Good news keep pouring in for Funambol. Today we made the finalist list of the Red Herring 100 Global. Somehow, we beat 1,600 startups that won the Red Herring award in the last three years. Not bad...
I received the following message from Red Herring:
Congratulations! After a rigorous evaluation process, I am pleased to inform you that Funambol Inc. is a 2007 finalist of the "Red Herring 100 Global” Award. This means that your company has been selected as one of the best startups in the world.
Indeed, only Red Herring 100 winners and finalists from North America, Europe and Asia of the last three years were eligible for this award. A very competitive process whittled down this pool of 1800 eligible promising companies to the 200 finalists for this first-time award. Evaluations were made on both quantitative and qualitative criteria such as financial performance, innovation, management, global strategy, and ecosystem integration.
You have made the final group because of your outstanding achievements, and Red Herring Magazine is honored to announce Funambol Inc. as one of the most promising technology firms in the world.
Wow, one more for Mobile Open Source!
From the Android Developer Challenge FAQ:
The Android Developer Challenge is open to individuals, teams of individuals, and business entities. While we seek to make the Challenge open worldwide, we cannot open the Challenge to residents of Cuba, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Sudan, and Myanmar (Burma) because of U.S. laws. In addition, the Challenge is not open to residents of Italy or Quebec because of local restrictions.
Ok, I can take the axis of evil are out of the cash prizes for building Android applications, but what is wrong with the residents of Italy?? What did the Italian government do, this time? Or is it a plot to leave out the best mobile developers in the world (apologies for the developers of Quebec, with whom my fellow Italian developers supposedly share bad local restrictions...)?
[NOTE ADDED AFTER THE POST]
One of the Italian readers of this blog added a comment, pointing to the explanation by Fabrizio Giudici. In a nutshell, the Italian government adds so many rules - and requires Google to put a security deposit of $10M in the Italian banks - that kill the ability for Italians to compete with the rest of the world. Quite sad. These are the days when I am glad Funambol is incorporated in Delaware ;-)
[NOTE ADDED A WEEK AFTER THE POST]
One of the readers added a comment pointing me to this article in "Il Punto Informatico" (in Italian, sorry). Carefully reading the Italian law - which is never easy ;-) - it appears that maybe Google has been overcautious, because there seems to be an exclusion for "scientific art" (which must included software, in particular if developed by Italians :-) . I contacted the Italians in Google I know and they told me they are working on it... Let's hope we'll get the country back on track. The economy needs the $10M prizes...
As you might have noticed, Google released the Android SDK today. To make it interesting, they added $10M (that's ten millions) for developers that will build an app for the platform. Which is open source, BTW.
I am already hearing people screaming "Is Google bribing developers?" or "Don't they know cash and open source together do not mix?".
Well, I disagree ;-)
Google is making another smart move. They have a platform and no phones. For six months at least. Who in his/her right mind would develop applications for Android, if nobody can use them? Maybe a couple of crazy Google addicts. But not the developers I know... You do open source for fun, but fun includes people seeing what you did. Nothing you can show today, if you build on Android...
So Google pays developers. As an incentive. To get applications on Android. ASAP.
Smart move.
Why don't I think mixing open source and cash is a bad idea? Well, because my ego is too big :-) Funambol was the first to introduce a cash component for open source developers, over a year ago. We launched the Phone Sniper program back then, giving $25 to developers willing to test and fix a device for the community. Ok, $25 is not exactly $10M, but it does not change the concept behind it :-))
I can tell you we did not receive one single complaint. Actually, we have hundreds of people who contributed and we sent out $20 to every corner of the planet (thanks to Paypal, I am not sure how this would have worked without it...). Phone Sniper has been a phenomenal success for us.
When I announced Phone Sniper on my blog, I wrote:
Now the question: wait, are you giving them cash??? Isn't this open source, where everybody works for free, you love each other and just want to topple Micro$oft because it is evil?
Yes, this is open source. The source is open. Everybody benefits from it. We love each other because of this.
Nope, not everybody works for free. Some need food on the table for their kids. And we do not care about Microsoft, we are just building the best platform possible for mobile.
Wow, is Google reading my blog and taking a page off my book?? Nah, keep the ego in check... But it is fantastic to see Google working to build a mobile open source client platform that will match our mobile open source server platform. And doing that following our path (wait, stop, they are not, it is just a coincidence. Damn ego...).
When you look at the companies involved in the Google's led Open Handset Alliance, it is easy to spot the ones that are missing... Nokia, RIM, Palm, Apple, Microsoft, Sony Ericsson, Vodafone, Verizon, O2... However, it is harder to miss the ones that are there, but they clearly do not belong...
The big one? Qualcomm...
I mean, Qualcomm has represented for years the pillar of the mobile wall garden. Mention the word OPEN and people at Qualcomm would ask you "what do you mean with that?". BREW is the most closed environment in the history of mankind.
Yet, Qualcomm is there. Proudly (I presume). In the OPEN Handset Alliance. Pushing for openness. Removing another brick from the wall garden.
Hey, how many more tips do you need to believe the wireless world has changed and Mobile 2.0 is here to stay? The wall garden is crumbling, the operators are becoming bit pipes, Qualcomm is supporting Open. Next thing you know, Apple will have an SDK for the iPhone. Wait, that happened already...
I love this market...
A few years back, when I filed for the "mobile open source" trademark, I thought I was onto something. In my view, mobile was going to be THE next platform. Open Source was going to be THE way to develop on it. I thought the ability of developers around the world to work on many different platforms and port applications on billions of devices would be the killer factor. I thought there was no killer app in mobile, the killer was going to be the way to allow people to build them. That a community effort was the only way to make it...
Today, I am definitely not alone touting mobile open source :-) Big giant Google announced the Open Handset Alliance. A group of powerful companies, coming together to build a mobile open source infrastructure, called Android.
It is just awesome. Welcome Google to the mobile open source world. We needed someone with weight to push this effort to the next level. Open networks, Open source, Open devices. That's the future of mobile. We are just at the beginning.
Stay tuned for the SDK preview, which is coming out on Nov 12. The license is Apache 2.0. The OS is Linux. The application stack is Java. Open. Open. Open.
If you are like me, this weekend you have received ten invitations to connect with friends via Plaxo Pulse. Like a few months ago we had the weekend of Facebook, this weekend it was the Plaxo weekend. At this rate, I will have the same amount of links in Plaxo that I have in Linked-In, in a few weeks.
Many thought Plaxo was dead. Now many will realize they were wrong. Plaxo is back.
What's cool in the new version of Plaxo? What is making them comeback?
- they have Pulse, which is a mere copy of Facebook. But equally effective. My blog postings, my twitter updates are there automatically. I am starting to receive comments on this blog within Plaxo, which is a signal Pulse is working...
- they have an automatic import from Linked-In, which works well. Their target seems to be more the business people than the "friends". Facebook is trying to expand to the business world, but it might be a fluke. Who wants to be poked by his customers or be part of the zombie group of his boss?? I have a feeling they will fall short.
- they have synchronization. Your address book can come from many sources. It is probably too complicated and cumbersome, but it is there and works ok. The address book is king, I wrote it many times. Who owns the address book, wins the social networking war... And Plaxo is well positioned to be the king of the address book.
- they have mobile synchronization. Years ago, I mentioned to Plaxo they needed SyncML. They laughed at me. This year, their big announcement was "the new platform is based on SyncML"... Nice to see they changed their mind ;-) They are even embracing mobile open source, since their Windows Mobile client is Funambol. Smart move. Great to see Funambol powering Plaxo. They even have me cheering for them :-)
Will it be enough to get Microsoft to cough up another $240M for less than two percent of Plaxo? I do not think so ;-) That deal was insane and part of a bubble. The Web 2.0 bubble.
It is just too easy to come up with a social networking site and make it explode. You need a couple different features from the competition and boom, your site explodes. Once that happens, it gets boring. And people leave you for the next one. It happened to Friendster, it might happen to others as well.
There is no loyalty in Web 2.0... Let's hope Plaxo will explode again, manage its growth (it is not easy from the infrastructure standpoint...) and keep it up. Resurgence is tough to achieve, but they made it. Do it twice would be impossible.
A friend who is on the advisory board of Eye-Fi wrote me yesterday that they launched the Eye-Fi Card, and it is currently in the top 20 best selling product in Amazon’s electronics category.
