mLearnCon 2012

I was honoured to do a Key Note at mLearnCon 2012 in Silicon Valley, sharing a combined session with Clarke Quinn (@Quinnovator) and /David Metcalf (@dmetcalf)

It was a fun and dynamic session, which seemed to catch the right mix of theory, practise and vision. See my presentation, below:

The session was focussed on some practical lessons from the field (the 3 of us are major m-learning veterans!). My key themes were:

Mobile is NOW, and personal - when your learners are already mobile web users, and smartphones are already mainstream … it is pointless debating whether m-learning is good or not. It is already here. We just need to get better at harnessing it!

One size does not fit all – there isn't only one approach. You need to plan your mobile learning around YOUR learners, YOUR scenario. YOUR domain area.

Learner centred design – It is the learner’s own phone. You need to design your learning around their context, and their needs.

Native app PLUS HTML5 – We are big fans of using HTML5 for all our content, and then blending that with the native app. We use PhoneGap, and build custom plugins, and javascript code to optimise for learning.

Standards decrease risk, and increase resilience – Where ever possible, make sure your content. Your data. The divide between different sections of your platform communicate with open, standard formats.

What do you think? Let’s hear your comment!

Google’s App Inventor … liberation or stagnation?

A year ago, Google released App Inventor – a fascinatingly visual, albeit rather buggy tool for developing android apps. Although not robust enough for our commercial development, we loved the fresh ideas about interface, and app building. Perfect tools for learning about coding. Today I found an email in my inbox announcing that Google are dropping support for it.

Google are open-sourcing the code base. Often a sign of a project’s demise. Sounds like bad news for education … or is it?

Mobile market share 2011 – really?

Fascinating overview of mobile operating system market share - but is it real?
Those nice folks at icrossing have updated their infographic summarising mobile operating systems all over the world.
It is a great visual image. I use it often. BUT BEWARE … it is easy to read too much into it. The same old problems with mobile stats apply here.

iPad + apps = amazing archaeology

(by Andrew Merryweather - @merryux - our UX guru) 

The iPad, loaded up with a few off-the-shelf apps, is revolutionising the way archaeological digs are run.

As an ex-archaeologist I keep an eye on digital trends in the digging world, and came across a great post on Apple.com about an old friend and colleague Dr Steven Ellis of the University of Cincinatti and his digitally-enhanced fieldwork at Pompeii. He is using iPads, with simple off-the-shelf apps to collect data in a simpler, and more shareable manner than ever before.

Computers and archaeology have a long history, but excavators have been waiting for mobile tech to hit the right balance of portability, usability and power to really have a big impact on the way they conduct fieldwork. The latest generation of mobile devices, and especially the iPad, has hit the sweetspot.

Ellis credits the introduction of six iPad devices at Pompeii with helping his team solve one of the most difficult problems of archaeological fieldwork: how to efficiently and accurately record the complex information they encounter in the trenches.

This kind of digital data collection could be a learning opportunity in the making. There's a chain ready to be created which takes live data from field projects (in any scientific discipline, not just archaeology), being captured by fieldworkers on iPads, iPhones, and other devices, and feeding it up to a web site, from where it could be pulled directly into a classroom.

It's not hard to imagine a collection of classrooms 'partnering' a dig, and getting data piped straight from the trench to a few iPads of their own. Activities could be built around looking at the latest photos and maps each day, discussing the latest finds, following the life of the project from start to finish.

M-learning with a twist?

If you like the sound of this, please also check out Nick Short’s work at the Royal Veterinary College. He is using Android devices, and off-the-shelf Google tools to support Vets in Africa collect and share some extremely valuable data  

Apple u-turn is excellent news for cross-platform app developers!

The big news of the moment amongst App developers, is the surprise announcement by Apple that they are relaxing some key restrictions on how Apps can be made. In particular they say:

…we are relaxing all restrictions on the development tools used to create iOS apps, as long as the resulting apps do not download any code. This should give developers the flexibility they want, while preserving the security we need.

