that will hide the differences in underlying mobile operating system?

The first of these approaches has the merit of simplicity, but cuts off large numbers of devices.  The second of these approaches is particularly hard to achieve: it requires wide-ranging knowledge.  The third is what I advocated in an earlier blog post, “A strategy for mobile app development“: it involves building a relationship with an external company which maintains up-to-date knowledge about changing mobile operating systems.  The fourth is a variation on the third.  Rather than rely on paying a third party to use their own systems to develop apps for each different platform, it relies on finding an intermediate platform and/or tool, to achieve the same end.

That takes me to the second decision about platform choice: what should developers do about the fact that there are so many different intermediate platforms available?

In one way, this second decision is harder than the first one.  That’s because the number of intermediate platforms available seems to be larger even than the number of different mobile operating systems.  Therefore the choice is larger.  (And it seems to be getting larger all the time, with the emergence of new intermediate plaforms.)

But, thankfully, in another way, this decision is easier.  That’s because there may well be more than one “right answer”.  Depending on the type of applications being developed, various different intermediate platforms are well-suited to distributing the application acrosss a wide range of mobile devices.

I’m not expecting a consolidation, any time soon, down to just a few intermediate mobile platforms.  Developers’ needs are too varied for that.  But I am expecting at least some of these platforms to become better and better, as their owners respond smartly to the evolving needs of the growing number of developers who want to bring applications to ever larger numbers of mobile devices.

Here are just four of these platforms which have caught my eye recently.  As I said, different platforms are appropriate for different kinds of developer needs.

1. JumpStart Wireless BusinessSuite

JumpStart Wireless has a solution for enterprises that want to improve how they interact with their mobile workforce.

A special feature of this solution is that no “programming” in a traditional sense is required: no C/C++, no Java, no HTML.  Instead, I heard the solution described as “you fill in a spreadsheet” giving details of an existing paper-based system that you’d like to replace by a version that runs on mobile devices – a paper-based system for work orders, time cards, daily reports, punch lists, inspections, sales orders, and so on.  The architect and founder of JumpStart Wireless, Dr. Jeffrey Bonar, observed many similarities between systems used by different companies, and captured the similarities in the engine that lies at the heart of the JumpStart Wireless BusinessSuite platform.  The platform generates versions of the application that can run on a wide variety of different mobile devices.

Their website states:

Problem: Mobile Employees Typically Waste Hours Per Day With Paperwork and Communicating to Headquarters

Time and money wasted:

  • Driving to pickup/drop-off paperwork, filling out paperwork and excessive phone calls.
  • Chasing down missing paperwork, correcting errors and dealing with illegible paperwork.
  • Dealing with backlogs of completed work waiting to be closed out and billed.
  • Manually entering field data

Solution: JumpStart Wireless™ – One Tenth the Cost of Conventional Wireless Approaches

  • Leveraging JumpStart Wireless’s patent pending artificial intelligence technology, your customized wireless applications are one tenth the price of conventional approaches to wireless software.
  • Your forms and mobile employee process is automatically transformed into a wireless device application

Works with Normal Cell Phones and PDAs

  • JumpStart Wireless applications work on normal, off-the-shelf cell phones and BlackBerrys.
  • You do not need an expensive ($700-$2000), complex, custom device

2. The MoSync Mobile Development SDK

The MoSync Mobile Development SDK takes a different approach. It provides access to a wide range of underlying device functionality, via a C/C++ SDK.  As such, it requires a greater degree of software skill from the developer, and in principle can enable a rich variety of different kinds of application.

MoSync were one of the finalists in the Mobile Premier Awards at Barcelona, where I had the chance to meet a couple of their founding team.

Their website states:

Mobile cross-platform done right

Today’s mobile device market is more fragmented than ever.  New platforms are introduced every year.  Dozens of new devices arrive from manufacturers every month.  Sometimes it can seem that writing your application is the easy part: the real headache is tailoring it for all those different platforms and devices, and trying to keep up with the ever-changing marketplace.

We think that mobile application development is hard enough without having to worry about porting issues. That’s why we’ve created MoSync — a truly open-source solution for today’s fragmented mobile market.

MoSync’s fully-featured software development kit helps you develop anything from simple programs for basic mobile phones to advanced applications that exploit the full potential of the latest intelligent smart phones and mobile devices.

And with MoSync you can adapt, build, and package your application for hundreds of different mobile devices in a few clicks – all from the same code base! That means huge savings in development costs, faster time-to-market, and wider distribution and revenue possibilities…

Most approaches to cross-platform software development involve

  • either manual brute-force porting (in essence rewriting the application for lots of mobile devices)
  • or the use of virtual machine runtimes that need to be installed on the target devices.

MoSync does neither — instead it gives you the best possible solution: Symbian, Windows Mobile, j2me, Moblin, and Android built from a single source…

3. The Airplay platform from Ideaworks Labs

The Airplay platform from Ideaworks Labs has particular strengths for high-performance rich-media mobile applications – including graphically-intense mobile games.

Their website states:

Airplay is a native mobile application development and deployment solution that overcomes many of the major problems faced by developers and publishers of mobile games today.

The Airplay SDK comprises a set of powerful and extensible tools and technologies within a framework of processes and workflow best practices. This combination of technology and know-how delivers massive cost savings during both development and deployment and enables a much faster time to market.

This solution is the unique result of a 7-year symbiotic relationship between Ideaworks Labs and Ideaworks Game Studio divisions, and it is through building many of the most innovative mobile games in the world that our solution has been fine-tuned and thoroughly battle-tested.

Key Features:

  • Single Binary: Airplay combines the platform-specific execution environment implementation with a single binary for each game or application. The key advantage of this is there is no need to embed software on the handset, no dependence on manufacturing supply chain, or individual manufacturer or operator deals.
  • Open Platforms: All applications built using Airplay run on all “open” platforms, such as Symbian, BREW, Windows Mobile, Linux, and can be embedded on “closed” platforms, such as RTOS.
  • Scalable Graphics: Fully scalable graphics pipeline optimized to support all leading semiconductor architectures…
  • OpenKODE compliant: Ideaworks Labs was co-spec lead in Khronos on OpenKODE Core API, committed to standards-based portability of native applications.

4. EZMobile from 509inc

509inc have a solution which may appeal to developers who already have a web service, which they want to connect to mobile devices in such a way that it takes advantage of mobile device features such as location.

Their website states:

5o9 EZMobile uses Web standards to simplify development and the support of mobile users. 5o9 EZMobile works with existing Web servers, most HTTP mobile browsers and any network. 5o9 EZMobile can reduce the time and cost to mobilize by 2 to 10 times that of cross-platform mobile application development and support…

5o9 EZMobile software enables enterprise-level Mobile SaaS by delivering contextual data to your Web Apps. It provides a cost-effective alternative to cross-platform mobile application development.