She told me about the card months ago and I thought it was a great idea. Now that it is actually shipping, it does not seem to be disappointing a bit.
What is the Eye-Fi Card? A 2GB SD card you put in your camera. Exactly the same you have today. The difference is that it has a wi-fi chip in it. You take your picture, then - when you turn the camera on - it syncs the pictures to your PC wirelessly going through your home network. It can also put them on Flickr, Picasa, Facebook and so on. 99 dollars for the convenience (instead of 50$ or so for a normal 2GB SD card).
No touch, no effort, no cable. Just magic. Automagic sync.
When we were thinking about Funambol, the vision was data on a myriad of devices, effortlessly synced across them. I never drank the "convergence" cool-aid. I believe in divergence. We'll have more and more devices in our houses. They will talk to each other, syncing our data among themselves behind the scenes (exactly as the BlackBerry service syncs your email from your mailbox to your cellphone, while you drive).
Automagic sync. Go out and buy an Eye-Fi card for your mom. She'll love you for that.
3 and Skype announced the Skype phone (sPhone?) today. It is a pretty basic and cheap phone (roughly $100) with a button to open the Skype application. Over 3G, it allows you to call other Skype users and text them.
That's it. Pretty simple. Voice over IP. The carrier gives you the IP. Everything else goes through that, including voice.
How significant is this?
I believe it is a huge step. Yet another one towards the "dumbification" of the carrier's business. That is: just being a carrier. Carrying voice and data, and in the near future... simply data. Because voice is just another data type.
Why is 3 doing it? Because they are not the incumbent and need to deliver new stuff to the market to become appealing.
What about the other carriers? I bet they are panicking. They should not. There is nothing wrong with being a bit pipe. It is the same as being a voice pipe, as they have been up to a few years ago (or today, considering SMS is the only real data service with traction).
They should just focus and do what they did on their voice business. Carry the voice. Who has the most reliable and cheaper network wins. Pretty simple.
Just carry the data. Make it cheaper and reliable. Try to keep the margin up. Who has the most reliable and cheaper network wins. Pretty simple. Forget about value added services. The world is going somewhere else...
The day I bought my iPhone, I was totally surprised to find that the only way to synchronize address book and calendar was over iTunes. I could do that ten years ago with my Palm III via HotSync...
The iPhone is a networked device, I could not believe they missed the over the air synchronization element. After all, it is what made BlackBerry what it is today (and RIM a 60B+ company, with a market value bigger than Motorola...).
Since that day, I have been thinking about porting the Funambol plug-in to the iPhone. We have it for Windows Mobile, Outlook, JavaME... Based on the Java or the C++ API. The goal was to have a native SyncML client, which would synchronize myFUNAMBOL (or any other SyncML server) with the local address book on the iPhone.
Once the hackers opened the door to actually make it happen, I called Patrick Ohly, the guy who wrote SyncEvolution and ported our SDK to Linux and Maemo. It just needed an iPhone to get going, so I shipped one from the US. A few weeks later, he had a first prototype. Then he went on vacation, rightly so ;-)
A couple of weeks ago, he sent me the first pre-release of SyncEvolution 0.7, with the iPhone address book sync. Awesome. He made it, through undocumented API (and he built a plug-in for Mac OS X while doing it ;-)
The stuff is great, but it requires a terminal and ssh to make it work. Manually... I asked him if he could do the GUI for the rest of us, he said "no thanks, I have better things to do in life" :-)
So I decided to build the GUI myself, as I did with the Funambol web interface for the iPhone address book. Quite an experience, navigating through Objective-C and undocumented Cocoa interfaces... A few nights and two weekends, and here it is.
There is a settings panel, to add your configuration parameters and sync to myFUNAMBOL.
To get it on your iPhone, you need Installer.app. Point your Safari browser on the iPhone to the http://www.funambol.com/iphone URL and install the Funambol Source, then open Installer (if you have an iPhone 1.1.1, you should open Installer, click on Sources (bottom right), click on Edit (top right), click on Add and put http://www.funambol.com/iphone then click on Done (top right) and refresh), select Productivity and install Funambol. That's it, it includes SyncEvolution as well (but you need the BSD subsystem to be installed on the iPhone already): change the settings and you have over-the-air address book sync...
I have to say the undocumented UIKit is extremely powerful. If you know Cocoa, you will find yourself at ease. The issue is that you have to try everything, because you have no clue what would work or not (the beauty of "undocumented" :-) The end result is a language that is elegant and allows you to build a GUI in hours (vs. weeks), with threads, timers and animations. Wow.
The issue is that I would bet Apple will not give developers this same API in February. They will take stuff out and will probably make it very difficult for anyone to really build powerful apps. Or maybe not. We'll see.
For now, enjoy the first native address book synchronization for the iPhone. And let me know if you find bugs in the GUI or you have suggestions.
As a usual commentator of iPhone fortunes, I have been mulling Steve Job's announcement of the iPhone open SDK for a few days and I finally I made up my mind...
It is not going to be open.
My first reaction was pure excitement. I have been pushing for this announcement since day zero, when Steve made me laugh saying "it is the first SDK without a SDK", also known as a browser... Now that the announcement is here, I just do not think it will be enough.
Here you have my predictions on the SDK (hey, I got the announcement of the Touch right, I might get lucky for the second time ;-)
- You are not going to be able to download apps on the iPhone over the air.
- You will have to go through iTunes, where they will build the Application Store, keeping complete control of the system (is anybody saying "on-deck"? ;-)
- As a developer, you will have limited APIs. For starters, no file system access, it will be a sandbox with access to your own application files. That's it.
- Because of the above, no way to build ringtones (they have to protect that chunk of the business) or access to music or building another million interesting applications.
- As a developer, you will have to "certify" yourself first (hopefully without paying), submit your application (hopefully online) and wait for a person to review it. I do not believe this system will be automated. They will have a certification suite but also someone to review the app to make sure it is "appropriate" for the iTunes Application Store. It will take time and be a tedious process.
Bottom line, we will have removed the on-deck requirement of the carrier... and we will get the on-deck requirement of the device manufacturer. The excuse will be security, viruses and blah blah. The end result is going to be an open SDK which will not be really open. That would be a disgrace.
Therefore, the key application which is missing on the iPhone, over-the-air synchronization, might not make it "on-deck". Hoping for the better, we just finished the first version anyway. Patrick Ohly, one of our estimated Funambol community MVPs, just released the iPhone version of SyncEvolution. It is the first SyncML client for the iPhone, syncing your address book with the free myFUNAMBOL portal natively (and other SyncML servers). For now, it has no GUI (so you need to be a geek and have ssh access to the device), but it works extremely well. We are also working on a nice GUI, which will have all the bells and whistles you would expect. It is going to be out in a week or so, stay tuned...
Just hoping to see Funambol on the Apple deck in February...
Yesterday I watched another Italian triumph in sports. I could not believe my eyes, but Ferrari won the F1 World Championship. For those that like Nascar, F1 is the second most watched sport on the planet (second to soccer ;-)
This is not just a triumph of Italian determination and never-give-up attitude (like in the soccer World Cup). This one represents the excellence of Italian technology. Of Italian high-tech. Of Italian engineering. And it is the second this year, after Ducati in MotoGP.
During my last trip to Europe, I stopped in Rome for the Venture Camp event. We talked about entrepreneurship in Italy and the lack of venture capital in Italy, despite the high tech competence.
I sensed something very interesting. A group of entrepreneurs with real drive and extreme talent. Willing to push forward, despite the rest of the country holding them back.
There were those who made it, like Gianluca Dettori (who brought Vitaminc to IPO, then sold it to Buongiorno) or Marco Palombi (who created the #1 blog site in Italy - Splinder - then sold it to Dada). There were those who are still trying, like me, Marco Rossi (CEO of Movenda) and Andrea Genovese (editor of 7th floor, a superb magazine). There were those who are just starting, such as Marco Barulli of Clipperz (a fantastic online password manager. If you are like me and you are tired of remembering 10,000 passwords, give it a try).
I sensed there is something new boiling in Italy. People that are there to make a difference and not planning to give up. Sadly, the only government help is coming from the other side, the American Embassy in Italy ;-) We'll take it, Richard Bohly is doing a terrific job and he is hundred times more effective than any Italian bureaucrat...
