Mobile web development and open platforms - why should I care?

02/07/2008 by nicola.

This year, its changing and its going to get more fun ! If it gets easier to develop mobile apps, there’s millions of more possibilities for mobile learning too. There is an interesting article from European Communications this week summarising past, current mobile development activity and possibilities about how it could become easier.

1. Why isn’t it easy now?

In the preface of Designing the Mobile User Experience, Barbara Ballard starts off with “hundreds of devices, dozens of browsers, hundreds of implementation environments” and expands further about the variety of technology, messaging, connectivity options. I was at a DevMobi event last week and they mentioned that there are now over 3000 unique device profiles in the Device Atlas including a refrigerator The Device Atlas is a relatively new (and amazing) output from DevMobi which has complete lists of device characteristics / specifications for mobile phones, blackberries etc across the planet.

In a post last week, George Siemens mentioned that innovation in this space has been lacking. A recent post from C. Enrique Ortiz who has many years of experience in the mobile computing space, clarifies this further by showing the differences between local and browser based application development. So - mobile application development to date has not been easily achieved, not just due to all the different devices, but the different components within the handsets as well.

2a) What innovation has there been? I’ve had some cool apps on my phone over the years (mosquito repeller that worked in Bodrum, being one of the better ones!)
I guess this also needs - b) What has been the context for mobile innovation to date ?
I am not in a position to answer this fully, but in short mobile developers have not had the time or resources to develop for multiple devices in multiple countries and have had licensing restrictions on the development. Some highly innovative mobile application development has been carried out by developers, often for their own personal use on their device of choice at the time. These have been released within communities - such as xda as well as manufacturer communities and forums - software development kits have been around for several years. Some communities and sites have been specific such as S60. Lots of apps are available as freeware but are scattered around the web.

3a) Why are applications not all in a central place for downloading like a Sourceforge and b) how do you know what is good or not?
Context and purpose of development as above (as well as specific commercial development by manufacturers and operators alike). Two more sets of developer communities have appeared for developing apps for iPhone and Android. Device Atlas is also a start and there are initiatives afoot to create more central ‘repositories’ of accessible applications that can be downloaded and modified. For example, the Android Developer Challenge recently released some screenshots of the 50
re b) As with any opensource - how do you decide - look at resources, check the ‘readme’ documentation, check online reviews and ask internal and external colleagues.

4. Ok, so Android is opensource - developers can build apps, what else ?
Ajit Jaokar’s ‘Android crossing the chasm’ post, his ‘eleven architectures of the mobile web 2.0′ post and not ‘comparing ecosystems with operating systems’ post explain that Android with its development of an open stack releases the potential for others to not just be application developers, but also device manufacturers because they can now afford to develop them (hmmm Nikia phones anyone ).Google as a web giant with extensive web application development and web communities can explore where it is appropriate to bring these into the mobile space. Andreas Constantinou on the Vision Mobile blog, describes Android as being similar to a browser on steroids

If you are interested in further details, I highly recommend both Ajit’s blog and book, as a non-industry specialist, I find it both readable and insightful.

5. What about other ‘open’ mobile foundations ?
The two most well-known are Limo and recently Symbian foundations which will both provide opportunities for royalty-free software development and in the case of Symbian foundation, backwards compatibility to current device versions such as S60 3rd editions and others.

6. I still don’t really get where the mobile web fits into all of this or why its important?
We know that we have been able to create content via the web, reuse, modify and distribute it via the web. We also know that with web2 apps and rise of web-based social networks, we can collaborate with others to produce and update content regularly, depending on how/when/why/where users have connected with the content. With the development of the mobile web, you can also create and publish content using the web and it might be possible to avoid the development problems highlighted above - such as device interoperability and higher cost, (and speed to market?). With mobile phones currently outnumbering computers in terms of personal or group ownership, there may be chances that some people’s first or early experiences of the web at all, could be via a mobile phone or similar device.

The device, context and purpose are also highly significant here - you are using a mobile device because you are on the move, you want to find relevant things quickly, connect quickly, not spend too much time browsing and fiddling around with the keypad or touchscreen, connect with other people quickly, maybe collaborate on work-related projects as well. Wifi, bluetooth, RFID, NFC and GPS provide a range of possibilities for getting real time location-relevant information.

Mobile marketing thoughts suggest that because of this relevance of data based on where you are and what you are doing, that mobile advertising may be more successful. Admobs live data concurs with this.

Matt Lewis suggested that using a browser to develop and deploy applications opens up possibilities for non-development specialists to have a go too (mobile widgets being a good current example of this). Gábor Török provides an overview of the different environments compared to a browser. He agrees to an extent but suggests that the proliferation of mobile browser versions and their current limits in terms of interaction / rich functionality may make it more complex.

7. So how can we develop mobile web content that is going to work, be enjoyable and useful ?

My journey into mobile web is documented on this site and its ongoing. One of the best resources available is the devmobi community website. Devmobi are part of Dotmobi whose investors (incl Google, Microsoft, Nokia, Sony Ericsson etc etc) have put money into the company to help ’standardise’ the mobile web and provide resources for anyone who wants to create a mobile web presence. Rudy Da Waele’s M-Trends is another good resource for mobile web development ideas. For mLearning specific ideas, mLearnopedia.com is a fantastic starting place.

If you are interested in mLearning but not sure how much technical understanding you need in order to develop content, the rise of the mobile web and the opening up of development opportunities will lead to you being able to access something on the ‘front end’ so that you can develop without needing to code or worry about how to make it work on devices. Barbara Ballard’s choice of book title is useful - it is not designing mobile applications, but designing the mobile user experience. They are mobile - moving around, what do they need or want? As with any other learning experience that you wish to create - who are your users, context, purpose etc . Device considerations come in a lot further along the process (although knowing about them / gaining an understanding of some of their characteristics can help and may make the process more cost-effective etc)

I will post back about this over the next few months as my ‘mproject’ continues, I would love to hear from you in the meantime.

For now, its back to Python

I am going to Open Tech Day this Saturday so have just attempted to download Android SDK and the Eclipse development environment (woohoo, it has pictures… well at least until I have to start typing !)

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