Myself and Matt had a little day trip to the Innovation Centre in Bath on Thursday to attend another of the enjoyable OpenMic events. We found the previous event in Guildford to be interesting and useful so wanted to get in on the action again! Read on to hear our reflections on the many discussions… (yes, this includes iPad).
First up we listened to an entertaining talk from old-hand tech journalist Giles Turnbull, on the evolution of news reporting in the context of mobile and the generally slow response of news editors to embrace the technology. He seemed to think that the iPhone had finally clicked on the light bulb for the people of influence in news, just by looking and feeling so good! Maybe true, let’s hope the new generation of editors etc. are a bit quicker to adopt new technologies… (AR news anyone?)
Next up Richard Spence gave us a quick run down of mobile development away from the iPhone, which was a handy reminder that the other platforms have remained viable. He pointed out that the success of Apple’s App Store has improved the world’s understanding and general consciousness of mobile apps (beyond only iPhone users), making it more likely to get your Java or Symbian app actually noticed and installed by the public. As developers who haven’t forgotten the skills we cut our teeth with, we completely agree, and if you want your app reach a large audience then you have to face up to this fact! You’re never gonna hit everyone but you can have a jolly good go…
After that, Bruce Lawson from Opera gave us a run down on Opera Widgets. Now, Mobile Pie have had plenty of experience recently with widgets, having developed over 50 of them so far, but we are always on the look out for tips from the experts.
The final session before lunch was a panel discussion, in which experienced designers / developers gave their views on iPad, which were a little mixed (we’re still going to get one!). The inevitable question mark over multitasking was raised. Personally I feel that this will not be so much of a problem for a lot of the potential audience (i.e. non-geeks). As web browsing and web-based email will be two of the most common activities for them, a web browser will maybe be all they need 90% of the time. Also, if web apps are due to make their presence felt over native apps in the way the rumour-mongers would have you believe, then that supports the point even further. However, maybe the Safari multi-tabbing capabilities might have to be made a little quicker/accessible than the iPhone version.
After a great noodle-break at Hong Kong Bistro, the format changed to bar camps, the purpose of which is for delegates to discuss among themselves the burning issues of the day (surrounding mobile development!). The themes are suggested by the delegates themselves; here Matt and I split up to get the most knowledge into the Pie databank as possible.
I attended ‘How to make money from apps’ – which threatened to be a lot of disheartened developers sitting around complaining – but turned out to be an interesting discussion on different revenue models and schemes, i.e. free/premium/freemium/ad-funded. We also came up with an interesting idea of borrowing the concept of certified standards for application stores. For example, if your app doesn’t drain the battery in 10 minutes, or can be used offline, it would be nice to have certain industry wide stamps on your app to demonstrate this. This helps the professional developers who put time into the design and user experience of their products get some recognition above the rest of the rabble!
Matt however, hadn’t quite had his widget fill for the day yet, and took in Opera’s Patrick Lauke discussing HTML5, widgets and Opera’s latest browser. He seemed pretty impressed with some of the demonstrations – how graphics can be composited onto video directly in HTML 5 and the content of vector graphics can be dynamically changed with media queries. The best thing on show though, was the brilliant demo video of Bruce’s turkish dancing. To get a feel for HTML5 they have some cool articles on their Opera developers pages, especially their Introduction to video in HTML5.
A good day and we look forward to the next OpenMic!