The issue is just access to capital, not lack of skilled entrepreneurs, human capital or clever technology. Exceptions are rare, like Luca Ungarelli of the Golden Mouse fund, who first believed in Funambol. At ETRE, I spoke to many European VCs and it is unreal to see the stats about Italy, comparing innovation vs. capital invested. We are at the bottom of the chart for capital invested, and at the top for innovation. Something must be wrong...
As usual, my hope is that the Funambol model (getting the capital elsewhere, since they are impossible to find in Italy) is the one for the short term. Moving that to a fully VC-backed Italian Silicon Valley will take some time, but we'll get there. What I saw in Rome was an eye-opener. There are more Ferrari and Ducati out there, I can tell you that.
Something is cooking in Italy, and it is not just pizza.
Today we announced our deal with 1&1, which happens to be the largest web hoster (ISP) on the planet. Details are sketchy and I do not think I am allowed to add anything on this blog, but it is most likely going to turn into the biggest deal in the history of Funambol ;-)
Why does this matter for anybody but us?
Because it is a turning point in wireless.
1&1 has roughly 70 millions email accounts under management (some free, through one of their portals). Not a small number... As of today, for any of those customers to have mobile email on their devices, they would have to call their mobile operator. Once the service is launched, they won't. They will just get an IP from the mobile operator (through a data plan) and they will get mobile email from 1&1 directly.
Consumers will get mobile email from their email provider, not the mobile operator.
I wrote before about Mobile 2.0 and the shift in the market, which involves data plans, flat rates and direct access to the "Internet" from your mobile device. A scenario where the mobile carrier becomes a "carrier" of voice and data, not services (a.k.a. a "dumb" pipe). If you thought it would happen in a few years, you were wrong. It is happening now. Today. It is 1&1, Earthlink and the rest of those who own your email (think Google, Yahoo, AOL...).
Mobile operators are risking to become a bit pipe, more than ever. If they do not move fast (really fast), they are toasted. The train is about to leave the station...
I am a technologist. I love gadgets and rely on a computer and a mobile device for many hours, every single day. I trust computers and understand how to work around issues (for example, using my iPhone here in Budapest with a Wind SIM card ;-)
Mostly, I know whom to blame when there is a problem: a human being. The developer, the operator behind the service, the company. Someone, who made a mistake.
I know it is not the machine.
Many people don't. They talk to their computer like it is a human. And get upset at the machine, when it fails them. Or they do not trust machines to be right, like my dad who does his taxes with a calculator, then verifies every single sum by hand...
I was reminded of how human technology is on Sunday. I woke up early to take a flight from Rome to Budapest. I arrived at the airport, checked in my bag and waited in front of a screen, far away from the gate. I do it always this way, I hate the packed crowd at the gate and people getting in line two hours before the flight is actually boarding. I like silence and a book. Even more, when I am in Italy...
In a word, I trust the computer.
This time, it failed me. The boarding sign never appeared and, while I was waiting for the plane to board, it actually left me there. My flight never showed "boarding" and disappeared from the screen, all of a sudden.
I had to pick up my bag, rebook a flight 10 hours later and, surprisingly, enjoy a full day in Rome. As a tourist. During a business trip. I left my bag at the airport, took the train back to the center. I had great pizza, fantastic coffee and super gelato. I walked around Fontana di Trevi and the Colosseo. I sat on the stairs in Piazza di Spagna with the Sunday crowd.
For a second, I actually thought the computer did it on purpose, to allow me an unexpected holiday.
Back at the airport, they initially told me I was not in the passenger list for the evening flight, then they called the manager in charge (an Hungarian lady from Malev) who finally put me on the plane. However, just when she gave me the boarding pass, she started yelling at me because I forced a 20 minutes delay of the morning flight, while they searched for my bag. I tried to explain I was looking at a computer and I trusted it. She would not listen. She kept yelling that I should not have trusted a computer. That it was all my fault, that she had to pay 30 euros to get my bag off the plane (which is probably a huge cost, for the Malev airline...). That I was supposed to be at the gate.
That I should not have trusted the computer.
Wait, was the computer at fault? Who forgot to press Enter and tell the system the plane was actually boarding? I would bet it was the same Hungarian lady... She screwed up, not the computer.
Technology is human, especially when it fails you.
Rather quietly, this week RIM announced the BlackBerry Curve 8320, a dual-mode phone. It supports the Tmobile GSM network, but it also adds wi-fi. Not a big deal, you might think. The iPhone has wi-fi as well, so do many smartphones.
The difference is that this device can switch to wi-fi for voice calls. Not just data. Voice...
That means you can sign up for T-Mobile Hotspot@Home ($10/month) and call for "free" when you are at home, in the office, at a Starbucks, in the airport, when you are traveling abroad... Without changing your number. Your cell phone will ring when they call you.
The technology behind this is called UMA. Tmobile acts as a gateway between your phone and the GSM network (that is, the phone gets an IP from your home router, then talks to a T-Mobile server, which routes the call). That's why you have to pay them the $10 per month.
If you have ever traveled with a BlackBerry, you know how expensive it is to call home from an hotel or a conference. Ten bucks go in a few minutes... Now, in all those places you have wi-fi. With $10/month, all your calls are included. You just have to sign-up to the hotspot where you are.
I am ready to bet that all CFOs on the planet are preparing to force their employees to take the new device and have them use it with wi-fi, at least at home and in the office, where the majority of the calls happen... It will be a huge saving.
Although it came in quietly, this is a big turning point in the market. Data is now used for voice. It is the start of a new era. Data will be ubiquitous. Blending voice as a data element makes data king. A number of very interesting applications will emerge out of this. 
There is a competing option to UMA, which is also quite interesting. It is called femtocell (for the geeks out there, femto is just a bit smaller than pico, which is smaller than nano, which is smaller than micro, and so on). It is a very very small cell, that you put in your house or office and connect to the Internet. In practical terms, it is like having a cell tower in your house, giving you five bars on your cellphone. Sprint has launched a trial on it, called AIRAVE. You get a small box in your house, plug into your Internet router and voila', you get great signal coverage. In your house, calls are routed from you normal mobile phone to the AIRAVE, then to a Sprint server via Internet. When you walk away from the house, your cellphone switches automatically from you own small cell to the tower cell. Sprint is charging $15/month for the service (unlimited nationwide calls), plus $49.99 for the device.
Just based on my gut feeling, I like UMA better... Femtocell gives me the impression I am paying my carrier to improve their network coverage, because it sucks in my house. They should have a better cell tower ;-) And I am not getting any advantage in a hotel, bar or even in the office. I can use my current phone, which is nice, but I am planning to change my phone every 18 months like everyone else. And the next device I get is definitely going to be data capable and have wi-fi, so... Femtocell seems like a stop-gap solution and, therefore, it might not last very long.
In any case, the future of mobile telephony looks very interesting. Wow, it is all changing so fast...
I am taking off tonight for a quick tour of Europe. Stops are London, Rome to speak at VentureCamp (looks like a very interesting event, if you are Italian with aspirations to become an entrepreneur and raise capital), Budapest to speak at ETRE, Helsinki and London again.
If you happen to live on one of my stops, drop me a note and let's have a beer (or some good food, if you are in Rome ;-)
It is pretty clear that the iPhone has caught all device manufacturers by surprise. First, they said "it is very hard to build a phone, Apple do not know what they are getting into, the first version will be a failure". Then, when the device was showed the first time, they gulped and started hoping it was all hype. And went back to the drawing board, just in case. Lastly, when it hit the market, they realized it was exactly what the marketing machine told us it would be. Apple did the impossible: they built a phone, which is hard to do, and the first version is nearly flawless. On top of it, it has many innovations. Every device manufacturer is now trying to catch up as fast as possible.
The closest seems to be HTC, which certainly was working on much of this before the iPhone was unveiled. They have manufactured devices without a logo for a while, now they are pushing their logo. The HTC Touch is the closest thing to an iPhone out there, with a reasonable price (Prada or Armani phones do not count...). It has TouchFLO, which reminds of the iPhone multitouch. They just announced they sold 800,000 of those. Not a bad number and very close to the iPhone. Today, they announced an evolution of it, the Touch Dual, with a sliding keypad. Both phones sport Windows Mobile.
