*But were afraid to ask.

Presented by Brian Fling, Directory of Strategy at BlueFlavor

Most of what follows references his slides, available at http://www.blueflavor.com/sxsw2007/

(In his screens, internet users = desktops)

“Find a need and fill it.” His dad created the portion-controlling soda dispenser… but originally for beer. Didn’t figure out it was actually needed for fast food. Put solution in front of the actual problem.

Software referenced in the presentation:

• Flash Lite.
• Opera Mini.

Notes on various slides in the presentation:

• Majority of users still have smaller screens with their feature phones — our conference Treos, etc. are in the minority. Design VERTICALLY (not horizontally like in presentation slide)
• New WAP 2.0 is better than old WAP, in many ways indistinguishable from other standards. XHTML almost = XHTML-MP.
• Firefox and Opera both have tools to help develop for the mobile web.
• On the mobile web, phone number should be links. May not make sense to serve the same code and modify with stylesheets, for example.
• On a mobile device, navigation is content. It can’t be to the side, etc. Assigned accesskeys make much more sense on mobile as well. Ordered lists (rather than unordered lists) can show the accesskey (instead of having to write what key it is.)
• About document styles, use document styles (unless a larger project, at which point they can become unmanageable — OK to use linked styles then).

Comments on “Context vs. Content” Slide:

SSR = Small Screen Rendering — Opera mini, Palm Blazer — app automatically changes formatting when a site isn’t optimized for mobile web. OK, but not nearly as a good of an experience for a user compared to an optimized site.

Stylesheets are OK approach, but if you hide content with CSS, the user still has to download it. Mobile specific site is best for user, but most difficult to develop.

On Testing:

Focus on five phones — at least one Razer, Treo, some small screen phones… If you do that and have good code, you’ll probably be OK.

Check out dev.mobi (development guide). and mr.dev.mobi (mobile site testing). Also check out mobiledesign.org.

Q&A Session:

Q: With the coming iPhone, since it’s going to render the real web, are people just not going to develop for the mobile web?

A: Nokia has been using Safari for their browser for over a year and a half… iPhone will be using browser as well. More worried people will develop for just the iPhone and forget about all the users out there on small screens. Expects iPhone to have a big impact… Just everone is waiting to see what it will be.

Lebkowsky / Nerad / Zuckerman / Faris / Amanullah / Tesanovic (translator from serbia)

Lebkowsky:  Speech isn’t free in many places, not just the ones you typically think of.  Even this country, haven’t you had a moment where you were kind of looking over your shoulder wondering if you should write something?  Maybe because of an employer, customer or mom or dad reading it.  Freedom has a relatively loose definition…  How do you define it?  Every day you need to figure what you’re free to blog.  Broader issue than just where free speech isn’t allowed.

Faris:  Involved with OpenNet Inititiative.  At one time it was hoped the Internet would be an open place, an open frontier not subject to national soverienty.  That idea is pretty much dead.  Check out opennet.net.  Rules of censorship have changed and will continue to evolve.  They’ll continue to change, creating opportunities and dangers.

Zuckerman: Watches citizen media.  Check freedomhouse.org.  (photo of  freedom map).  In many areas moderate oppression results in huge independent citizen media.  Look at Iran:  Press shut down, use of blogging exploded.  In some cases some bloggers have their entries smuggled out of jails on paper and then posted by a friend or family member.  States respond by blocking sites, blocking tools, registering bloggers and threatening safety.  Pakistan has blocked Blogger, for example.  Bahrain forces registration of blogs.  Ways to fight back:  Mirror sites, bring attention countries that are blocking and sites that are blocked.  We must fight for free speech for everyone, whether they’re pro-democratic or not.

Nerad:  Exec. director of Tor project.  Applied for 501c3.  Produces suite of software which can be used by those who want to circumvent firewalls and protect identity online.  Users get routed through on of 1000+ proxy servers.  People can see what you’re writing, but not where you cam from.  Prevents people blogging about democracy in China from getting a knock on their door at night.

