I’ll be at CTIA from the 23rd and leaving on the 25th. I’ll be talking Clearspring’s mobile services and looking for other great companies for Clearspring to work with. If you’re interested in having a chat, let me know and I’ll make some time to get together.

I was visiting the (newly AdMob-pimping) WURFL site the other day and came upon this scathing commentary by Lucia.

The abusive company I am talking about is Vodafone UK and the abuse is their decision to strip out essential device identification information that mobile phones send to content providers in order to let them serve customized content for each user’s device.
I want to bring the problem to public attention, make people aware of the issue and get everyone involved to do something about it.

I wanted to do my small part to get the word out. WURFL and other device databases have evolved over time to create workable, deployable solutions for creating widely compatible mobile services. Using the user-agent to map into a worldwide user-contributed database of device capabilities has significantly reduced the barrier to entry for many companies and hobbyists.

You can also follow these complaints on the wmlprogramming Yahoo Group and Vodafone’s BVine.

If we let these header standards break down, we’re back to an annoying, discouraging, heterogeneous device identification landscape. We want to see innovation, we don’t want to stifle it.

And yeah, Novarra, you should have known better too.

One of the harder to believe stats of mobile ads is that studies have shown clickthrough rates of up to 6% and conversion rates over 25%. This is in contrast to web ads, which have “evolved” over time to be significantly less than 1% clickthrough but with a wide range of conversion rates depending on the ease of action.

Many people attribute the high mobile clickthrough to a captive audience looking for content, who aren’t jaded auto-ad filtering robots as they are on the web. The landing pages for mobile ads have also been hand-crafted to provide a solid mobile experience, and the advertisers who have expended the time and money to go mobile generally have more interesting things to offer than the cruft that exists in the web ad ecosystem.

But what happens when you take the cruft, transcode it for mobile so it’s even more crufty, then flood the mobile ad ecosystem with it? I’m tempted to flat out say it destroys the ecosystem and be done with it, but I want to get practical here and go through a few of the real issues.

The Sponsored Results Could Be Useful But the Landings Could be Crap

Let’s do some searches and look at the AdWords results on the right. I’m going to be choosing things that people would search for from the phone.

Pizza NYC – The AdWord links are mostly to city guides. Not bad. You need to dig a bit in these to get what you want, but if you take a look at Google’s transcocoded version of AOL City Guide, it will be very difficult to find what you’re looking for.

Cab Atlanta – The first AdWord link would be totally useful if it worked on mobile devices. But again, the transcoded version takes the form interface out and leaves it crippled.

Female Lead The Brave One – No AdWords whatsoever in this one. Good. First link is to IMDB. They don’t have a mobile site redirected from their main URLs yet, and the transcoded version moves all the useful information to subsequent pages you need to click through to. So the result is great, but the transcoding makes it less great.

Local Searches are Overruled by Generic Sponsored Links

Here’s another search:

Adult Toys Chicago – Here we have a situation where someone wants a local solution, like the cab and pizza searches above, but doesn’t get it. When you’re searching for a sex toy store from your phone, odds are you don’t want to mail order it and wait.

The problem here is that all the AdWords links go to online stores, which not only aren’t what you’re looking for, but also probably don’t have mobile versions of their stores anyway. So here a local search has become useless.

The worst part about this is that the non-sponsored results go to local results – just what they were looking for.

Searches for Mobile Services Overruled by Web

One more search for mobile-specific services:

Mobile Photo Sharing – The second sponsored result is actually a mobile wallpaper service. Great. But if you click on the link with a mobile device user agent, you get the message “This feature is not yet available for mobile use. Please check back soon!” In this situation, mobile services have a lot to gain from redirecting mobile user agents from their web URL’s instead of having separate URLs for their mobile services. Are you reading this .mobi???

In these types of mobile searches, you’ll most likely be dominated by links to the desktop-web sites of generic photo sharing services that happen to maybe have some mobile features. I think over time, this could evolve into more useful results as companies wise up, target correctly, and begin to redirect mobiles to mobile versions of sites. Which brings me to my next point.

It’s Good to be a Mobile Web Development / Middleware / Infrastructure Offering

So I’m a company with a well-performing AdWords campaign driving serious users to my web site. I never really paid much attention to this mobile thing, but now I’m suddenly appearing on phones. I don’t want to wait for Google to get their transcoder working well, and I’m not thrilled with them dictating how my site will look on phones. What do I do?

If I have half a brain, I’d at least explore what it would take to get my content mobile. I’d probably do some Google searches like “bring web content mobile“. Boy oh boy – talk about a hot AdWords buy now. If your mobile web company has a friendly, turnkey solution for Joe Website out there, this Google AdWords move could make you bank.

