Aza Raskin shows an interesting concept for Firefox Mobile. Microformats are also mentioned in the video.
Firefox Mobile Concept Video from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.
Archive for the 'Mobile Web' Category
This week’s Carnival of the Mobilists is hosted at Skydeck. As usual it contains a summary of a weeks most interesting posts from the mobile blogosphere. As a long time reader, I am more than happy to be in it and that Dan liked my post on microformats.
Go visit this week’s edition of the Carnival to stay up to date on anything mobile.
Microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards. I am a big fan of microformats and you can find them frequently in this blog. Before I write about what microformats mean to mobile, let me briefly explain, for those who are not familiar with them, what the buzz is all about and why you should use them…
What the heck? Why do we need microformats?
It might not seem so on the first glance, but computers are incredibly stupid, even though they can do impressive things like adding up all the data in your huge Excel file within a blink of an eye. However, those machines can only understand us if we provide them with exactly the input and commands they are expecting. They cannot understand our human languages (yet).
HTML is a markup language to describe how a website should be displayed — not to describe the meaning of a website’s content. Some meta information on the content can be given to a computer by using semantic (= “meaningful”) XHTML.
So instead of writing
<font size="13">What Are Microformats and What Do They Mean to Mobile?</font>
to markup my heading I use a heading tag like
<h3>What Are Microformats and What Do They Mean to Mobile?</h3>.
To display the heading in the preferred size, font, color I can use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). I do not need the <font> tag anymore… at least a computer now knows that this is a heading.
Today, search engines are only analyzing key words on a spidered page. In addition to those key words they determine a ranking for the page to know how important that information might be for others. For search engine optimization (SEO) a semantic markup code in XHTML is a plus, as search engines can better understand the content. If you are writing a post on your blog with the title/heading that contains the keyword “microformat” then the search engines assumes that the whole paragraph below should somehow deal with that topic. Therefore, your site gets a higher ranking for “microformats” compared to a site that just used the word in a paragraph.
Now lets assume a user comes along searching for some content by key words… the search engine digs into its huge databases to see which sites contain those key words and displays the results ordered by their secret ranking algorithm on the screen. But there are so many crappy results that do not interest our fellow searcher… why is that?
Well, search engines don’t understand the content of a website, they only scan it for its key terms based on a statistical analysis. Efforts for text recognition exist, but for the Yahoos and Googles in this world it would not be feasible today to crawl the whole web trying to understand the content of each single page in detail. This might work for a short text, but does not scale to the entire web.
Even many humans are overstrained on understanding texts in their mother language and to determine its meaning. When I think back to German classes in school and the poems we read from Kafka and other poets half of the pupils (including me) didn’t understand the meaning of the text. Did you understand all of that? How should a computer determine the content of a poem by only looking at key terms? In poems the author might leave room for interpretation on purpose. On a news article and most other written text this should not be the case…
How do microformats help?
Microformats are a forerunner of the Semantic Web, which some folks even call Web 3.0. The problem with the “real” Semantic Web is that the new standards are complicated and it takes lots of time and brainpower to use them. We still have to wait some years for the Semantic Web to happen, as this will be a major version change of the web. If we will switch to it at all…
Microformats are “Web 2.5″, simple and built upon open existing standards that web developers already know. They are bridging the gap between the current and the Semantic Web. Instead of using new technologies and standards XHTML class names and other attributes are leveraged to add meaning for machines, helping them to understand the content better.
This does not only help search engines to find the results you are actually looking for. It also helps them to display the results in a better way just as Yahoo showed with their recent announcement of the Yahoo Open Search platform.
Microformat are not only making searches better. Add-ons for browsers exist with which you can grab microformatted data from a site with two clicks and export the data to other applications such as an address book or a calendar. Firefox 3 will have those capabilities build-in. FF 3 will be released in 2008, not decades ahead of us. Rumors say Microsoft is planning to include microformats in Internet Explorer 8. No more Copy/Paste needed.
What microformats are out there?