Now you can extend your existing Web services to mobile users by leveraging the power of the Web. Your Web apps can access real-time who, what and where data about your mobile users, letting you personalize services via customized menu-based navigation. Standardize delivery, via the browser, across multiple mobile platforms. You determine the data you need. You control your data security and privacy  policies. You choose the appropriate level of personalization for your mobile employees, customers and partners.

Experienced cross-platform mobile developer Simon Judge recently looked more closely at 509inc and wrote some of his findings in a blog post “509 Bridges the App Web Gap“:

Last year I mentioned how 5o9 had developed a solution that allowed BlackBerry and Windows Mobile device location to be made available to web sites. Since then, things have progressed and they now offer a range of multi-platform tools for mobile developers.

5o9 told me that their view of the future is that for mobile to really take off the web has to know the end-user better. This means that web browsers need better access to phone features.

If you go to the 5o9 web site you can learn more. However, what it doesn’t say is how this technology works and how it might be integrated into your mobile solution, so I dug deeper

The 5o9 solution is a simple mobile application that can share critical meta data (without the need to type it in) with any web app in the world. It works by extending the HTTP protocol with new customizable HTTP_X headers….

Some people think that the future of mobile is the web. Until such time, technologies such as those offered by 5o9 can be used to bridge the gap.

This is just to scratch the surface…

Above, I’ve provided brief details of four attractive intermediate mobile platforms, but there are probably at least five times as many more that could be added to this list (I apologise for the highly selective nature of my list).

And that’s without covering the better known intermediate platforms such as Qt, Java, HTML5, Adobe Flash/AIR, and Microsoft Silverlight.  It would take a long time to fairly compare and evaluate all serious players in this space.

One conclusion that can be drawn from this multiplicity of offerings is that there’s wide perception of the need for such solutions, driven by the combination of two observations:

  • The mobile opportunity is huge, and demands attention
  • Mobile development is still generally seen as unnecessarily difficult.

2 March 2010

Major new challenges to receive X PRIZE backing

Filed under: catalysts, challenge, futurist, Genetic Engineering, Google, grants, innovation, medicine, space — David Wood @ 7:16 pm

The X PRIZE Foundation has an audacious vision.

On its website, it describes itself as follows:

The X PRIZE Foundation is an educational nonprofit organization whose mission is to create radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity thereby inspiring the formation of new industries, jobs and the revitalization of markets that are currently stuck

The foundation can point to the success of its initial prize, the Ansari X PRIZE.  This was a $10M prize to be awarded to the first non-government organization to launch a reusable manned spacecraft into space twice within two weeks.  This prize was announced in May 1996 and was won in October 2004, by the Tier One project using the experimental spaceplane SpaceShipOne.

Other announced prizes are driving research and development in a number of breakthrough areas:


The Archon X PRIZE will award $10 million to the first privately funded team to accurately sequence 100 human genomes in just 10 days.  Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking explains his support for this prize:

You may know that I am suffering from what is known as Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig’s Disease, which is thought to have a genetic component to its origin. It is for this reason that I am a supporter of the $10M Archon X PRIZE for Genomics to drive rapid human genome sequencing. This prize and the resulting technology can help bring about an era of personalized medicine. It is my sincere hope that the Archon X PRIZE for Genomics can help drive breakthroughs in diseases like ALS at the same time that future X PRIZEs for space travel help humanity to become a galactic species.

The Google Lunar X PRIZE is a $30 million competition for the first privately funded team to send a robot to the moon, travel 500 meters and transmit video, images and data back to the Earth.  Peter Diamandis, Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation, provided some context in a recent Wall Street Journal article:

Government agencies have dominated space exploration for three decades. But in a new plan unveiled in President Barack Obama’s 2011 budget earlier this month, a new player has taken center stage: American capitalism and entrepreneurship. The plan lays the foundation for the future Google, Cisco and Apple of space to be born, drive job creation and open the cosmos for the rest of us.

Two fundamental realities now exist that will drive space exploration forward. First, private capital is seeing space as a good investment, willing to fund individuals who are passionate about exploring space, for adventure as well as profit. What was once affordable only by nations can now be lucrative, public-private partnerships.

Second, companies and investors are realizing that everything we hold of value—metals, minerals, energy and real estate—are in near-infinite quantities in space. As space transportation and operations become more affordable, what was once seen as a wasteland will become the next gold rush. Alaska serves as an excellent analogy. Once thought of as “Seward’s Folly” (Secretary of State William Seward was criticized for overpaying the sum of $7.2 million to the Russians for the territory in 1867), Alaska has since become a billion-dollar economy.

The same will hold true for space. For example, there are millions of asteroids of different sizes and composition flying throughout space. One category, known as S-type, is composed of iron, magnesium silicates and a variety of other metals, including cobalt and platinum. An average half-kilometer S-type asteroid is worth more than $20 trillion.

Technology is reaching a critical point. Moore’s Law has given us exponential growth in computing technology, which has led to exponential growth in nearly every other technological industry. Breakthroughs in rocket propulsion will allow us to go farther, faster and more safely into space…

The Progressive Automotive X PRIZE seeks “to inspire a new generation of viable, safe, affordable and super fuel efficient vehicles that people want to buy“.  $10 million in prizes will be awarded in September 2010 to the teams that win a rigorous stage competition for clean, production-capable vehicles that exceed 100 MPG energy equivalent (MPGe).  Over 40 teams from 11 countries are currently entered in the competition.

Forthcoming new X PRIZEs

The best may still be to come.

It now appears that a series of new X PRIZEs are about to be announced.  CNET News writer Daniel Terdiman reports a fascinating interview with Peter Diamandis, in his article “X Prize group sets sights on next challenges (Q&A)“.

The article is well worth reading in its entirety.  Here are just a few highlights:

On May 15, at a gala fundraising event to be held at George Lucas’ Letterman Digital Arts Center in San Francisco, X Prize Foundation Chairman and CEO Peter Diamandis, along with Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and “Avatar” director James Cameron, will unveil their five-year vision for the famous awards…

The foundation …  is focusing on several potential new prizes that could change the world of medicine, oceanic exploration, and human transport.

The first is the so-called AI Physician X Prize, which will go to a team that designs an artificial intelligence system capable of providing a diagnosis equal to or better than 10 board-certified doctors.

The second is the Autonomous Automobile X Prize, which will go to the first team to design a car that can beat a top-seeded driver in a Gran Prix race.

