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Another slick application for Mobile MUSE platform

Submitted by Jim Udall on January 5, 2007 - 10:41am.
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Well this idea had struck me some time ago, and an e-mail thread with my colleague - Richard Smith - prodded me to do something about it.   The problem is that it's a real shame I even had to do it.  You see it all came down to price plans for wireless networks.

In particular, Richard sent me a note where he parenthetically bemoaned the price of data on the Fido network.  Specifically, in one instance he had consumed about 500K bytes of data - for which he was charged the whopping sum of $17.25 (pre or post tax - I'm not sure).  In another instance, he had consumed about 270k bytes of data - for which he was charged $8.01.  Now when you consider he's using an N80 device that has a reasonable 3M pixel camera, his average photo is just south of 1M.  So uploading a single photo at these rates would cost on the neighbourhood of $30 each!


Mobile Platform you say?

Submitted by Jim Udall on December 14, 2006 - 12:44pm.
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As part of the Mobile MUSE project, I have been involved in creating a platform of multi-media services for mobile devices.  We'll get to what that means in a minute, but I'd like to explain some of the rationale and concepts behind the motivation for the platform.

One of the problems in delivery content to mobile devices is barrier to entry for developers.  These barriers take many forms.  These barriers invariably fall into three different categories:

  • Financial - it can be difficult for small cap companies in early development phases to afford the investment required to begin working in the mobile space.
  • Technical - At the end of the day, mobile devices differ radically from each other in terms of capabilities and even implementations of standard level technologies.  This situation is in stark contrast to the traditional Internet world where PC's generally support a myriad of standard and de-facto standard implementations.  Usually the biggest headache for Internet developers is accounting for two different browsers: IE and Firefox.  The mobile world should be so lucky.
  • Business - Multiple wireless network operators put up various barriers - some technical, some financial - that make it difficult to create generic cross-carrier content.

The platform that's been developed for Mobile MUSE is an attempt to redress these barriers and provide a more hospitable environment for rich-media content development.


Women and the future of mobile content

Submitted by Jean Hébert on October 10, 2006 - 6:05pm.
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You may have read recently about the Nielsen study that observed women gamers outnumbering men two to one. There are some very good questions asked about this over at Constructing Amusement. 

If this weren't enough to counter your intuitions about gaming, gender and technology, consider this. A new study by M:Metrics highlights some new trends in mobile technology adoption (including mobile games), and here again, more women are coming on deck than men. From the RCR Wireless article:
Of particular note is the shifting demographic profile for active mobile content consumers. The number of females consuming ringtones and games grew by 27 percent and 21 percent, respectively, year over year. Corresponding numbers for males were growth of 15.4 percent in males downloading ringtones and a decline of 11.3 percent in the number of males downloading games. Females now account for a clear majority, or 55 percent, of ringtone purchasers. While males still have a higher propensity to download games, the ratio of male to female game downloaders has dropped from 61 percent male in 2005 to 54 percent male in 2006.

What do MMS and Brick Walls Have in Common?

Submitted by Jim Udall on July 9, 2006 - 10:33am.
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I've written before about my interest in pursuing MMS as a method of rich-media distribution.  Indeed I've directed a lot of my efforts on the Mobile MUSE projects trying to leverage this technology in the projects.

In a previous life, I've spent a lot of time in this area; participating in standards definitions and understanding carrier requirements as well as dealing with the issues of interoperability between 3GPP and 3GPP2 domains.  However, until the mobile MUSE projects, I've had no practical experience with trying to use MMS as a service delivery technology.


My Crawl Through Broken Glass

Submitted by Jim Udall on June 2, 2006 - 12:30pm.
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Though my titular reference within the MobileMuse.ca project is Research Director, in practice, my role is more of chief technology officer.  But lately my role has been one of major domo lab rat.

People might be expecting insightful guidance on future trends in mobile multi-media from me, but in truth, I've spent the past 7 days in a dark windowless room trying to bastardize together a content delivery system based on MMS.


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