Plenty of microformats with which you can attach semantics to the markup exist already (or are in the making):
- hCard - People and Organizations
- hCalendar - Calendars and Events
- VoteLinks, hReview - Opinions, Ratings and Reviews
- XFN - Social Networks and Blogs
- rel-license - Licenses
- hReview - Reviews
- geo - Geographic coordinates
- adr - Address Information
I do not want to go into details on how the markup code for those formats looks like, a good example can be found on Wikipedia.
If you are missing a microformat in the list above, check the microformats website first, if you don’t find it, collaborate, specify a draft and create it! Microformats are created by the community in an open process. Everybody is able to propose and elaborate on new formats. The only requirement is that the format solves a problem.
What do microformats mean to mobile?
Obviously many of the previously mentioned microformats make sense on a mobile phone. Instantly add a contact from a mobile web site to your address book with hCard, add an event to the calendar with one click (hCalendar) or directly click on an address to navigate to it, if you have a GPS-enabled phone.
Input to mobile device is cumbersome and should be avoided whenever possible, microformats offer a solution to some of these input problems. Meaning less stupid text prediction à la T9, less Copy/Paste (I even heard some smartphones don’t support this =) but a better experience for the user. A better experience equals more fun, longer sessions, more ad views, higher conversion and more money for the site owner. What does it cost to add microformats to a website? Almost nothing, you basically just have to add some class names to the XHTML markup.
Although strictly speaking not microformats, because they are not built on XHTML, there are special efforts to bring microformats to mobile - in particular to the plain text in mobile messaging: nanoformats and picoformats.
Nanoformats
Targeted at microblogging services like Twitter and Jaiku, nanoformats try to add semantics to your jabbering. They extend the capabilities of microblogging and provide standards for commonly used parameters:
- @username - Reply to another user
- L:Berlin - Referring to a specific location
- tag++, tag–, username++ - Vote for or against a tag or user
- #tag - Categorize your tweet with a tag
- lang:en - Specify the language
- event: - Describe an event, should be combined with L:
And why should you waste some more characters in your short 140-character tweet? It’s the same reason as for microformats. To describe the stupid computers what you are talking about. Nanoformats enabled services like Hashtags, Tweet Translation and Plusplus Bot, making it easier to monitor topics of your interest.
Picoformats
Communicating and executing commands with mobile devices over SMS is becoming more and more common. Plazes, Remember The Milk, Dopplr, Facebook mobile, Twitter and many others allow users to control the application by sending in specific SMS commands. Picoformats represent an effort to codify those different standards and to openly pursue a nomenclature and syntax for SMS commands.
The question is if it will be possible to standardize these short SMS commands. For applications with similar use cases this might be reasonable, but in general most applications are having very different domains and finding an easy way to interact with the service by SMS is a key aspect of development. The only observation that I could make was that .command is used frequently to send commands to a service and ?query to request the delivery of information to a phone. Unix-based command-line tools have many different purposes as well and face the same problem but most tools obey the standard. So why shouldn’t this work for the SMS-terminal?
So What?
Everybody hopefully understands my passion for microformats, if you made it this far in the article. With only small efforts it is possible to add semantics to your website. When publishing something on the web you want your content to be read, used and distributed. Otherwise you wouldn’t be doing it, would you?
Microformats help to spread your word and make things easier for your visitors, especially on a cell phone when mobile browsers are going to add support for microformats in the future. And as this is happening on the desktop we probably won’t have to wait a long time for this feature.
Nano- and picoformats, the microformats for mobile messaging, are still in their infancy and only a couple are frequently used on services today. It is questionable if these efforts will take off. Creating web sites is something that is done by skilled web designers that (hopefully) know the languages they are using. It should be easy for them to understand the benefit of microformats. Twitter and the others microblogging services are still used by many web geeks, but in the end, they are tools that anybody can use. The idea behind nano- and picoformats is great, I just do not think my sister will want to spend time to produce a semantically correct tweet, do you?
Mobile Strategist Rudy De Waele (mTrends) held a presentation on Mobile 2.0 last week at the Plugg Conference in Brussels. If you were - just like me - not able to attend read the slides. They are worth a read and give a great intro to Mobile 2.0.