The third would go to a team that can generate an organ from a terminal patient’s stem cells, transplant the organ [a lung, liver, or heart] into the patient, and have them live for a year.

And the fourth would reward a team that can design a deep-sea submersible capable of allowing scientists to gather complex data on the ocean floor…

Diamandis  explains the potential outcome of the AI Physician Prize:

The implications of that are that by the end of 2013, 80 percent of the world’s populace will have a cell phone, and anyone with a cell phone can call this AI and the AI can speak Mandarin, Spanish, Swahili, any language, and anyone with a cell phone then has medical advice at the level of a board certified doctor, and it’s a game change.

Even more new X PRIZEs

Details of the process of developing new X PRIZEs are described on the foundation’s website.  New X PRIZEs are are guided by the following principles:

  • We create prizes that result in innovation that makes a lasting impact. Although a technological breakthrough can meet this criterion, so do prizes which inspire teams to use existing technologies, knowledge or systems in more effective ways.
  • Prizes are designed to generate popular interest through the prize lifecycle: enrollment, competition, attempts (both successful and unsuccessful) and post-completion…
  • Prizes result in financial leverage. For a prize to be successful, it should generate outside investment from competitors at least 5-10 times the prize purse size. The greater the leverage, the better return on investment for our prize donors and partners.
  • Prizes incorporate both elements of technological innovation as well as successful “real world” deployment. An invention which is too costly or too inconvenient to deploy widely will not win a prize.
  • Prizes engage multidisciplinary innovators which would otherwise be unlikely to tackle the problems that the prize is designed to address.

The backing provided to the foundation by the Google founders and by James Cameron provides added momentum to what is already an inspirational initiative and a great catalyst for innovation.

27 February 2010

Achieving a 130-fold improvement in 40 years

Filed under: books, Economics, green, Kurzweil, RSA, solar energy, sustainability — David Wood @ 3:23 pm

One reason I like London so much is the quality of debate and discussion that takes place, at least three times most weeks, at the RSA.

The full name of this organisation is “the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce“.  It’s been holding meetings since 1754.  Early participants included Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Johnson, and Richard Arkwright.

Recently, there have been several RSA meetings addressing the need for significant reform of how the global economy operates.  Otherwise, these speakers imply, the future will be much bleaker than the present.

On Wednesday, Professor Tim Jackson of the University of Surrey led a debate on the question “Is Prosperity Without Growth Possible?”  Professor Jackson recently authored the book “Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet“.  The book contains an extended version of his remarks at the debate.

I find myself in agreement a great deal of what the book says:

  • Continuous economic growth is a shallow and, by itself, dangerous goal;
  • Beyond an initial level, greater wealth has only a weak correlation with greater prosperity;
  • Greater affluence can bring malaise – especially in countries with significant internal inequalities;
  • Consumers frequently find themselves spending money they don’t have, to buy new goods they don’t really need;
  • The recent economic crisis provides us with an important opportunity to reflect on the operation of economics;
  • “Business as usual” is not a sustainable answer;
  • There is an imperative to consider whether society can operate without its existing commitment to regular GDP growth.

What makes this book stand out is its recognition of the enormous practical problems in stopping growth.  Both growth and de-growth face significant perils.  As the start of chapter 12 of the book states:

Society is faced with a profound dilemma.  To resist growth is to risk economic and social collapse.  To pursue it relentlessly is to endanger the ecosystems on which we depend for long-term survival.

For the most part, this dilemma goes unrecognised in mainstream policy…  When reality begins to impinge on the collective consciousness, the best suggestion to hand is that we can somehow ‘decouple‘ growth from its material impacts…

The sheer scale of this task is rarely acknowledged.  In a world of 9 billion people all aspiring to western lifestyles, the carbon intensity of every dollar of output must be at least 130 times lower in 2050 than it it today…

Never mind that no-one knows what such an economy looks like.  Never mind that decoupling isn’t happening on anything like that scale.  Never mind that all our institutions and incentive structures continually point in the wrong direction.  The dilemma, once recognised, looms so dangerously over our future that we are desperate to believe in miracles.  Technology will save us.  Capitalism is good at technology…

This delusional strategy has reached its limits.  Simplistic assumptions that capitalism’s propensity for efficiency will stabilise the climate and solve the problem of resource scarcity are almost literally bankrupt.  We now stand in urgent need of a clearer vision, braver policy-making, something more robust in the way of a strategy with which to confront the dilemma of growth.

The starting point must be to unravel the forces that keep us in damaging denial.  Nature and structure conspire together here.  The profit motive stimulates a continual search for newer, better or cheaper products and services.  Our own relentless search for novelty and social status locks us into an iron cage of consumerism.  Affluence itself has betrayed us.

Affluence breeds – and indeed relies on – the continual production and reproduction of consumer novelty.  But relentless novelty reinforces anxiety and weakens our ability to protect long-term social goals.  In doing so it ends up undermining our own well-being and the well-being of those around us.  Somewhere along the way, we lose the shared prosperity we sought int he first place.

None of this is inevitable.  We can’t change ecological limits.  We can’t alter human nature.  But we can and do create and recreate the social world. Its norms are our norms.  Its visions are our visions.  Its structures and institutions shape and are shaped by those norms and visions.  This is where transformation is needed…

As I said, I find myself in agreement a great deal of what the book says.  The questions raised in the book deserve a wide hearing.  Society needs higher overarching goals than merely increasing our GDP.  Society needs to focus on new priorities, which take into account the finite nature of the resources available to us, and the risks of imminent additional ecological and economic disaster.

However, I confess to being one of the people who believe (with some caveats…) that “technology will save us“.  Let’s look again at this figure of a 130-fold descrease needed, between now and 2050.

The figure of 130 comes from a calculation in chapter 5 of the book.  I have no quibble with the figure.  It comes from the Paul Ehrlich equation

I = P * A * T

where:

  • I is the impact on the environment resulting from consumption
  • P is the population
  • A is the consumption or income level per capita (affluence)
  • T is the technological intensity of economic output.

Jackson’s book considers various scenarios.  Scenario 4 assumes a global population of 9 billion by 2050, all enjoying a lifestyle equivalent to that of the average EU citizen, which has grown by the modest amount of only 2% per annum over the intervening 40 years.  To bring down today’s I level for carbon intensity of economic level, to that seen by the IPCC as required to avoid catastrophic climate change, will require a 130-fold reduction in T in the meantime.

How feasible is an improvement factor of 130 in technology, over the next 40 years?  How good is the track record of technology at solving this kind of problem?

