Jose's Cerebro

Best iPhone feature? Email instead of MMS

I have a confession to make... As a mobile designer, I hate to deal with the carriers and their telecom networks. I wish their networks would operate just like the web - TCP/IP-based communications from top to bottom. Can you imagine how many more mobile applications we'd have if instead of SMS we had email based SMS - just like in Japan? Or SMS over instant messaging? At the end of the day, SMS is just text. Can you count all the different ways to send and receive text on the Internet? Exactly. So why the hell do carriers have this archaic way of sending TEXT MESSAGES? I think I know... Complacency and Control. Regardless of their attitude, the writing is on the wall:

All carriers will become Internet Serice Providers whether they like it or not.

Can you forsee a future where you don't need six to eight weeks to get a shortcode? Or one in which you can just think of all mobile devices as the IP devices they really are? Or a future in which you don't need to get your application "screened" or "approved" by a carrier? How about a world with no aggregators? Screw SMSC and MMS gateways. How about just plain STMP, Jabber servers and $5.99 domain names at GoDaddy?

So when I read people complaining about the iPhone's lack of MMS I say... bring it on. Why stop there? Get rid of SMS too and provide an IP-base way of sending text messaging and watch this industry's innovation explode.

Until then... Way to go Apple, way to go!

How do you spell the end of Flash on mobile phones? Easy... H.264/3gp

Are you a fan of Flash? I'm not. It's one of those open-canvas technologies that let people do lots of distasteful things for sake of creativity. Don't get me wrong, it has it's place, but I rather use some of the alternatives. To be honest, I didn't have much of a need for Flash until YouTube came along. There are tons of Flash sites out there, but the killer app for Flash right now is certainly YouTube. So it's ironic that the same site that put Flash on everyone's radar is the site that will eventually kill it: YouTube. You see, until last week, the only way to view videos on YouTube's site was with Flash. What happened last week? YouTube Mobile, that's what happened. YouTube Mobile is a version of YouTube with videos encoded in H.264/3gp instead of Flash. H.264 and 3gpp are related to MPEG-4. If you look even deeper behind the formats, you'll find Quicktime/Apple roots behind them. 3gp - the file format behind 3gpp - is also the standard of choice behind all GSM mobile phones. So it's also no surprise that a week after YouTube releases their Flash-free, 3gp version of their site, Apple announces that the iPhone will play YouTube videos in H.264. YouTube Mobile is not only relevant to mobiles or the iPhones of the world. Remember Foleo, from Palm? Guess what? All Foleo's will be able to view YouTube videos now. Nokia's N800/770? Those too will get some YouTube love now - as soon as Nokia fixes their 3gp implementation. Bottom line is that with YouTube's adoption of MPEG-4 via H.264 and 3gp, they've set their videos "free" for everyone to watch. Byebye Flash, Byebye Flash.Lite! Hello open standards.

Take a look at this video of YouTube playing on an iPhone.

Nokia's Mobile Web Server Beta is Out

I wake up this morning and what do I find in my inbox:

Dear Raccoon User,

I'm happy to announce that a more product oriented mobile web server is now available for download.

You can find it right now at http://mymobilesite.net and soon also via http://www.nokia.com/betalabs, where there are a number of other cool applications.

The main difference between Raccoon and MWS, which is based upon Raccoon, is that while the former is primarily intended for hard-core developers and others who don't mind spending time at the bleeding edge, the latter is more geared towards regular end-users. However, the possibilities for customization and for building your own kind of mobsites are still there.

Furthermore, MWS provides https and access control at the gateway, so the possibilites for controlling who can access what, are much improved.

Thanks Johan, Juha and the rest of the Nokia team for making this happen. These are the type of examples we need to make people aware of the power they carry in their pockets - not that kind of power you freak. Do I smell the makings of a mobile social network? Stay tuned... Mercurio and MWS integration is next.

iPhone will ignite Objective-C interest

We all know that the iPhone will run widgets - small dhtml, javascript and css applications. Against the rumors spread by "analysts/experts", the iPhone will be open to developers for applications and I don't mean just widgets- they'd be crazy not to. Btw, there's no evidence anywhere on the announcement of the iPhone, nor interviews where Apple says that the iPhone will be "closed." In any case, as a result the tightest applications for the iPhone - those that will require OS integration (address book, calendar, etc.) - will require development with OS X's Cocoa development framework. For the uninitiated, Cocoa is currently the best desktop development framework. If you're a Windows or Linux developer, do yourself a favor and get yourself a ticket to heaven-on-earth by taking a look at Cocoa. You'll develop apps faster than anything else out there. Anyway, Cocoa has bindings for languages like Java, but its core language is Objective-C.

Once the iPhone starts selling as well as the iPod - and it will... I predict Objective-C interest - O'Reilly books, sites, code snippets, etc - will explode. The good thing is that as a developer, you don't have to wait until June 29th to start learning Objective-C. Check Apple's page and O'Reilly's section on the topic.

It's Official - iPhone comes out June 29th

I admit, I'm not the type to make a big deal about gadget releases, but for the iPhone... I have to make an exception. There I was eating dinner and watching 60 Minutes. I couldn't believe my eyes. All I knew was that in a very weird way... I was watching history in the making. Don't worry, I won't ruin the commercial for you. I'm sure you'll see it plenty of times in the next month or so. Bottom line is on June 29th, the mobile world will change for ever.

What a great time to be alive!