What is the difference between the Touch(es) and the iPhone? Well, marketing... Apple wins hands down. However, the Touch has Microsoft behind and they will pour some dollars on this one, in my opinion.
The main difference is applications. There are a tons for Windows Mobile, an "open" platform. There are none available for the iPhone today (if you upgraded to 1.1.1, that is). The difference is staggering. Apple is putting itself in a hole. After the launch, they managed to leave a door open for hackers and dozens of apps were written. With AppTapp, installations and upgrade were seamless. Now it is all gone and it might never get back to where it was (playing cat and mouse is fun for a while, then you get bored to be eaten by the mouse every month and you just give up). Apple is risking big. They might lose their lead, if they keep insisting on supporting a fully closed device.
It is also hurting their marketing a lot. Look at the Nokia poster that went around the web today...
The message is simple: the iPhone is closed and has limits, imposed by Apple. And it is locked to a single carrier, that you might not like...
Mobile Linux, Windows Mobile, Symbian... all open platforms... And you can buy an HTC phone, put your SIM card in it and use it anywhere you want. Unlocked...
The iPhone has a lead, but if Apple is not careful, it is not going to last long.
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BTW, thanks to those of you who voted for me in the Visionary category for Consumer Mobile Software at the Mobile Star Awards, allowing me to be a Bright Star for the second year in a row. Much appreciated ;-)
As you might know, the word Funambol comes from the latin words funis (rope) and ambulare (walking). The term refers to tight-rope walking. It symbolizes the daily struggle for any open source company to balance the commercial soul with the open source soul. Not an easy task.
The word funambulism or funambulist are part of the English dictionary, but I found only two people in this country knowing the meaning of it... In 99.99% of my tests, people do not believe there is such a word in the dictionary and they think I am crazy (maybe not just for this, I must add). It is much easier in Italy or France, where funambolo and funambul are well used words.
A friend sent me the following today. It includes the words in a normal sentence, which might mean I am less crazy... In any case, it is a must-have for any open source company. It will definitely find its way to our offices...
The Enterprise Open Source magazine is running an article this month about marketing and segmenting your open source community. The examples are taken from Funambol marketing strategy, so you can find a lot of our brainstorming, trials, errors and successes in it. In a nutshell, a lot of sweat for the last few years. Mine and of the team around me.
In my opinion (and not just because I know the authors...) it is a must read if you are doing/looking at a commercial open source company. Being in the first crop is a nice thing, but it also means making a lot of mistakes and be forced to learn from them. You are definitely better off reading about what worked for us and avoid the mistakes ;-)
And working it seems, I might add with a smile. Today is a great day at Funambol. I am closing the books on the best quarter in the history of the company, where we blew our numbers and signed two major deals in the last six weeks. Even better, knowing we have two additional big deals just in reach to be closed in the next few weeks. Good quarters should always end on a Friday, so you have the entire weekend to enjoy them :-)
I wrote a few days ago about the upcoming software update by Apple for the iPhone. It was supposed to brick unlocked phone. Apparently, it did. This morning I started receiving emails with "DO NOT UPGRADE, IT BRICKED MY PHONE" ;-) I am amazed by how many people did not know about what was coming and now have a bricked phone... I guess they now have to pray for some hacker to save them...
On top of it, it seems the upgrade bricked also some virgin phones... The Apple support site has a bunch of people complaining that their phones are dead, despite no hacks or unlock having been performed. Apple might have overdone this one a bit...
Now, what do I take from this experience?
- This is the first phone on the planet that gets such a serious software update on a massive scale. It has never been so easy to add a feature to a phone. Apple has made it. It is a huge change in the mobile industry.
- People will be demanding software updates from every device manufacturer from now on, at least for smartphones. RIM, Palm, Microsoft... Somebody else set a new bar, you have to catch up (fast).
- If you upgrade a firmware and things go wrong, that's really bad. It is not acceptable to brick a phone. Your customers will yell at you... They can't call anymore. They could die in the middle of a fire because their phone is not working anymore. They will sue you and probably win. Firmware upgrade is a risky thing, but Apple went for it. In any case, it is a fact of life now.
- Do not hack your phone or you will be in trouble, because the manufacturer will first brick your phone, then kick you out of the store when you show up with a sad face asking for help.
- If you hack your phone, just hope the manufacturer will screw up the firmware update. If Apple really bricked normal phones, you might get lucky and show up in the store, and say with a angry (and straight) face "I did not hack it and the upgrade bricked it!!! I want a refund!!!!"
I should write a book about the iPhone. This developing story is just fascinating...
The world is full of very interesting people...
In the last three months, lots of non-technical users jailbreaked their iPhone, opening it up to third party applications. Then they unlocked it, opening it up to any carrier. Rumors say "lots" could mean over 100,000 people, 10% of the iPhone buyers ;-)
Now they are all panicking...
Apple yesterday has said: "we are about to release an upgrade of the iPhone firmware. If you unlocked your iPhone, this upgrade will most likely transform it into a brick". Maybe you will be able to use it as a mirror. A $499 mirror (after rebate). A rather expensive one.
What is exactly happening?
Simple:
- jailbreaking was an easily reversible operation. You could click on Restore in your iTunes and you would have a virgin iPhone. Apple would do it for you. Automatically. At any firmware update.
- unlocking is not easily reversible, since you actually update the baseband... To reverse it, you have to get the baseband back to its original state. You would need a tool, which is not available today. And the hacks available today do not seem to be working too well...
Not many people realized the difference, subtle but significant. And now that Apple is about to issue a firmware update, panic has spread... If you cannot give your iPhone its virginity back and you upgrade the firmware, the phone will be bricked. If you go to an Apple store with it, they will laugh at you. Your wife will make you pay for it.
Blogs are full of strategies today, like throwing the iPhone out of the window and asking the credit card for a refund (they would refund a broken iPhone, in particular if you cannot even turn it on anymore ;-) Some are thinking about a class-action lawsuit against Apple (for what? Issuing a software upgrade?). Others are starting to blame the developers of the unlocking tools (like they did not tell you it could be risky...). Unbelievable.
Seriously, what do you do?
You just wait :-) Apple firmware upgrades are not mandatory. iTunes asks you if you want to update the iPhone. Just say no.
If you did only software changes to the iPhone (remember, you did not open it up), those are reversible. You just need the software developer who developed the unlock, to develop a working ununlock. Worst case scenario, they will develop a virginity tool. At that point, you will be able to upgrade your iPhone and get the wonderful new features in it (as far as I know, only the ability to spend more money buying music online, maybe not even worth it ;-) Then you can re-unlock it, if you feel it was worth the anxiety.
Do not panic. Just wait. Next time, think about it twice. Leave it to the geeks.
Despite my daily efforts (...) made-in-Italy is rarely in the news for high-tech. Italians always score high for fashion, style, food, music, tourism and so on. Newspapers seem to ignore the country high-tech successes.
When look and technology get together, though, I believe Italy shines. One example is Ducati, the most beautiful bike in the world, built and designed in Italy, who won the MotoGP championship this weekend (both driver and constructor titles).
Granted, we needed an Australian to drive it and win it. But that's the way of globalization (look where I live ;-)
If you follow the news in mobile, you might have noticed mobile advertising is really hot (surprise ;-) Google has launched mobile ads last week, when Nokia bought a mobile advertising company; so did AOL a few months ago.
Why is mobile advertising hot, all of a sudden? The answer, in my opinion, is in the continuous drop of data plans prices and everything happening around what I call mobile 2.0. In a nutshell, service providers and portal have the opportunity to reach consumers directly, for the first time in history. They are going around the carriers and mobile advertising is the way to do it because it gives them reach (for free) and a potentially huge return.
You might ask: any prediction on what will work with mobile advertising? Sure, just because you asked ;-)
First of all, web-based mobile advertising is destined to fail (in my opinion, until proven wrong...). The browsing experience on a mobile phone is sub-par. There is no mouse and the screen is too small. The iPhone sports the ultimate browser and the largest screen, you can't do better than that: however, browsing on the iPhone still sucks. I mean, it is a nice-to-have feature in emergencies, when you do not have a PC or laptop close-by. However, it is not where you will spend most of your time on a phone. On top of it, there is just no room for advertising, to make it not-annoying for users. Annoying is BAD in advertising. Mobile ads on browsers will be annoying and intrusive. They simply won't work.
