However … for now I’m going to simply point you to somebody else’s blog.

I ‘chaired’ the OpenMic session at last month’s CETIS Conference in Nottingham. Very much enjoyed it. Nice and relaxed, fun and informative with 6 short talks and discussions around a clutch of random topics.

There was the MIMAS Landmap Geospacial Resources project, a discussion around the role of the “learning technologist” in today’s tech environment, the XCRI validator and mashups opportunities, a pondering on whether there was a standardised ways to exchange forms across systems, HESA’s Redesigning the Higher Education Data and Information Landscape and yours truly did a quickfire thing around where I see Augmented Reality right now.

But anyhoo … thankfully, the JISC’s very own David Kernohan attended the session and very kindly live-blogged the whole thing.

So … for coverage and links and stuff, go see David’s post at http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/cetis12-open-mic-session

Now then. I best start thinking about getting some more posts done. See you soon!

And packed with talks. Too many to properly go into here as I’m one of those people that believes blog posts shouldn’t really end up the size of a report…or books ;)

Naturally, there was a lot of focus on geolocation implementations – the use of Open Street Map data, mashed with twitter streams, media, social networking & tagging, crowdsourcing and even a spot of augmented reality. Some cool stuff. In fact, quite a lot of cool stuff.

Two pieces of work in the Edu Institutional space, both benefitting from JISC funding, which are big favourites of mine, were presented – MyMobileBristol and MOLLY – both open source solutions for institutions to deliver key services to students through their mobile devices. Access to local travel information such as bus times, library services, PC availability, news, events, contacts…you know…all the kind of stuff you would expect when it comes to service delivery. Over the coming months I’m going to be looking at ways in which CETIS can help to raise awareness and advertise these tools to institutions and – hopefully – help uptake and roll-out across institutions and engagement with the open source community that can then assist sustainability of these frameworks. I would strongly advise institutions that are considering and developing their mobile strategy (for I sincerely hope most, if not all, are doing!) to check these out. Stay tuned for an upcoming event organised by yours truly over the next few months.

There was also a load of great advice on building open source communities, processes and tools for open development collaboration, open source business models and open development & IPR. All while – across both days – allowing plenty of slots and time for folks to do the self-pitch, speed date and general interactive sessions where we all mingled and spoke to people we identified as potential collaborators. There seemed, to me, to be quite a bit of joining up happening and relationships & network building.

All the talks were filmed but, given they have quite a few to deal with, they’re not available as yet. In the meantime though you should check out some of the resources like the recorded live blog feed, the programme with links to session details and a couple of presentation slides…and keep an eye on the site for more landing. That’s available on the Open Source Junction site on Posterous – http://opensourcejunction.posterous.com/

For a look at the wider work of OSS Watch, visit their site at http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk/

There is no such thing as the Mobile Web...at least that bit makes sense!

The piece was a kind of follow-on from the Mobile Web Apps briefing paper and Brian and I looked to produce an easily digestible, ‘Top Tips for the Mobile Web’, that we hoped would serve as a nice jumping point for those people in institutions working on delivering services and content to mobile devices.

While I’m very pleased to see the article rendered so nicely and published in Inform I must confess to be kicking myself at how badly I’ve actually worded the first tip (the FIRST one!! So it’s immediately noticeable! Eek.)

You can see the piece at http://www.jisc.ac.uk/inform/inform31/MobileWeb.html

What appears is this:

There is no such thing as the Mobile Web
Design for the usual internet and then make your site adaptable for mobile devices for example decreasing the screen size using CSS media queries and then scaling up for larger devices like tablets and PCs by progressively enhancing access for larger audiences.

Now…poorly written, right? “usual Internet”? Decreasing screen size using media queries”? Crikey. Not quite sure what happened here but let me have a stab at making it a bit clearer (and sensible).

“There is no mobile web” – I think this is true from the POV that many people in education have jumped on the buzzwordy feel of the Mobile Web as a cool topic and then fall into the trap of thinking that the web on mobile devices (ie. smaller screens) exists as a separate entity. My view is that there is simply “The Web” and that we view it through different windows–desktop monitors, laptops, phones, tablets, television sets, etc–and we should simply see it as that. After all, we don’t call it the “Desktop Web” or the “TV Web” do we? No. Ok…let’s move on.

