Molecularist

The W3C has lumbered across the finish line with their Mobile Web Best Practices document. Looks like now I have a bit of summer reading to do.

As for you, go read it, too, and implement it. Then get back to the W3C and let them know that all that work and headache has paid off. 🙂

All kidding aside, now that they have come out with recommendations, they want folks to step up with real example of the impact of these recommendations. Yeah, I am sure (I hope) that the folks who came up with the best practices actually saw examples in reality, but now they are asking for more (and I think they want folks to actually impelement them and reply as to how wonderful it was).

Go get ’em.

Link: W3C Issues Mobile Web Best Practices as Candidate Recommendation.

27 June 2006 — Today, W3C reached an important milestone toward its mission of making it as easy to use the Web on a mobile device as on a desktop computer. W3C has published Mobile Web Best Practices a Candidate Recommendation, an indication of broad consensus on the technical content of the document.

W3C now invites implementation experience from the community. Industry leaders are declaring their support for the guidelines, which explain how to develop Web sites that work on mobile devices. "There are many devices, but one Web," said Daniel Appelquist, chair of the Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group. "Practical guidelines on how to create content once that can be delivered to the plethora of devices saves developers and organizations time and money, and has the added benefit of not breaking the Web. "

Bernardo sent me a link to a company (description below) he saw was at Supernova. The company had a video of the CEO’s slideware demo of their gearON service – call it a concept demo.

I don’t think anything supernova was really revealed (especially since there wasn’t anything working that I saw). Also, the ideas have been bouncing around for some time and in different forms.

The Good? The CEO is a designer and it seems that they are starting from the experience first and then designing the interaction and product. I like that approach. It seems to have a mobile-Web integration, favoring mobile, though. He calls it a ‘mobile lifestyle’ service – of course I like that, it says so much. And, it centers around the buddy-list, something I’ve been saying is under-appreciated in the mobile world (I wrote about this already back in 2001 in my first book).

The Bad? It centers around high-end phones, forgetting the other 2 billion (and growing) who use simpler mobile phones (see scathing commentary here). At least, that what it looks like, even though they call it cross-platform, whatever that means. It also depends on two key things that he mentions in the video – connections with others (duh, that’s the whole thing) and gearON content.

As with all social services, my litmus test for longevity is if the service allows me to bring my existing stuff to it. If I have to start all over again, just to test it, then it won’t happen. Well, Joi Ito did once comment that it’s the social network that folks follow, not their content, so this issue is not set in stone, for sure. But, baggage is still a major hurdle.

The other thing that is more worrisome is that it sounds like there will be specific gearON content – info, events, etc. I’d be interested in knowing really how much of this is created by the gearON service or brought in from the outside (and paid for by gearON). I am sure, though, that a lot of it will be created by the users.

What do you think of gearON? Do you think we need another mobile social service for high-end phones?*

Link: Protomobl, Inc.

PROTOMOBL is a software product company focused on building social networking services for mobile phones. Our first product gearON is a mobile user interface where the buddy-list is the entry point for the social sharing of photos, music, events and venue information. It is a mobile lifestyle service targeted directly at an active urban youth culture that fuels the passions of the mobile society from music to dating. gearON is cross platform, cross network; mobile first, web second. An integrated, compelling user experience. gearON be mobile be social.

*And don’t get me going about how he waves ‘hit engine’, the super-distribution of music, in front of everyone’s face. Sheesh. If that’s his biz model, he’s in trouble. And they are ex-Sony guys, so they should know better.

Driving innovation (which is becoming an overused word for me) is more than:

– saying the word like a mantra – I remember being in a talk where Carly Fiorina said innovative so many times that I stopped believing it. Mantras are good for concentration, but not for magic.
– saying you will be more like an Internet company. If Internet is 3-guys, a pizza, and three months, don’t turn it into 10+ guys and even more contractors, multi-million dollars and 9 months. It’s not the same.
– than a bunch of guys doing grass-roots efforts and skunkworks. At some point, some real money and real structural changes have to be made, and for that, you need the big dudes holding the structure and money in place.
– is not something any company can do. You need to go beyond talking the talk, because you understand it academically very well. You need to know it in your bones – and that requires fundamental changes in personality, expectations, and, for want of a better word, culture.

I like reading Innoblog (from the folks who work with Clayton Christensen – the man you brought all a kernel of doubt amid success with ‘Innovator’s Dilemma’) to keep my finger on the pulse of thinking in this space. Another decent site is BusinessWeek’s site on design.

Link: A ‘Culture of Innovation’: Separating Myths from Truths – Innoblog.

Much of this conventional thinking about a culture of innovation is deeply misguided. Establishing a replicable innovation process takes a lot more than redesigning your workplace and embracing flip-flops. Culture is fundamentally a lagging variable: It is the result of a set of decisions about strategy, structure, people, and processes. Starting a transformation by focusing on culture is like selling a failing car by changing the brand. A brand is the result—not the cause—of a set of correct design, strategy, marketing, and other organizational decisions.