A Sad Day ...

A hero, an entertainer, a visionary inventor, an inveterate entrepreneur, a champion, a mahatma of technology breathed his last today. Steve Jobs single handedly defined global digital culture. He had an impact not just how engineers consume technology, but how our grandmothers interact with technology. He achieved the Holy Grail of bridging the gap between entertainers and consumers - just when it seemed that the entertainment industry was preparing for war over Digital Rights Management.

Thank You, Steve Jobs for everything that you have done. I join the billions around the world saluting you.

One more thing .... we will sorely miss you ...

Best practices when you lose your digital device to liquids ...

An article in today's Mercury News by Patrick May prompted me to pen this blog about being deprived of your digital device - cell phone, laptop, camera, etc.

This has happened to most of us - when our phone has fallen into a "bowl" or coffee spilled on our laptop or the camera got drenched in rain.

I wanted to ask people out there what they have done in such situations. There is, of course, the dreaded, "Liquid spills are not covered by the warranty." Is there anything that works? What have people done in the past - post them as comments to this blog and I will collect these and post a follow up blog towards the end of this month.

An Open Letter to Steve Jobs

The world heard your tirade against RIM and Android on Monday. I understand that you are nervous over the fact that Android Sales have overtaken iPhone. As any good sales person would, you injected some FUD to deflect the positive press that Android has been receiving.

But it is just that - Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. Usually, this is a sign of weakness - conceding to the enemy and "retaliating" with FUD. Fundamentally, your rant can be distilled to two issues:

1. Fragmentation of Android resulting in developers spending more time testing than adding features
2. Multiple Android Markets making it confusing for end users and developers

As a developer who has applications on both iOS and Android, I can tell you that I do not have the issue of having to "port" my Android code to multiple Android platforms. My code runs as-is across all Android devices.

Now, regarding the issue of multiple Android Markets, I think this is an advantage for Android. As a developer, this gives me multiple channels to have my app get downloaded. It is a matter of time before these markets provide an svn repository for my "bundle" (which includes screen shots, descriptions and the .apk file) that I simply upload to the various markets. The end-user can find the app within their context (either GetJar or Amazon or Google). Moreover, this keeps Google on its toes to constantly innovate. Competition always brings the best out in people.

You have always eschewed "open" and taken the I-know-what-is-best-for-you approach. The success of Linux for desktops/severs did not necessarily raise your antennae because the "fight" was for a much smaller percentage (Windows owns 90+% of the market. Linux/MacOS and others were competing for the scraps). However, the world of Smart Phones is a new era and an opportunity for "world dominance". Things were going well until Android started gaining momentum and started eclipsing the iPhone. Thus, the need for the rant.

I continue to be in awe of your genius. Your ability to provide clear thinking to a befuddled marketplace is phenomenal. Your legacy to our world of technology is unparalleled. So, you can understand my bewilderment with your scare tactics.

I believe there is room for two players in the market (three if RIM gets their act together quickly). Windows 7 is probably late to the party. However, if RIM does not watch out, the third player could well be Windows Phone 7. So, my request to you is to leave Android alone and focus on things that you have control over improving:

• Reduce (or even remove) the approval time for apps on iTunes
• Add recommendations to the iTunes store (similar to Amazon) including percentage of people who download the app, percentage of people who bought other apps, etc.

With Best Wishes,

Micello Indoor Maps v1.1 now available ...

v1.1 of Micello Indoor Maps became available in the iTunes AppStore earlier this morning.

In this version, we have integrated the compass (available on the iPhone 3GS) that will allow the indoor map to rotate and align the orientation of the map with the real world. On the picture to the left, the user was outside the "Sino" store at Santana Row (in San Jose) walking towards "Left Bank Brassiere". As I have mentioned before, we are able to add these innovations to the indoor maps because Micello's maps are accurate and ge0-coded.

In addition, this version has much smoother scrolling and panning of the maps and some performance improvements. So non-iPhone 3GS users will also benefit from upgrading to v1.1

Micello Indoor Maps unique features ...

In an earlier post, I introduced the Micello Indoor Maps application that is available at Apple's iTunes AppStore. I had mentioned a few of the unique features of the app that are not available in other applications that offer indoor maps. Here, I will talk about a few more unique features of Micello's maps.

Yesterday was Valentine's Day. Outside of the Holiday Season (Thanksgiving and Christmas), this day is one of the biggest shopping days in the year. Micello celebrated Valentine's Day by applying a special color theme to its maps. The screen shot to the left shows the King of Prussia Mall in Pennsylvania. It shows the stores that are highlighted from a search result for "Shoes" (Nordstorm, American Eagle Outfitters, Forever 21, Wet Seal). It also shows "The North Face" as a selected store. Finally, it shows Ralph Lauren and Tiffany & Co. as favorite stores. Notice the stair icon is highlighted in Blue. This indicates that this is a 2-story mall and there are search results in other floors too.

Another unique feature in Micello's Maps is the ability to provide a "best fit" of the store name within the store outline. When the map is zoomed out, the entity names are not displayed. As you start zooming in, the store names start appearing within the store outline in a manner that can be best fitted.

There are additional capabilities that we will unveil within the next few days. You will have to stay tuned for that ...

Micello Indoor Maps now available ...

The Micello Indoor Maps application is now available for download from the iTunes AppStore. We wanted to wait until v1.0 to provide a rich experience to our users. Once you download the app, you will agree that it was worth the wait.

We have started receiving some good reviews:

• ReadWriteWeb
• VentureBeat
• NextWeb
• MobileBehavior
• Sun Startup-of-the-day
• PrWeb (Press Release)

Recently when Google announced Nexus One, they showed navigation to IKEA. We wanted to show that you could go into IKEA with the Micello App. The idea was not to misrepresent that the Micello App is available on Android, but to inform that Micello is extending the navigation metaphor to "Go Inside". Here is the video:

Here are a few unique features in the App:

• The only app that provides your location on a map that is not an outdoor map. We are able to do this because our maps are more than just "pretty pictures". They are accurate and are geo-coded. In the above picture, the blue-dot indicates the user's position inside the community.
• The maps are personalized and interactive - so you can set your own favorites (the yellow entites above are this user's favorites)
• The maps provide iPod Touch users a rich experience by doing intelligent caching and not requiring a data connection all the time
• Multi-level communities are handled intuitively - with a "stair icon" to navigate between levels using a thumbnail sketch of the level

There are even more unique features. I will save that for the next post.

If you own and iPhone/iPod touch, download the app and give it a spin - even if there are no maps for communities in your neighborhood. You can experience the interface and then give us feedback on the maps that you would like to see become available.

Creating the Next Killer Mobile Application

App Stores have hit mass market. The estimate is that by 2014, the revenues will reach $25b! Mobile data services revenue have already exceeded $10b in Q1 of 2009. The opportunity for the Next Killer Mobile Application is real and we can all smell it.

At Micello, we have been working on creating such an application for the last 8+ months. Micello did a private launch at JavaOne two months back to validate the concept. We got good visibility and some excellent feedback. We are gearing up to launch our Public Beta pretty soon (watch this space for announcements on that). In the meantime, I worked with Marina Fisher at Sun Microsystems to put together a Webinar on "Creating the Next Killer Mobile Application" that includes lessons learned, best practices and collective wisdom. The Webinar will also delve into how Micello uses Sun's technologies in the deployment stack. So, sign up here and hope to see you at the Webinar on Wednesday next week.