As the US tries to cope with the lack of a Space Shuttle (or any other reusable space vehicle) we look to the future and wonder what will be. I’m sure JFK didn’t envision our astronauts hitch-hiking a ride on a Russian rocket to get into space these days, but he probably didn’t envision the massive shift to handheld devices either.

I remember, as a boy, sitting on the floor in my parent’s living room watching the Apollo 11 Lunar Module land on the moon and two astronauts wandering around on the surface of the moon. My grandmother was sitting with us and with a tear in her eye remarked that she had now seen everything. I didn’t realize at the time how profound this experience was for her (after all, I was only 7 years old).

Years later I asked my grandmother what she meant and she explained that she was born when many houses didn’t have electricity, indoor plumbing wasn’t widespread and there was no such thing as a TV. Radio was in its infancy and telephones for homes were unheard of. Horses still pulled the wagons that people used to buy ice from to keep their food cold. Cars were around but rare and highways were non-existent. Now she sat watching a man walk on the surface of the moon some 238,856 miles from Earth. The fact that we put men on the moon AND the common folk were able to watch it on a box in our living room was almost too much for her to comprehend in the span of her lifetime. It was the first time in my life that I experienced a true generation gap.

As 2011 rapidly comes to an end and we hurl forward toward 2012, technology is changing in leaps and bounds. Landing on the moon (or watching it on TV in our living room) seems blasé compared to a Smartphone that we can’t live without (and could now watch the lunar landing live video feed on while away from home). There really isn’t a comparison in my lifetime that I can gauge my grandmother’s awe against. Partly because I have been in the technology space since graduating high school and partly because all these changes have been evolutionary steps on a series of related fronts.

The biggest change I have seen in my time on the blue marble is the convergence of various communications, photography and entertainment capabilities into a single device. These devices are now small enough to be held in your hand and have enough horsepower to do practically anything (and not require a tripod or a trailer full of batteries to support). That alone should inspire awe, but it seems we take it for granted.

I often tell people that I started in the communications industry back when we used to call it two-way radio (people who called it “wireless” back in those days actually knew Marconi), or as I like to call it BC: Before Cellular. When I started playing with cellular technology it seemed like a logical progression of the existing radio systems I was used to. As we transitioned to digital cellular, again, it was a logical progression. Phones that started with the ability to only store ~20 phone numbers (without a name attached) progressed to alpha-numeric phone books and then to caller ID and texting. Now we have the convergence of phone, text, contacts, e-mail, calendars, photo albums and cameras, video capture and view, etc. Where does it end?

I think we are a few years away from “beam me up Scotty” capabilities in a Smartphone but that would probably be an awe-inspiring experience for me that equates to my grandmother’s lunar landing experience. I’m not holding my breath but I’m sure Gink (as my dad and uncles used to call my grandma) never imagined men in spacesuits leaving footprints on the moon so, at this point, I’d be happy to be awe-struck. Wishing you all a happy and prosperous New Year in 2012.

Happy Holidays from Antenna Software!

It’s that time of year again, when the leaves have fallen, the air gets crisp and television ads are dominated with toys that every kid will want in their home.  It’s the holidays!  And it’s also the end of the year and a time to reflect on all of the great things that have happened in 2011 and to predict the wonderful things that will come in 2012. This year we’re doing the predictions thing a little bit differently.  We’re going to get thoughts from several different Mobile Masters bloggers and let you vote on whose predictions you think ring the most true, or who just made you laugh out loud.

And I’m the lucky man who gets to go first!

I’ll start by saying, we’re fortunate to be a part of a very exciting wireless industry.  Mobile experienced tremendous growth this past year and we expect even more next year.  Strangely, one of our predictions from last year’s blog-o-tainment was nearly correct.  As predicted, Motorola spun off two units, the mobility arm was purchased, and the RAZR returned to life.  Moto, are you serious?  We were joking when we said we wanted to see the RAZR brought back from the dead.