“Design for the usual Internet” – possibly the most nonsensical sentence I’ve ever written. And that’s saying something. What I actually *mean* is–as outlined above–think about your overall approach to developing content for the web in general and then look at how you adapt that content for the screen sizes we’re talking about when we talk “mobile”. Don’t think, “we’re going to make a mobile website because mobile is where it’s at now”. The web is where it’s at. Always has been, always will.

Decreasing for screen size? – A botched job of saying “take your website, make it adaptable and responsive to it displays properly in mobile browsers, then use CSS Media Queries to make the same content adapt to different devices: flexible layouts that respond to the browser capabilities and screen real estate on offer.

Larger audiences? – Wider audience…those that aren’t viewing on a mobile device. Again, one web that adapts to the different canvases we view it on.

So…hopefully that clarifies that tip somewhat. I think where I went wrong was in trying to pack 2 thoughts and 3 tips into one tip, while keeping it short (hence not mentioning <meta name=”viewport”>) but ending up with something that I read back and thought, “Good god, man…you’ll never work again!” ;)

I *think* I’m happy with the other tips though.

Two of the biggest names in this space are Sencha Touch & jQuery Mobile (which has now been built-in to the latest version of Adobe’s Dreamweaver CS 5.5). Both are freely available and enable developers to enhance the user experience by quickly and easily adding the kind of smooth transitions, animations and interactions that we have all come to associate with using our fancy touchscreen smartphones and their powerful mobile web browsers.

So…which one to use? Well, that very question has come up and garnered some feedback on Quora. So I thought I’d flag it up for you here (I’m nice like that, see).

The general consensus seems to be that Sencha is more robust and performs better than jQuery Mobile, with richer and smoother interactions and animations making for a cleaner – more “native feeling” – UI. However, it also seems to be agreed that Sencha involves a much steeper learning curve and is a bit lacking in the documentation area. One summation was, “If you’re simply looking to enhance a mobile delivered website, go with jQuery. If you’re looking at developing a richer web *app* then Sencha is the way to go, particularly if you’re looking at developing your app using web technologies and then wrapping it up for deployment as a native app using something like PhoneGap.”

So, like I say, I thought I’d flag it up. You can read the discussion on Quora at http://www.quora.com/Were-deciding-between-jQuery-Mobile-currently-in-alpha-and-Sencha-Touch-What-are-the-pros-and-cons-for-each and you’ll find that some of the comments link to other – possibly useful – resources.

But while I’m here I may as well point out a couple of other – related – things. First up is a “Quick Introduction to jQuery Mobile” that I spotted on Twitter.

http://www.coldfusionjedi.com/index.cfm/2011/6/29/jQuery-Mobile-Quick-Start-and-new-jQuery-class

And, secondly, is a topic of conversation that has started up around the whole business of mobile apps…native apps…web apps…(!!!) which I think is interesting. That revolves around the thinking in some quarters that if you’re building a web app for mobile you actually SHOULDN’T go trying to make it look like a native app at all. I think this is one for the designers and those interested in UX (I don’t think we really have any UX experts working in web teams in UK Edu do we?)…

http://cvil.ly/2011/06/19/pretenders-why-mobile-web-apps-should-stop-trying-to-act-like-native-apps/

Oh and my thanks to Mike Jones at MyMobileBristol for the above link :)

• The web has evolved through two major phases: Web 1.0, the era of dumb terminals and Web 2.0, the era of smarter terminals, where users are both consumers and producers of content.
• The web is both a technology paradigm (HTML) and a business model paradigm for the unfettered distribution [and monetisation] of content.
• HTML5 is pushing the capabilities of web applications to the point of making web apps as engaging as Flash applications and as integrated with the device as mobile applications.
• Despite the adoption of WebKit as the de-facto browser engine on over 500 million handsets to date, mobile browser implementations remain consistently fragmented. Even standards bodies W3C and the WHAT WG show fragmented approaches to HTML5 completion, which is not expected before 2014.
• The web is winning in developer mindshare, but it will not replace native platforms; instead web applications will co-exist with native applications that maintain an edge in terms of device and cloud integration capabilities. Web applications will retain an edge in use cases such as business applications, mass-market services and cross-screen experiences (mobile, TV, PC).