We talk about free speech about seeing something people should have right now, but we need to remember many cultures that free speech is somewhat of a new idea culturally.  Tor is a safety valve.  Many countries realize that the internet is inevitable, but try to manage it.  China allows the Internet, but throttles it…  For example they blocked many proxy servers two weeks before Tianemann anniversary, but allowed access a week after.  Basically, China said, OK, you can go back to subverting the great firewall, so not quite as cut-and-dried as it may seem.  “Live action role-playing game involving Internet diplomacy.”

Amanullah:  Trying to encourage blogging in Muslim world.  Creating a moderate and dynamic Islam requires intellecutal freedom.

Forcers against Muslim bloggers:  Governments, extremists.  It’s tough to run an open bookstore in the Muslim world, same is true with blogging.  Despite this, muslims are coming out on blogosphere, they desperately want to join the modern world and get their voices out.

How does blogging get us there?  Starts with simple questions, Saudi girl asking why she can’t drive, for example.  That starts the ball rolling.  Also, breaking the monopoly on information.

The freer the discourse is, the more moderate the Islamic practice is.

How can we help?  Use technology to pry the doors open from the outside.  Read and publicize work of bloggers.  Reduce anarchy (and extremism) in Muslim world.  Friend went to Iraq to start paper and got chased out by extremists within six months.  Advocacy for persecuted bloggers and press freedom in general…  Not just for pro-US or other specific bloggers.  Must push for general press freedom.

Tesanovic:  Feels she’s a case study.  Feminist in Yugoslavia.    Had a mailing-list diary telling people what was going on during war.  Noticed during bombing of Serbia that both the national goverment and NATO were not reporting on what was actually happening.  National, everything’s fine, NATO, no collateral damages.  She reported on this via her blog.  ABC finally found her, but didn’t want to user her name because they wanted to her to be safe.  She decided being public was her only protection, so she wouldn’t become one of the disappeared.  Told people who she was, full name, plus email address.  And she still lives there.

Q:  Do people us anonymity to spread lies, and is Tor preasured to give those people up?

Neard:  No one can pressure us, because we don’t keep the info.  We can’t see it.  That said, people can use mail to spread lies and illegal content, but we don’t allow people to open other people’s mail.

——————-

Zuckerman:  We’re finally seeing a net breaking away from English-only.  Getting around linguistic barriers is huge.  His group translates around 12 languages right now.  Translating is one thing, but what happens when people want to talk together?

Nerad:  China could shut down Tor, but ministers over there saying “if you could shut down Tor, wouldn’t _____ have already done it.”

Lebkowsky:  It’s possible to have free speech without conveying actual information.

Amanullah:  Knows a lot of people who love to battle ideas, but afraid gov. will knock on their door asking “why did you visit this site.”

—————-

Q: How does this follow the tradition of countries without free press, but with neighbors with free press?  Expatriate press.

Zuckerman:  Global group of expatriates is emerging as a new political and information class.  Debate outside borders can influence voting and elections inside them.  (Debate outside among expatriates, then communicated to those inside.)

Faris:  Some countries, like Burma, that communication isn’t going to get in.

Q:  What about blogging gap, those who have access to blogs, vs. those who don’t have electricity?

Zuckerman:  Economic barriers are utterly enormous.  That said, in cases community radio + mobile phones = blogs.  Web is still an elite medium, we just need to amplify those who are online and get them out to a larger audience.

Nerad:  Tor is working on those working on the digital divide…  Very aware of it as an issue of free speech.

Q:  How can this help whistleblowing?

Neard:  Much happens on systems of those who are having the whistle blown on them.  Check out epic.org, and Privacy International.

Note (March 17th): This entry may be a bit hosed in the area of statement attribution. I believe I have the statements linked with those who actually said them, but please take what follows with a grain of salt.

I still have some cleanup to do on this one…

Panel:

• Richard
• Burton
• Beckham
• Combee
• Zbar

Beckham: Design considerations: control, branding, standards and trust.

Zbar: Group has done work tmobile and others. Showing web example of zannel.com site. Mobile content distribution.

Q: Did designing for mobile first influence design?