What will work, then?
I believe the best application to drive ads on a mobile phone is the maps application. An app you need and want to have on a device. In particular, when your phone has GPS and knows where you are. If I am searching for pizza in a one mile radius from my current position and you own a pizza place nearby, how much would you pay to be on top of the list? Or - at least - very visible? Dollars? Tens of dollars? I think so...
Anything else?
I predict a big chunk of advertisement will be driven by "ads in app". That is, advertisement placed inside applications you use frequently. Not intrusive. Not annoying. Just there, when you do something else. One example? Mobile messaging, a.k.a. push email. If you met me recently, I probably showed you the Funambol email client on the RAZR, with advertising on top. Not intrusive, but extremely effective.
Why?
Because:
- the phone is a communication device. You either talk or send messages with it, 99% of the time. Everything else takes just a bit of your daily usage. Sorry, I never bought the mobile TV marketing story...
- #1 means you are going to spend more time in front of your messaging client than anything else. The mobile messaging client is going to be the most expensive piece of real estate on a device.
- if you tie mobile ads in a mobile messaging client with location, you have the killer mobile ad conduit.
Imaging this: you walk down a street, your phone beeps, you open the phone to read the message your best friend sent you and the ad on top offers you a free latte at the Starbucks three steps from where you are. Location-aware, not intrusive, highly effective. You stop, walk in the Starbucks, get the latte, read the message from your friend, then you realize latte actually in this country does not mean just milk... You call your friend and ask who in the world thought to drop the word coffee from caffelatte... Isn't that weird?? Go and ask for a latte in Milan and see if they bring you coffee with it or not :-)
Forget browsing, location-aware map searches and ads in apps are the future of mobile advertising. It is hot today, it is just going to get hotter and hotter. Like your latte with coffee.
I have been playing with my iPhone for almost three months now, enough to be able to suggest a few things to Apple for the next release. All pretty much obvious, but...
HARDWARE
- A 3G chip. I know, I am not the first to ask it, but everywhere I have wi-fi, I also have a laptop or a PC... I need high bandwidth on the run. Wi-fi is nice to have. 3G is a must.
- A GPS chip. Same as before. Google Maps would take up a complete new dimension. And it would be good for mobile advertising too ;-)
- A phone that would not make my radio in the car and the speakers on my PC rattle once every 10 minutes. It is really annoying.
- A camera that makes picture that you want to keep.
- A keyboard and a self-cleaning screen. Just kidding...
SOFTWARE
- Just an open phone, everything the iPhone is missing today would be (and it is) developed by the community out there. Please do it soon. Today is not soon enough. If you do it, all the items below will be disappearing from your feature list. Wouldn't it be great?
- Push email beside Yahoo (we are working on it, but we need #1 to make it mainstream)
- Contacts, Calendar, Task and Notes synchronization over-the-air (same as #2, but we need also #4)
- Tasks. I just can't remember a single thing if I do not write it down. Not having task support on-the-go could be dangerous for my health, because I might forget to take medications without it. It is just like e911. It should be mandatory, by the government (just for me ;-)
- Support for something more than just the English dictionary. I know autocorrect is cool, but if you type in Italian and every single word gets changed by the device... it gets you to a point where you want to throw the beautiful device and hit an Apple employee.
- The landscape mode working in many other apps, beside the browser. For example, in the Mail application. It makes typing much easier.
- The ability to sort cities in Weather. You have to delete them to re-sort them today. Who forgot this feature (bug)? Where was QA?
- Search in contacts. We have a person in our free myFUNAMBOL site with over 9,000 contacts. Believe me, s/he can't call anybody without a search tool.
- Support for a bunch more attachments, like audio (I get my landline voicemail forwarded via email and I can't listen to it). Powerpoint would be nice too.
- Copy and Paste. People get really surprised when I tell them the iPhone does not have copy and paste, but I have the feeling it will be very hard to figure out how to do it (right), considering the current user interface. Double-tap and drag? I do not know... I just have the need to be able to copy something from the web into an email...
That's it. Not that much, I know. The iPhone is a heck of a device, with a few additional touches I would even carry it around as my main device (I am not doing it today).
Today, Zimbra has been bought by Yahoo! for $350M. No more than a month ago, I was celebrating the sale of XenSource for $500M, amazed by the multiplier but still questioning the future of OSS companies. In a nutshell: will any of our crop of open source commercial companies ever make it to IPO and become a billion dollar company?
I am very happy for Satish, Scott, Andy and the team. They are great minds, they have built a terrific product and they deserve a nice payback for it (and, yes, the multiplier is still crazy). Congratulations guys.
They were so good, I thought Zimbra was one of the few that could have made it all the way to IPO and after. They had a fantastic play and were on a great track. They could have been THE billion dollars open source company...
Looking at the market today and the multipliers flying around, I just do not see who can make it all the way. Open source is just too hot. Everybody wants a piece of it and building a community from scratch is plainly impossible (for starters, it takes five years...). There are too many buyers and too few opportunities out there... Scarcity is the name of the game. If you show up with a trunk full of gold, nobody will resist it. It is just part of human nature. And yes, VCs are part of the game too ;-)
My prediction is that prices will continue to go up, buyers will continue to buy and at the end of this madness, open source will simply be everywhere. But there won't be a billion dollars standalone open source company.
If we are all getting gobbled up by the mainstream, we will simply have to change it from the inside ;-)
I wrote before that Mobile 2.0 happens with flat fee billing. Data plans are the basis for Mobile 2.0 to happen. Just like the Internet happened when we threw away modems, the mobile data revolution will really take off once the price for unlimited data plans in mobile will drop to a reasonable amount.
Today, I saw another step in the right direction. T-mobile dropped the price for the unlimited data plan to $19.99 a month (from $29.99, that's 30%, just like the drop in price of the iPhone ;-)
Why? The iPhone is changing the game. The at&t unlimited data plan is $20 a month. T-mobile was forced to lower it. And it will keep going down.
Why today? Well, this is not a coincidence. Two days ago, the first method to easily unlock the iPhone came out. It is software-only. It takes a few seconds.
What you do when you unlock an at&t iPhone and you live in the US? You use it with Tmobile, which is the only alternative here... And now, the data plan price is even a bit lower than at&t . What a coincidence!
I am enjoying my Tmobile iPhone, ready to take-off for Europe, where I will be able to use it with my European SIM card. Freedom never felt so good...
Believe me, data plans will drop there as well. Quickly. Even faster than we think. The process has started and there is no way back. Mobile 2.0 is getting closer to reality.
For once, I got it right. Yesterday I wrote "I think it will be an iPod without a trackwheel but with a multi-touch screen, just like the iPhone" and today Steve Jobs announced the iPod Touch. I should go out and play the lotto ;-)
There are many ways to analyze this announcement and the other Apple did today. Let me pick a few angles that highlight a theme that is starting to bother me.
First of all, the iPod Touch it is a glorified iPod (or a dumbed-down iPhone, your call). This time, arguably, the best iPod ever (the tagline does not apply to the iPhone anymore...). I do not see it is a move to expand in a new market, but more a way to prevent the entire iPod line from being cannibalized by the iPhone. A defensive move. Smart, but with zero additional revenues attached.
The iPod Touch is missing some interesting apps, compared with the iPhone. The BIG one: email. Yep, it is a wi-fi device with full browsing but no email. But it has contacts and calendar... Sounds strange? Well, yes. The explanation is that this is just an upgrade of the other iPods, so you have only the features you always had on the iPods. Email was not there (same for weather or stocks). However, you never had a browser in an iPod... If you add it, these other apps could fit nicely as well...
Why do I have to use a web-based email interface (which sucks on the iPhone) when I could have an email app on the device? Why do I have to connect the browser to weather.com to check the weather?
The excuse for the browser is that it is necessary to connect to some wi-fi sites. I find it weak.
Bottom line: Apple is preventing users from having on the device features that they would like to have. My take on it: one day they will pay for it, if they keep closing things down. Consumers are not as stupid as they seems. Give them an alternative and they will jump. Loyalty to any one company is at its lowest, these days. See what happened to Tivo. They are playing with fire, but until they are a monopoly, they can do it... But it won't last.
Is Apple becoming too cocky? Mmmhhh, maybe.