That said, if Google improves the transcoder to the point of most web advertisers being satisfied with the results, Google will have themselves a large chunk of this mobile-enabling market as well.

Near-Term Conclusion

Sitting here right now, I can’t honestly say Google’s move will be a net loss for the mobile web. It will certainly hurt those excellent mobile ad statistics I started this post with, but that was going to happen over time anyway.

Google knows it has to increase mobile ad inventory, but it also needs to keep its results relevant or people will stop using their mobile search. Keep that in mind. They need to balance search usefulness with a mobile ad strategy, and they know more than anyone that the quality of the links on that search page will make or break their dominance. Even if the quality dips for a bit, rest assured that they’ll find ways to balance it out and get those search pages useful and generating money at the same time. This includes improving their transcoder to make the landing pages more useful as well.

So for now, it’s reasonable to complain about transcoded web pages, and web buys clogging up search results. But they have the basics, a lot of smart people, and are now focused. They have a good shot at improving all of these aspects and making an integrated solution that is the rumbling giant the smaller guys have been fearing. The heat is on – it’s going to be an interesting battle.

Being a mobile guy with a side of widget development, there’s two BarCamps coming down the pike that are of interest to me.

I went to the first Mobile Camp NY last spring and it was a great event. I’m expecting it to only get better. Check out Mobile Camp NYC 2 November 10th. There will be a lot of physical hyperlinking presence at this one, which was a hot topic at the first meeting.

Next is the first WidgetDevCamp held in DC. Clearspring is one of the sponsors, and I’m going to try to get down there for it. Right now there’s no specific date set, but they’re looking at a weekend-long event in the middle or end of October. Get ready to get practical at this one, there will be a widget hackathon and hands on help to get real-world code up and running.

You can follow this camp on Twitter as well.

Here we are folks. It’s 2007, and the music industry from 1988 just appeared in a DeLorean, fire trail and supercool vapor pouring off of it, dressed in a silver lab coat and mirrored sunglasses. In their dash – an Alpine head unit with a cassingle in it looping Huey Lewis & The News’ “Power of Love” over and over.

Finding out that no one uses cassettes anymore, and seeing all these people talking on wireless telephones with custom rings, they evolved their product to its next generation – The Ringle: cassingle + ringtone in CD form! They then increased the price to account for inflation (makes sense, right?) and prepared themselves to dominate the future.

I relate the ringtone idea to selling Java games in physical stores. Remember that from like 2003? There was mReach, who had these kiosk ideas where you could download games, ringtones and wallpapers – but I’m not sure if it was bluetooth or they just sent SMS links. Anyway, I never saw one, and I think the company’s toast now. The only time I’ve seen physical stores carrying mobile content was in Japan, and that’s… well… Japan – your western mobile preconceptions do not apply.

They don’t even have specifics on ringtone redemption yet. Whoever they partner with to do the digital distribution will want a cut, so that’ll reduce the profit margin and encourage them to up the price. Then you have the proposed price itself – $5.98 or $6.98. Ringtones are like $2.50 max now, and you can get music singles from iTunes for $0.99. So at what point is this looking appetizing? Other than an impulse buy on the checkout line, this can’t have appeal to most consumers.

I will now prepare myself to see a Ringle for Rhianna’s “Umbrella” next to the umbrellas in 7-11.

I’m sure you’ve been reading the “I want My $200 Back Apple!” posts now that the iPhone prices have been dropped. Personally, I don’t feel it’s a big deal – you don’t buy this stuff with the intent of being frugal. They’re luxury items that you should feel very lucky to be able to buy after you pay your bills for the month, feed your kids, and put some away for savings. If you look at buying gadgets as putting your extra money in the shredder for some sick pleasure, you don’t get phased by price drops and new models.

That said, I do feel shafted by yesterday’s announcements. Not due to the new iPod touch, or the price drops, but because there was no significant iPhone software update announced. Sure, they’ll give us the mobile iTunes store in a month, but there’s so many software improvements need to happen with the iPhone, and they’re not coming. Apple has stated that this iPhone model is a platform that will last for a while. Great, but the people treating it like that are the unsupported 3rd party app builders. Look at awesome software like Apollo IM. Why are third parties being forced to fill these holes?

I’d go right ahead and crack the machine and use all these third party apps. They made it easy enough. But back when Apple released a minor update to the phone, people were scared shitless that the official update would brick it. A very small minority, if any actually did get bricked phones, and some got a bit scared and had to do a system restore to recover. But I really use this phone both personally and for work, and I do development testing on it as well. So I need it to be stock, and I need it to not be a brick.

