Paul Coulton's Forum Nokia Blog

Mobile User Generated Content at FN Tech Day

2008-10-22T13:39:09+03:00

This blog links in with Nathans in relation to the Forum Nokia Developer Day to be held in Budapest in November and relates to my talk which will be on Mobile Users Generated Content (UGC). The emergence of large scale UGC marks a shift among particularly for media organizations from creating on-line content to creating the facilities for non-media professionals (i.e., 'the rest of us') to publish our own content in prominent places. Mobile phones are particularly well suited for this type of media creation as they always carried and are therefore immediately available to the users when required. In my talk I will illustrate through example both the power of user generated content and how it may be harnessed but also the opportunities for utilizing the greater contextual awareness and flexibility the mobile phones offer over current online services. As a taste of what you might expect consider the following figure which relates to the density of user generated geo-located photographs from our LocoMash project for the Roskilde Festival in 2007 (left) and 2008 (right). We can not only see a greater density in 2008 (no doubt partly due to the better weather) but also the relative similarities over the two years indicating the primary areas of interest are consistent for the event which illustrates that UGC through mobile can provide and interesting insight into user behaviour at such events.

Mobile Control of Your Inner Rabbit

2008-06-19T19:58:00+03:00

This is part of a project looking at novel interaction possibilities through so called internet toys. The project was developed by one of my new PhD students Kate Lund as part of the learning process for Widgets and because my colleague Reuben had bought a Internet Rabbit some time ago and its been gathering dust whilst we thought of an interesting project. Basically in its current form it provides a mobile WidSets Widget for sending messages to or controlling (flashing its lights or waggling the ears) your own, or someone else’s, Nabaztag Internet Rabbit as shown in the following video.

These internet toys are intriguing as the are purely a fun item but I know there is a huge community around these rabbits and my kids love sending messages to me through it. It also shows given the right tools and suitable APIs mobile widgets can produce new mash-ups and tap into existing communities very quickly. Finally, I know that many readers wont have a Nabaztag but for those who do I hope the widget provides a means for discovering your inner rabbit.

Workshop with added Concert!

2008-04-22T10:44:38+03:00

In my last post I highlighted the FREE workshop I am running at Futuresonic 2008 in Manchester UK on the 30^th of April which has been kindly supported by Forum Nokia. As part of the event we are running a live visual demonstration of an mobile interactive project called Mash Reality on the big screens at the headlining music event of the festival:

The RZA as Bobby Digital (Wu-Tang Clan) + Flying Lotus - Live (Warp), Rustie

On Thurs 1 May Manchester Academy 1 Oxford Rd. 8pm – MidnightI am going to be giving away tickets at the workshop so that people can experience the possibilities of mobile development offers first hand.Who says mobile development isn’t much fun

Futuresonic Mobile Experiences Workshop

2008-04-16T11:41:56+03:00

This blog is to let the community know about the free (but no lunch) Mobile Experiences workshop I am running from 12pm on the 30^th of April in Contact Theatre Space 3 in Manchester as part of kick off events for Futuresonic 2008 which is a Urban Festival of Art, Music & Ideas running between the 1-5 May in Manchester in the UK . The workshop is being supported by Forum Nokia (thanks again) and its aim is to facilitate cooperation between artists, designers, and developers in the mobile space

This year we intend to focus on the three technology areas currently growing in significance in the mobile phone space that of Location Based Services, RFID and Near Field Communications, and Mobile Widgets (WRT and WidSets) and each will be presented by a Forum Nokia Champion. The workshop is intended to be accessible and open to a variety of interest and in particular we want to provide an opportunity for designers to find out what these technologies have to offer and what the limitations, what support are and development environments exist, where they can get access to examples. We will also provide an opportunity to mix and discuss design ideas with developers and experts experienced in these areas together with providing some hands on practical experience of the technology.

To finish the event we are planning a group participation of a mobile experience but i will post more information as soon as the details are finalised but it should be very cool.

Manchester is a great city with a unique atmosphere and culture and this Festival is a great experience so if you have never visited the city this may be all the excuse you need.

Please feel free to pass on this information to anyone you think will be interested.

Why am I such a fan of Widgets?

2008-03-09T13:30:59+02:00

This blog is in response to a number of requests I received after our presentation at this year's Game Developers conference (GDC 2008) for both an annotated copy of the slides (they directly printed out the slides which mostly just consisted of images and video) and to answer the basic question of why I think widgets are so important?