As one of a small (but enthusiastic) set of app developers striving to make cross-platform apps, this is a HUGE deal.
Apple is not against cross-platform apps per se, but until recently they were very against Adobe & Flash, and their previous stance was to a large extent an attempt to block several different technologies that allowed Flash apps to be automatically disassembled, and automatically re-assembled into an App.
Ignoring the Adobe vs Apple squabbles for a moment, there was another group of developers who were being caught in the fallout. Those are the app developers using one of a few choice systems (many open source, collaborative frameworks) that allow you to code once, and deploy to iPhone, Android, WinMob, Blackberry …..
The smallprint of the Apple restrictions, also restricted this sort of App. And an increasing number of them started getting refused across all of the frameworks
The fundamental technical problem is that it is not possible to write one piece of native software that plays on iPhone, Android, WinMob, etc. They all use different languages. The only way to do this is to use a computer to generate multiple different versions for different platforms. And it is this interim computer intervention that caused the trouble.
But – today this has changed. And all the cross-platform app developers around the world are heaving a sigh of relief
So – good news for cross platform mobile apps!
(Another equally interesting development, is Apple going public with their developer guidelines – previously us developers had no way of knowing the criteria used to decide whether to accept, or reject an app!)
For a quick synopsis of the top tools for building cross platform apps  read on …

 Appcelerator Titanium - http://www.appcelerator.com
Like most on my list, Titanium lets developers create an app in traditional web coding (HTML, CSS, Javascript), and then it renders the web code into a native apps for iPhone and Android (Blackberry in the pipeline)
The system builds apps. But you also get access to the converted (native) source code which allows for a second round of platform specific tweaks - if you know what you are doing
Initially Titanuim started as fully open source, but now a “free” and better supported “pay” version.
Nice review here: http://labs.thesedays.com/2010/02/04/review-of-appcelerator-titanium/

 
 
PhoneGap - http://www.phonegap.com
Like Titanuim, developers code their app in web coding. Unlike Titanium, the final app that is built still contains the original web coding, but buried within the app. Fully Open Source, all the app code is available, and can be customised for your own needs
We use both of these two quite a bit, and they are both great. Lightweight native apps embedding web-apps that can be both online, or offline. 
Although not really “app building”, special mention needs to go to JQTouch (http://www.jqtouch.com/) and Sencha Touch (http://www.sencha.com/products/touch/), 2 AJAX frameworks that you need to use if you want web-apps to look and feel like native apps 



Rhodes / RhoMobile - http://rhomobile.com
Rhodes is a harder-core techie solution, which tries to do without the browser, giving you tools to build cross platform native apps. Free to use (MIT license) plus premium support options
it is good – but uses Ruby as a programming language. Ruby has a cult-like following, unless you are already a Ruby developer, you may be better to stick to one of the other options
One of the big advantages of Titanium over RhoMobile is that with RhoMobile you don’t get any source code – only the finished (and un-alterable app). But it does support more phones (iPhone, Windows Mobile, RIM, Symbian and Android)

These three are the main players. They have very technical arguments with one another about exactly how “native” each other’s apps are – but in all cases they use the same basic trick – embedding a web-browser into the app, and using that to deliver web-esque layout and features in an app

Others worth looking at include



Grapple Mobile - http://www.grapplemobile.com
Grapple are not Open Source. They recently hit the news with some (untrue) speculation that the 7 month old startup was bought for £15m! They use a similar approach as the previous systems, as well as a secondary system to support older phones. (On iPhone and Android, it uses Webkit. On Blackberry and Symbian it compiles to J2ME.)
Most commercial engagement with them seems to be from marketing and advertising companies
 

MotherApp - http://www.motherapp.com
Like rhomobile, motherapp tries to build native apps without needing to include a browser in your app. We have only recently found out about MotherApp, so don’t know much about it apart from the fact that you use a special subset of html to define your app, then upload to motherapp who will render it into native apps for different devices, passing any calls for data back to your website (supports iPhone, Android, WinMob)

Corona (by Ansca) – Corona is specifically for building games. You need a Mac to develop in it, but you can build apps for iPhone, iPad & Android. It uses the unusual Lua language, which is purpose built for describing 3-D type games (like World of Warcraft!)
Free 30day trial, then fairly inexpensive developer license (currently $99)
 
If you want to find out more, there is a very considered, and well presented comparison on AMLCode’s site

There are also A LOT of offerings that help you build apps automatically. These are not developer tools as such, but do allow non-technical people to auto-generate apps. Examples include AppBaker, App Inventor, AppMakr, AppBuilder, MyAppBuilder, Wapple and more appear every day.

