Girl Geek Dinner #5: How to Succeed in Mobile

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CORZINE: Good evening. Hi, welcome to Girl Geek Dinner #5 How to Succeed in Mobile. Thanks,
you guys, for coming out tonight on a stormy, trafficky, awful night out there. I really
appreciate it. Hope you got some food and got some drinks. The bathrooms are back through
the cafe area, if you need those. And we will be having some coffee and desert afterwards
and more networking. So if you can stick around, if you want to chat. My name is Kriz Corzine.
I'm the moderator tonight and I'd like to introduce our panel now. Oh, and Angie Chang
is basically the brainiac behind this, if everybody can give it up for Angie. She's
done fabulous job at the Girl Geek Dinners. Thank you, Angie. And thanks to all the Google
staff for all the swag, Holly, Mike--and thanks, you guys, a lot. Just a couple of things,
you can take pictures in this room. That's fine, but please do not take any photos outside
of this room. You know, as you probably suspect, Google has some IP things going on, so. What
else? We are being filmed for YouTube. So if you have questions at the end, we're going
to try to run mics out to people. Please try not to yell out questions in the middle because
we weren't, aren't going to be able to capture that very well. We'll try to capture everything
on the mic for future generations at the very end. So why don't we get started on how to
succeed in mobile. We're start down at the end, Christina. Christina is formerly of YouTube
and currently of Pickv. She worked on the UI for YouTube and also worked on setting
up the mobile platform for YouTube, is that correct? Karyln Neel of eBay who is disclaimer,
we work together and--but she is not my boss, so it's okay. She put together a lot of the
eBay mobile app for the iPhone and is even currently being brought in to do new flows
for eBay's mobile. Angana--I'm sorry, I don't like to trip in over your name because I want
to say your last name. She is here with us from Google. So an Android PM working out
for all your questions about Android and the Nexus One. She's the one in the green sweater.
Mary Ann Cotter. Mary Ann Cotter is an entrepreneur. She won one of the first Android prices for
her fabulous design, Cooking Capsules, and she is just wrapping up the newest, what is
it, the feature part, recipe book? >> COTTER: It's a [INDISTINCT] recipe book,
recipe collection out. >> CORZINE: Yeah. The newest recipe collection
that is brunch so for all of you food fans, check out Mary Ann's app on Android. Sarah
Allen, the fabulous Sarah Allen. Sarah Allen does a lot for women intact. She is pretty
much everything I go to. I love her to death. She does a fantastic ruby on rails tutorial,
and classes for, specifically for women who are new to development. And she is currently
CTO of Mightyverse, it's a new mobile company based in San Francisco. And then we have Corrine
Chan. She is--what is your title exactly at Chictopia?
>> CHAN: Co-founder and CTO. >> CORZINE: Co-founder and CTO. Co-founder
and CTO, the two CTOs are together, of course. Formerly of Wells Fargo, Corrine worked on
the mobile app at Wells Fargo as well and production management. Could you say that's
pretty accurate? Yes, working close with UED mobile development, yes. And that's our crew
so thank you guys for coming. We'll start out, you know, I just wanted to do a brief
overview. How many people here are working currently in mobile or they're working in
a company that has mobile available and you'd like to work in it. Okay, cool. And who here
knows nothing about mobile and you don't--you came to figure it out? Great, great. Okay,
good. That's good to know, excellent. Just kind of a brief overview for the panel, we'll
start out the first question. Basically this is about context, why did you guys get involved
in mobile? What attracted all of you ladies to the mobile side of either YouTube, eBay,
doing it yourself, working within Google, you know, within the larger organizations
you worked for, or as an entrepreneur? Let me start with Christina. Sorry, I'm kind of
picking on you because you're the farthest away.
>> BRODBECK: I think for me, I was always sort of interested in mobile. I had done my
grad school project on instructional design for handheld devices. And the first two years
I was at YouTube, I worked on the desktop site. And I kind of wanted to do something
that was fun and different and innovative. And at that time, you know, myself and then
my friend, we both decide--who's actually currently my co-founder at Pickv and YouTube.
In general, we saw that, you know, 3G was coming out more 3G hand--devices will be coming
more popular and that, you know, YouTube content, its small net-sized content, right, and it
fit very well in the mobile device. And we're like, "Hey, let's just give this a shot and
see what happens, right?" Like now is the time to do this and it turned out pretty well,
I guess. >> NEEL: So, I started being interested in
mobile probably back in 2001. I was working for a company called Quidnunc. It was a British-based
digital consultancy in the States. And way back then, the company allowed basically all
employees to explore kind of their interest in new technologies and back then broadband
was used as a word that was considered a newer technology; pretty funny. So, of course, I
was very interested in mobile back then, but only dreaming of the possibilities because
the technology and the networking carriers just didn't have the possibilities that we
were talking about with, you know, the old Starbucks marketing when you walk by it. So
there are so--basically, when I came to eBay, I had an opportunity to work on the iPhone
application. This was before the App Store launch. So we're one of the 10 featured at
www.dc, and when the opportunity came up, I definitely jumped on it. It was basically
me and a product manager, and we launched the app and it was a great success. So that's
kind of how I got involved. >> GHOSH: Purely by accident. So, some 10
years ago, I joined Ericsson back in North Carolina, Research Triangle Park. And after
I joined the research team, I understood, wow, the potential of the technology and the
wireless and ever since then I loved it; mobile. I cannot even think of a carrier outside wireless.