I have already blogged about their link with the paradigms of Web 2.0 but it is also the very nature of widgets themselves that makes them interesting. Widgets are becoming increasingly popular in the PC/web landscape with offerings such as iGoogle Gadgets, Opera Widgets, Yahoo Widgets, Apple Dashboard Widgets and Windows Sidebar Gadgets (not to mention widgets incorporated into social networking sites (Facebook being a prime example)and blogs). In our talk Will and I gave a basic definition of a number of qualities of a widget but for me the three most important are:

Simple. Generally does one thing but does it well.
Quick to develop, easy to deploy.Personalisation.
The widget/environment adaptable to needs of the user.

The key things here from a developer's perspective are that they are easy develop and deploy but from a users perspective it's in the simplicity and personalisation. Simple should be taken to mean targeted, and fairly easy to use rather than trivial - creating a good user experience given the constraints off many widget platforms can be quite a challenge. Given the nature of the mobile phone interface and its manner of use I believe this elegant simplicity is the essential component of any successful mobile application. Personalisation is another, although arguably secondary, key factor. As in our evolving Web 2.0 world, users increasingly expect to be able to tailor their environment to their personal needs and interests and this extends to applications too. In terms of implementation, all widgets require a platform or engine of some sort to enable their operation. In mobile we have two general solutions: browser-based widgets and custom widget environments. Within Nokia, these are illustrated by their offerings of WidSets and the S60 Web Run-Time (WRT) respectively. Many of the standards that define a widget platform's operation either borrow from or directly adopt standard web technologies. Browser based solutions (WRT) generally stick more closly to web standards (JavaScript, XML, HTML, CSS etc.) and some people would therefore argue that they are more in keeping with established Web 2.0 paradigms (and therefore preferable in terms of attracting developers). However, in our experience custom environments can provide greater opportunity for developing richer applications and their centralised infrastructure can provide great benefits in terms of distribution, community features etc. From a independent developer's perspective it is the infrastructure of a centralised, custom widget environment, such as WidSets, that is particularly attractive. To illustrate this, consider the graph below which shows the user downloads of our simple WidSets game Bombus:

The two notable events represent some of the power of utilising your users to rate and rank content rather than parties who may/may not have vested interests e.g. game deck administrator. The first event was the promotion of Bombus on the WidSets client (a featured widget) which provides an initial boost and then the steady download by users. The second key event is when the ratings from the users results in the widget reaching the "top 5 rated" list (after which we experienced lots of new users). Its hard to imagine such a situation without this type of users input as it is increasingly evident people are more inclined to accept the advice of other users.

As we have won two prizes for WidSets development (Bombus and Boom!) and one for WRT (m-footy) I often get asked "which is better"? My answer is always the same they both provide different qualities and I am happy to create for both. Given the use of open standards WRT is hugely attractive to current web developers in that they can be produced very easily and integrated within existing frameworks, whilst Widsets has a good infrastructure but requires a new language be learned by the developer (Helium script) and feels less integrated with the general phone applications. The ideal for me is to combine the positive aspects of both. Perhaps the ability to launch WRT from WidSets (which I understand may be part of the intended evolution) would help in part achieve this end.

With the current beta version of the client, WidSets have introduced ad-supported content with a planned revenue sharing model between WidSets and developers. When this is released, it will provide a great end-to-end solution for developers and a truly user centred perspective?

So while I will always be a huge advocate of the power of creating very novel native applications( although for me its not an all or nothing debate), for the many simple casual applications we can envisage for mobile why not make them widgets?

BTW Big thanks to Will for the comments and discussions surrounding this blog

First Mobile Game 2.0

2008-01-21T15:01:39+02:00

In a previous blog I talked about the presentation Will and I are going to do at this year’s Game Developers Conference (GDC08) around the paradigms of Web 2.0 as applied to mobile games using widgets. In that Blog I talked about a new game which built upon our previous experience of the WidSets game Bombus. We believe the features of WidSets enable game designers to explore such concepts as perpetual beta and collective intelligence without having to create a large supporting infrastructure and in our follow up study we wanted to explore this further and include ideas of user generated content.

The new game is called BOOM!, a scrolling platform arcade style game:

The interesting part of game is that it’s designed to allow users to upload new maps, tilesets and game attributes to change the game. The idea being that we could create a level editor on the game site so user could create their own content which the community could rank and rate.