Some of the other speakers at the RSA event were hesitant to make any predictions for a 40 year time period.  They noted that history has a habit of making this kind of prediction irrelevant.  Jackson’s answer is that since we have little confidence of making a significant change in T, we should look to ways to reduce A.  Jackson is also worried that recent talk of a ‘Green New Deal’:

  • Is still couched in language of economic growth, rather than improvement in prosperity;
  • Has seen little translation into action, since first raised during 2008-9.

My own answer is that 130 represents just over 7 doublings (2 raised to the 7th power is 128) and that at least some parts of technology have no problems in improving by seven doubling generations over 40 years.  Indeed, taking two years as the usual Moore’s Law doubling period, for improvements in semiconductor density, would require only 14 years for this kind of improvement, rather than 40.

To consider how Moore’s Law improvements could transform the energy business, radically reducing its carbon intensity, here are some remarks by futurist Ray Kurzweil, as reported by LiveScience Senior Editor Robin Lloyd:

Futurist and inventor Ray Kurzweil is part of distinguished panel of engineers that says solar power will scale up to produce all the energy needs of Earth’s people in 20 years.

There is 10,000 times more sunlight than we need to meet 100 percent of our energy needs, he says, and the technology needed for collecting and storing it is about to emerge as the field of solar energy is going to advance exponentially in accordance with Kurzweil’s Law of Accelerating Returns. That law yields a doubling of price performance in information technologies every year.

Kurzweil, author of “The Singularity Is Near” and “The Age of Intelligent Machines,” worked on the solar energy solution with Google Co-Founder Larry Page as part of a panel of experts convened by the National Association of Engineers to address the 14 “grand challenges of the 21st century,” including making solar energy more economical. The panel’s findings were announced here last week at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Solar and wind power currently supply about 1 percent of the world’s energy needs, Kurzweil said, but advances in technology are about to expand with the introduction of nano-engineered materials for solar panels, making them far more efficient, lighter and easier to install. Google has invested substantially in companies pioneering these approaches.

Regardless of any one technology, members of the panel are “confident that we are not that far away from a tipping point where energy from solar will be [economically] competitive with fossil fuels,” Kurzweil said, adding that it could happen within five years.

The reason why solar energy technologies will advance exponentially, Kurzweil said, is because it is an “information technology” (one for which we can measure the information content), and thereby subject to the Law of Accelerating Returns.

“We also see an exponential progression in the use of solar energy,” he said. “It is doubling now every two years. Doubling every two years means multiplying by 1,000 in 20 years. At that rate we’ll meet 100 percent of our energy needs in 20 years.”

Other technologies that will help are solar concentrators made of parabolic mirrors that focus very large areas of sunlight onto a small collector or a small efficient steam turbine. The energy can be stored using nano-engineered fuel cells, Kurzweil said.

“You could, for example, create hydrogen or hydrogen-based fuels from the energy produced by solar panels and then use that to create fuel for fuel cells”, he said. “There are already nano-engineered fuel cells, microscopic in size, that can be scaled up to store huge quantities of energy”, he said…

To be clear, I don’t see any of this as inevitable.  The economy as a whole could falter again, jeopardising “Kurzweil’s Law of Accelerating Returns”.  Less dramatically, Moore’s Law could run out of steam, or it might prove harder than expected to apply silicon improvements in systems for generating, storing, and transporting energy.  I therefore share Professor Jackson’s warning that capitalism, by itself, cannot be trusted to get the best out of technology.  That’s why this debate is particularly important.

24 February 2010

Grants available for online social entrepreneurs

Filed under: grants, innovation, sustainability — David Wood @ 10:44 am

Are you a UK-based online social entrepreneur?

That is – to quote from the website of UnLtd – are you someone with vision, drive, commitment and passion, who wants to use the Internet to change the world for the better?

If so, you could be eligible for one of more than 80 grants which UnLtd plan to distribute this year, as part of the “Better Net Awards” programme being managed by UnLtd and funded by the Nominet Trust.

I recently met with Analia Lemmo from UnLtd, who explained to me how the programme works.

Throughout 2010, the programme will be making awards, at two levels:

  • Level 1 is for awards of between £500 and £5,000 (expected average of £2,000) to startups;
  • Level 2 is for awards of up to £15,000, for people who have already put their idea into practice, and who now want to expand it.

The key criteria for people to receive one of these awards is that:

  • You must have a project in mind to use the Internet for social impact;
  • Your project must be sustainable, that is, the grant should enable you to move the project to a level where it won’t need additional grants to keep it running;
  • Your project should be run from the UK, and should have an impact on a community of people in the UK.

The process to apply for a grant is explained on the UnLtd website:

  • UnLtd run regular information sessions, at various locations around the UK;
  • After taking part in one of these sessions, you should decide whether to proceed to fill in an application form;
  • Candidates may then be interviewed to check details of the proposal;
  • The final decision is made by a board of trustees.

Projects should fall within the following range of areas:

  • Digital inclusion – encouraging and assisting more people to acquire an online presence;
  • Education about the Internet;
  • Improving the environment;
  • Improving healthcare;
  • Online safety for children.

In a press release, Nominet explained their goals in providing this funding:

Teaming up with UnLtd allows Nominet Trust to source often hard to reach entrepreneurial individuals and community groups around the UK, and support their efforts to create, develop and implement Internet-based projects that benefit society.

UnLtd will provide hands-on support and resources alongside awards of funding to individuals and small groups who are creating new projects that reflect the objectives of Nominet Trust. The projects will focus on the safe use of the Internet for social benefit purposes such as education and inclusion. All awards in the partnership programme will be jointly approved by Nominet Trust and UnLtd.

Cliff Prior, chief executive at UnLtd, says: “UnLtd has a history of finding fantastic people with talent and a passion to transform the world in which they live, and supporting them to become successful social entrepreneurs – over 16,000 people to date. The Nominet Trust awards programme will enable UnLtd to build on this success by helping a new wave of people create social benefit through the Internet.”

Examples of previous winners of UnLtd awards are highlighted on the UnLtd website, and include:

  • Action for Sustainable Living, which supports people to live more sustainably in the context of their local community, so that local sustainability issues and priorities are tackled and resolved locally;
  • MOTIV – which works with primary and secondary schools to improve attendance and raise children’s aspirations;
  • The Big Green Idea – a charity dedicated to showing people how sustainable living can be easy, healthy, inexpensive and fun;
  • BabyGROE – the first free UK-wide magazine to inform new parents on ways to raise children which save money and protect the environment;
  • The Calma project – which provides support and training to individuals, families and carers who are affected by the challenging behaviour associated with autism, Asperger syndrome, learning difficulties, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and related conditions.