VisionMobile have given an overview on their blog, where you can also download the free report.

http://www.visionmobile.com/blog/2011/06/html5-and-what-it-means-for-the-mobile-industry/

I’m interested in the Internet of Things. I do believe that this is the next major advancement of the technology that every one of us uses. Outside of the “edtech” bubble (I use the word lightly despite of its connotations in IT ;)…) it’s a hot topic. Well, if not hot…maybe something of a pot-boiler. The IoT is definitely something though that is very much a horizon topic when it comes to technology assisted teaching and learning.

However, the system has been slowly but steadily taking shape and people who keep a track of movements in the world of technology can’t have escaped the buzz around the topic of mobile payments through Near Field Communication (NFC). This week Google (in partnership with US mobile operator, Sprint, Citi and MasterCard) have announced their initiative in this space, calling it ‘Google Wallet’. Well…I believe what we’re seeing now is just the beginning. These bullet points aren’t separate things…they’re just a way of me organising my thoughts (and pitch, if you will). So…here goes:

1. The IoT will only really capture hearts & minds (ie. interest & creative thinking) through people seeing where there is human interaction…as in, not just a bunch of networked objects but how they relate to us, how we can involve ourselves in it
2. NFC is the vehicle through which humans will interact with ‘things’ – objects, buildings, environments – through our personal technologies (yeah…at first…phones)
3. The business case of mobile payments will drive recognition, uptake, understanding and acceptance of NFC.
4. More businesses will latch onto the use of mobile payments, driving demand which will lead to more and more mobile devices implementing the technology (I’m looking at you, iPhone)
5. As the devices become equipped, innovation in other areas will start to appear and grow as the technology moves toward ubiquity
6. Everyday objects will begin to be tagged. Information services around environments will start to be delivered and people will embrace the added value of common transactions and communications with all manner of their daily lives
7. The use (and proliferation) of sensors; networked and interfaced and made accessible to people, will open up opportunities for growth and improvement to everyday life. Sensors in environments and in the devices that we carry with us, connecting us to our surroundings
8. Google Wallet is the first high profile innovation & implementation that will kickstart it all

Not to say that Google have invented all this. This has been talked about for a long time now but I feel it’s only really now that we have the technology so embedded in everyday life to make it really happen and I think that Google’s initiative will pave the way as an early pioneer in this space.

There’ll be upsets, accidents, cock ups, accusations over privacy and security and general, all round naysaying (isn’t there always). But the Internet of Things, Everyware, Ubicomp…it was always going to be a sea change and hugely disruptive. And it’s going to have growing pains.

But, I think, I believe, I’m seeing the birth of it starting to become real. And I’m excited about it.

Oh and, yeah, this probably reads as very idealistic and a little bit exciteable. But then I do tend to be to be honest.

For a quick look at coverage of Google Wallet I’ve picked out this article at Engadget…but it is late as I write this and there are no doubt more in-depth or simply more interesting articles out there right now. I shall have to update.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/26/google-wallet-mobile-payment-service-google-offers-announced/

So step forward the newly formed Web Real-Time Communications Working Group. The mission of the group is to define a set of client-side APIs to enable real-time communications through the browser…video, audio, no plug-ins or downloads. The Charter page also states “supplementary real-time communication” so we’re also looking at screen sharing – or at least ‘browser window sharing’ – I think I’d be safe in saying.

One of the great things about this – imho – is that the working group will be looking closely at device APIs and pushing work on those forward, which, along with the DAP (Device APIs & Policy WG) should hopefully propel the development of APIs for device capabilities such as use of camera, microphone and the whole area of media capture and streaming. I then automatically think of the mobile space…mobile web apps for video chat anyone? :)

The working group has a timescale that looks at getting their first recommendations out toward the end of next year.

