Mobile Innovators Falling Back?

antoniocapo: Blog Post: A twittering life. http://tinyurl.com/33esrk. Yours similar?

You can never be too fast to follow the latest trends in the World. Being slow, on the other hand, is unacceptable; it means you're not cool! Last night I was sitting around, doing some work, then @antoniocapo sent this out on Twitter, and the post got me thinking... (It also got me thinking that I'm probably the only one amongst the 8,000 people at RIM that uses Twitter. Facebook is catching up :)).

Well, for those of you who don't know, I work at Research in Motion, RIM for short. We make the BlackBerry. We are THE innovators in mobile technology. To be more specific, I work in the group that makes your Gmail, Yahoo!, heck all your personal emails delivered to your phone so you get more addicted to your device (more info here). We are the kings of push mail technology which saves you gazillions of dollars on mobile data bills.

So, what has this tweet got to do anything with what I do? It got me to realize that we're still very much on the corporate side. RIM's not trying hard enough to tap into the consumer market. Yes, last couple years we've done a lot to tap into the consumer market and achieved great success (ever heard of Pearl, Curve ?). But we can do better, we should be doing much better.

Then what happened next? We said, let's tap into social networks. I bet only people that had Blackberry's heard about the infamous (!) Facebook app. In my opinion this brought the biggest shame on the company's profile but nobody has realized it yet. First of all it's no where as cool as the Facebook iPhone app - it's not even close, it hurts. Let me tell you what this app does. You know, Facebook sends you emails on certain things - like somebody sent you a message, wrote on your wall, added you as a friend, right? All this app does, is sees these emails on your inbox and displays them to you in a pretty application. You can reply to the wall posts, etc from this app but that's about it. You can also tag the pictures you took with you BlackBerry and upload to Facebook, but that's the cool part of the app - so unimportant. Why don't I like this app? Because it relies on Facebook sending you an email (I'm already pissed off at Facebook because it never delivers these emails in a timely fashion anyways).

If you ask me, any application on BlackBerry that doesn't use push data somehow is LAME. A Twitter app that refreshes every 15 minutes is LAME (The coolest thing so far - which is kind of accidental, is to have Twitter send notifications to your Google Talk on your BlackBerry; but still, that's not a true, native Twitter application). A Facebook app that doesn't send you all the notifications is LAME. We provide really good infrastructure so you can write apps that will deliver real-time data to the device, i.e. push! Push, push, push, push.

What can I do so I don't cry myself at night? I take it as a personal goal to raise awareness of the BlackBerry API to the masses, a la iPhone SDK. We already have a great network of sources for BlackBerry developers, however - for some reason - it's not as cool, or popular as the iPhone's. Why isn't there any buzz about BlackBerry apps? What saddens me the most is the fact that even thought there is a tremendous amount of BlackBerry apps out there (yes, even US government has in-house apps built on BlackBerry infrastructure) the mass media - aka non BlackBerry users - don't know about them.

All BlackBerry developers out there - make sure you drop me a line. I want to hear your thoughts and ambitions on how to improve your experience so YOU can design and develop the coolest applications.

All BlackBerry users - drop me a line as well. What kind of cool applications do YOU want to see on your device so iPhone and other smart phone users are jealous of your BlackBerry?

PS: I'm no where related to the group that publishes the BlackBerry APIs, nor am I a PR person. I have no influence what so ever on those groups and I don't want to be. This is totally a non-work-related initiative of mine.

Your Online Presence

This is a very tricky and fragile matter. Actually there are two matters here, first the standardization of web services - whether this be SOAP, REST or WS-*, this problem has been solved long time ago - and then there is creating a standard infrastructure of web services - this is what I'd like to rant on. Feeling confused? Well, don't, because this will be the next greatest thing after my grandmother's crunchy walnut baklava.

Here is the problem I see with the web services and Web 2.0 applications out there today:

1. There are a lot of new websites that do pretty much the same things. RSS readers, social networks, heck even word processing sites (Google Docs rocks, I know, it's so cool!).
2. I have my established (or maybe not so, who knows?) online presence and I'm using certain tools/applications to maintain it (Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, etc.)
3. If I'm not happy with one service, it's almost impossible to move to a different one. This fact makes me locked in to one application either because I started using it the first, or because the majority of my friends circle is in it.

One of the major problems people have been arguing around is the question of who owns the data/pictures/videos people upload? If I put up a video on YouTube, does that video becomes YouTube's property? For the sake of simplicity, you can replace "media" with "profile", "data", etc.

The way I think of this issue is rather different than any other person's I've heard so far. I believe that you are the sole owner of your own media. Hence, you have a hard copy (offline) of the media at your person. The problem you're facing is, in order to share your media with your friends, you have to go through some third party social network. It also happens that this social network also makes tagging your friends on this media and commenting on the same media available to your and your friends' disposal. The key here is that the media is now in the 3rd party's control.