In contrast to the general awards available from UnLtd, the Better Net Awards programme will have a special emphasis on Internet-based solutions.  If you think you could qualify – or if you think you could be a useful partner who can help UnLtd to identify potential award winners – then please follow the contact links on UnLtd’s site.

22 February 2010

Scepticism about the future of politics

Filed under: politics, UKH+, UKTA — David Wood @ 10:30 pm

I ought to have realised in advance that the topic for last Saturday’s UKH+ meeting would prove less popular than usual.

The first comment from the audience, once the speaker opened up for questions, said it all:

Frankly, I’m sceptical.

Recently, UKH+ meetings have attracted audiences of 40-70 people each time, for discussions about various aspects of the future of technology.  This time, we only had 20 people in the room.

The topic for this meeting was:

The future of politics. Can politicians prepare society for the major technology challenges ahead?

Another indication of scepticism about the meeting topic came in a tweet which suggested a different flow of causation:

Seems unlikely. Can technologists prepare politicians for the major technology challenges ahead?

Politicians are held in low regard by the public as a whole, and seem to be held in even lower regard by technology-savvy members of the public.  Even the speaker at the meeting, Darren Reynolds (chair of Burnley Liberal Democrats), accepted that politicians generally lag well behind breakthrough technological developments, such as the creation of the Internet.

So what was the point of organising the meeting?  Why should a group that focuses on potential breakthrough consequences of new technology be concerned about interactions with politicians?

Well, like it or not, politicians have a big influence over what happens in society:

  • They put in place regulatory frameworks, such as govern new medical treatments and drugs with human enhancement potential;
  • They allocate central funds in favour of different kinds of research and development;
  • They (sometimes) galvanise public change.

Politicians can on occasion even be persuaded to take good decisions – as in the case which was the subject of discussion last time Darren spoke at a UKH+ meeting, back in April 2008:

  • Reasons to support and improve the Human Fertilisation & Embryology bill.

On Saturday, Darren argued that, even though the party political system is far from perfect, and often drives suboptimal behaviour, it can still achieve good outcomes.  Those of us who desire faster development and wise adoption of new technologies (such as nanotechnology, synthetic biology, robotics, and artificial intelligence) need to become more skilled in interacting with politicians.  What’s more, we have to recognise the emotional aspects of political dialog:

  • It’s insufficient to focus on rational debate about the capabilities of technologies;
  • People make decisions based on their feelings, not just on their rationality;
  • We have to understand the concerns, aspirations, hopes, and fears of different people, and tailor our communications to fit;
  • We also have to understand the power structures within society, and take these into account in our change initiatives too.

That advice made good sense to me, with my background in advocating the merits of various smartphone techologies over the years.  “Politics” – whether involving people who call themselves politicians, or merely as a messy aspect of corporate life – is something we have to learn to deal with.  If we fail to raise techno-progressive issues to the mainstream political agenda, we shouldn’t be surprised if people who are generally techno-conservative or techno-ignorant occupy positions of power in society.  Becoming a skilled influencer is much more than becoming a skilled rationalist.

But there’s another connection between politics and technology. It’s not just that politicians can influence the evolution and adoption of technology.  It’s that technology can enable improvements in how politics are conducted.  Discussion at the meeting raised good points about this connection:

  • The accelerating decline of old-style printed newspapers, and the rise of online media, alters the style of political discussion;
  • Technology could be used to enable more frequent votes, at lower cost, on matters where the public should be consulted;
  • Wider collaboration, such as used in open source software projects, or for Wikipedia, might enable better decisions to be reached;
  • Over time, more and more decisions could be referred to AI systems, to generate recommendations;
  • In due course, we’ll have to decide whether AIs deserve votes (the slogan “one man, one vote” will need re-thinking).

After the meeting finished, I found an interesting website with ideas along some of the same lines.  The Metagovernment project describes itself as follows:

The mission of the Metagovernment project is to support the development and use of Internet tools which enable the members of any community to fully participate in the governance of that community. We are a global group of people working on various projects which further this goal.

We expect governance software to be adopted first in small communities, and then to spread outward with the potential to gradually replace many institutions of representative democracy with a new kind of social organization called collaborative governance.

We conceive a world where every person, without exception, is able to substantively participate in any governance structure in which they have an interest. We envision governance which is not only more open, free, and democratic; but also which is more effective and less fallible than pre-Internet forms of governance…

I haven’t had time to look into Metagovernment more fully, but it’s potentially a good topic for a future meeting on “The future of politics”.

A different approach was (half-jokingly?) suggested by James Clement on Facebook:

I’m not so sure about ” putting choices in the hands of ordinary people…”  I’ll wait for our AI Overlords to save us!

Footnote: Darren Reynolds has been a pro-technology activist since at least 1998, when he was part of the team who who produced the original “Transhumanism Declaration“:

  1. Humanity will be radically changed by technology in the future. We foresee the feasibility of redesigning the human condition, including such parameters as the inevitability of ageing, limitations on human and artificial intellects, unchosen psychology, suffering, and our confinement to the planet earth.
  2. Systematic research should be put into understanding these coming developments and their long-term consequences.
  3. Transhumanists think that by being generally open and embracing of new technology we have a better chance of turning it to our advantage than if we try to ban or prohibit it…

Global hotspots for mobile innovation

Filed under: innovation, startups — David Wood @ 1:42 pm

In which parts of the world can we find the most innovative developments in mobile products?

One way to answer that question is to look at the 20 finalists of the recent “Mobile Premier Awards” event.  Entries to this contest came from all over the world, nominated by local Mobile Monday chapter organisations.  An international group of judges whittled down the list of local nominations to a group of 20 finalists.  Here’s the geographical breakdown of the final 20:

  • 1 from South America (Bogota)
  • 2 from North America (New York and Silicon Valley)
  • 2 from India (Chennai and New Delhi)
  • 1 from the Middle East (Tel Aviv)
  • 5 from Baltic countries (Copenhagen, Estonia, Lithuania, Oslo, and Stockholm)
  • 1 from Balkan countries (Slovenia)
  • 8 from Western Europe (Amsterdam, Austria, Barcelona, Berlin, Edinburgh, London, Milan, and Munich).

On the day of the final itself, out of these 20 companies, prizes were awarded to:

But another way to answer this question is to look at the view of the influential publication Fast Company.  They’ve just published a list of the world’s ten most innovative companies in the mobile industry.

What kind of geographical breakdown would you expect in Fast Company’s list?

90% of the list are companies headquartered in the USA:

  • Google, Apple, Amazon, Ford, Evernote, Qualcomm, Clearwire, Foursquare, Intermap.