So I’m here waiting for Apple to do what they said, and treat the phone like a platform. But…

IM
exchange sync
MMS
video recording

video podcast support (Update: Looks like the new iTunes with the latest iPhone firmware syncs them correctly. If you play them in the podcasts list, it’s just audio, but they are now listed under videos as well.)

3rd party widget engine
more native widgets
and better bluetooth profiles

… won’t make them money like Starbucks integration (what a damn insult that is), so I’m not holding my breath.

This isn’t news at all. But I was just browsing Verizon’s BroadbandAccess service and was dismayed to find their disapproval of SlingBox in particular written right into their terms of agreement:

Examples of prohibited uses include, without limitation, the following: (i) continuous uploading, downloading, or streaming of audio or video programming or games; (ii) server devices or host computer applications, including, but not limited to, Web camera posts or broadcasts, automatic data feeds, automated machine to-machine connections or peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing; or (iii) as a substitute or backup for private lines or dedicated data connections. This means, by way of example only, that checking email, surfing the Internet, downloading legally acquired songs, and/or visiting corporate intranets is permitted, but downloading movies using P2P file-sharing services and/or redirecting television programming content for viewing on laptops is prohibited.

So I decided to check out AT&T’s terms:

PROHIBITED USES INCLUDE, BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO, USING SERVICES: (I) WITH SERVER DEVICES OR WITH HOST COMPUTER APPLICATIONS, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, WEB CAMERA POSTS OR BROADCASTS, CONTINUOUS JPEG FILE TRANSFERS, AUTOMATIC DATA FEEDS, TELEMETRY APPLICATIONS, PEER-TO-PEER (P2P) FILE SHARING, AUTOMATED FUNCTIONS OR ANY OTHER MACHINE-TO-MACHINE APPLICATIONS; (II) AS SUBSTITUTE OR BACKUP FOR PRIVATE LINES OR DEDICATED DATA CONNECTIONS; (III) FOR VOICE OVER IP; (IV) IN CONJUNCTION WITH WWAN OR OTHER APPLICATIONS OR DEVICES WHICH AGGREGATE USAGE FROM MULTIPLE SOURCES PRIOR TO TRANSMISSION; (V) USING THE SERVICES FOR ANY ACTIVITY THAT ADVERSELY AFFECTS THE ABILITY OF OTHER PEOPLE OR SYSTEMS TO USE EITHER THE SERVICES OR OTHER PARTIES’ INTERNET-BASED RESOURCES INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO EXCESSIVE CONSUMPTION OF NETWORK OR SYSTEM RESOURCES (WHETHER INTENTIONAL OR UNINTENTIONAL) AND “DENIAL OF SERVICE” (DOS) ATTACKS AGAINST ANOTHER NETWORK HOST OR INDIVIDUAL USER; OR (VI) INTERFERENCE WITH OR DISRUPTION OF OTHER NETWORK USERS, NETWORK SERVICES OR NETWORK EQUIPMENT. EXCEPT FOR CONTENT FORMATTED IN ACCORDANCE WITH AT&T’S WIRELESS CONTENT STANDARDS, UNLIMITED PLANS CANNOT BE USED FOR UPLOADING, DOWNLOADING OR STREAMING OF VIDEO CONTENT (E.G. MOVIES, TV), MUSIC OR GAMES. FURTHERMORE, UNLIMITED PLANS (EXCEPT FOR DATACONNECT AND BLACKBERRY TETHERED) CANNOT BE USED FOR ANY APPLICATIONS THAT TETHER THE DEVICE (THROUGH USE OF, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION, CONNECTION KITS, OTHER PHONE/PDA-TO-COMPUTER ACCESSORIES, BLUETOOTH® OR ANY OTHER WIRELESS TECHNOLOGY) TO LAPTOPS, PCS, OR OTHER EQUIPMENT FOR ANY PURPOSE.

They hate SlingBox, Skype, and pretty much everything else except web, email and IM… and I guess the eventual FTP transfer.

Sprint, however, is less specific:

In addition to the rules for using all of our other Services, unless the we identify the Service or Device you have selected as specifically intended for that purpose (for example, wireless routers, Data Link, etc.), you can’t use our data Services: (1) with server devices or host computer applications, or other systems that drive continuous heavy traffic or data sessions; and (2) as a substitute or backup for private lines or frame relay connections. We reserve the right to limit or suspend any heavy, continuous data usage that adversely impacts our network performance or hinders access to our network. If your Services include unlimited web or data access, you also can’t use your Device as a modem for computers or other equipment, unless we identify the Service or Device you have selected as specifically intended for that purpose (for example, with “phone as modem” plans, Sprint Mobile Broadband card plans, wireless router plans, etc.).

Given all these terms, I’d go with Sprint. I wonder what their WiMax terms will look like. Hmmm…