Did you ever wonder what is going on in the mobile startup scene in Germany?
I crawled through the German web and - besides noticing and wondering how many new mom&dad, sport and pet communities we have - collected a decent list of mobile startups.
If you know a company that is missing please add it in the comments. I will keep an eye on any new startups and follow up on this in the future.
| Mobile Content | |
|---|---|
| dailyme.tv | Application to automatically grab videos to your phone. Nokia only so far. |
| hiogi | Text any question when you are on the go to a short code number and the community will reply with an answer. |
| itsmy | Mobile content community. Site looks like Jamba TV ads. |
| ViiF | Stream yourself with video telephony function of your phone and view videos. See the detailed report. |
| yasssu | Reformat content to mobile. For media companies. |
| Mobile Gaming | |
|---|---|
| ewave | Provider of mobile multiplayer games. |
| Mobile Services | |
|---|---|
| Beem it up Scotty | Send any file over the web to your mobile device. |
| cellity | Application for your phone to make cheap phone calls |
| indyphone | Create wallpapers for your mobile phone. |
| Mobile Social Networks | |
|---|---|
| aka-aki | Creative and promising startup. Uses Bluetooth technology to connect with people around you. |
| KWICK! | German social network with new large mobile website. |
| Plazes | Create activities to let your friends know what you are doing where. See recent coverage. |
| peperonity | Mobile community. Did they do this retro-design on purpose? |
| plexme | Connect with people in your region. SMS-based. |
| qeep | Nice design. Cheap messages to other devices. |
| Qiro | Promising application for your phone. Similar to loopt. |
| Rock-It-Mobile | Create your own groups and chat with SMS. |
| scaanoo | Mobile messenger community. Do they think the design of the logo brings success? |
| TownKings | Explore your city. |
| Townster | See above. |
| Youni-mobile | Community and virtual network operator. |
| Microblogging | |
|---|---|
| 1you | Seems like Twitter for dating. Did the designers actually look at the rendered page? |
| baluu | Basis microblogging. Only a few posts a day on the system. |
| brabblr | Broadcasts messages to various microblogging platforms (Twitter, Jaiku, tumblr, …) |
| dasbeep | Another Twitter-clone |
| dukudu | Good looking clone. Not much going on anymore. |
| Frazr | Most active German microblogging service. |
| niimo | Former texteln.de. Quite active. |
| Slogr | *Yawn* |
| Wamadu | Number for each mobile operator so most folks can use their included messages. |
| Was geht bei dir? | *Yawn* again… |
| Mobile Tagging | |
|---|---|
| BeeTag | Mobile Tagging system (Switzerland) |
| KAYWA | Provides mobile blogs and QR reader + other services. (Switzerland) |
| kooaba | Make a picture of the real-world object and easily get further information. (Switzerland) |
| TagYourCity | Post stickers with encoded information in your city. (Austria) |
German Facebook clone StudiVZ is now getting serious competition in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Facebook just launched a localized German version of their social network. Today all Germans have to learn English in school, but most - even college students - prefer to do everything in their primary language.
Many successful international startups do not have the resources to localize right away and focus on the U.S. market first, which gave the various German Web 2.0 clones like StudiVZ a chance to grow. StudiVZ launched in fall 2005 and claims that they are having about 4.9 Million users today. Facebook, with about 700,000 members in Germany, only has a fraction of the users but the user base is expected to raise significantly now that the app is localized.
The German translation is still far from perfect but students and others will begin to see that the Facebook platform is way superior to the poorly copied StudiVZ. StudiVZ basically looks the same as Facebook did several years ago (besides the colors) and doesn’t provide applications, an activity stream or a mobile version.
Although StudiVZ has better connections to German media partners I do not think they can compete against the well-funded giant Facebook. In the end Facebook’s rumored cooperation with Nokia, where all Nokia devices might come with a pre-installed Facebook client, and similar deals will break StudiVZ’s neck. Only the people that have spent hours on StudiVZ collecting friends will have doubts to switch and stay loyal first. However, when more and more of their friends have left StudiVZ they will also embrace the change and join Facebook.