If you would like me to post a bit more on these apps, either the developer ones or the others, leave me a comment

Introducing the $35 tablet!

I had the honour of meeting one of the Global VPs at TATA today, and getting a small insight into the extraordinary power of the Indian market for technology.

One part of our discussion was about the recent announcement of a $35 Android powered tablet targeting education

Yes – you heard that right. $35 !

(it is not quite that simple, of course. An Indian manufacturer has made a lovely prototype, and has offered to supply 1m of the devices for $35m, which the government is considering to buy for education)

But = still. $35 for an Android powered tablet (with all the extras you would expect) does sound awfully compelling!

 

What do you think?

Let us know your comments, or if you find further links to it

Can my m-learning course run the same on every phone?

There are a few m-learning conversations that pop up again and again when talking to clients about mobile courses. It often starts with a seemingly simple question:

“I want richly interactive content for any phone”

“Will it do Blackberry? And iPhone? And Nokia?”

“all my students need to have the same access to learning”

These are good questions, and the obvious response to any is “yes, of course”, because we would all like equality between mobile users. But there is a painful reality that (right now, in 2010) makes this an impossible dream:

The painful reality about making m-learning content is that there is no single solution to push richly interactive mobile content onto every possible phone. Rather, there is a spectrum of possible solutions: On one side, going for the richest possible interactivities (but narrowing down to single platforms) and on the other side going for the widest possible phone coverage (but limiting interactivities to the very lowest common denominator)

Examples on either side of this spectrum would be some of the delightfully interactive apps you can get for the iPhone (which exclude all other devices) vs several SMS / text messaging solutions (which work on just about any phone)

This spectrum is just the reality. There is no getting away from it. if somebody tells you otherwise they are not seeing the whole picture.

M-learning developers have been trying many creative approaches to cover as wide a range on this spectrum as possible, but it is technically impossible to cover it all. Examples are:

- making a different app for each device, playing whichever bits of the same central content that device supports

- delivering media-only courses (video or audio) that make up for lack of interactivity with wide device coverage

- using 3rd party players (like Flash, or eBook readers) to render a common course format to different devices

- putting content online, in the browser, and allowing the web-server to decide which versions suit your device

In all of these scenarios, there is a functionality sacrifice (because you are not exploiting device specific features, like GPS), but the benefit of create-once but used-by-many.

So, if you are thinking of making your own mobile content, my best advice is to be pragmatic about this spectrum of solutions. Instead of starting with the big dream (“for every single device”) rather start a little more pragmatically by narrowing the range of technologies you are looking at, and them work backwards to see which type of authoring tool or technical approach works best.

A popular example of a narrower range is "smartphones", though depending on who you are trying to reach out to it might also be "phones with decent browsers".

Another good subset (if data rates are not an issue) are phones with decent browsers, since the latest smartphones and high end featurephones all have a pretty good web browser, which is a lot more standardised than their operating systems.

Currently, my team in Cambridge cover the spectrum via a hybrid approach. We build for iPhone and Blackberry by hand. We have a java (j2me) engine we use for old-skool phones. We use a hand-made authoring tool for WindowsMobile / Android / UMPC / Linux / Windows / Mac (also sold commercially as MyLearning Author). We use another handmade tool for SMS activities (SMS Quiz / SMS Survey).

A lot of our current research work is looking at a hybrid between our MyLearning app (building installable learning apps) and browser-based content (wider cross-device support), so that we can get the best of both – with content that can be installed like an app, runs both on- and off-line, and uses the browser to play back courses wherever possible.

Even the US Military wants mobile APPs!