Only one entry on the list is headquartered outside the USA:

  • HTC.

What should we make of this fact?  Here are three ways to think about it:

  1. Fast Company, immersed in activities in the US, is suffering from myopia (short-sightedness)
  2. It’s smart marketing by Fast Company.  As Matt Millar suggested: Fast Company is a US mag, read by US people. So tell them the US is great, they buy more 🙂
  3. The lion’s share of the greatest mobile innovation really is happening in the USA, and the rest of the world should wake up and recognise that fact.

If the third explanation is the right one, perhaps I should seek my next employment in the US.

I’m reminded of the marvellously thought-provoking picture produced a couple of years back by Rubicon Consulting, of how Internet companies view the mobile industry:

Footnote: Thanks to Petteri Muilu for drawing my attention to the Fast Company list.

19 February 2010

Silent drama on flight BA487

Filed under: flight, risks — David Wood @ 12:36 pm

Can the senior member of the cabin staff please come to the cockpit immediately.

I hadn’t heard that announcement on an airplane before, and I hope I don’t hear it again.

About 20 minutes after take off from Barcelona, the pilot of the BA487 clearly had something that needed attention in a hurry.

I was seated quite far back in the plane, so I couldn’t see whether any cabin staff actually ran up the aisle.  Indeed, there was nothing to see at all – everything seemed to be progressing smoothly.  I had my head in a book; someone nearby was watching a movie on his laptop; many other people were sleeping.  It seemed as if nothing had happened.

But about five minutes later, an air stewardess leaned over to the person near me watching the movie, and gently instructed:

Please turn off the laptop – the captain hasn’t switched off the fasten-seatbelts sign.

Other passengers were asked to straighten the backs of their seats.  I overheard one air stewardess say to another “I think the pilot will make an announcement”.

For a moment, I wondered to myself if my own laptop could, somehow, be the cause of this as yet unknown issue.  It was in my laptop bag, in the locker above the seats.  I know that, occasionally, the laptop seems to switch itself on (perhaps to run an auto-timed virus scan) and then fails to close down again.  On these occasions, the laptop can become hotter and hotter, with the airconditioning fan going at full speed.  Perhaps – I speculated – it might be running at frantic speed at this very moment, above my head, emitting some kind of dangerous wireless rays, which were influencing cockit equipment.  Should I own up to this remote possibility, open my seatbelt, stand up, look inside my laptop bag, and check?  Probably not.

Then an air stewardess said quietly, in a reassuring voice:

We’re going back.  The pilot’s turning round.  There’s nothing to be worried about.

A few moments later, the pilot confirmed the same information via a cockpit announcement.  There was a strange smell in the cockpit, he said.  As a precaution, we would be returning to Barcelona.

I thought to myself: things can’t be too bad.  Otherwise we’d be diverting as quickly as possible to some other nearby airport, closer than Barcelona.

However, I found myself unable to concentrate on my book.  I read the same few paragraphs time and again, losing track of where I’d reached.  My mind was racing elsewhere.

Then all the cabin lights went out – apart from the low-level emergency lighting.  My mind jumped ahead again – hmm, the captain is accustomising everyone’s eyes to the darkness, in case the plane crashes and we all need to be able to see things clearly in the midst of nighttime chaos.  But the cabin as a whole seemed calm.  The British stiff upper lip was in play.  Or perhaps it was just that we were all tired – we’d had a long, hard week of meetings, meetings, meetings at the Mobile World Congress.

In the near-darkness, I half wondered about switching on my phone to compose a text message to my loved ones.  What would I say? Then the captain announced:

Cabin crew, ten minutes to landing

which had the happy side effect of calming me down.  But I couldn’t help noticing that someone a few rows away appeared to be praying.

The lights of Barcelona were, by now, visible outside the window.  We seemed an awfully long way up in the air.  Could we really descend all that way in just ten minutes?

Psychologically, those ten minutes lasted an age.  Chronologically, they lasted 12 minutes (according to my watch) – until the airplane wheels touched down on the runway.  A few people nervously clapped their hands, but the applause was muted, and failed to catch.

The potentially heart-stopping drama was over.  161 passengers (according to Telegraph.co.uk) had survived without any physical injury.  But another, lesser, drama was starting.  161 travel plans had been disrupted, and it was not at all clear how the plans would be re-made.  Most British Airways ground staff had gone home for the evening.  A few Iberian staff were, a few hours later, still processing a long line of passengers.  The lucky first few in the queue got seats on a mid-morning flight.  Those of us further back in the queue were assigned to increasingly late flights.  Too bad – it will mean I miss my early evening engagement in London.  But at least we’re all in one piece.

At around 1.30am in the morning, a minibus took a group of us to a hotel in Barcelona town centre.  We drove past the main FIRA location of the Mobile World Congress, which we had all been attending earlier in the week.  At last, the silence and stiff upper lip vanished.  Laughter broke out, with lots of black humour.  Momentarily, it seemed that the bus was stopping at the FIRA itself, and we joked that we needed to get out and start arranging more business meetings.

Postscript 1: There was at least one journalist on the flight, and he used mobile technology to file a report which appeared on Sky News while we were still in the airport arrival hall awaiting our luggage delivery: BA Flight Makes Emergency Landing.  (That story contains exaggerations.  For example, there was no announcement that there was going to be an emergency landing.  Don’t believe everything you read on news sites!)

The story was picked up by The Aviation Herald in its report, “Incident: British Airways B752 near Barcelona on Feb 18th 2010, strange odour in cockpit“.  Some of the reader comments there are interesting:

  • There is often a strange odour in the cockpit when I fly.
  • Tried a shower lately? Then use a different shampoo. [This one is a joke, by the way.]
  • Same aircraft had a similar problem on the 12th Feb. I guess they didn’t find the root cause yet.

The last comment is particularly interesting.  I wonder if the cause lies in software – the same as with the Toyota car recalls?

Postscript 2: By chance I found myself standing next to the pilot and co-pilot in the check-in area next day.  After thanking them for getting the flight down safely, I asked about the report of a similar incident the previous week.  They confirmed it had happened.  Indeed, they had been in the cockpit on that occasion too.  On that occasion, the fumes had caused them feelings of illness and lack of concentration – not something you want in the flight cockpit!  On this occasion, they had reacted quicker, putting on oxygen masks as soon as they smelt the fumes.  Better safe than sorry.

Postscript 3: My thanks to Jorgen Behrens for drawing my attention to a 2006 Guardian article by Antony Barnett which seems highly relevant: “Toxic cockpit fumes that bring danger to the skies“.  Here’s the beginning of that article:

Dozens of pilots have flown while dizzy, nauseous and suffering double vision on crowded passenger flights. The cause is contaminated air and it can strike without warning – but the cases have been kept from the public.