With no intention of actually repeating last year’s prediction success, here’s a glimpse of some of the possibilities for 2012.  From our family to yours, Happy Holidays!

Top Five 2012 Predictions for the Wireless Industry

#5) iCook – Apple does a major overhaul of iTunes and its focus on content.  The top applications in the store are no longer titles such as “Angry Birds”, “Tetris” and “Bejeweled”.  Under the old Apple, the Jobs mentality was to create an ecosystem of content, employing others to build content for the popular iPhone.  Now, with a Cook at the helm, the application focus does a tremendous shift.  The new popular titles in the store are: “iBaking”, “Grilling Shish-Ka-Pods” and “Cook-ing with Apples”.  Sorry Apple… you did that one to yourself when you hired a CEO with the last name of Cook to manage a company named after a fruit.

#4) DeviceOS – After Steve Ballmer finally recognizes that the majority of his employees at Microsoft are using iPhones, he concedes defeat.  At one of his infamous pep rallies at an employee meeting, he screams the new motto, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!” Microsoft approaches Apple and seals a deal to license iOS, under the condition that they rebrand it.  Of course, the typical Microsoft touch is put on the operating system to ensure backwards compatibility with old phone and PC hardware, spending billions of dollars to effectively support the one guy in Halifax, Nova Scotia who wants to run iOS on a 1987 IBM PS/2.  Microsoft’s marketing team changes the “i” in iOS to “D”, for Device.  No one realizes the new acronym until after it ships – DOS.  Oh no!  DOS is back and it runs on a 1987 IBM PC!

#3) China T-Mobile – AT&T’s failed merger with T-Mobile leaves Deutsche Telekom with $4 billion in cash and spectrum, but it lacks a strategy for the future.  After a board meeting in Germany, Deutsche Telekom has the answer.  $4B per year in failed mergers!  The world’s largest carrier, China Mobile, is eager to expand beyond China into the United States.  So, Deutsche Telekom sells off T-Mobile to China Mobile, with another $4B in fees if the merger fails.  Then, secret lobbyists for Deutsche Telekom work their contacts in Congress to veto the transaction, spreading fears of Chinese spying via U.S. telecom networks.  The plan nearly succeeds before China threatens to dump their massive U.S. bond holdings onto the market, sparking widespread inflation fears.  Congress surrenders and allows the transaction to proceed.  China T-Mobile is formed.

#2 – The Gates of RIM – Blackberry’s smartphone market share continues to decline.  RIM acknowledges that its co-CEO arrangement of Balsillie and Lazaridis is not working.  The problem?  They need more CEOs to handle the load.  Two is not enough.  So they add a third CEO, bringing Bill Gates out of retirement.  Gates has spent most of his time on his charitable foundation, but after looking at RIM, he concludes that it fits his charitable requirements – thousands of Canadians are at risk of starvation if RIM collapses.  Gates, now at the helm with two other CEOs, concludes that licensing iOS from Apple is the best direction for RIM.  The problem is that Ballmer has beaten him to Apple and has already licensed iOS.  Gates has to settle for acquiring the Windows Phone assets from Microsoft, who is no longer using it.  Bill Gates is once again in charge of Windows.

#1 – Newt 5 – Newt Gingrich is losing his momentum in the race for the U.S. presidency in 2012.  November is quickly approaching, but his ratings in the polls have taken a hit.  He decides to switch his political platform to HTML 5, believing that it will solve all the world’s problems.  “Newt, how will you fix the economy?” “HTML 5,” is his answer.  “Newt, how will you combat global warming?”  “HMTL5” is his answer, once again.  The Newt 5 strategy fails.  While the strategy might have worked in 2011, HTML5 is so yesteryear of an answer by 2012.  To the dismay of the W3C, all vendors in the mobile industry have already begun work on the new answer to solve the world’s issues – HTML6.  All vendors except one.  The lone exception is Kony Solutions, who is still trying to figure out HTML5.

