Ernest

Ny tider..

1. Uppdatera regelbundet

2. Svenska från och med nu

Its now ore newer…!

It’s been crazy days, the last month …
Extensive travel and a lot of mobile chattering ..

People have really started to get smart phones and started to use them ..
A clear trend right now is that the market is maturing much faster than those who want to communicate with it ..

I received yet another clear example of this today, when the Client Director from a very large agency in Sweden, 

 with offices worldwide, today called me ..

I had visited him for about a year ago and talked with him about the mobile as the perfect channel for one of their customer a large global company in the clothing industry ..

We talked about the importance of adapting the mobile technology to the user and in this particular case, the target group was accustomed to mobile phones as tools, and text message as a message delivery and responsemanner ..

Of course it was not exciting, then, not many could have predicted the mobile development and have not been able to do so over the past five years ..
(we have always been there, however, but it is a whole other post)

Anyhow, Today he called when he discovered already that the client moved to another agency, and purchased mobile services elsewhere..

So you have to jump on the mobile express-train now, before it is too late ..


The mobile year 2011 - five predictions…!

It is this year’s second day, I feel that I am so restless that I could strangle someone …

Christmas and New Year holidays has passaret slowly and it naturally gives me time to think back on the mobile year that has passed and think about what the major trends in mobile will be in 2011 …

Here is my trend report for 2011 - the year of the mobile:

1) Video Sharing:

 Just as we have seen this year, a whole bunch of fun and successful social applications have arrived for sharing photos and images between each other, such as Flickr, Instagram etc.. It feels as a quite natural step to go forward to creating & sharing video on mobile phones to people, friends, followers, family & friends …

When marketers a few years ago talked about the mobile as a channel, they used to say ”that on the web you created and in the cell phone you consume” … This could not be more wrong today!

We see a huge development in mobile phones today, where the creative process made directly in the cell phone has become more and more a reality and led to an incredible power of ”just in time / on the go” content that users and viewers even are willing to pay for and already do.

So the mobile ”creative revolution” will continue even stronger in 2011!

2) Pads:

As predicted 2010 was the year of the Pad. Unfortunately, only the iPad!
We all thought that Apple’s competitors in the market would have time to present their pads and give Apple a battle for market, but they were nowhere to be seen during the year, until the end of 2010 ..

2011 will be the year that the digital pads hit it big, and Apple will see themselves defeated…

3) Cloud Services:

More and more services are moving out in the ”cloud” …

I myself have for example come to fully utilize Apple’s fairly simple but very effective 

cloudservice iDisk, whit which I can access my data on the server from any device at any time, whether it be my laptop in the office, my iPad at home or on my iPhone the go in the subway …


Another example is Google with its Google Docs ..

The reasons are many but to name a few, you dont have to download longer, increased savingspace and released information for a location-independent work. Then when you need to update, everything is done in the same place again and it turns fully to all users

Just look att Google.. I rest my case.

4) Web apps:

We will see that it is in 2011 that native apps ”go out on the Web”.
And the users need not necessarily to understand it..

Thin clients are created to maintain the ”app-lok and feel”, but instead the user lands on a ”mobile web site” that is more dynamic and alive than native apps can be …

Although that native apps will not disappear in any way, 2011 is the year when companies and marketers across the world will understand the mechanisms underlying dynamics, and we will see an explosion of webapps.

5) Positioning Services:

2011 is the year when the GPS / POS solutions will hit big.
We are already seeing a huge usage, and Foursquare, Gowalla and lately Facebook places are just some examples of this trend.

Companies such as HM, etc., begin to place themselves with their message in these social contexts by offers, discounts etc, when “checking in” at different locations, etc.

HTML5:

Even if we have talked about this technology a long time now, HTML5 is far from fully developed ..
But we have come quite a long way when it comes to use the phone’s built-in native services such as camera, positioning etc…

Therefore, I would still like to mention it at the end of this post regarding my hopes for 2011 …

Although I do not dare to hope that it will be done wonders in HTML5 technology next year, I can always hope ..

Happy mobile 2011 to you all!

APP better than WEB?

In one of Sweden’s largest newspapers, I read today an article written by

 Björn Ewenfeldt, a media and IT reporter ..


