DeepDarkSee

I’m very excited to see the mobile site for Moblyng go up (m.moblyng.com from your phone browser, or iPhone)!

I first got involved with Moblyng to help them convert and deliver video content to cell phones via SMS and a wap site. Now we just launched a mobile web portal. They are great people doing great things. Check it out!

So it’s been a while. Kathryn and I are hitting the gym 3 times a week and share a personal trainer. She’s off for two weeks at a Spanish language immersion school in Peurto Vallarta next week, and Audrey is off to summer camp as a “CIT.” I’m still doing things for Bones in Motion and Rocket Mobile, but have been spending lots of time with Moblyng on their mobile strategy and build-out. We’re doing interesting things with video to mobile phones, and web sites that adapt to different phone browser capabilities. Some secret stuff that should pop out soon too! BiM was a great ride, but it’s really fun to involved with a fresh new start-up.

I’ve also been looking at what I want to do next as a self funded project. Lots of digging around Marine related resources on the web, and pondering iPhone app opportunities. I’m really pleased, as an early iPhone adapter, that I’ve got all the capabilities of the new phone except the faster network and better GPS. Go Apple!

Last year I wrote an AIM Bot that could respond to informational requests (meeebot if you want to check it out).  I just adapted some of it’s features to work with the TextMarks service.  Check it out!

Send a text from your phone to the short code 41411 with one of these words in the body:  answ (magic 8 ball), fuzzy (a compliment), insp (inspirational quote), insult (well, you know), shudi (should I?), spell (check spelling), thes (thesaurus lookup), weat (weather for a zip code), words (dictionary lookup).

Fun with a phone!  My daughters wrote the compliments, insults, and yes/no answers…

I sent this to a contact at NAVTEQ today after a conversation on mobile and maps earlier in the week at the Moto Developer Summit in San Jose.  I think this is an opportunity waiting to be leveraged, by a map vendor, or mapping web service provider (ESRI, Autodesk, you there?).  I also think that in cases where carriers mandate map providers, this kind of thinking could win contracts.

As a developer, we want to do more with maps on handsets.  We want to pan and zoom, turn layers on and off, add custom layers, and have a responsive UI experience for the user.  I looked hard for some solutions for this 2.5 years ago as we got started, and have kept poking around since.  This solution means vector maps to me, but as Google as shown, it can also be done ‘marginally well’ with tiles on handsets.  We do it like most right right now with single static images or small groups of tiles.

The key issue is that as a single developer, we don’t have the resources to build a great map display engine in our Java and BREW apps.  We also don’t want to run our own map servers (we use ESRI). 

I was (and am) really surprised that no vendor has shown up at the table offering a map display/rendering module for BREW and for JavaME that developer can adopt and use in their apps. This would be VERY leveraging for developers.I think that a company that solves these problems would be very well received.  I could even see the license for the tool require a certain map vendor. 

I could see NAVTEQ doing this, and working with companies like ESRI or AutoDesk to serve  (and enable their leased servers) vector data to the handset display components you provide.  It just seems like a win-win situation all around.  You don’t step on the toes of your content resellers or server vendors, you enable customers, and you lock in NAVTEQ as the map source.

On a related topic, I think the JSR-293 Location API 2.0, the replacement of the JSR-179 JavaME standard for GPS, provides an interesting opportunity for NAVTEQ along these same lines.  The new standard includes a map display component.  NAVTEQ could write a reference implementation of the map component, but even more interestingly, NAVTEQ could build and make available a super charged version of the implementation - not as a reference but as a value add implementation.  It could be the kind of high end vector display capability that would turn peoples heads, and could be locked to NAVTEQ content (through your existing distribution channels).  This could be part of that same “super handset map display component” work effort.

I see these as opportunities to take a leadership position, as well as advantage NAVTEQ in the mobile space.

So what’s new? BiM is moving along well. Audrey was a wonderful Alice in Alice in Wonderland, her 8th grade play. She also just started her first non- babysitting job, working the concession stand at Lemos Farm, and was a junior counselor at Wavy Gravy’s Camp Winnarainbow. Kathryn has had a rockin’ summer at Camp Winnarainbow, where she was in a chess tournament, did juggling, performed in “A Mid Summer Night’s Dream”, and was invited into the advanced improv group. She is also enjoying being 12! Leann is liking her job at Applied Bio Systems. I’ve been fooling around with a marine commerce site, and working on an iPhone application that shows tides, weather, waves, and marine advisories (and maybe charts!). I’ve also been really active at the Half Moon Bay Yacht Club, sailing the San Francisco Bay on a Santa Cruz 27, and running the Yacht Club summer youth sailing program. It looks like I’m also part of that new old crowd landing on face book. And hey, aren’t my daughters beautiful???

Check it out on YouTube here!

The Silicone Valley Mobile Monday meeting this month was focused on metrics for the Mobile space. Here are the slide decks from presentations by M:Metrics and Telephia.

Some items that I found interesting…

• 89% growth in downloads revenue over the past year, yet downloads are less than 25% of mobile data revenue
• all mobile data areas are growing, but MMS penetration is going gangbusters
• 43% of people aren’t aware that they can download apps to their phone, 44% have no interest in doing so. That leaves only 13% with an interest in buying/using downloaded apps
• 70% of mobile game revenue is concentrated in the top 10 publishers
• preloaded games still represent almost HALF of games played
• porn is sticky (average session time is 3x longer than other video content)
• 9% of pink RAZRs are carried by men, 7% of magenta RAZRs too

Lots of interesting things have been happening in the area around BiM Active and GPS. Things I find most interesting…

Nike + iPod Sport Kit - a step sensor in your running shoe that talks to your iPod - but they key is the implication of a low power wireless body network between the iPod and multiple sensors on and near your body. Step sensor now, but I’m waiting to see the iPod start communicating with things like a heart rate monitor, body temp and respiration, a GPS puck, and devices in exercise equipment. The implications of Apple making a strong play for owning the “body server” complete with a wireless network and path to the internet (USB docking today) are huge. And their entry point is only $29 plus an iPod.

Trimble has acquired AllSportGPS (a lite and Java only version of BiM Active without the strong web support). Congrats to Dave Sutter - couldn’t happen to a nicer guy! Between Trimble Outdoors and the AllSportGPS acquisition, Trimble has declared itself clearly in the mobile phone GPS space. Garmin is in with a navigation handset entry and a ‘GPS device on your phone’ entry. So how about the rest of the GPS space? Time to get in or be passed by. Should be interesting.

ADEO Fitness GPS by MotionLingo is a $149 stand alone GPS receiver with headphones, music, activity recording, pace/progress/goal feedback, and a web site back end. I’m not much for the “have to connect a cable to your PC ” issue, but I’m biased because I love the wireless saving/update of BiM Active. But it’s an interesting looking product, doesn’t have cell phone network issues, and is at a pretty good price point. You can mark laps, and it’s getting great press.

Info from Red Herring about some of Verizon’s “Location Based Services” plans here.

Beware of fishing expeditions:
…it is always nice to have a large company call you and express acquisition interest. That being said, go into the conversations with a skeptical eye and make sure you do not waste your time as these strategic discussions can quickly lead to a dead end if not managed appropriately. The tricky part of the dance is trying to establish early in the process a range that the acquirer will potentially pay for your company assuming everything you tell them is true. The sooner you can get to this answer the sooner you will know if you should continue talking or just walk away. If you manage this process appropriately you may find yourself in a great place as many of the best acquisitions happen when companies are bought and not sold. The downside is that these discussions can suck up lots of your precious resources and be a tremendous distraction to your management team.