In a recent article by Fiercewireless’s Jason Ankeny, he describes first and foremost the cool things that brands have been able to do with Applications and mobile.  Even though I am a true beleiver in the real experiences that can be generated with direct brand engagment and applications, I still feel that there is a long way to go with the potential here. iPhones are still limited in market penetration and with the explosion of new app stores there is clearly a problem for cross-platform and distribution simplicity for a brand manager.  Nokia recently in it’s Monaco developer forum (last month) made it very clear they are working on leveraging thier ” widget” framework off the browser for developers and really showcased some cool things to come.  Although it is still early, I am quite interested to see where developers will continue to migrate to get the bigged bang for the buck, but with “brands” starting to also drive this process, there may be ubiquitous targeting of multiple platforms from the get-go with this sponsor making it all happen.  As they say, “Apple” blew a hole in the window and now all the flys can come through……

Just saw that Mozilla has Firefox has re-releases its Alpha 1 ( kind of like how they are moving forward but still not beta:). What is interesting to see that now that the Android, Nokia and Apple ( soon Blackberry?) have all moved with WebKit, the competition still is fierce for bringing the online web experience to mobile.  I could not stop thinking of all the possibilities withthe plug-in base online and how they would get extended to mobile.   These are some of the things that are new to the build.

• Tons of  bug fixes and performance upgrades ( 3 months worth
• Fennec UI have been rebuilt entirely in CSS,
  • This will allow the browser to easily be tweaked  different handsets without having to go in and change the hardcoding, making it easier to  port Fennec to different screensizes and resolutions.
• And last but not least Add-ons! Lets see where this goes with the compatibility for plug-ins. This will become quite dynamic for plug-in providors to start building different User Interfaces for mobile….

My key question is when all of the API’s that we normally see for applications all start to become part of the browsing experience. No longer will a developer need to create an iPhone app to do those cool things, but in basic CSS and with widgets.

Something to keep an eye on.

In the unofficial web blog from Apple, it looks like compatibility spagettii is about to happen, or not? Being in mobile myself for the last 15 years one of the greatest challenges with application development has always been with forward and backward compatibility. After Apple has now reached it’s 1billionth download with >30K apps in store and in the market for just over 1 year, compatibility-hell (CH) has started. As Apple is no stranger to this, I am sure they will do a great job in informing developers what to do about this, but what makes this interesting now is the cost to develop apps. As it will now become the responsibility for the developer to make sure that there is compatibility with the new OS3.0, New OS3.0 developers will now have to start looking at their apps for older versions potentially as well. As it is not cheap to develop apps, this is another factor that has made application development for dedicated platforms quite interesting. When there are standards around cross-platform application development, the same CH exists, but there is a bit more assurance on being able to have a product that works across multiple devices in the market.  As a developer, hopefully companies like Nitobi with PhoneGap will work out these issues and make it easier and cheaper to develop with CH.  I am particularly interested in how this will play out with the emerging App Stories of WinMo, Nokia’s Symbian, and Google Android.  Maybe it is time to just focus on the web?

This is week of digital convergence  us Vancouverites, but mobile is also part of the convergence of the event! VancouverDigitalWeek. Check out the three sites that have been Mobified by a local design agency using Mobify.  Even the Local design firm called NoshortCutsDesign has created a mobile view of their site….. I find this interesting as local interactive design firms embrace mobile.

http://m.popvoxawards.com

http://m.vipf.ca

http://m.vancouverdigitalweek.com

Robert Scoble with his 85K followers just made a statement that FriendFeed was growing faster then Twitter. I guess when you have that many followers you can create buzz, but as far as Compete.com goes, there is no match yet between the two ( at least from the standpoint of URL comparisons goes…. can not say about the API)

This evening I was out on the town and started to crave the Twitter Search feature that has now become front and center of my Twitter web app page. When Twitter adds this to mobile, it could really change the landscape of  local perspective search.  I can not wait to see the mobile twitter search come along…