There has been a flurry of news over the past few days including the words “US Military” and “mobile Apps”

part one:

DARPA, home of the pentagon’s technology research gurus, has announced it wants to buy an “AppStore” to use for distributing mobile apps to soldiers.

This is newsworthy on several fronts:

1: DoD (department of defence) are thinking of using normal, everyday-type connectivity (3G), on normal, every-day type devices! (Android)

2: They plan on taking their own 3G coverage with them, to save relying on the possibly unfriendly locals when in far away lands

3: they have dropped both WindowsMobile and iPhone in favour of Android

4: they plan on asking the open market to bid for funding to make apps

 

Read those again. Bog standard kit. Mainstream networks. Open standards. Open market for apps. Wow.

 

part two:

A couple of days later, DoD announces the A4A (Apps for the Army) initiative to encourage software-savvy soldiers to propose and make apps (mobile and other).

There is only enough funding for 100 lucky soldiers, but this is clearly just the beginning because …

 

part three:

DARPA are expected to announce that they are looking to buy apps. If you have a good idea for an app, and the technology skills to make it, they might well be in the market to buy it.

 

“Flurry of news” is definitely the phrase, here. Until a few weeks ago I had seen hardly any publicity from the US military around mobile learning. Here in the UK, there has been a bit more, with people like Major Roy Evans who has been doing some innovative trials in Iraq and Afghanistan.

You can here him talking about it here (though you will need to ffw the first few minutes, which have no sound!)

Publicity. Nice projects. But quite small trials.

 

Now, all of a sudden the US has significantly upped the game and leapt for a very mainstream, and imminently achievable solution. Wow!

 

Bring on those Android Apps, and as Google says, “don’t be evil” :-)

Which m-learning devices should I buy?

Dear m-learning.org, I am new to m-learning and want to know which devices to buy for my class

We are getting more and more of these requests, partially connected with the latest round of MoLeNET funding in the UK, so I thought I would post some suggestions, below

 

STEP 1: have a look at http://www.molenetprojects.org.uk/moletech/ which has some very useful overviews on the different devices, and what you might want to do with them.

 

STEP 2: In thinking about what type of device to go for, some very important considerations are:

• Do you want your learners to be consumers, or creators of media?
  
  long term, helping your learners to be “creators” is always better and can be applied to a wider range of learning situations. (Think writing, filing, reporting, synthesising information, publishing.) 
  
  For this, you want devices that are easy to input (camera / audio / text), share (wireless / data bundles / bluetooth) and possibly manage centrally. 
  
  But there are some very nice “consuming” devices, like PSPs, Nintendo DSs etc. If you have very good resources and a simple to use device, you can get good short term gains as “consumers” too. Examples here are DS games that help you learn a language, or build your maths skills, or using a PSP for watching video clips
  
  For this, you should start with your resources, and work back. So if you are teaching Spanish and rate the DS Spanish game, go with that.
  
  A good hybrid of the two is the kind of work done by the amazing Tim Rylands (try his big game hunting) that uses “consuming” devices, but then builds richer learning interactions on top of them

 

• Will you be generating and sharing learning resources?
  
  “Making your own” is almost always a good idea for any longer term project, and is particularly effective if you can include your learners in the making. But it does narrow the range of devices available to you, as you need to have easy ways of sharing what you have made, and putting it onto the devices.

 

• How will you manage connectivity?
  
  Do you have a wireless network? How mobile will your learners be? Are you using SIM cards? Who pays for data?
  
  There are many important considerations to do with data cost, but this posting is about the devices themselves, so restrict your choice to be “with a SIM, or not”

 

STEP 3: Evaluate some of your front-runner choices. Ultimately the decision is your own, though many people end up going for something different from what they started wanting.