Zbar: Took a lot to keep the web version simple. After desiging for mobile, wanted to fill all white space.

Combee: Developed palm tool for sxsw. (Look into this.)

Burton: Convergent services: One service, many devices. Convergent design: Ecosystem (how do you design for an area when users already have expectations for the space), touch points, cross-disciplines (designing for the web today, how can I design for mobile in the future), sweet spot (), design system (a base where you understand your design framework and what your app needs to do that you can put across all devices — object-orientated approach to design).

Don’t be consistent for consistency’s sake.

Richard: Spends a lot of time trying to get customers to NOT be consistent with web presences when desiging for mobile.

Burton: Design for the device: Environment (bright sunlight, etc), Activity (kiosk design–user may have baby hanging off them, etc), Device (constraints of display, input devices, and issues with different platforms on the device… browser wars for mobile).

Zbar: Of the 100 million mobile devices that support video, there are over 10 different standards that they have to support video for. Also wide range of network speeds. 1) detect streaming or download, network speed, maybe send to email depending on video size.

Burton: Screen: Resolution and orientation changes from phone to phone. Font and color support (gradients may be bad, for example)(mobile, everythign must be small, kiosk everything must be big), input device (TV device may have a zoom button, for example; you need to know all the features your users may be using), focus state

Combee: Palm started with stylus, then added five-way navigator. Had to keep one while accounting for the other. User feedback (status bars may not exist on a mobile device — issues around how you show feedback, tell the user what’s happening).

Richard: In some cases subtltey is overrated.

Burton: User expectations. Really tricky when designing for a new platform.

Q: What’s the place of advertising on mobile devices?

Richard: My general take is advertising gets in the way of what the users are trying to do. If advertising puts a user off task, the provider should find some other way to make money. “Anything that gets in my way is an aggivation.” Lessens goodwill for brands.

Zbar: You can brand entertaintment.

Zbar: People don’t know what phone acronyms like SMS mean. Have to use common language… Don’t use terms people don’t know. “Send this to my phone,” for example.

Q: Lots of the decisions makers are guys who don’t even own PDAs yet. How do you sell people on all the different devices they need to design for? How do you show ROI on this?

Zbar: Consistent question from investors, why do you need $6 million? Simple examples: YouTube transcodes one format, they do 10. Front end may be simple, but quite a matrix on the back end. 20 million users interested in video right now in US, and we’re way behind other countries where adoption is much higher.

Combee: We’re not going to get to one device that does everything, but a bunch of devices that do one thing well.

Sunday morning, kind of quiet. I wonder how many people forgot to move their clocks forward last night.

Saturday was pretty good. The panels as a whole seemed to get off to a better start than last year, although from talking to others I may just have been lucky with my selection. I got stuck in the video-enabled consolation section after missing the start of Kathy Sierra’s keynote yesterday, but at least I got lunch at Las Manitas out of it.

Speaking of Las Manitas, it sounds like some development group wants to demolish the block to put up a huge hotel. They say Las Manitas is an institution and that they’ll move it, but so much of what makes the place great is the building itself. The holy trinity of good food, trashed patio and bad service really should be preserved. Besides, I’m sure any replacement building wouldn’t require guests to walk through the kitchen to get to the patio, and that would be a tragedy.

Hung out at Barcamp Austin last night. I didn’t really pay attention to the presentations that much, but did run into a few people and have some good conversations about tagging, identity 2.0 and other things that would make my friends want to slap me.

Lots of network connectivity problems today. Not sure when I’ll be able to post this.

Ted Rhinegold / Shanalyn Victor / Gabe Rivera / Tara Hunt / Ryan Carson

myspacemaps.info

shoemoney.com

Cheap to fail quickly and often.

“Dogster is so silly it’s hard to speak seriously about it.” – Rhinegold

Laura Moorhead / Robert Fabricant / Jeff Bonforte / Andrew Blum / Eliot Van Buskirk / Rafael (Yahoo!, worked on Pipes) / Rogas (Editor-In-Chief, Endgadget)

Rogas: Technology is driving a lot of social change in our society. Democritizing media, but also changing how we interact with others and understand ourselves. The idea of always being connected by the device in our pocket changes the way we think of ourselves relating to society.
Blum: When you compare how quickly technology has changed compared to say, cities, the change is pretty striking.