It will be exciting to watch the social networking war and Facebook’s launch will hopefully help to boost the German Web 2.0. You can count that I will keep an eye on this and in particular the usage of the already localized mobile version of Facebook here in Germany.
Kudos to zweinull.cc for pointing the German release out.
A picture is worth a thousand words is the new slogan of Twitxr, a photo-enabled Twitter clone that has recently been launched by Fon Labs. The launch created buzz in blogs and the media even though similar Twitter variations already appeared such as Zannel or Twit Pic.
I didn’t test all the services in detail but Twitxr seems to be different as it is automatically adding location details to the picture and text which makes it much more powerful. Recently, I just had the same idea and really liked it…
Today we are viewing public webcams to get a glimpse of the current weather, skiing conditions or other things on certain places. If real time geo-tagged mobile photo blogging is taking off we will basically have ubiquitous webcams all around us where interesting things are happening.
Imagine the FIFA World Cup Final 2010 between Italy and Germany in South Africa. Do you want to know what is going on around the stadium, on the streets in Berlin, Rome or anywhere else (when Germany will - of course - win)? Go to a twittervision-like website that supports photos and geolocation, zoom in on the area of your interest and you will instantaneously see what is going on there. Brought to you live, with comments and feelings by real people like you and me and not the traditional media.
Crowdsourced live streaming of any place or event - your vacation destination, a football game, a demonstration or even coverage of a terrorist attack as it happened in London where people quickly started to upload pictures to the web.
Twitxr doesn’t provide exact pinpointing of your location to date. Hence, this is still a vision but more and more phones contain GPS receivers and mobile plans become cheaper. What do you think? Will we have a broad distribution of mobile photo blogging services by 2010 or is this to optimistic?
Plazes is an the first (?) international location-aware social network and has already been around since 2004. I didn’t come along the term for a long time but back in those days this has been called MoSoSo (= Mobile Social Software). You can discover “Plazes” anywhere in the world, share your location, hook up with your mates or other people in your vicinity and all the usual social networking features such as groups, messaging and commenting are included as well.
The venture has been founded in 2005 by Felix Petersen and Stefan Kellner in Berlin, Germany. By 2006 Plazes had secured seed financing from business angels such as Esther Dyson, Marc Andreessen and Martin Varsavsky. In 2007 Plazes raised €2.7 Million from Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures in another round of funding.
Plazes originally started to map a user’s location based on the MAC address of the wireless network that was being used. New routers were discovered by users and tagged with geo-coordinates. After having downloaded a “Plazer” your notebook was capable of detecting your current location by investigating the network you were using.
Nowadays there are plenty of different locations, which are not tied to wireless networks anymore, in the system. The tracking no longer relies on wireless networks. A user can submit his location by SMS, the website or an updated version of the “Plazer”. The new activity concept adds a Twittery Twist to Plazes so that I can describe what I am doing when broadcasting my whereabouts to the world. The latest version is also preserving a user’s update history and allows planning meetings in the future. Recently a new API has been released to enable developers to build their own applications and to extend the reach of the Plazes network.
Even though Plazes is based in Germany its majority of users is from the United States. Many similar location-aware services like Loopt, Helio or Dodgeball (still alive?) exist and similarities between Plazes and websites like Twitter and Jaiku are evident.
To gain more users the challenge for Plazes will be to distinguish itself from comparable services. Opening the system with a new API is definitely a step in the right direction. It will be interesting to watch the fight between the mobile social networks and how Plazes evolves in the future. I will keep an eye on them and inform you about any interesting updates.
Are you using Plazes? What do you think should Plazes do?
Do interesting German mobile startups exist or is this area occupied by the often-quoted German Copy/Paste Innovation that has been dominating the German Web 2.0?
Damn sure there are! During my research I was not bombarded with dozens of mobile startups, but I found a hand full of interesting and innovative companies I want to further elaborate on in future posts. Partly those companies are even targeting an international market and are not only focused on Germany. Stay tuned for the next posts!
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