Three weeks ago the pilot of a FlyBe flight from Belfast international airport to Gatwick was preparing his passenger jet for take-off . He had just received clearance from air traffic control and released the aircraft’s brakes, pushing forward on the power levers in the cockpit to open the throttle.

As the plane began to accelerate down the runway at more than 100mph, he began to smell a strange odour described as similar to a ‘central heating boiler’. His throat became very dry and his eyes began to burn. Such was his discomfort that he was forced to hand control of the plane to his co-pilot. His fingers were tingling and his shirt soaked in sweat. He was confused, talking incoherently and unable to answer questions from his co-pilot. He could not accurately do safety checks. An emergency was declared and the flight returned to Belfast…

Chilling.

18 February 2010

Coping without my second brain

Filed under: intelligence, Psion — David Wood @ 6:06 pm

Every so often, my current Psion Series 5mx PDA develops a fault in its screen display.  Due to repeated stress on the cable joining the screen to the main body of the device, the connectors in the cable fail.

When that happens, all I can see on the screen is a series of horizontal lines, looking a bit like an extract of a bar code:

I find that, with my pattern of using the Psion device, this problem arises roughly once every 6-12 months.  It’s because I open and shut the device numerous times most waking hours – in order to access the applications on the device which help me to manage my life: Agenda, Contacts, To-do, Alarms, numerous documents and spreadsheets, and so on.  The heavy usage magnifies the stress on the cable.

I can manage my life with these applications provided the screen is working.

When the screen cable fault occurs, I can sometimes mitigate the problem by viewing the screen at a half-open angle.  I presume that, with less stress on the cable, the connectors are able to work properly again.  However, using the device in a propped partially-open state is hardly an ideal ergonomic experience.

Because I know this fault will eventually afflict all the S5mx devices I use, I keep a backup device – bought from EBay.  Alas, my current device developed this problem when I opened it last Saturday, as I sat down in the airplane to fly from Heathrow to Barcelona, for this week’s Mobile World Congress event.  My backup device is still at home in London.  Worse, the usual remediation step did not work in this case: the screen was unviewable even when partially open.

Hmm – I thought to myself – maybe this will be a chance to see how well I can function without the device I often think of as my second brain.

The answer: it has been hard!  Details of my hotel, as well as other logistics matters and appointment details, are stored inside the S5mx.

To restore at least an element of personal productivity, I copied a few key files from the Psion to my laptop, and started up the PC emulator of this device.  It took me a while to remember how to configure the emulator (but I found the details via Google – part of my third brain).  My heart started to beat normally again, as my Agenda showed up on my laptop screen:

By means of this PC emulator, I was able to find out where I should be at various times, and so on.

On the other hand, my laptop is significantly less convenient than the pocket-occupying, instant-on Psion device.  Time and again over the last few days, I’ve scribbled notes on pieces of paper, and been slow to identify times in my schedule when I would be able to slot in new meetings.  It’s been a strain.

I feel a little bit like the character Manfred who has his personal glasses stolen (by “Spring-Heeled Jack”) at the start of Chapter 3 of of Charlie Stross‘s magnificent book Accelerando:

Spring-Heeled Jack runs blind, blue fumes crackling from his heels. His right hand, outstretched for balance, clutches a mark’s stolen memories. The victim is sitting on the hard stones of the pavement behind him. Maybe he’s wondering what’s happened; maybe he looks after the fleeing youth. But the tourist crowds block the view effectively, and in any case, he has no hope of catching the mugger. Hit-and-run amnesia is what the polis call it, but to Spring-Heeled Jack it’s just more loot to buy fuel for his Russian army-surplus motorized combat boots.

* * *

The victim sits on the cobblestones clutching his aching temples. What happened? he wonders. The universe is a brightly colored blur of fast-moving shapes augmented by deafening noises. His ear-mounted cameras are rebooting repeatedly: They panic every eight hundred milliseconds, whenever they realize that they’re alone on his personal area network without the comforting support of a hub to tell them where to send his incoming sensory feed. Two of his mobile phones are bickering moronically, disputing ownership of his grid bandwidth, and his memory … is missing.

A tall blond clutching an electric chainsaw sheathed in pink bubble wrap leans over him curiously: “you all right?” she asks.

“I –” He shakes his head, which hurts. “Who am I?” His medical monitor is alarmed because his blood pressure has fallen: His pulse is racing, his serum cortisol titer is up, and a host of other biometrics suggest that he’s going into shock.

“I think you need an ambulance,” the woman announces. She mutters at her lapel, “Phone, call an ambulance. ” She waves a finger vaguely at him as if to reify a geolink, then wanders off, chain-saw clutched under one arm. Typical southern émigré behavior in the Athens of the North, too embarrassed to get involved. The man shakes his head again, eyes closed, as a flock of girls on powered blades skid around him in elaborate loops. A siren begins to warble, over the bridge to the north.

Who am I? he wonders. “I’m Manfred,” he says with a sense of stunned wonder. He looks up at the bronze statue of a man on a horse that looms above the crowds on this busy street corner. Someone has plastered a Hello Cthulhu! holo on the plaque that names its rider: Languid fluffy pink tentacles wave at him in an attack of kawaii. “I’m Manfred – Manfred. My memory. What’s happened to my memory?” Elderly Malaysian tourists point at him from the open top deck of a passing bus. He burns with a sense of horrified urgency. I was going somewhere, he recalls. What was I doing? It was amazingly important, he thinks, but he can’t remember what exactly it was. He was going to see someone about – it’s on the tip of his tongue –

When I reach home again this evening, I’ll copy all my data files to my backup second brain, and (all being well) I’ll be back to my usual level of personal organisation and effectiveness.

10 February 2010

The mobile multitasking advantage

Filed under: Android, applications, architecture, iPhone, multitasking, Psion, universities — David Wood @ 11:48 am

How important is it for a mobile device to support background multitasking?

Specifically, how important is it that users can install, onto the device, applications which will continue to run well in background whilst the user is simultaneously using the device for another purpose?

Humans are multitasking creatures.  We get involved in many activities simultaneously: listening to music, browsing the web, holding conversations, taking notes, staying on the alert for interruptions… – so shouldn’t our mobile devices support this model of working?

One argument is that this feature is not important.  That’s because the Apple iPhone fails to offer it, and the sales of the iPhone don’t seem to have suffered as a result.  The applications built into the iPhone continue to operate in background, but downloaded apps don’t.  iPhone apps continue to sell well.  Conclusion: mobile multitasking has little importance in the real world.  Right?