Fabricant: Social position is started to be reflected by how people are shown in social mediums. People’s sense of social security has been affected as a result. Trying to confirm through their networks their place in society.

Van Buskirk: Widgets are doing to the web what the web did to society. Lots of splintering and loss of place.

Q: How is place changing?

Blum: Check plazes. Geographic social networking.

Rogas: People have a different sense of privacy than they did even five or ten years ago. Being very relevatory about one’s life online is very comfortable to many young people. Staying private doesn’t make sense to them. “I don’t want to feel old when I don’t blog about everything I do.” Kids are constantly negotiating a private and public sense.

Fabricant: Exact same trend in business world, just represented differently. (Checking of email, IM at work, how available people are to other people.) Kind of an idea of uber-self or super-self.

Van Buskirk: While users are stealing data from companies, they’re doing the same to us. Collecting data.

Q: With the entire generation going online, is there gonig to be a new generation that goes the opposite direction?
Rogas: If there is a backlash, we may not know about it, as they won’t be blogging about it.

Van Buskirk: May seem more cliques, you only get the address of the network if you’ve met someone.

—————

Rogas: Mfg tend to freak out too much over people hacking and modifying their devices. By allowing it, though, you make yourself seem more consumer friendly.

Van Buskirk: Still waiting for a larger commitment to customization from larger companies. Business are kind of hooked on that, but still want their products to be disposable.

Rogas: iphone will be a closed platform that people won’t be able to change. Goes against trend towards adaptability and innovation.

VanBuskirk: Apple will miss out if they don’t open up the platform.

Rafael: Need more openess from providers as well. Apple needed to push a closed device to get carrier support. Offering hackable devices on a mobile network could give more business to mobile providers.

VanBuskirk: Social trends happenign with computers can’t happen with mobile devices because vendors control everything.

Rogas: We’re going to have to get to another generation of wireless networks before we see something like that.

Q: What are population or demographic trends that are going to influence social and tech.

Blum: Baby boomers having lots of children with big TVs, cable cards, and video cameras. All the infrastrucutre is all there for videoconfrencing.

Audience question: How long for internation trends to trickle down to US?

Blum: Look at how long it took restrictions on carbon emissions to get here.

Van Buskirk: As countries realize they can make money by not havign everything locked and DRMd, we’ll see more coming from other countries in coming years.

I’d been hoping for a relatively quiet week leading up to SXSW, but unfortunately it’s been nothing of the sort. In addition to work being more chaotic than usual, I had a less than stellar cholesterol test (overall cholesterol down, but triglycerides way up) and problems with my braces (one of the anchors snapped off for a second time). On top of all of that, Lisa’s oldest guinea pig, Ling–the so-called “big pig” our home Wi-Fi network is named after–had to be put down Tuesday night. So, it’s been a pretty crappy week.

As far as heading to Austin tomorrow, am I excited? Yes, very. Am I ready? Not in the slightest. I’d hoped to go in rested, but instead I’m going in exhausted.

As with last year, I’ll be using this space to take panel notes over the next few days.  Things should get back to normal next week Wednesday.

Pretty quiet around here lately. I’ve been busy. There’s been a lot of extra stuff at work (which, well, I’m going to have to get used to), but in addition most of my free time has been taken up studying for the GMAT. I just finished a very intensive course put on by Kaplan last week, but I still have a lot of studying to do before my April 2nd test date. On top of that, next weekend brings SXSW Interactive. That’ll cost me five days, not to mention the few days I’ll need after it to recover.

In other words, I have way too much going on. I’m not complaining, really. It’s much better than not having anything to do.

We put in an offer on a three-bedroom condo in south Minneapolis, contingent on us finding a buyer for our current place. The sellers used our offer to bid up two non-contingent offers, one of which they eventually accepted, so we’re still looking. The market’s pretty tough for our price range.

I love the weather. I just wish I had more time to enjoy it.