A more worrying sign is the creation of the 0.99 per ringtone application. This is one feature of the 51.5kb SendSong application I have on my iPhone TODAY. It probably took Erica Sadun few hours to develop it. If Apple is thinking about making 99 cents with ringtones, it is clear to me they have NO PLANS WHATSOEVER to open up to developers the iPhone (or the iPod Touch, for that matter). Not in the short term, at least. If they did, Erica's app will be on every iPhone and the 99 cents per ringtone revenue would be gone. In an instant. Maybe they will open up portions of the devices, maybe not the music. Most likely, just nada, zip, zilch. Until the monopoly is over.
Is Apple becoming too cocky? Well, probably yes. They have always been cocky. But being the underdog, everybody roots for you. If you become the monopoly, it is way different. You just do not piss off developers, if you build operating systems. You pay for it, one day. Lessons from the past should help...
Last sign of being too cocky? They collapsed the price of the iPhone from $599 to $399. Good sign for consumers, you might say. Bad sign for iPhone sales, investors seem to believe (Apple stock was down 5% today). Maybe, but for sure an horrible sign for all the loyal Apple people that bought a device in the last two months and now realized how fools they have been. Think about the wives looking at their husbands and saying "I told you. You are an idiot. You spent hours waiting in a long line to get an high-five from Apple employees... and you threw away 200 bucks. Idiot. I told you. Go take the garbage out, maybe you'll learn something". Apple is messing up with their loyal customers. Everybody is laughing at them. There is a riot going on in the blogosphere right now...
Is messing up with your loyal customers being too cocky? Well, sure it is. It is a bad mistake. Apple should be very careful... You pay for it, one day.
I wrote about the Palm Foleo when it was announced and I can't say I was impressed...
Today, Palm surprised me (again) with the announcement of the killing of the product. These are not very frequent events in our business, in particular when they require a 10M write-off.
However, this is the smartest thing Palm could have done at this time. Kudos to the CEO. Most companies would have committed suicide, before admitting they were wrong. They did not.
Now they can just focus on a realistic answer to the iPhone, exploiting its weaknesses. Build a next generation platform that attracts developers (and no, I do not believe Steve Jobs will announce the iPhone SDK tomorrow, sorry. I think it will be an iPod without a trackwheel but with a multi-touch screen, just like the iPhone). Beat Apple on the turf where the have been ALWAYS weak, the one that allowed Microsoft to become a dominant force.
As Steve Ballmer once said, it is all about developers. Developers. Developers.
I have been observing the iPhone phenomenon very closely. Partly because I believe the iPhone is the turning point of this market and will have a lasting impact. Mostly because it had to create a new ecosystem from scratch, and I love studying new ecosystems (from open source collaboration, to social networking). In particular, those managed by an entity acting as God.
The iPhone ecosystem was created overnight, although carefully crafted for months. At the beginning, it was geeks and fashion-conscious people (I repeat myself here, but those who do not understand the fashion component in cellphones and believe it is just about technology are deadly wrong...).
The geeks attacked the phone on day one. The goal was to crack it open. Study it from the inside. It was a discovery expedition. In a day or so, the iPhone was cracked. In a month or so, the first native applications appeared. In two months, the first two methods to unlock it were invented.
The fashion-conscious looked at the geeks to see if they could add ringtones and change the icons on the screen. Once the tools were easy to use, they acted and were very proud to be even cooler.
Apple reacted in an aggressive and smart way. They upgraded the OS of the phone twice, once a month. The upgrade is a marketing positive, with a few twists.
The positive for Apple is that this is the FIRST mobile device that gets a software update once a month and it is so easy to upgrade. It is a game-changing procedure. Nobody else does it or does it even nearly so well. They are years ahead of the competition.
One twist is that every single OS upgrade wipes out every modification by the hackers. If you changed an icon and you upgrade, it is gone. On top of it, the upgrade takes 30 minutes instead than 4. And you have to re-hack the phone to put your ringtones back. And you might lose something else in the restore process, if it does not work well.
Now, the fashion-conscious have had enough. Cool is great, but wasting one hour of your life every thirty days is insane. The ecosystem is losing these people. They won't hack the iPhone anymore, unless Apple lets them do it.
The geeks are still there. They keep working on it. Unlocking the device has been a remarkable effort, similar to pure science. You have an organism you do not know, someone else made it (God or Steve Jobs, pretty much the same). Many researchers try different paths, some paths lead to new paths, someone else picks them up and boom, a new discovery. Fascinating.
New participants are now appearing at the horizon. The "I am not getting the first device because it is buggy, I'll wait a few months". These are now demanding software upgrades. Nobody on the planet ever thought their cell phone will be updated, after they bought it. They now expect it from Apple. Apple MUST add new features. New icons MUST pop up on the phone. Apple created a demand and expectation. It is another twist, but I am not sure if Apple planned it. It looks like a by-product. Sometimes the deus-ex-machina loses a bit of control.
The next step of the evolution is Apple giving Eva (or was it God giving Apple to Eva, I am confused...) and the geeks the power to add applications and change ringtones, without hacking the phone and being forced to throw away all the effort once a month. This will happen once the geeks have satisfied their ego, which will be pretty much done in a month.
At that point, new elements will appear. The ISVs. The companies that build applications for a living and make money out of it. They will change the landscape once more.
Then Apple will create another iPhone and will change the ecosystem. Again and again and again...
Ok, I title of the post is misleading. One would think I will talk about how open source software is powering SaaS and why this is making life great for everyone. I have done it already. Many times. It does, believe me.
Something happened last week.
On Friday, I opened my computer and tried to access Netvibes, which is my current home page. I got a "500 Internal Server error". Reload: same thing. Reload again: sorry... Ohh well, I said, it is a free service, how can I complain?
Fifteen minutes later I had a call scheduled with Italy. As usual, with Skype. Strangely, I was not connected to the network. Strangely, it was not working. Ohh well, I said, it is a free service, how can I complain? I used the phone.
An hour later, my wife yelled from the living room: Skype is not working!!!! I need to call mom!!! She was not happy. She complained. Like it was my fault... I scrambled to put money in Jajah. I made the call for her, phone rang, mom was on the line and she was happy (high priority in my life goals).
My normal computing abilities were halved on Friday morning. No news, no calls. I invested "precious" time to help my wife. Simply because free services were down. Free services my life relies on...
Could I complain to someone? No. Try calling someone in Skype or Netvibes...
You can't complain for a free service.
Did Skype give an explanation? No. C'mon, you are kidding me, the problem was that a Microsoft patch made reboot all the PCs on the planet???? The issue was that the authentication system on their servers got screwed up, probably because it was not sized properly. That's a scalability issue. I had one in my past while working on a consumer online trading platform. Our authentication server started to choke up. The queue got long. The clients re-tried to login after 30 seconds. The queue increased. More login attempts... The system died. We had to manually clean the queue, block the clients, increase the power of the machines and their throughput, open clients up a chunk at a time. A painful excercise. But easy to explain. And we had to. Skype does not have to.
You can avoid giving explanations when a free service crashes.
Did Skype offer a refund? Nope. They increased my subscription for a week. Lame...
You do not have to offer a refund for a free service.
Bottom line: free software as a service is good for businesses. Get people hooked to them. Screw their lives. Nobody can say a word. Yep, they might leave you and use something else (in particular, if you piss off their wives), but it is a small prize to pay :-)
Today marks another joyous day for commercial open source companies. Xensource has been bought by Citrix for 500M. Yep, that's half a billion. For a commercial open source company making less than 10M in revenues this year and pretty much zero last year (rumors say). That's a huge multiplier, on any standard (the only acquisition with a higher multiplier I know was YouTube and, maybe, Skype). It comes after the JBoss acquisition, which already had a big multiplier (but this one beats it by a long margin).
Now, I was reading Alex Fletcher's blog this morning (an analyst at Entiva), where he defines "The five phases of maturity for open source software ecosystems". For those lacking hyperlink clicking abilities:
- Phase 1: Purely open source stage. The technology doesn't feature any commercial support and may or may have reached a level of production-ready stability. [...] Example(s) - open source implementations of Jingle
- Phase 2: Entrance into the marketplace. Often marked by the initial offering of commercial services or "productization" of open source code. [...]. Example(s) - Untangle
- Phase 3: Momentum takeoff drives growth. A midpoint in the evolution of an ecosystem [...]. Example(s) - Alfresco, Funambol, Zimbra
- Phase 4: Predictability. After the ecosystem reaches an invariable point of cultivation, momentum transfers into sustained equilibrium. [...]. Example(s) - Red Hat Linux, MySQL (still in the early stages)
- Phase 5: Emergence as full-fledged platform. The transformation from ecosystem into platform represents the highest form of an evolved open source ecosystem, in addition to its final maturation phase. [..]
