Some moblog photos in Paris...

Even US goes off-deck

With Japan moving more and more into the mobile web and Asia and Europe following in its wake, the US is finally developing its own taste for the unknown waters of the "off-deck".

"Off-deck" means outside the mobile phone carrier's officially vetted mobile websites. In the traditional business model for mobile phone carriers or operators, when you click on the Internet button on your mobile phone, carefully vetted specific service providers are showed to you on an official "menu" or "deck". However with the increasingly atomised interests of mobile web users, the slow speed to which operators react to changes in their user's interest centers, and the slow mobil-isation of web content and web services means people are more and more willing to find the services they want and don't need to be spoonfed in that process. This seems to have started happening in the US as well as people get more and more used to the idea of internet on their small mobile phone, and more and more phones are internet-enabled with bigger screens.

When speaking at the mobile roundtable at the Dreamgate Japan CEO conference in early 2007, K-Laboratories CEO Tetsuya Sanada waxed sentimental about how the walled garden allowed the Japanese mobile industry to develop around Docomo, and that's where he cut his teeth so I could see where he was coming from. But the go-go early 2000s are radically different to the end of the 00s where fixed mobile convergence will make sure that competition will be coming from one media or the other or diagonally out of the woodwork where you least expect it. It struck me at the time more as an argument that ailing agricultural producers would lobby for in the face of the globalisation of trade, but it is the opposite of competition.

Walled gardens work to develop an industry and should be retained to help seed emerging markets and industries, that's why East Asian economies have done the same and have been rewarded with long growth periods of growth, but once out of the posts they fail to serve their purpose when they fossilize current players with little novelty to bring to the dynamism of an industry. When I said that the walled garden is falling apart and on-deck is dead, I was slapped down by both walled garden participants at the conference. One year on however, and the walled gardens keep crashing down all across the globe.

More in the original article here.

Blueberries and ice-cream

Was at the frontline today for the Tokyo premiere of the latest blueberries from Wong KarWai in "My Blueberry Nights": with altogether 3 Wong KarWai aficionados including myself. Verdict -- the film was nice but not as good as perhaps hoped. There was a generalised happy-smiley feel at the exit, but we all felt that the scenes were too close to In The Mood for Love, and his other well-known pieces.

The shot with Jude Law staring blankly as time flew by or the shots through the shop window glass as lovers slowly got to know each other under overexposed neon lights were plucked straight out of Chungking Express. What was spot-on in 1994 with the nihilistic urban environments of pre-millenial Hong Kong's stories of fast-paced life and people passing by each other, rings slightly hollow in 2008. A mediocre treacly performance by Jude Law was compensated by a breathtakingly depressive/end-of-the-road David Strathairn. Norah Jones was the innocent young woman in search of herself and love; played admirably, but we got no character depth.

Altogether recommended viewing, but this is not the cutting edge, more an artistic rehash of past influences.

Research on microblogging and communities

It seems microblogging is all the rage these days, but is it more than a webified instant-messaging widget? It seems to be the logical progression from function-restricted and price-constricted "mainstream" mobile phone users being forced to use texting to get their message across for so long now that one-to-many texting has taken this route. Naviblog's even got its own Twitter widget now (see top of the blog page), just to play around and see what it does and how it enhances the site.

Will the flat-rate data packages now being deployed in many carriers Europe-wide change this to a longing for standard email as we've known it in Japan? When you think about it, people still short-message here, but the price differential is so tiny that no-one really cares.

Will the newfangled functions to be found in mid- and even low-end handsets spur increased usage, for example for GPS or mobile commerce? I think the rule is if it's simple and the hurdle of adoption is low enough in usability and price terms, then it's very likely there'll be strong adoption, at least in the first instances.

Anyway, this piece of research (about 3MB) from the University of Maryland and NEC Labs America details the architecture and dynamics of microblogging: quite interesting as a primer to the area, and generally interesting when thinking about social communities on the mobile.

The end for native mobile apps?

This is no piece of news to our ears, indeed Naviblog has been touting itself as one of the leaders on pushing the boundaries of the mobile services and applications since the start, in the same way as others think of twitter, yahoo mail and google calendar for the PC. But the fact is that many bloggers, and increasingly web service platform developers including latest wake-up call from Google's Android, are realising that the introduction of cheap and ubiquitous internet mobile phones is driving the economic case for mobile services.

The bottom line is: it is cheaper to build mobile services based on common web standards that will work on many mobile phones with the same user experience, than developing a number of optimized native applications that you have to download, install and double-click on your phone before using.