Download BOOM! to your WidSets Dashboard:

It will be nice to see if we can also address some of these ideas through WRT but for the moment we will have to wait to see how.

WRT Widgeting

2007-12-17T12:11:41+02:00

I got news today that the WRT Widget mfooty developed by my new PhD student Carlos Garcia Wylie was a winner in the recent Nokia widget competition. The design idea was based around an old favourite application of mine called mfooty but updated to take account the philosophy of simplicity and ease of use.

The widget was designed to have a very simple intuitive UI based on selecting teams from their shirts which links you to the relevant news feeds as shown.

To me the beauty of the design was the simplicity and obviously the judges agreed as they said about the widget.

"This is a must for any football fan. Mostly we liked the stylish UI
and ease of navigation”

I will try to blog more details about the devlopment on our widget workshop as it was the first web appication Carlos had done so might give nice insight.

Mobile Games 2.0!

2007-11-26T13:57:01+02:00

Along with Will Bamford I have had a lecture accepted for next year’s GDC called “Mobile Game 2.0: The Rise of the Widget?” based on the ideas we have developed from working on the Widgets Workshop blog. In the coming weeks I will talk about a new game and distribution concept we are working on based on widgets but in the mean time here is the basis of the talk for GDC.

Before we can attempt to frame the concept of ‘Mobile Games 2.0’ let us first consider some of the principles that have come to encompass the concepts of Web 2.0 and Mobile Web 2.0. As with any concept that is not tied to specific technologies, the field is open to various interpretation but Mobile Web 2.0 services are generally seen to harness:

Data (often user derived) over software;
Collective intelligence (for example group filtering);
Open standards “Above the Single Device”;
Niche markets or the Long Tail;
Use of context;
Emergence resulting in constant evolution (perpetual Beta).

Whilst some of these concepts might be alien to traditional console games developers, the very nature of the mobile games environment and the broad demographic of game players would appear to offer enormous potential for this industry. However, if Mobile Games 2.0 is to become more than a mere buzz phrase, we will need to overcome the current fragmentation within the market and provide a platform that facilitates the majority of these features.

To achieve the principles of Web 2.0 in Mobile Game 2.0 it is worth seeking inspiration for the by evaluating the solutions that have evolved in that environment, ascertaining their relevance to mobile. In this regard Widgets are seen as a primary enabler of Web 2.0 as they utilise open standards, are easy to distribute, and have a mechanism for continued evolution. As Nokia has recently introduced two flavours of Widgets for mobile, in this lecture we’ll be exploring these platforms in terms of their development and distribution mechanisms in relation to games.

may you live in interesting times

2007-11-08T11:41:06+02:00

On what seemed like another in an endless stream of plane rides last week (my carbon footprint is rubbish) I had cause to consider on what changes I have encountered in the mobile industry over the summer and it brought to mind the supposed Chinese curse “may you live in interesting times”.

The trip this time was to attend two workshops in Helsinki one on NFC the other on Web Run Time (WRT) Widgets. As some of you are aware I have a long standing interest in NFC/RFID through projects such as Mobspray and Pac-Lan but I came away from the workshop very excited by new features embodied in the 6131 particularly the secure element and I would urge those with the opportunity to take Rons advice and attend the workshop in Amsterdam. The WRT workshop was also fascinating (thanks to Finn and the guys formaking it such an interesting day) as I have recently been playing with the Widsets Widgets platform which for me is tremendously exciting as it embodies many of the elements we crave from Web 2.0 type applications such as perpetual beta and addressing the long tail. However, I was equally impressed by WRT in the ease of development and the fact it definitely address a new audience of potential mobile developers from the web community. It’s interesting that these two platforms are often lumped together in people’s minds but I would urge people to investigate both as they offer very different but complimentary opportunities.

At the Nokia Games Summit I was trialling a Locomash experiment for the attendees and also demonstrated our accelerometer games Tilt Racer and Tunnel Run. Having spent much of the event bemoaning the fact that only the 5500 offered the facility, what happens? last week up pops fact that the N95 had them all the time. Who says we can’t be surprised anymore?.

There are of course countless other fascinating developments such as ‘Open’ becoming the new black of the mobile Industry, the appearance of the Iphone, reduction in pc ownership in Japan, Nokia’s acquisition of Navteq, etc, etc. This brings me back to my original thought (yes there was one) that those of us in this industry are bombarded by change but rather than seeing this as as a curse let us revel in the fact we do indeed live in very interesting times.