A couple of kneejerk responses to specific devices are:

Nintendo DS lite = very good if you have a good game to use on it that aligns well with learning (though there are not too many that do). Also quite good as a communication tool, messaging between learners. But – rubbish for putting anything you have made onto it. (so, all “consumer”)

PSP = less good than the DS, because there are fewer decent learning games. But a very good “media player” – so if you have videos you want student to watch, it is great for that. Would be HUGELY enhanced by buying the addon GoCam video camera, which allows students to record, as well as playback video. (transforming them from a “consumer” to a “creator”)

Mini PC / UMPC / Netbook = fantastic in terms of value for money, and offering a wide range of good resources available for free. Also a great “creator” device with much much better ways to input words, audio, pictures etc. If at all possible get one with an inbuilt webcam too. The only real disadvantage is size. Are they really mobile enough? Really, they are just “laptops-lite”, so it depends what you plan to do with them, of course.

Smartphones = these are the best bet if you really want to be mobile. Powerful enough to be like a netbook. small enough to carry. Almost the same “creator” tools as the mini PC, but with all the portability of the DS and PSP. Use a sim to connect, or block it to save data costs.

Another good reason is that the smartphones of today are likely to be similar to the mass-market phones of tomorrow, so it is a good way to prepare for the close future when learners will be bringing in their own phones.

but … which smartphone! Zealots go to war over lesser issues …

Right now, all look too expensive when you can get a netbook for about the same price, though with a good phone contract the price drops dramatically. Headline things to think of when selecting one are:

iPhone / iPod Touch = still the best for slick interface, great apps and ease of use. But poor for text input, and terrible for uploading and sharing your own apps

Windows Mobile = best value for money, as you can pick up devices from a few years ago quite cheaply. Also – huge number of apps available for it. Much easier than the iPhone to put your own apps onto (but more complicated to use). Watch out for non-touch screen versions (WinMob 6 Standard) which are very feeble, and if you go pre WinMob6 make sure you back up regularly, as you can lose your work when the battery dies !

Android = The Google device snapping on the heels of the iPhone. That is how it is promoted, but in reality it is closer to Windows Mobile (and in fact shares the same equipment manufacturer, HTC). A great device, certainly one to watch – especially given the very open operating system, and easy-of-development if you want to make your own Android application. Right now, you may find it a bit pricey, and certainly not as slick as the iPhone, but it’s open systems make it the best bet yet for the educational device of the future.

 

Back to making your own mobile content: there are many different approaches to this, but when we make m-learning modules, we use our own, home-grown MyLearning Authoring tool to build mobile apps, or even mobile aware web sites that run on almost all of the touchscreen devices mentioned above (as well as UMPCs, netbooks, laptops etc).

If you want to give it a go, to make some mobile quizzes and games to give any lesson a real lift, try our free trial version.  We also have some ready made m-learning content which may be of interest.

 

I hope this helps …. by necessity I have kept the advice at a very high level. If you have any suggestions please comment

Flash on my iPhone? It’s showdown time!

• For several years Adobe has been promoting Flash as a great technology for mobile devices (and it is).
• For several years Apple have been making amazing mobile devices (and they are).

… and, for some bizarre reason, the two have been bickering all along, and never quite making friends.

The latest move in the ongoing showdown is this slightly aggressive message iPhone and iPod Touch users get if they visit a website requiring flash: 

Apple restricts use of technologies required by product like Flash Player. Until Apple eliminates these restrictions, Adobe cannot provide Flash Player for the iPhone or iPod Touch 

This is Adobe’s second move in the past few months to push the blame back onto Apple. They also announced that the next version of Flash Professional will allow developers to build iPhone apps from their Flash projects.

This is great news, as it will open up App development to the vast army of skilled Flash developers and coders out there. And the announcement was made via this hilarious “myth buster” movie

 

But – the bickering is hardly over, and iPhones will still not be “running Flash”. There remains no support for websites containing Flash. If you want that, you had better stick with your:

• WindowsMobile
• Android
• Blackberry
• Palm Pre

etc etc etc devices!

What is this Android thing?

You may have heard the word Android being mentioned recently around the mobile phone world, well here is a quick post on what the fuss is all about.

Android is a new-ish Operating System (OS) that has been developed by around 50 big names across the device and software industry (the Open Handset Alliance) to try is to offer a low-cost, fully-featured, open-source OS. Then hand that over to the cell phone manufacturers so that they can concentrate more on designing desirable hardware, rather than divide their efforts on the OS and hardware.