Now, Xensource is definitely in Phase 3, together with the other three in the list and surely a few more. JBoss was there as well, when it was bought. Same for Sourcefire or Sleepycat.
Two questions arise in my mind:
- Will anybody make it to phase 4 or will we be all snatched by a proprietary vendor before making it? Considering all of us have VC investors on board, I just do not see how anyone would be able to resist a 100x multiplier...
- Will anybody make it to phase 5, eventually, and become a huge company like Microsoft?
Looking at what is happening in the market, either proprietary vendors are "killing" open source companies or open source is becoming such a basic need that it will blend in the mainstream (I believe the latter is true). If this happens, there will be a few companies getting to phase 4...
What about phase 5? We already have only MySQL and RedHat that could make it, but I always thought MySQL will be a target for an acquisition one day. RedHat could become the big pure open source play. But it is at risk to be the only one. Maybe a pure open source dominating player will never exist...
Wow, that's a sad thought in a joyous day :-)
Tonight is Mobile Monday. Ok, the first monday of the month was supposed to be last week, I know. But it is August, it is sunny out there, it is right to take it easy...
Anyway, Mobile Monday tonight is about the iPhone. One of my favorite topics of late. I am scheduled to talk about "what we have been working to get Funambol support for the iPhone as well as posting some info of general interest to iPhone hackers". An event not to be missed (it is free ;-)
- What: August 2007 Mobile Monday (iPhone)
- When: August 13th, 2007 7:00pm
- Where: AOL Building 12, 401 Ellis St., Mountain View, CA
- Who: Anyone interested in mobility
- Cost: Nothing!
See you there!
If you are reading this blog, most likely you heard about SCO. They sued IBM claiming they had copyrights on Linux. It was 2003 and many thought it could signal the end of Linux and open source in general.
Not many people believed the claim or - at least - CIOs kept buying Red Hat...
The issue looked to me like a mosquito flying around while you are enjoying a nice dinner. It bothers you, you look at it, you hope someone will squash it, but you keep having dinner and still enjoy it.
Today the mosquito has been squashed. SCO has lost the case. They did not have any copyright on Linux. End of story.
The Groklaw site went down, after publishing the news, under heavy load... The mosquito bothered many, apparently :-)
Glad to see it is gone.
Today I spent some time with the MOTODEV team around LinuxWorld. I like the team and what they are doing, however I end up always hoping they would move much faster. I have the feeling they share my hope but there is not much you can do in a gigantic company (well, there is a reason why I like startups...).
This week, they did a magic trick. They announced something that is not available. And they called it MAGX.
I saw this before (remember Apple and iPhone in January?), so no surprises. here. However, it gets worst when you announce developer tools you do not have, instead of cool electronics for consumers. Consumers are friendlier than developers. Bullshit a developer and you risk of losing his/her forever. This is valid for Apple as well. "The first Software Developer Kit without a Software Developer Kit, also knows as browser" speech by Steve Jobs was insulting. But at least the device was cool.
What is MAGX? A Java ME platform (uuuuhhh, that's news ;-), a vague WebUI for Web 2.0 applications (are they going to announce a browser as well??) and a Linux API for building native applications. The first one is available, the other two only for "selected developers" in Q4.
As everyone else, I hate "selected" everything, as long as I am not selected...
Jokes apart, the cool thing here is the last one. A full Linux API, to build native APIs. What is missing in the iPhone, although we got a hold of one through hacking...
The issue is: when? We would need it tomorrow. It would put the MOTO phones ahead of the curve, with OpenMoko. Ahead of the iPhone. Ahead of Nokia (which, at least, has the N800 Tablet).
Unfortunately, I believe it is going to take a while... Let's hope it does not take too much. It smells a lot like Palm to me and time-to-market is supercritical in mobile.
Lastly, I played around with the RAZR2 V8, due later this year in the US (at&t? Directly against the iPhone? Or T-Mobile?). Nice phone, snappy user interface, SyncML, Opera browser. No wow, though. Nothing that would convince an end user to change its phone. Linux does not sell to end users. Cool applications do.
But you need developers for it. And developer tools. And you need them now... That's the MAGX.
Back in November, I wrote a Manifesto about Mobile 2.0 and what I thought it meant (and will mean in the future). Since then, lots of things have happened. The X-Series from 3. The Helio Ocean. The iPhone. The 700 Mhz auction and what Google wants to do with it.
Last week at HostingCon I had the exact feeling of how all this is changing the mobile world. Simply, the carriers are starting to lose the grip on their customers... Flat data plans are here to stay. The $20/month of the iPhone is the new bar and it is destined to go down (see $15 plans from Sprint or the €9 from 3, for example).
What does it mean? It means a new world. If the carrier just provides me the IP, anyone in the world (starting with web hosters and portal, such as Google, Yahoo and AOL) can provide me services. You would not need to go to a carrier to get mobile email, you can get it from your web hoster.
On the other side, competition forces the carriers to accelerate their deployments. They cannot sit on the SMS revenue stream any longer. They have to act and start providing services or the hosters will eat in their plate. Google is not really a friend, when takes the users away from you. Nor it is Apple when your brand is only in the top left and there is nothing else from you on the phone (I am sure one day at&t will regret the move on the iPhone). That means, better+useful+cheap services from the carriers. Starting now.
This is the beginning of Mobile 2.0, but it is happening very very quickly.
P.S. I am in Frankfurt, Germany today. If you are around tonight and want to meet, just give me a buzz.
Since I started going around with my iPhone with the additional icon on it, showing the contacts application included in the free myFUNAMBOL portal, a lot of people have asked me how can they have it as well, or do the same with their browser-based app.
The goal is simple: having an additional icon on your screen, with your logo and the name of your application, that fires up a browser to your site. So you can keep the Safari for browsing and that icon to access that web-based app you really like (for me, it is one-click access to all my contacts over-the-air, with search capabilities, since the native iPhone contact app has zero search and I have 700+ contacts...).
The assumption is that you have already done jailbreak and you have ssh access to your iPhone. If you did it already, I am not responsible for anything that happens on your iPhone (or the warranty). If you did not, well... good luck with the rest of this ;-)
Steps:
- Create a folder called Funambol.app under /Applications
- Copy all the files under /Applications/MobileSafari.app to /Applications/Funambol.app (making sure you copy also the subdirectory English.lproj). You can use iphoneinterface, sftp or, better, do a "cp -r"
- Make sure /Applications/Funambol.app/MobileSafari can be executed (chmod 755 MobileSafari)
- Overwrite the existing icon.png with the Funambol icon.png in /Applications/Funambol.app (or make your 60x60 PNG file)
- Overwrite the existing Info.plist with the Funambol Info.plist in /Applications/Funambol.app (the trick is simply for the app to be called something differently than com.apple.mobilesafari)
- Reboot the iPhone
That's it. You now have a second browser on your iPhone, with a pretty icon named Funambol. The two browsers share bookmarks and history at boot, but once started they will live separate lives. That means you can click on your Funambol icon, open the http://my.funambol.com/iphone URL and it won't change, while you use your Safari icon to browse your favorite sites.
Change Funambol with your application and you have one-click access to your favorite web app. Nice.
Years ago, Apple launched the "Think Different" campaign. It worked nicely. When your customers are a small minority, why not make them feel special? Otherwise, they will just leave you.
Few years later, Apple has made a spectacular comeback. The AAPL stock went up almost 10% in after hours trading today. They are selling Macs and iPods like crazy (and a few iPhones ;-) They are becoming mainstream. Why? Because they now sport Intel laptops, iTunes runs on Windows and so on. They are thinking mainstream...
Now I am starting to wondering what they have in mind for developers on the iPhone. If you look at their current propaganda, it is all about Web 2.0 applications. Do they really think running apps on a mobile browser is the best for us? Do they really believe this is the way for thinking differently in mobile, instead of having applications on the phone? Are they really crazy?