But that’s a weak argument.  Customer sentiment can change.  If users start talking about use cases which the iPhone fails to support – and which other smartphones support well – then public perception of the fitness of the iPhone system software could suffer a significant downturn.  (“iPhone apps – they’re so 2009…”)

How about Android?  That offers background multitasking.  But does it do it well?

My former colleague Brendan Donegan has been putting an Android phone to serious use, and has noticed some problems in how it works.  He has reported his findings in a series of tweets:

I say, with all honesty that Android’s multitasking is a huge travesty. Doesn’t even deserve to be called that

Poor prioritisation of tasks. Exemplar use-case – Spotify [music playing app] + camera

Spotify will jitter and the photo will be taken out of sync with flash, giving a whited out image

Symbian of course handles the same use case flawlessly

Android really is just not up to doing more than one ‘intensive’ task at a time

Even the [built-in] Android music player skips when taking a photo

(Brendan has some positive remarks about his Android phone too, by the way.)

Mark Wilcox suggests a diagnosis:

sounds like the non-real-time, high interrupt latency on Linux is causing some problems in multimedia use cases

Personally, I find this discussion fascinating – on both an architecture level and a usability level.  I see a whole series of questions that need answers:

  1. Are these results applicable just to one Android phone, or are they intrinsic to the whole platform?
  2. Could these problems be fixed by fairly simple software modifications, or are they more deeply rooted?
  3. How do other mobile platforms handle similar use cases?  What about feature phone platforms?
  4. How important is the use case of playing music in background, while taking a photograph?  Are there other use cases that could come to be seen as more significant?

Perhaps this is a good topic for a university research project.  Any takers?

(Related to this, it would be interesting to know more about the background processing abilities of modern feature phones.  For example, it used to be the case that some feature phones would discard the contents of partially written text messages if there was an incoming voice call.  Has anyone looked into this recently?)

Regardless of the merits of these particular use cases, I am convinced that software responsiveness is important.  If the software system is tied up attending to task A when I want it to do task B, I’m frustrated.  I don’t think I’m alone in this feeling.

My 1990’s Psion PDA typically runs more than a dozen apps in parallel (several word processors, spreadsheeets, databases, plus an individual agenda, tube map app, calculator, and so on) and switches instantly between them.  That sets my baseline expectation.

Here’s another mobile use case that’s on my mind a lot these days.  It applies, not to a PDA or mobile phone, but to my laptop.  It’s not (I think) a device problem, but a wider system problem, involving network connectivity:

  • I frequently find myself in mobile situations where I’m browsing websites on my laptop (for example, on the train), and the pages take ages to load;
  • The signal indicator on the built-in wireless modem app says there’s a strong signal, but for some reason, wireless traffic is squeezed;
  • I sit watching empty tabs on my Firefox browser, waiting and waiting and waiting for content to appear;
  • In frustration, I’ll often open another tab, and try to visit the BBC website – to rule out the possibility that the server for the other web pages(s) has gone down – but that gives me another blank page;
  • Eventually, things recover, but in the meantime, I’ve been left twiddling my thumbs.

When I switch to a WiFi connection instead of a cellular connection, things are usually better – though I’ve had the same bitter experience with some WiFi hotspots too (for example, in some Starbucks coffee shops).

So what should the highest priority be for system architects to optimise?  Responsiveness comes high on my own wishlist.  I recognise that this will often require changes in several parts of the software system.

9 February 2010

Improving mobile phone usability

Filed under: Barcelona, usability — David Wood @ 9:42 am

One fundamental step to unlocking the full transformational potential of smart mobile technology is to significantly improve the usability of multi-function devices.  As additional features have been added into mobile phones, there’s been a natural tendency for each new feature to detract from the overall ease of use of the device:

  • It’s harder for users to locate the exact function that they wish to use at any given time;
  • It’s harder for users to understand the full set of functions that are available for them to use.

This has led to feelings of frustration and disenchantment.  Devices are full of powerful functionality that is under-used and under-appreciated.

Recognising this problem, companies throughout the mobile industry are exploring approaches to improving the usability of multi-function devices.

One common idea is to try to arrange all the functionality into a clear logical hierarchy.  But as the number of available functions grows and grows, the result is something that is harder and harder to use, no matter how thoughtfully the functions are arranged.

A second common idea is to allow users to select the applications that they personally use the most often, and to put shortcuts to these applications onto the homescreen (start screen) of the phone.  That’s a step forwards, but there are drawbacks with this as well:

  1. The functionality that users want to access is more fine-grained than simply picking an application.  Instead, a user will often have a specific task in mind, such as “phone Mum” or “email Susie” or “check what movies are showing this evening”;
  2. The functionality that users want to access the most often varies depending on the context the user is in – for example, the time of day, or the user’s location;
  3. The UI to creating these shortcuts can be time-consuming or intimidating.

In this context, I’ve recently been looking at some technology developed by the startup company Intuitive User Interfaces.  The founders of Intuitive previously held key roles with the company ART (Advanced Recognition Technologies) which was subsequently acquired by Nuance Communications.

Intuitive highlight the following vision:

Imagine a phone that knows what you need, when you need it, one touch away.

Briefly, the technology works as follows:

  1. An underlying engine observes which tasks the user performs frequently, and in which circumstances;
  2. These tasks are made available to the user via a simple top-level one-touch selection screen;
  3. The set of tasks in this screen vary depending on user context.

Intuitive will be showing their system, running on an Android phone, at the Mobile World Congress at Barcelona next week.  Ports to other platforms are in the works.

Of course, software that tries to anticipate a user’s actions has sometimes proved annoying rather than helpful.  Microsoft’s “paperclip” Office Assistant became particularly notorious:

  • It was included in versions of Microsoft Office from 1997 to 2003 – with the intention of providing advice to users when it deduced that they were trying to carry out a particular task;
  • It was widely criticised for being intrusive and unhelpful;
  • It was excluded from later versions;
  • Smithsonian magazine in 2007 called this paperclip agent “one of the worst software design blunders in the annals of computing“.

It’s down to the quality of the underlying engine whether the context-dependent suggestions provided to the user are seen as helpful or annoying.  Intuitive describe the engine in their product as “using sophisticated machine learning algorithms” in order to create “a statistically driven model”.  Users’ reactions to suggestions also depend on the UI of the suggestion system.

Personally, I’m sufficiently interested in this technology to have joined Intuitive’s Advisory Board.  If anyone would like to explore this technology further, in meetings at Barcelona, please get in touch!

For other news about Intuitive User Interfaces, please see their website.

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