Want to see it in action? Well, Ericsson Labs (who are co-chairing the working group) rather kindly produced a video demo – Beyond HTML5: Peer-2-peer conversational video in HTML5. It is below…for your viewing pleasure. You can also read their accompanying blog post at https://labs.ericsson.com/developer-community/blog/beyond-html5-peer-peer-conversational-video

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

It was a relatively short event (half a day) but packed full with some interesting talks, showcasing the work that is being done with the web by various parties in collaboration with the W3C. The talks did a nice job of giving us a look at how central the web is in fields like mobile delivery (MobileAware & Vodafone), future media (from the BBC), Internet & television (BBC R&D) and, underpinning much of this, was the importance and role of the web in sociological terms, with Prof. Bill Dutton, Director of the Oxford Internet Institution, rounding off things with a look at Freedom of Connection & Freedom of Expression. Prof. Dutton highlighted elements of a forthcoming UNESCO report that provides a new perspective on the social and political dynamics behind threats to freedom of expression using the Internet and the web through digital rights issues and how technical, legal and regulatory measures might be constraining the freedom that many of us see the Internet allowing us today. A line that stood out for me in particular was:

Freedom of expression is not an inevitable outcome of technological innovation

Sir Tim Berners Lee kicked off proceedings with a bit of history behind his invention of the web and the subsequent creation of the W3C, whose goal, Sir Tim told us, is to “lead the web to its full potential”. Around 20-25% of the globe now uses the web but now we have reached a point where we need to look at why the other 75-80% don’t. The W3C Web Foundation (http://www.w3.org/2009/Talks/0318_bratt_WebFoundation/WebFoundation.pdf) is there to tackle this issue and figure out ways to accelerate the take up of the web in the parts of the world that still don’t have it.

Sir Tim Berners Lee

Sir Tim talked about the role of the web in supporting justice and democracy too (something that the UNESCO report investigates as I wrote previously) and asked the question of how we can optimise the web to support wider and more efficient democracy. Science too. How do we design the web to more easily bring together part formed ideas across people and countries to help these ideas feed off each other and evolve. And how can the web – in this new age of social networking – help us work more effectively and communicate wider than simply “friends of friends”, breaking through traditional social barriers and forming new relationships that may not normally occur?

An interesting question from the audience was the one around temporal bubble and how to ensure we can still view the web as we have now in decades to come – after all, so much content from 10 years ago cannot now be viewed (without a painstaking process of content conversion). It was a timely revisit to that question as on the train down I was reading about the hundreds of thousands of photographs shared on the fotopic.net have recently simply vanished due to fotopic going into liquidation. Then the day after I read that Google is now telling users of their Google Video service that they need to move them off there as, while it hasn’t supported new uploads for quite some time, Google will actually be folding the whole thing and putting up the closed sign.

So that was all just in the opening talk!

HTML5 Logo

The open web platform is the new mobile operating system

and the W3C’s work is ongoing to make it as robust as possible.

Dr. Adrian Woolard of BBC R&D talked about their work in Internet TV and how they are looking to free this from the set-top box, while focusing on the accessibility of New Broadcasting products and services. We’ve had the web on our televisions for a few years now, well, those of us with a Wii or Playstation 3 that is. But the Internet will be moving into the TV itself. On this topic the W3C recently formed the Web & Television Interest Group (January 2011) to start looking at requirements that will then form recommendations and a Working Group that will approach the standards issue in this space – see http://www.w3.org/2010/09/webTVIGcharter.html. This is something that I want to take a bit further in a future article, around the web in a Post-PC world. We’ve had the web on PCs for over a decade now, we have it, increasingly, in powerful mobile devices in our pockets, tablets, and now…that bastion of the living room…the TV!

Dan Appelquist of Vodafone outlined the company’s commitment to working with the W3C in the mobile space and nicely highlighted some of the reasons why Vodafone look to work with the W3C, contributing to web standards. Something Dan mentioned (kind of in passing) that I didn’t know about was around the social networking space. One was OneSocialWeb project (http://onesocialweb.org/), a free decentralised approach to the social network (in fact I’ve just this minute found they have an iPhone app that I’ll be duly installing after writing this) and something more grounded in the CETIS Standards space – oStatus, an open standard for distributed status updates, across networks. See http://ostatus.org/about

Ralph Rivera, Director of BBC Future Media talked to us about how the BBC is looking at the digital public space it inhabits as much as the programmes and services it creates and outlined what digital public space means to the BBC, and how the W3C and BBC can work in partnership. Ralph said a couple of things that really stood out for me. One was that the BBC is looking at the 2012 Olympics and planning their digital products & services around it to do for online broadcasting what the Coronation did for television. I thought that was pretty cool. He also said this, and I’ll round off the article with this…

There is no more important digital space than the web itself

I like that.