Maybe not. If I look at my iPhone tonight, I have full ssh access as root on it, I can sftp files to it, I have a Funambol icon on the screen that opens up a browser (separate from the Safari one)... I have full control of the iPhone and I can develop any app I want on it. I do not need the browser anymore, I can create real local mobile apps (I just wish I had the time and the skills to do it ;-)
Now, it took our beloved hackers three weeks to make it. It was too easy. Too easy. The root password can be cracked in 12 seconds with basic tools. The system is completely open, once you have control of it. It is a developer dream, that leaves Windows Mobile, Palm and BlackBerry in the dust.
I have the feeling Apple left the door open. They could not do it "officially" because at&t wanted to control everything, from ringtones to applications. The door is therefore officially closed, but you just had to push it a bit to slam it open. Now we can build real mobile applications and more...
They might be still thinking differently. But they are becoming way smarter at it. They are now thinking mainstream, and they still make you feel different.
I am in Chicago today, attending HostingCon 2007. A very interesting conference, dedicated to a market that needs to go mobile, has big issues with device compatibility and has been using open source for a long time. Now you know why I am here... If you are in Chicago and want to meet, please drop me a note. Yes, if you are hosting email... we can mobilize it :-)
Now the off-topic. Why in the world do American foosball tables have thirteen players per team?
Do foosball table manufacturers watch their daughters play soccer? Did they ever notice there are eleven players per team? Where did they get the idea that there are three goalies?
I am going to design an Italian baseball table with a square instead of a diamond and see how it goes...
I just read about a recent Informa report that total mobile data revenues (excluding SMS) in the US were $11.3 billion in Q1 07, up 40% from last year. This number represents one third of all data revenues. The rest is SMS.
So you would guess that mobile data services (including email and IM) are eating into the SMS plate.
Wrong.
SMS usage is up 50% worldwide, with 620 billion messages sent in Q1. SMS revenues are up as well ($34.3 billion in a quarter!), although they do not follow the growth in messages directly, because of the bundles.
How do you read this? Well, let me try:
- Consumers want messaging more than ever
- Consumers are still willing to spend a lot of money on messaging
- If you add email and IM in the mix, that does not kill SMS
- Email and IM are additional sources of significant revenues for carriers
If you are a carrier, this is the time for consumer mobile email...
Last year we made the Red Herring 100. They do not name companies twice, so this year we won something else ;-) We made in the 2007 AO 100 Top Companies, which is a pretty trendy list.
Looking at the list, I noticed:- 13% of the companies in the list are mobile (thanks to the iPhone!). For example, there is AdMob, which is a cool company. Some of the others are mobile play but they do not know it yet: for example, Jajah (believe me they are a mobile play)
- 5% of the companies in the list are open source, such as rPath, MuleSource and others.
Bottom line: MOBILE OPEN SOURCE RULES :-)
Unfortunately, the quality of the picture is quite bad... But those with a good eye might notice a Funambol icon on my iPhone (my apologies to Safari ;-)
I have a bet out (with myself) that someone will be able to completely hack the iPhone in less than two weeks. I am running out of time but it looks like people are getting very close. There is an (open source) tremendous effort on the iPhone Dev Wiki (that I am not linking because they asked not to), which is starting to bear fruits.
In a nutshell:
- They know how to activate the iPhone without at&t (not how to unlock it, yet)
- They apparently have gained full access to the file system, a.k.a. "How to Escape Jail" (although they have not posted software yet, so this is just a rumor)
Bottom line, I believe we'll have something before the end of the weekend. The issue is that Apple will be able to wipe every effort out with a single firmware update. It looks like a crazy race where evil (close as in jail) will sadly prevail against good (open as in free), but it is fun to watch anyway ...
You know for which side I am cheering ;-)
I have been convinced from day one that the current iPhone will be a niche. After using one for a while, I am more convinced than ever... Too expensive, too slow, too closed. A fantastic device, do not get me wrong, but I am not giving up my Windows Mobile device with Funambol installed. I simply cannot live without push email and push calendar anymore. Or without a real keyboard. It looks to me like the same experience I had with Tivo and the DirecTV DVR. When you get spoiled, it is hard to go back. Even if the new device has more features and it is gorgeous. The basic is missing and I simply need it.
Now, if I am not switching to the iPhone (and I am a smartphone user), then who would? People that do not have an iPod and are planning to upgrade their dumbphone. What will suffer? The iPod sales numbers...
Yep, the iPhone will eat into the iPod market.
What can Apple do? Launch the iPhone nano as soon as possible... I wrote about it many times, this will be the killer device (and it would be a dream if Apple agreed with at&t only for the iPhone and they would made this completely unlocked...) but the rumors are now stronger. JP Morgan reported that it could happen even before Christmas. It is the only way for Apple to avoid iPod numbers to collapse...
Will it look like this?
Probably not, but it would be interesting to guess which features would they cut from the original to the nano. What would I cut? Let me try:
- Calendar -> only for geeks and if it is not synchronized, useless even for geeks...
- Stocks -> only for geeks with money (very small category)
- Calculator -> only for geeks that forgot how to divide numbers, due to excessive use of computers
- Notes -> who takes notes on a mobile device with a supercrippled keyboard??
- Clock -> believe me, you have another device on you that tells you what time it is...
- Weather -> well, this would be really nice to have but I am out of room... You'll have to use the browser for it, sorry.
What would you cut? What do you really need on a phone? Can you live without weather or would you rather sacrifice maps?
Here is an event not to be missed if you live in the Bay Area. Tomorrow night (Friday) starts iPhoneDevCamp, "Making the web a better place for iPhone". It is a developer meeting, going on for the entire weekend. The outcome? An unlocked iPhone (just kidding)...
Funambol is sponsoring the pizza on Saturday night. Hey, it is developers on a mobile platform, we just launched the first contacts app for the iPhone, built by a bunch of Italians... we definitely could not have missed it and pizza clearly fits the bill. Just to keep your expectations in check, it is going to be American pizza ;-)
I'll see you there.
For those who like podcasts and do not mind my Italian accent, I had a (pretty long) chat with Scott Mace of IT Conversations a few weeks ago.
So I listened to the imaginary suggestion of Steve Jobs and I showed up Friday at 6 pm at the Apple store in Palo Alto. I saw the long line (about 150 people), but not as long as I would have expected. I did not see Steve Jobs (who appeared from the sky in the store, some say). However, I saw a guy tearing one iPhone apart, in front of a camera (just for fun, I guess). The wait was too long, so I went out and had few beers with friends (that is what you are supposed to do on a Friday night, not standing in line...) and I came back at 10 pm (ok, maybe the beers were not few :-) Five minutes wait, and I got my iPhone. Went home, tried to activate it, waited until the next morning and had it working (and no hangover).
Now, the iPhone is an amazing device, with one missing feature that makes it just a toy for me, not something I can use everyday. It is missing over the air sync. That is, you cannot sync your address book or calendar, unless you are at home, your PC is on and you are connecting the iPhone to it with a cable.
I need my address book on the iPhone. Having wifi and cellular connectivity and being forced to use a cable is insane. I could do cable sync in the nineties with my Palm.
So... we decided to launch myFUNAMBOL.
myFUNAMBOL is a demo installation of our Carrier Edition (without push, in most cases). You can get email on your device for free (that is, your RAZR, Nokia, but also Windows Mobile) and you can sync your address book and calendar from whatever phone you have. It includes Outlook and iPod sync, but you can use the community plugins to sync Thunderbird, Yahoo, Evolution and so on. More info about it is on our web site.The coolest thing is that you can use it with the iPhone.
So, if you have an iPhone and an old phone, you can sync your old phone and access your contacts on the iPhone. Or you can use Outlook, Thunderbird, Evolution to keep your address book updated in real time. Even Yahoo address book is there. Steve Jobs would say "this is the best portal we ever did".
For now, the myFUNAMBOL portal is beta and we are open it slowly. We received hundreds of requests in the first few hours and we are processing them. It is an early beta, so... be patient with us. In any case, more to come. This is just the beginning...
Good news keep pouring in for Funambol. Today we made the finalist list of the Red Herring 100 Global. Somehow, we beat 1,600 startups that won the Red Herring award in the last three years. Not bad...