Are you with me so far? Here is what you've been trying to accomplish so far.

1. You have some media you want to share with your friends.
2. You upload this media where all or most of your friends can access.
3. The place you uploaded allows you to link this media with your friends through tags or comments, etc.

Good. We can get back to what I believe in. My God says that even if I own the original media, the social network owns the plumbing that connects me to my friends. It's the social network's value-add to society. It may be your personal profile, your blog, your status updates. but it's the social network that provides you with the infrastructure to host this data.

It used to be that getting your data back from social networks was hard; not impossible, but hard. If you really wanted, you could use screen scraping. Nowadays, most sites give you public links that will take anybody outside the social network easily see the media or provide you with web service APIs that would allow you to look at your information from outside the social network's web site.

Twitter's API, for example, allows you to do pretty much everything you want to do on Twitter - including getting a list of your friends, followers, your and their statuses. When you think about the power Twitter gives in the user's hands, this is a great step towards enabling the user owning their own data.

Similarly, OPML - the XML document that describes "outlines" - lets you easily move your RSS subscriptions from one reader to another.

Don't even get me started on the power of Facebook and Ning APIs.

Now, imagine that you can move all your online presence over to wherever you want. In comes DataPortability.org. It's a project that started in November 2007 and has seen a lot of attention in the last couple of months. The idea behind the group is to merge the existing open standards, protocols, formats (such as OpenID, APML, and various APIs) with people's online presences (profiles, friends, media) in a way that the users have the control over their data. I'm very hopeful about the steps this group has been taking so far, and hopefully it's going to result in a new era in web applications.

Imagine tagging a picture on Facebook and viewing that same picture with same tags (and maybe more) on Flickr without doing anything... It's going to be slow but hopefully that's the direction I'd like to see social networks and web sites evolving into. Of course this might require different ways for you to host your data but what the hell, we're humans, we evolve!

Ben De Artik Meshurum - Teknoloji'nin Karanlik Yuzu

Iki hafta once Christmas arti yilbasi vesilesiyle ufak bir kacamak yapip Istanbul'a donmustum. Sira Murat Lostar'la (www.lostar.com) bayramlasamaya geldiginde beni Teknoloji'nin Karanlik Yuzu'ne davet etti; BlackBerry'den "Daha sanal, daha sosyal"den konustuk. Lafi daha fazla uzatmadan buradan podcast'e buyurun... http://teknoloji.lostar.com/2008/01/blackberry-gvenlii.html

BlackBerry's New in Town

For those of you who don't know, technology evangelism runs in our family. My parents own an IT infrastructure/consulting firm and I grew up in this environment where people were trying to fix a lot of every-day enterprise problems by using various technologies, primarily on the Microsoft front (Go check out www.datasistem.com.tr, but I guess they don't have an English site anymore!).

While I'm back in Istanbul for my first ever vacation from work, I've been hanging out with the old man. I usually prefer to just meet with customers and listen to what's going on in the industry. One very good aspect of these visits is that I get to meet a lot of CxOs (buzzword - networking!). But the best part is I get the chance to talk to them about the new/different technologies they use within their Enterprise. I usually prefer to converse with people higher up in the food chain, because most often they are the ones who decided to go forward with the chosen technology. No offense to anybody, but unfortunately the IT personnel is often grumpy and they don't like to enjoy these technologies from an engineering/innovation point of view.

Also, my dad has a very unique sense of humor. I mean it's really awkward when you're visiting your father's customers and while they are demoing the iPAQs the customer turns over to me and begs me to fix their BES. He didn't take me there to teach me how to sell, he knew that they were having problems with their BlackBerries. Half the meeting revolved along the lines of "Hey look, this guy works at RIM, he built that thing you're holding!"

So, guess what? The latest hype in Turkey is on the smartphone front. BlackBerry entered the market around Summer of 2006 and now HP is pushing forward with its new iPAQ Voice Messengers. Both the BlackBerry and Windows Mobile sides have their pros and cons (NO, BlackBerry doesn't have cons!) - but for the sake of simplicity I will assume that they all have the same features - push email, synchronization, phone, Internet browsing, etc. So what do people make their final decisions on? From all the people I've talked recently, the winning answer, by far, is "which ever just works".

Wait a minute, so BlackBerry should be ahead by two touchdowns and a field goal! After all BlackBerry just works! Apparently it doesn't and what's worse is this has nothing to do with BlackBerry not working. The apparent market penetration strategy so far - from what I have heard from several of these CxOs - is Turkcell says here are 10 - 15 8800s for free and here is BES, go install and evaluate, we'll see if you like it within a couple of months. Guess what? The local IT crew can't setup the BES properly so your BlackBerry gets all the Service Books except for CMIME which turns out to be your Exchange email Service Book. So they call up Turkcell's customer support and the only answer they know to solve this problem is to say "Open up your BES settings and click on 'Send Service Books'". Give me a fucking break!