“Everyone wants apps,” read the headline!
He continued to write: “App Better than Web “(…)

 As it turns out, app hysteria continues…!


What is even more worrying is that the media is good at running hysteria forward to unprecedented levels ..

In addition, Björn is misleading in the article, since he also has a large picture of the CEO of one of Swedens largest iPhone app manufacturers ..

Implicitly, everyone wants the iPhone Apps ..


First of all; what is meant by an app, and why would everybody like to have them?

Well, we know that out of all mobile phones that will be sold before 2010 is over, the estimated amount is about 22% of them to be smartphones?

This means that 88% of them will not be able to get apps?

…but most likely - have built-in web browser, whether they like it or not?

Conclusion: Not everyone wants to have apps!

Most likely, Sweden is an exception: as often called, a mini-America with an incredible iPhone app-hysteria .. but come on, try to see it in a larger perspective ..!

Fortunately, the iPhone app-hysteria seen better days and will decrease slowly, and for all of you who wonder if we will see the same mad hysteria around Android apps, the answer is probably NO - customers quite simply dont have the energy to go through exactly the same thing with Adroid as with the iPhone ..

Oh yes, that’s right, then there was the notion that “APP is better than WEB”?
Strange statement?

What Björn probably should have written is: the app is web “

For about a year ago, it began to circulate a nasty rumor among app-manufacturers ..


 .. They began to realize the limitations of their “local-apps” that were downloaded to the mobile, and customers began demanding more dynamic apps, alive apps.. 


Apps were local, static and often not use several times since they were not possible to change …
And for clients, not a long-term economical solution ..

The app-manufacturers started talking about web-apps …

An app that was simply a “shortcut” on the web ..

This is a trend that has continued in still silence in the shadow of the

 “static local-app” ..


But things are starting to slowly change …

We see examples of Swedish “Aftonbladet Supernytt” which is a web-app, where what you see in the iPhone as an “app” only is a “shortcut”, or bookmark if you like, transporting you out on the living, dynamic web .. and the user does not notice that he or she is out on the Web… Clever!


And it’s probably not the last time we see this type of web-app in the future …

We who have worked with mobile communications for years now, have obviously talked about this a long time … And now it is thus finally time for the “stupid App” to disappear forever …


Hopefully ..



Mail is for Old People

Our communication is quicker and faster and our way of telling a story has changed ..

 We are becoming more and more snuttified, and the message must be delivered quickly or else we get bored.

A while ago I read an interesting theory by mobile-guru Tomi T Ahonen - who described that it started already in our third mass media channel: The Cinema.

In the beginning the film makers did not take into account the length and flms were often several hours long, where visitors had to come back more times, and the films were divided into sections.

Finally, came the standard time, about 2 hours!

The same thing happened when the phenomenon of television infringed, and with the format “sit-coms”.

“Sit-coms” were in the beginning an hour long, but they discovered that this also was too long and chose standard; 30 min

Another contributing factor to this phenomenon was MTV, which, with its new Music Television, began to push the music industry to start producing music videos to promote, and sell songs and CDs ..

Again, it was necessary to convey the message in a short time, about 3 minutes, and preferably tell the whole story, an entire “film” if you will, in a short time ..

Everything goes faster and faster …
So also our communication ..

The average time for the opening of an email - 48 hours
An SMS will be opened in about 30 seconds …

It is no wonder that youths today refers to “Mail Is for Old People” … It goes too slow …

When I some time ago in a Twitter thread, mentioned that only old people use email, I caused a fierce debate with many opinions ..

A little over a year ago I lectured in Stockholm at the IT/Internet fair, about the mobile phone as our future communications channel.

I spoke among other things about on how we choose to be contacted in the future:

Not all of us are going to be contacted only by mail, or even SMS, but weare going to see more rapid communication such as instant messaging & chat etc..

Today I looked at Facebook’s release of their new messaging where they have gathered all the different ways to send messages, SMS, email and chat / IM in the same place …

Just as I predicted for more than a year ago ..


What’s also funny: Listen carefully approximately 0.20 sec into the movie …

“When I want to reach out to my cousin Danny, I have to-use text message, because he just graduated high school and thats all he ewer uses ..

