« March 2005 | Main | May 2005 »
April 16, 2005
Busy Busy
We've been really busy the last week working on the product so I haven't had much time to blog. Not too much to write about either since it's mostly just hours and hours on a computer writing code, profiling phones, etc. So I thought I'd throw some images up.
Posted by David Adams at 07:35 PM | Comments (2)
April 15, 2005
Great Seattle Mobile Meeting
We had a great April meeting of Seattle Mobile last night. We had just over 20 people this month. The speakers were great and I think everyone learned a lot about SMS and MMS. I must say though that I think we set a record for the most acronyms used at a meeting. It was really great to get the different perspectives of a Cingular, Blue Frog, and Infospace. It won't be long until the weather is nice enough to do some barbequeing on the deck before the meets.
Thanks to all the presenters and everyone who came.
Posted by David Adams at 07:28 PM | Comments (0)
April 14, 2005
Seattle Mobile April Meeting Tonight
April's topic is "Mobile Messaging" and we've got a great lineup of presenters for tonight.
Paul Mason, Product Realization Manager for MMS at Cingular will be speaking about MMS device standardization and interoperability.
Ed Toon, Chief Architect at Blue Frog Mobile will be speaking about key business and technical components in the SMS value chain: Carriers, aggregators, content providers, marketers, racketeers.
and
Josh DeWitt, Direct Strategic Technology - Infospace Mobile will be speaking about messaging as a promotional driver and enabler for other services.
Should be a great meeting. I am very excited to hear these presentations. I hope if you are local you will try to make it to tonight's meeting.
There will be snacks and refreshments!
Posted by David Adams at 11:14 AM | Comments (2)
April 13, 2005
Gearing Up
I'm starting to gear up for the impending launch. We are going to need to move away from the "startup" type servers (read "cheap frankenstein boxes") and put some real infrastructure in place, both internally and in the data center. So I ordered a really nice cabinet for our office servers. This will house are development servers, database, messaging servers, intranet, CVS, etc.
Posted by David Adams at 10:47 PM | Comments (0)
New Data Center
We are in the process of getting our data center set up for launch. For the non-techies out there, we need to host our servers for our database, web site, applications servers, etc., etc. somewhere where they are secure, have redundant power, redundant internet connectivity, fire detection, security, etc. So we are going with Savvis. Savvis is a very large providers that has aquired all the assets from Exodus, whom you'll remember as one of the stars of the Internet boom. So we've leased a very nice cabinet in what used to be Exodus Seattle #2. This is an amazing facility that I've done some work in, in past lives for other companies. Got a great deal from our sales rep and I am generally very impressed with their whole operation. One of the very nice things is that Savvis has their own OC-192 backbone (they purchase Cable & Wireless) and are multinational. This means when we go into Europe and Asia, we are going to be able to have our servers on the same backbone.
Posted by David Adams at 12:12 PM | Comments (0)
April 12, 2005
Seattle Mobile Thursday Night
The April meeting of Seattle Mobile is Thursday night at 7:00. Networking starts at 6:30. This month's topic is Mobile Messaging. Tell your friends, hope to see the locals there.
Posted by David Adams at 09:40 AM | Comments (0)
April 07, 2005
Nokia Announces 8800
Nokia announced the new Nokia 8800 phone today. This is an beautiful phone. It has an amazingly designed stainless steel body with a mechanical pop-up design to reveal the keypad. This is a series 40 phone but sports a 208p x 208p screen. The 8800 is a triband GSM phone that supports EDGE class 8, GPRS class 8, and HSCSD class 4. It has all the nice features of the new series 40 devices, such as a digital music player that supports MP3/AAC, MMS, Bluetooth, integrated SVGA camera, and more.
Nokia also commisioned Ryuichi Sakamoto(of "Merry Christmans, Mr.Lawrence" fame) to create original ringtones for the 8800.
The Nokia 8800 will be out this quarter in Europe, and Q3 in the US.
Posted by David Adams at 05:17 PM | Comments (3)
April 06, 2005
Wow
The article in the Seattle Times yesterday really generated a lot of interest in what Mobile Research is doing. Lot's of phone calls and emails. I've got some great feedback from potential customers regarding what types of data they are looking for and how they want to use it. Very enlightening and it is really helping me develop our ongoing product path. The almost unanimous request seems to be for data from the European market. Looks like we'll be heading to Europe this summer to profile a lot of phones and carriers. Tough job, but someone has to do it. Actually it is going to be a LOT of difficult work to purchase and profile all those devices in a foriegn country quickly.
Posted by David Adams at 12:40 AM | Comments (5)
April 04, 2005
Mobile Research's First Press
Mobile Research got some press in the Seattle Times business section today.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2002229777_btinterface04.html
The didn't post our URL though so here it is: www.mobileresearch.net
Posted by David Adams at 09:08 AM | Comments (0)
April 02, 2005
Planes, Trains, Automobiles, and rental car buses
The trip down to the Bay Area/Valley was a thrash. I was late to the airport, tried to use the terminal to check in and as usual was not able to. Two reasons it turns out. First the flight was cancelled. This is a pretty common occurance going/coming to/from the Bay Area on Alaska according to friends who commute a lot. There is a second reason, which is why I have not been successful using a terminal to check in for a while. Apparently my name has made it onto the TSA watch list. Super. So now when I want to fly, I need to leave an extra 30 minutes for the Airline attendant to take my ID and look me up in some government database. They gave me an 8th generation xerox form on how to contact the government and get this fixed. Yeah, that'll work. After this post I'll probably go on some other list.
So I was able to catch a flight into San Francisco but my rental car was waiting in San Jose and they were out of cars in SF. Plus the drop-off fee is $100. So I ended up taking BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) over one stop and hopping on CalTrain. $3.00 and 45 minutes later, I'm at my destination in Sunnyvale. Sure beats fighting the traffic on the 101. When I was done, I hopped back on CalTrain, got off at Santa Clara and caught a free bus to the airport to pick up my rental car.
It was like 80 ° in the valley Thursday. I was half tempted to stay. The weather in Seattle has been so bad this last week, that the ski slopes have finally opened the ski season.
Posted by David Adams at 09:48 PM | Comments (2)
Busy Week
It's would be great to be resting this weekend but I just have too much to do. I had a really busy week. Flew down to the Bay Area Wednesday to meet with some prospective clients as well as attend a Nokia developer conference on Thursday. Had a couple of great meetings and the Nokia thing was great. I got to meet and talk with the people at Nokia who are responsible for the development tools. I got a great idea of where they are headed and saw a cool demonstration of Python on the Series 60. Python is going to be an outstanding prototyping language for the Series 60. They are basically wrapping all of the Symbian API's in Python. Fast, easy and powerful. Awesome. Back Thursday night Alaska "sorry that flight has been cancelled" Airlines and back to work. I was interviewed yesterday for the Seattle Times "Business Technology" section. More on that Monday.
Posted by David Adams at 09:43 PM | Comments (0)