But it seems the industry I work in, the mobile app developer industry, is still wedded to the idea. Granted, you can't throw away a body of knowledge of more than a decade of mobile app development overnight, but this shortsightedness is now costing our users and our industry in dollar/yen/euro terms and in terms of growth for content and commerce on the mobile.

A nice piece I found recently from insightful trendwatcher and industry buff Michael Mace, where he states:

"...If you haven't figured it out yet, I'm talking about the Web. I think Web applications are going to destroy most native app development for mobiles. Not because the Web is a better technology for mobile, but because it has a better business model."

The date says Feb 24, 2008, and the title of the piece is "Mobile [native] applications, RIP"... more here.

Child abuse rampant in South Africa

Pretty powerful stuff: see here.

Chicago riots 40 yrs ago

Pretty cool trailer by Sundance-premiered director Brett Morgen's new film, Chicago 10:



An excerpt from the movie:

Egypt and Gaza Palestine... a necessary rapprochement?

The asphyxiation of the Hamas-controlled Gaza strip continues from both the Israeli government and Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah-controlled West Bank. Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak has asked the Fatah and Hamas to sit around a table in Egypt, Fatah refused while Hamas agreed... I wonder whether that's because the West Bank has been drip-fed by the big-power US-leaning European governments, and maybe because you can't get proper salaries or fresh food and drink in Gaza. But you can be gunned down, your house bulldozed with your family inside, or just your city block taken out by a missile or two.

Egypt has reached out to an unlikely operation by Hamas, partly planned and partly out of desperation it seems, with Hamas militants bulldozing parts of the wall separating Gaza Palestine from Egypt. The checkpoint has been shut down until further notice: see this as another screw tightened on the poverty in Gaza by Israel-leaning elements. Interesting that Egypt is allowing the palestinians to jump over the fence, and announce specifically that Egypt is going to help Palestinians to come over to Egypt and get the necessary basics for their sustenance.

Maybe are assisting to the beginning of a Cold War-like West Germany / East Germany demarcation of Palestine with "West" controlled West Bank and "East" controlled Gaza. Unfortunately, there is no industrial base to look forward to, even if you have a Marshall Plan lying around, which looks all the more uncertain in an election year and when US military and support operations worldwide are stretched extremely thin in all directions with few funds flowing through.

Could Egypt keep Gaza's formal boundaries, and walk in to restore law and order in Gaza under a "war against terror"-type operation (or anything else they can make up), effectively annexing the territory? It is a real option, and considering the plight of the Palestinians there after months and nearly years of depravation, may not be that bad. Egypt could just as easily have "police" training programs to beef up their military there, although Israel would probably make a similar move to control the West Bank more effectively. Abbas would be more the governor of the West Bank, than its leader. The end result though would be is a stabilisation of the area, and a return to a poor but basic lifestyle for people there.

A possible backlash can be expected with the increase of political islamic parties inside Egypt, trying to stir up arab / islamic nationalism in the right proportions to get the Egyptian electorate around the Palestinian issue. Of course, Egypt's own islamic parties would probably love to see the back of Mubarak, but if he plays it carefully, he could neuter their pulpits to his own advantage and start getting the same islamic hero coverage as Ahmadjinebad, without the UNSC connotations. If he manoeuvres himself into the role of a Jimmy Carter of the Near East, he may even be able to land himself a political future as an Arab peacemaker/superstar/lectureCircuiter a-la-Blair, and groom the best of the islamic parties with the Palestine issue to push on his legacy once he's moved on.

A bit farfetched, maybe. But not a bad idea when you think about it, this rapprochement.

Naviblogger says... Virgin Mobile goes MySQL

Little blog snippet from the ZDNET site: MySQL credibility on highly-transactional DB systems just went up a bit. There's a lot of talk around me of the benefits of Postgre vs MySQL, but this implementation in one of the leaders of the MVNO deployment space is definitely food for thought. More below:

"Virgin makes mySQL look bigger by ZDNet's Dana Blankenhorn -- By using mySQL to do it, and buying mySQL support contracts, Virgin Mobile is calling mySQL enterprise-ready."

Middle Eastern globalization

A pretty broadbrush piece on the Middle East and business there in general, with Iran coming in as wildcard numero uno. A lot of interest in North Africa, and countries around Israel. Good to see a piece like this on the Wharton site: keep up that knowledge factory!!

More here. Also available there in downloadable or streaming podcast format.

UK Punk in Shibuya Sept 8

Recently found a flyer for Sundance-celebrated "London Calling - The Life of Joe Strummer" that will be playing at Shibuya's MuseCon on September 8th. The Japanese website was shite with their puny official teaser: The Clash is mad, cool and I was born the year when they released their first album - '77. Nuff said. Check this live snippet one year later.