And guess which side Data Sistem is on? Of course, they are going to push harder to sell the iPAQs to customers who've already started using BlackBerries. On the Windows side, they have the power to at least setup a system that "just works", plus they will make a ton of money on extra consulting and the device sales. After all the dark side aligns better with their business. So their new plot goes like this

Customer: I heard you're son's working at RIM, too bad our BES doesn't work - do you think he can come over and fix this thing?

Dad: Hey, we actually have these new HP thingys that actually works perfect - We'll setup it up for you to test AND it's going to cost you less - you don't have to pay for BES with Exchange 2007!

RIM, on the other hand, has only the next few months - OK I give them (us?) until the end of next summer - to fix their strategies and to gain a faithful customer base. It's not going to be easy! I know that we - as RIM - don't have that many subscribers yet in Turkey but as everybody acknowledges there is great potential to expand. What that means is, we have to make sure that we have to provide a smoother experience than any Windows Mobile solution. It has to work even if these are evaluation units. We have to continue giving the world class customer support that we're proud of. Unfortunately I don't see any future for BlackBerry in Turkey - not if we're not going to put in the effort.

PS: It's really awkward to talk about RIM in third person - in the R&D groups, we rarely hear about the marketing side of things.

My Shared Items

I'm probably the biggest fan of Google Reader. There are minor details that I don't like; i.e. the "All Items (100+)". I lost track of how many feeds I'm following, so I consulted my "Trends" and I'm pasting it what it says right here...

From your 72 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 11,426 items, starred 13 items, and shared 33 items.

The point is, I easily get more than 100 items when I wake up in the West Coast. Usually I get the "(100+)" almost all of my folders there. That's probably another reason why I stopped using del.icio.us long time ago. It's just too much hassle to add stuff to a list and tag them when I'm just skimming through millions of posts every day.

Just because of this sole issue, I decided to publish my "Shared Items" from Google Reader. I added the widget on my blog's sidebar. You can also check it out from here. And if you're a Google Reader bloke like me, you might want to add the feed.

Can You Really Export Software?

Just a little thought experiment... Today, I came across an article (I really don't remember where) about Pakistan Software Export Board's new goals and expectations and what not. What really struck me the most is the name of the board and I have a gut feeling that it's actually misleading. I really believe i the fact that in the world we're living in today, software really became a mainstream commodity. My question however, is, can you really "export" software or is it the "labour" that you export by the means of outsourcing?

The best resource I've seen on this so far is http://www.emich.edu/ict_usa/exporting_software.htm.

What I'm most concerned about is how can you really regulate the software trade? With products like shoes, books, DVD's at least the Customs Authorities can do something. How can you monitor downloaded software? How about open source software?

Worst Way to Communicate - SMS

I'm quite certain I never liked communicating over SMS. I have to admit that texting occupied a great deal of my life growing up, but that doesn't stop me from hating it. Anyway, a couple of weeks ago I started using GrandCentral now that I have a desk phone, two BlackBerry's and my good old cell phone. This made me re-realise how much I hate text messaging.

When we were younger, for some reason it seemed to us that texting was cheaper than directly calling the person and I remember sending an SMS to learn the whereabouts of my friends when they were late to the movies. Trust me it was time consuming; go to Menu, then Messages/Create new message, type the message, wait until the guy receives and responds to your text. How can this be faster then just calling the dude? Anyways that's not the point. On the plus side, practice really made perfect; we were really fast typing on the dial pad (Remember, my childhood were the times before T9 or any other text prediction was introduced). Soon, cell phones and SMS became the greatest cheating device - we could text without looking at the phone under the desk

So why do I have so much hatred now that I'm all "grown up"? Now that I'm paying for my own phone bill, I find the charges unacceptably high. Whether you have a texting plan or not, I think it's really expensive. Aside from that I still think they are slow. Actually, come to think about it, if you have a BlackBerry, it's not slower then typing an email, but did I tell you SMS is extremely unreliable?

Here is my breakdown:

1. Doesn't guarantee that the message will be delivered (at least I have come across a lot of cases where the message was not delivered).
2. You can only RECEIVE on your cell phone.
3. You can only SEND TO a cell phone.
4. You can't redirect your text messages if your phone's battery dies (or any other reason for that matter).

I guess that'd make a nice list, did I forget anything else? Here is the single most reason my hatred grew once again - now that I'm using GrandCentral as my "phone hub", I don't check my old cell phone anymore (I think it's somewhere on my desk hiding under a huge pile of papers). So what then? I DON'T GET TEXT MESSAGES ANYMORE.