As Microsoft continues to stumble around in the dark many of the customers who have committed to Windows Mobile applications running on rugged devices are asking, “What about us?” These companies made fairly substantial commitments by purchasing rugged devices with price tags ranging from $800-$2,500. Many now feel like they are being taken for granted or ignored completely and simple assurances that the rugged device manufacturers will support Windows Mobile 6.x devices for the next five years points out the key problem: What about the future?

There isn’t a week that goes by when I don’t have one of many conversations with customers and prospects who are asking what the next platform will be for rugged devices. Many of these same customers express frustration with the lack of available alternatives to the Windows-based handheld devices. Some have gone as far as saying that if there was ANY alternative they would jump ship immediately because they are tired of being held hostage to the Windows Mobile platform.

With the advent of iPhone and Android phones, and the proliferation of apps for these devices, “good enough” just doesn’t cut it anymore. Having a Windows Mobile rugged device that has a dim outlook for future enhancements isn’t new, but it continues to trouble companies that want to future-proof their investments. On the flip side of that coin, product cycles for rugged devices tend to be very long, making it easy for a company to commit to a hardware platform that they know won’t be obsolete before they deploy it. The dilemma comes when companies have no alternative and no solid assurance that the rest of the industry advancements will not be lost on users due to limited OS support.

Contrary to popular belief, there are still situations that require a rugged device and an iPhone with a “sleeve or cover” won’t cut it. Imagine mining, oil and gas exploration, trucking, warehouse or other users trying to do their job in a “hostile environment” with a less-than-durable device. Better yet, what if they need high-volume bar code scanning under any lighting conditions? And don’t get me started about intrinsically safe device requirements for the oil refining and delivery industries. These users groups do exist.

One of the attractions of rugged devices is the simplified support processes they offer a company. I’ve heard hundreds of people say, “For the price of a rugged device I can buy four consumer devices.” The problem is that they don’t actually buy the extra devices and with a consumer product life cycle of only a few months for most phones, you quickly can’t find replacement devices, batteries or accessories and are forced to deploy multiple devices. The iPhone is a bit of an exception to the life cycle woes but it also isn’t exactly cheap or rugged.

Android would seem to be the choice for folks that want to build the next generation of rugged devices. It’s an open standard, multiple manufacturers are building them, there is healthy competition, etc. The problem is that the OS also has a rapid life cycle of evolution making it a moving target. Any device manufacturer considering Android as the alternative to Windows Mobile-based rugged devices will need to address the future proof concerns of the customer prior to pushing their wares. It only makes good sense.

In this day and age of rapid change and ever evolving requirements it seems odd that a device OS that seems to have stalled has become the poster child for long-term stability. How did we get here? And more importantly, how do we get past this point and look to the future?

Charlie Brown, Lucy and the Football

Its fame is not what it once was, but most of you will probably still know what I’m talking about when I say that my relationship with Microsoft’s operating systems is best summed up by the interaction between Charlie Brown and Lucy in Charles Schultz’ classic comic strip, Peanuts.

For those of you whose lives weren’t touched by its 50-year run, it’s enough to know that a recurring gag in Peanuts sees Charlie trying and failing to kick an American football, which Lucy always sweeps away at the last second, leaving him flat on his back in the grass. Fortunately for fans of Schultz’ gentle humour, Lucy is always able to convince Charlie to take another run at it – no matter how many times she’s tricked him in the past.

And so to Microsoft, the Lucy of the software world. Every time I encounter a new version of Windows I am gulled into thinking it has genuinely improved, only to take a run at it and find myself sprawled on the metaphorical turf in a matter of minutes. Microsoft’s operating systems have long seemed to me to consist of a cat’s cradle of half-executed ideas, alive with the possibility of spectacular failure. Call me cynical, but I have always felt the assumption underlying Windows is that the user will manage to convince him or herself that it is they who are at fault when catastrophe strikes – as long as the software looks and feels reasonably impressive for the first 15 minutes. In corporate IT they are often assisted in this by the person who imposed the systems on the end users – i.e. the IT administrator. The systems admin went through the same joy/dismay cycle, is indeed convinced it was his/her own fault, but also knows from experience that they can successfully cover it up because the same effect will apply to the end user. Welcome to the maze of twisty little all alike passages that is the Microsoft death spiral of dwindling self-esteem.