Or try "I fought the law" on for size:



-- Mandali

Airport grilling, Adams and me

Classic article [here] where Gerry Adams goes to the US and gets picked on by anti-terrorism squads of airport security there... but for some, you don't need to go all the way to the land of the free to enjoy airport security culture. You can get it for free where you live now.

Picture the set:



On a recent trip to HK on business a few weeks ago, I didn't have time to choose which airplane company to fly, but flew on UA. United Airlines, US airline company, they told me. Couldn't care less, I thought, I've flown on Aeroflots, Canadian Internationals and Singapore Airlines, what's wrong with flying Uncle Sam for once? Mistake.

Not only was my bag searched and passed through the x-ray machine about 3 times, especially regarding "liquids" in a plastic bag that they couldn't decide on whether I could take a sore throat spray on board or not. Searched up and down with metal detector: bleep on my belt.



Take belt off. No bleep. Move. Next, check shoes. Nice shoes, but shoe bomber me? Move on please. "Laptop? Can I see your laptop?" Maybe because Apple is cool, they didn't fuss too much about it. Anyway, go through immigration. Japanese lady, 20 seconds. Korean lady, 25 seconds. Me, 120 seconds. Blip, look at my face, look again, look again, thank you. By this time it was a few minutes before my flight and I dashed over towards the gate. A UA ground assistant stopped me on the way:
"UA?" she said.
"Yes"
"Well hurry up, go now!" and she brushed past me.
She was Japanese. Hmm.

I get to waiting lounge. No-one there, they're shutting the gate down, plane to leave in 5 minutes. Zip through the check-in machine. Two UA-labelled officers jump out of the woodwork, a guy with a big machine and a lady with a metal detector.



"Tickets please"
"Why are you going to Hong Kong?"
"Just for a short trip, see some friends"

She eyes my passport and ticket. Metal detector check, beep, take off belt, bag check, "what is this?" remark, laptop check, laptop looked over fairly quickly, "Apple is cool" thought to self. Check my shoes. Nice shoes.

"Do you have a mobile phone?"
As the CEO of a mobile phone services company, I could not resist the obvious reply.
"Yes"
Wrong answer.



Mobile phone is taken from me, opened and button pad swiped carefully with some cloth/plastic, then fed into big machine of chunky guy.

"What's that for?" I ask gingerly, hoping they aren't magneto-deleting my address book.
"To check for explosives and other substances. It's quite sensitive." he says quietly.
(For a split second I get a flashback to the scene in Fight Club when Edward Norton gets off the plane, finds his bag is not on the luggage belt and the guard tells him quietly "sometimes it's an alarm clock in the bag, not sure. But every so often... it's a dildo")

...WTF?? Sure, I'm going to rub my mobile phone in TNT, then put it in my pocket? I mean, come on!

Get on plane. Positioned in the middle of a row of 4 seats. Fidgety lady to my left. She looks at me from the side of her eye. Murmur and mumble. "Whatever", I think. The plane door closes and she eyes me saying something about placing people in the middle row and coming in at the last minute as if I was wearing a JihadBoyz bandana with ShoeBomber T-shirt. She moves all her stuff to another vacant seat. Then moves her shoes with a suspicious look.

I guess with a first name that is short for Mohammed Ali, the two most important figures in the Islamic religion, and a middle name Wieslaw, which means "great glory", and last and not least a middle-eastern-sounding family name "Khalesi", meaning "of the pure", I shouldn't be surprised all the keyword-matching bells go off every time I board a plane, but this is ridiculous. I repeat, RI-di-CU-lous.

I hear airport security sometimes look at people's blogs when interrogating them in random airport rooms. Read this blog, don't piss me off. That said, I have got somewhat used to getting checked and re-checked, no-one believing me when I reply "I am British, look at my passport". I was incensed when my dad got the usual treatment in supposedly Middle East-friendly France's Charles de Gaulle airport. He still is, everytime. I couldn't give a toss now. If I wanted to falsify my documents, I wouldn't use Mohammed or Ahmad, I'd use George, or W., or Bill, or Tony, you know? Give me a break.

I'm not flying UA again, but I get the feeling the problem won't go away.

- Mandali

Popular Chinese blog interviews Naviblog CEO

Popular China business blog Danwei.org recently released an interview with Naviblog CEO, Mandali Khalesi, on the future of mobile marketing in China. Having visited, studied and worked in China as early as 1994, Mandali has a unique overview of the changes seen in the transition from traditional to user-driven marketing, over the last 10 years.

After the success of Naviblog trials on the China Unicom network in summer 2006, and winning the Red Herring 100 award, Naviblog is well-positioned to harness user-driven mobile marketing in China. Find out more: read the article, or hear the interview here.