The Buzz, blog by Apis Design

October 21, 2009

Mobile madness and crowdsourcing mixer by Digital Alberta. Event review.

Filed under: Technology industry — Tags: , , , — Alex Zagoumenov @ 10:55 am

Last night I attended an event by Digital Alberta in Calgary – the Mobile Madness and Crowdsourcing Mixer. It was one of the monthly themed networking events put together by the association. Here’s the synopsis of the event from Digital Alberta’s website, which, by the way, is true to what the event delivered.

Paul Poutanen and Stephen King of Mob4Hire have enjoyed tremendous success from creating a business that harnesses the power of the crowd and their mobile devices. Jon Lam of Ph03nix New Media spoke of his plans of raising $2 Million for the iPho3nix fund to develop 133 iPhone Apps. Tapium’s Richerd Chan, who makes iPhone Games and cool applications and Michelle Sklar, host of BNetTV, moderated this insightful look on the industry.

Here are some event highlights from my perspective about the mobile industry:

  • Mobile web is experiencing huge growth. Smart phones are in the mainstream.
  • Problems with mobile distribution remain. Companies like mob4hire use the power of crowds to test mobile technologies before they get introduced to market.
  • Most of the talk at the panel was from a developer’s standpoint. That is, things discussed were: how to build? is the market ready? how to monetize? how to fix operational problems.
  • The industry is still relatively new. As a result a lot of problems are coming not from developers but from a lack of infrastructure of mobile networks and carriers and lack of technology standards.
  • According to Paul Poutanen of Mob4Hire there close to 100,000 mobile applications on the market right now. paul predicts that within 5 years there will be 5 million mobile applications. Application personalization will play a huge role in the growth of mobile application market. We will all have a personalized application that fits our mobile needs.
  • One of the questions from the audience was: how do you promote your Mobile Application? A collective answer from the panel was along these lines: 1) you have to promote where the consumer is (i.e. at app store properties), 2) external marketing vehicles are of great importance too.
  • As pointed out by Jonathan Lam of Ph03nix New Media, mobile developers should not be afraid of a market of 100,000 applications. Most of them are developed by amateurs, not by professional / for-profit developers. So, there’s definitely an opportunity rather than threat.

Stay tuned as Sarah Blue of TechVibes reviews the event in greater details.

  • Share/Bookmark

September 15, 2009

Convergence or complication?

Filed under: Web Strategy — Tags: , , , — Robin Eldred @ 10:42 am

I say ‘complication’. Let me explain.

As mobile web browsing becomes more and more prevalent, web designers are considering the use of mobile websites more frequently. The big question is, do you simply restyle the same content to accommodate for a smaller browser window with no images, scripts, or multimedia, or do you use entirely different content. I feel quite strongly that you must use entirely different content, as the objectives of visitors on varying devices will in turn vary.

As an example, people sitting in front of dual 24 inch monitors are ‘browsing’. They can take their time, research, digest, take notes, add bookmarks, compare, etc. Visitors using their iPhone on the bus need something specific, and they need it now; directions, a phone number, an email address, a price. Bam! No waiting allowed.

As such, given these different objectives, the different “types” of a website should necessarily have different messages.

In the future, we will see more devices, not fewer. The PC will not converge on your wrist, or in your sunglasses, or in your head. You will simply have all of these as options. And, as such, websites will be required to present specific information to each of these devices.

So, my friends, I vote for ‘complication’ over ‘convergence’ when predicting the future of websites.

  • Share/Bookmark