Android’s roots are based in the open source Linux platform, but it has been optimised for the smaller mobile platform. It has also been done very nicely too!

Who is involved in Android?

Some of the companies involved are Google, HTC, T-Mobile, Motorola, Samsung, Garmin, Vodafone, eBay, Toshiba, Dell, LG, Sony Ericsson, ARM, Acer, plus a massive following of Open Source development. So you can see it has some weight and momentum behind it. Google are probably at the forefront of these and provide a big driving force behind it. So, you may also hear the term Google phone, they are effectively one and the same - just differences on what applications are pre-installed. (Though it is a little more than that in reality.)

What does Google get out of all that? More mobile searches, which may be one of its biggest sources of growth in the coming years, plus a chance to drive the direction the mobile world operates, rather than relying on others to do it.

Is Android for just phones?

At the moment Android is available off the shelf, on top end phones from HTC, Motorola, LG, and Samsung. Mobile carriers such as T-Mobile, Sprint, and Vodafone are also rebranding the phones as their own too, so the same phone may have more than one name!

But Android is not just for phones, Acer are just about to launch the Aspire D250 net book, which will dual boot Windows XP and Android. You will note that names like Toshiba and Dell are in the Android club. While they are rumoured to be releasing android phones soon, is this the start of a new mass produced laptop environment.

Why do I care about a new OS?

An OS is the environment that you use every day to do the stuff you want to do on your computer/phone, so it can help/hinder you, and even drive you to frustration when it gets it wrong. I hear Vista users mumbling away at this point. An OS can make or break your relationship with a bit of IT kit.

Well from my own usage I would say that the Android experience is a refreshing change. Things are natural to do and things just seem to work.

Android is also going to be appearing on a lot of phones over the coming months, so it is coming to a phone shop near you soon!

What can I do with an Android phone?

Answer: how long is a piece of string...? Well, not quite, but the top end phones are now becoming very adaptable bits of technology, and Android phones are helping to lead the way. Let’s list a few things that can be done. Phone, Email, SMS, MMS, Browsing, IM, Calendar, Contacts, MP3 player, Calculator, Camera(Stills and movies), Slideshow player, Voice recorder, Memos, Office type applications, SatNav, Weather checking, Google maps, Compass, Social networking, games, and of course learning all sorts of things. This is just a list of the stock or mainstream free applications. If that doesn’t appeal then there are around 10,000 applications in the Android Market that can very easily be installed. They range from classic and whacky games, an interactive map of the stars (very cool!), dictionaries in various languages, GPS tracking, office utilities, social networking to fuel prices. You hear the advertisement “There is an app for that...” - Well on Android there certainly is, arguably even more than the iPhone (that should provoke a response from the iPhone fans).

You can see the most popular apps online here. This is just small sample available to the devices and installing them from the phone is very easy, even for the Technophobe. You just search for key words, scroll up and down the different application tap and install on the one you want.

Is this Nirvana?

It is not all perfect yet as there are still some gripes. Yes the phones are generally costly at the moment (similar to iPhone) as the phones being released are all top end. But I think the prices will come down as the number of handsets increase and it becomes more main-stream and it gets used on lower spec devices. Some things are not as quick (split second timing) to do as an iPhone equivalent, but newer versions are just getting quicker and with Android you can easily upgrade the OS – something you can’t easily do on an iPhone.

But it is a huge and very interesting leap forward forward for mobile phones and will certainly help shape the mobile world in the year or two.

But I still want an iPhone!

Yes, the iPhone is a very nice and trendy phone with great functionality. Android is right there beside it as it can do everything an iPhone can do and more. Some things it does better and some things not as well. One thing you cannot do is ignore Android.

Android is here to stay and with predictions that 75 million android phones will be sold in 2012 it is only going to get bigger.

Go into a mobile phone store and ask to play around with an Android phone, you will be surprised what can be done on a phone nowadays. Then let your creative mind think about the possibilities in using it for learning!

m-learning authoring tool: huge discount available

The latest version of the popular MyLearning Author was released this week, and to help us celebrate, there is a 30% discount for all new licenses bought before the end of the month (March 2009).