Mobile Web Apps: A Briefing Paper

With the growth and constant shift in the mobile space institutions could be forgiven for feeling a little lost as to how to best tackle the issue of delivering content and/or services that are optimised for mobile devices. Apple, Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone…app ecosystems seemingly everywhere you turn and each requiring different development approaches; SDKs, programming languages, approval processes and terms & conditions. I think it’s fair to say that for institutions, looking to deliver to mobile devices while being as inclusive as possible, this area is something of a minefield.

A viable, alternative approach is developing Mobile Apps using open web technologies and standards; technologies that continue to improve performance and offer more powerful functionality – as is now being talked about quite a bit on the topic of HTML5.

The briefing paper is intended to give an overview of this space and cover some of the key talking points, with a collection of useful resources with which to delve deeper into the subject for those that decide that mobile web apps are indeed a workable solution for them. I’m hoping that an interested audience would consist of institutional web staff, students services, learning technologists, maybe even an IT services manager here and there :)

It’s in PDF format but I’ll also be looking to get it in web form on the CETIS website over the next few days and, of course, I’d welcome any feedback and questions on it here.

If you’re interested, get it at http://wiki.cetis.ac.uk/images/7/76/Mobile_Web_Apps.pdf

Argon is the completely open standards augmented reality browser that allows rapid development and deployment of Web 2.0 style augmented reality content.

Argon renders a standards compliant combination of KML, HTML, CSS and JavaScript served via typical HTTP servers

Multiple simultaneous channels, analogous to browser tab on the desktop, let authors create dynamic and interactive AR content using existing web development toolsets.

The browser is stated as being the reference implementation of Georgia Tech’s work on the KHARMA Mobile AR Architecture, which combines HTML for content with KML for defining geographical co-ordinates (as used by Google Maps, Google Earth & Yahoo Maps).

Argon Mobile AR Browser

One thing that seems to counter-balance this standards flag bearing though (for me, at least) is the fact that Argon is only available on iPhone – in fact, the developers go so far as to specify that it is best run on the latest version, iPhone 4. Hopefully that will change over time and we’ll see versions for the other popular mobile platforms too: the ever growing Android and the recently adrenaline-injected Windows Phone 7. After all, it would seem a little odd lauding the open standards route while then being restricted to a single delivery platform.

But there’s plenty of growing room in the still young AR space. With the technology making a significant appearance in this year’s Horizon Report – given a ‘Time-to-adoption’ period of 2-3 years, and us already seeing mobile augmented reality being implemented at Exeter Uni on their JISC LTIG Project: Unlocking the Hidden Curriculum, it’s good to see a new offering in this area to possibly compete with the current big players: Layar, Wikitude & Junaio.

My wish? My wish is that we could see something like Argon develop into a platform for AR developers, built on open standards, that would be supported by those players and open up the AR space to easily create interactive and immersive mobile AR experiences & content that you could then deploy cross-browser. Like I say though…early days yet. Hopefully we’ll see it happen.

Oh..one more thing…I have installed Argon on my (now lowly) iPhone 3GS and while the browser looks pretty standard fare – channel view, map, search, etc – unfortunately it seems there are absolutely no POIs (Points of Interest) nearby and the search for local channels isn’t yet implemented. So, as yet, it’s a bit difficult to get a handle of whether Argon would float my boat. Next up I shall go and check out the developer’s area and have a look at creating my own POIs and content. I’ll let you know how I get on…

The Argon browser can be found at http://argon.gatech.edu/

*** Update ***

There are POIs available nearby – I just hadn’t looked at the getting started tutorial properly (I know…I’m one of those blokes that doesn’t read the manual). I’m liking the search box in the realview but the POI icon itself is a bit flaky and judders about a bit too much – I suspect their recommendation of using iPhone 4 is down to the gyroscope aiding with that, which the 3GS doesn’t have. But as you can see from the screenshot, it does the basics and I would imagine one can customise the look with your own CSS. Now…let’s hope their documentation is clear and helpful and not simply written by some Tefal headed genii in a Georgia Tech Lab…

Screenshot of Argon AR Browser