Needless to say, when Windows Phone 7 came out I vowed not to fall for Lucy’s tricks again, but with the much hyped release of the first Nokia-Windows device, and analysts predicting that WP7 will be the second most popular platform by 2015, I felt that I could hardly avoid taking a trial-look at the fatal football on here.

The first thing to say is that as far as the enterprise is concerned, Windows Phone 7 is going to have as much impact as the New York earthquake. Lots of field service teams are using Windows Mobile 6.5 (strange but true – it’s because the only ruggedised handsets you can buy in any volume utilise the platform) but this is unlikely to count as an advantage to its predecessor because of what Chris Hazelton calls “the lack of a clear migration path from Windows Mobile to Windows Phone 7.” In the last year, the number of enterprises issuing/catering for Windows Phone 7 fell from 6 percent to 4 percent (Hazelton/ChangeWave Research again), and the downward trend is not likely to reverse unless the number of consumers taking up the OS rises dramatically, forcing IT departments to cater for it as they are now catering for Android and iOS.

According to IDC and Gartner there’s a decent chance that that reversal will be felt by the time 2015 rolls around. Their thinking seems to be that WP will pick up a lot of the current Symbian user-base as well as a decent chunk of migrants from RIM’s Blackberry platform. Only time will tell if that presumes a little too much on the brand loyalty commanded by Nokia and too little on the wooing power of future iterations of Android and iOS.

As far as the software goes (*lining up to kick the football*)…first impressions are good. Microsoft has obviously taken a look at Android, said “we can do better than that” (correct) and, unusually, looked at Apple and thought “we need to make it different enough to matter” (again, correct). Although knowing what you need to do is not the same as knowing how to do it, there’s much to improve. The integration of Office goes beyond the tokenistic (but not by much) and the inclusion of an XBOX Live ‘hub’ takes advantage of what is currently Microsoft’s most exciting asset. The Zune software makes iTunes look like the painful fait accompli most of us know it to be and Bing Maps deserves the wider audience that integration with the platform should give it. I won’t go into further detail here – for those looking for a fuller review of the software, this is a good place to start.

Of course, even if Microsoft doesn’t pull the football out from under their users this time round, how far it flies will depend upon a factor that we haven’t even brought into the equation thus far: the vibrancy of the ecosystem. In other words, if nobody is making apps for WP7, it hardly matters how well the platform stands up and we can revise those 2015 estimates down to zero. As of July this year, the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace held 25,000 apps, against 350,000 for the App Store, and 150,000 for the Android Marketplace (numbers via CNET). Incomparable – but not insignificant.

Microsoft has an expensive road ahead of it in 2012. It will need to spend a lot on wooing both consumers and developers, even as it pushes towards Windows Phone 8 (which is looking like an unnecessary distraction at this point) or the take-up of the platform will sputter and die. And with desktop computing in not-that-long-term decline, that is unthinkable.

Do you eat healthy? Do you know what goes into your food? Sometimes I’d rather not know. Take for instance the recent egg scandal around a large producer for McDonald’s. Or this article about everyday food such as potatoes and popcorn that pose hidden dangers.

In this month’s installment of the Mobile Gourmet Review, I have been playing with an app called Fooducate. The purpose of this app is to educate consumers on more than 200,000 packaged food products that we eat everyday. It’s like having a dietician in the palm of your hands. Fooducate provides a letter grade for a food based on the analysis of the food’s known ingredients list and nutritional values.