 

What's new?

• No longer just "WindowsMobile", your content can play back on many more mobile devices including several smartphones, UMPC, Mac, Linux, Windows ...
• Some great new activities, including a mobile survey builder
• More ways to share your courses (with other authors, as well as with your learners)
• Revamped installers for your courses
• Many usability improvements, as suggested by our (very) active users!

 

• for all the specific details please visit the MyLearning author pages on the m-learning.org site

 

Can I upgrade?

Of course! If you already have a valid license you can upgrade for free. If your license has expired you can renew for even cheaper (50% off).

 

What about courses?

We have over 20 mobile courses available right now, but are also happy to help you customise (and mobilise) any existing resources you may have.

 

You want some?

Over 5000 happy learners can't be wrong ... If you want to start making your own, engaging mobile content with our tried and tested author, dive right into our online shop right now, or chat to any our mobile team at ctadsales.education@tribalgroup.co.uk

 

Happy mobile course creating!

Nokia buys Symbian ... and then gives it away!

Nokia has just bought out the rest of the Symbian partners, giving it 100% ownership of the Symbian operating system, which it plans to "give away"!

According to the The Register:

Nokia has bought up the bits of Symbian it didn't already own and is chucking the OS into an open-source foundation along with the S60 UI layer, accompanied by Sony Ericsson and DoCoMo, who are throwing in UIQ and MOAP(S) respectively.

The BBC adds

Nokia, which already owns 48% of the UK-based firm, intends to develop its software to compete with Google's planned Android operating system.

...

The Symbian foundation will bring together Nokia, AT&T, LG, Motorola, NTT Docomo, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone in collaboration on a new, royalty-free open software platform for mobile phones.

Here on MobLearn we have always been Android fans, as much for the open ethos as for the technology itself, and this news certainly adds an exciting new chapter, especially given the Android delays, and the very solid userbase that Symbian already has in the market.

small "ps": although technically "open", access to the Symbian source code is not free. You need to pay $1500 to be in the foundation. But relative to the costs of having your own OS, this must seem minor.

Geoff (with thanks to James for spotting this)

$10 million from Google for cool mobile apps

The Android Developer Challenge: Google has offered $10 million to developers for the coolest, most interesting, creative applications that will run on their new mobile operating system.

Android is the google sponsored operating system that they hope will run on all future phones, and with true google flair, they are offering some no-strings-attached funding to encourage developers to get involved.

If you want some of this money, you will need to move fast, though. They have split it into two packages:

Android Developer Challenge I: Happening now. You need to apply before March 3, 2008.

The top 50 entries each get $25K to fund their work, and then they also get the chance to apply for further grants (ten $275K awards and ten $100K awards)

Android Developer Challenge II: This part will only happen once the first android handsets become available - so we are talking the second half of 2008


As always - a breath of fresh air. Lets hope that some of those winning apps are good for learning!

If you want to find out more, visit the android site

gPhone anyone?

Finally, some tangible news about the gPhone, or "Google phone"!

It turns out there isn’t going to be a physical device at all, but rather a heavy-weight alliance (the open handset alliance ) who are getting together to create an open source platform for mobile devices.

Loads of big names are involved: Google, HTC, LG, Motorola, Samsung, T-mobile, Intel….

Notable absences: Nokia and Vodafone

The platform is currently called "Android", and if you have ever tried developing software for phones, you will love all the promises that seem custom-made to make battle-weary J2ME and Symbian developers smile once again:

Android does not differentiate between the phone's core applications and third-party applications. They can all be built to have equal access to phone's capabilities

Android is built on the open Linux Kernel

With Android, a developer could build an application that enables users to view the location of their friends and be alerted when they are in the vicinity giving them a chance to connect.

which means I really really can use the phone features

There will be a publicly accessible repository, similar to how the Linux kernel is managed.

which means I can un-install those default apps I don't want

To find out more, look at the Official Google Blog: Where's my Gphone?


Great news all round. Now, lets hold our m-breaths to see if it really can offer what it claims, and if those phone manufacturers really do deliver.



ps: thanks to Bob and Juan who got me onto this