“My Grandmother only the uses e-mail, I can not send her a Facebook message and expect her to get back to me …”

So it may be true: “Mail is for Old People”

In Swedish: Vart är tomten?

In Swedish: Vart är tomten?

5 Ways HTML5 Is Changing Mobile Advertising

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5 Ways HTML5 Is Changing Mobile Advertising

The Introduction of HTML5

A large part of the issue is that many rich media ad technologies are proprietary and closed platforms. None of the mobile ad integration kits for apps are interoperable with each other. The technical barrier for running a mobile rich media ad campaign is very high.

With iAds demonstrating that HTML5 is a viable option for mobile ad development today, the industry will see more progress. HTML5 and compatible HTML5-based ad formats will have a major impact on the future of the mobile ad industry. Here are the five reasons why HTML5, an open standard, will change mobile advertising the way Flash changed it for the desktop.

1. Open Systems Support Speed And Scale

When ads are programmed using HTML, agencies can give the work to their own designers and developers. It saves time and money to put the creative control back in their hands instead of having to go back and forth with third-party vendors or ad networks.

Some rich media ad technologies may be based on open standards, but they are generally all closed systems where it often takes one or two months to get the ad unit developed and tested. After all, earlier HTML versions resolved the content creation bottleneck in the early days of the world wide web as well.

2. HTML Can Run Anywhere

HTML can be downloaded from an ad server and displayed on the web and in apps. The ability of apps to render HTML is a huge boost. Android and iOS support HTML5, and soon all major smartphone platforms will follow suit. The same can’t be said for Flash and other Flash lookalikes. One of the key issues in extending desktop campaigns to mobile is dealing with the fragmentation of that audience by diverging technologies.

Let’s take the recent extension of the Nissan Leaf campaign to mobile platforms. One vendor could have developed a Flash creative for the desktop web. Another vendor could have converted it to run in Android apps. Yet another vendor might support it to run on mobile web browsers. Apple could also use iAd to run the campaign on iPhone apps. Imagine the headache a media agency would have customizing that ad to run across all of these different platforms. HTML5 can be leveraged to solve that.

3. Tracker Compatibility

What’s the point of extending a campaign to mobile devices if you can’t get the delivery and brand interaction metrics right? This is another point easily solved by the unifying nature of HTML/JavaScript-based ad units. Agency ad servers can track banner impressions and clicks across many devices and technologies and produce a single report.

This is a more reliable approach than collecting various reports out of different mobile platforms, which are all calibrated according to different methodologies. For example, most in-app mobile ad servers count an impression every time an ad is requested from the server, while web servers track an impression only after the ad is displayed.

4. Lightweight Ad Display Engine

You may well be aware of the ongoing HTML5 vs. Flash debates happening across the industry and the web. One of the arguments in that debate is the potential quality and performance problems that plug-in technologies can suffer. With rich media advertising for mobile, much of the same concept stands.

When a mobile application developer integrates a rich media ad kit, it adds weight and can cause application performance issues. On the other hand, the code involved in leveraging the browser as the ad rendering engine is comparatively lighter and simpler, thus more suitable for resource-constrained mobile devices.

5. Design Flexibility

Last but not least, HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript offer remarkable design flexibility and capability, which is unlikely to be trumped by a single technology compatible with so many mobile devices. It doesn’t require downloading of potentially insecure pre-compiled binaries and it doesn’t necessitate any heavy UI framework to be bundled with the app. For instance, the iPad apps for The Wall Street Journal and Popular Mechanics use HTML5 exclusively for their advertisers.

Based on a dozen or so major app publishers I’ve spoken to, the majority are either already serving HTML5-based display ads in their mobile tablet or smart phone apps, or they are considering it in the near future. There are even app developers who are collaborating on open source software development kits to create a rich media mobile advertising standard based on HTML5 with some extra native application hooks.

While display advertising on mobile devices may not reach full maturity for a while, the need to de-fragment the platforms on a technical level is key right now. Bridging the gap between the mobile web and apps has pushed the technology to evolve towards a cross-platform architecture. It is an exciting time for interactive developers and designers.

(via jonathancarpenter)

(via jonathancarpenter)

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