As a 20-something, I’ve had the luxury of growing up with technology as a bigger part of my life than certainly my parents and their generation did.  There are photos of me as an adorable infant sitting on my father’s lap trying to type on the keyboard while he worked on his Commodore 64 or his work Compaq Portable (for the record – “portable” had a whole new meaning back then).  Later at school I learned to count using games we played on some of the first Apple computers used in education, and at home I split time with my brother and sister on our IBM AT and later the Compaq Presario 425 Desktop.

I bet kids today can't imagine using these in school. Then again I bet my parents couldn't have imagined I'd get to use this either.

In the early 90’s my dad discovered Prodigy, which predated AOL in our house and was my first window in the future of how technology and the internet specifically were going to change our lives. And yet, it shocks me still every time kids and technology collide in amazing ways.

As a YouTube fan, I’ve come across a couple hilarious and adorable videos about kids and technology that I thought I’d share with you all, as a constant reminder of how quickly the new world order changes.  For me, it was helping my dad and mom program digital clocks with ease, or figuring out their Nokia cell phones and what five numbers they should program, which frankly came very naturally to me J. For the next generations there are a slew of 80’s and 90’s pop culture mishaps I’m sure I’ll have to answer for and explain, but technology is definitely not a topic I expect I’ll have to do much teaching about.

Check out this mini-Steve Jobs-esque app developer

Thomas Suarez. App developer, TEDx presenter and 6th grader.

An adorable little boy and his iPad Bridger is adorable, two years old and better at operating an iPad than half of my friends.

And one baby struggling to get the magazine to “go to the next page.” This baby is learning early on that technology creates expectations of the world that can frustrate us sometimes.

Many years ago I was performing a QA test suite on some software. Everything seemed to be going swimmingly well until I started to test “outside the box.” I had completed the standard test fare and had begun what I like to call “adversarial testing.” More accurately it could be described as “what if” testing.

Following this process I found a bug that seemed pretty severe to me. If a user entered a valid username but an invalid password the application would crash and burn. The same held true for valid password and invalid username. But when you entered gibberish in both fields you received a lovely pop up stating that your username and/or password were incorrect and to try again. Huh? What’s that all about?

I reported this as a Severity 1 bug (since it stops a user from using the application, at least temporarily) and went about my business trying to break something else. It wasn’t until our weekly bug review that the humor really started. During our review call the engineering team said they didn’t accept my bug as a valid test case and therefore were closing it as invalid. I protested vehemently. “You can’t close that bug, you need to fix it!” Since this was my first time to this rodeo, I was a bit shocked by the reply.

The lead engineer simply said, “That’s stupid. Just tell the customer not to do that.”  He went one step further asking, “Why would the customer want to enter the right username and wrong password anyway?” Had he never heard of a typo? What about fat-finger syndrome on a keyboard? Was he kidding?

I quickly learned he was not kidding and had no clue where I was coming from. To be completely fair, I had no clue where he was coming from either, but assumed he was ignorant of what happens to his work when it hits the real world. He wasn’t moved by impassioned speech about customer experience and our reputation, but fortunately our engineering VP was and ordered them to fix it (prior to delivery).

What’s the point?

When it comes to your mobile project you need to use your User Acceptance Testing (UAT) process as your opportunity to mitigate your risk once your solution hits your full user community. Start by testing the proper way to use the application. Ensure it does exactly what it needs to do (and you should know these requirements from your detailed requirements sessions that I have pounded on you about in previous blog posts). Once you have validated that the solution works as promised start the adversarial testing.  Test like a user. Find out what happens when somebody enters a typo. If the user is impatient and tries to hit a button 27 times because it doesn’t react fast enough does the app crash? What happens if you remove the device battery in the middle of your test suite? Does the application recover elegantly or is it an ugly scene? Use your imagination. Make mistakes you would never make but real users might, and see what happens.

All of these scenarios will occur with frightening frequency in the field and knowing what happens BEFORE you send the app out to the masses will allow you to either correct the bug and prevent it from happening or prepare your support team for the troubleshooting task. And, remember, “Just don’t do that” is not an acceptable response to any user no matter how silly the issue may appear on the surface.