After Ericsson, I was at Sun, and now I'm at Google all doing wireless mobile to our
phones. >> COTTER: I think the glarf for me for mobile
was I like to look at a platform as a, think about what's unique about it. If it's new,
like mobile as it was emerging, the fact that it was emerging, and this is sounds a little
silly, but the fact that it was mobile, something you couldn't take with you. And that presents
a whole bunch of unique opportunities, I think. And so that was exciting to me. And then also,
Android kind of lured me in once I started just investigating mobile because it was open
and there was a way for independent developers to get in the gates which there wasn't really
so much elsewhere at that time. So that's what kind of lured me in. And the Android
developer challenge, that's a good incentive too.
>> ALLEN: So I've actually been historically uninterested in mobile. I always felt that
people were really only interested in it because of the gadgets and that the lock that the
carriers had stifled creativity. But in the last few years, mobile phones are more powerful
than computers were when I started programming. And I think that even though they're more
constrained than today's computer, it's really exciting because of the capabilities of the
mobile devices. Let them do things that computers can't really do, kind of like what you're
saying. And so, I got really excited about mobile and have gotten into mobile development
in the last year actively. And I'm just really interested in the new different types of apps
that you can't do on desktops that you can do on mobile.
>> CHAN: I basically started becoming interested in mobile as it came to sought, to seek me
through Wells Fargo. I had an opportunity to go into the mobile banking development
group there. And the reason, one of the reasons I thought it was very appealing was because
that was the, this was probably around three years ago where still a lot of people were
carrying around Razors and maybe BlackBerries but it was way before iPhone. And you can
kind of see the emerging, you know, the PDA out there, that it was going to become the
next wave of, you know, the technology was going to be focusing on mobile devices. And
coming from a PC kind of web app development world, I was sort of plateauing on that and
I was curious as to how mobile development was different from just your typical web applications.
So, that's how I started getting into it. And then once iPhone came, it really was a
validation that the mobile industry was really where it was going to be. And so with Wells
Fargo and also with Chictopia now, we have our own iPhone app here too. That, you know,
that's where it's leading and now even further with Android phones, furteher validation that
we're in the right space. >> CORZINE: Yeah, and I got into it for the
devices. I was blissfully unaware of the carrier kind of oppression of anything interest that
you really wanted to do working. And trying to get on deck with a carrier was a big wakeup
call at a former start-up that I worked at. And, but, I could see the potential. It was
like 1994 or 1995 all over again. It was just amazing. Plus, you could carry this around.
It's like I have cheat sheets in there sitting right here, you know. So that to me; it was
just powerful and impressive. And so that brings me to the next point of like, you guys,
you create things for mobile, what do your users want? Can you talk a little bit about
how you discover what kind of--what you're going to put out there for people? Not so
much the technical side per se but kind of a bigger like, you know, what's the user feedback
and what kind of things are they looking for? What do people want in a phone? And personally,
what do you want on your phone? Let's start with Corinne.
>> CHAN: Oh, Okay. I mean, having an application that's mobile means that, you know, you have
to think about what does the customer want to do on the go? And with the Wells Fargo
application in particular, there is, there are actually three different kind of platforms
that they have. One is text spanking and that's essentially SMS where you can view your account
balances, et cetera, just read only information. But then you can also use the browser on your
mobile device and then view your balances and do bill pay and transfers. And then there's
also the applications, downloadable applications, such as the iPhone app where, you know, it's
very similar to the browser experience with added features for the app. And one of the
things you think about is you want to do something immediately on your--but you're not at home
so what would that be? One is you need money with Wells so, you know, ATMs. How can I find
one easily based on where I am and now with how many phones have GPS that is one of the
big things that you can leverage. And I think with the lot of apps, that's one of the primary
assets for the phone that is very unique to it that the PC doesn't have. The other is
just what kind of things you have to do, kind of, you don't really have the time to go home
to do it. So in this case, stuff like paying your bills. Or if you're like, your daughter
calls up and says, "I need $200 right away because I want these pairs of shoes," you
know, like, "Can you transfer that money over ASAP?" and you know, you have your phone there
and you can do that for them. Stuff like that. Or the other one with our app with Chictopia,
we think about, "Well, you're not at home but you just want to pass the time because
you're standing in line and, you know, you want to just do something." And so, one of
the things we have is you can browse photos and just kind of, you know, if you like to
do that and, you know, that's something you can do. I think that's where games kind of
come into play for apps, so. >> ALLEN: I'll chime in. I totally agree with
you in terms of thinking about what you can do with the mobile phone that you can't do
anywhere else and what do you need to do when you're stuck somewhere. And what we're doing
at Mightyverse is we're really interested in how people communicate across languages
and across cultures. And we have, the iPhone App let's you, "But you can download right
now, just look for Mightyverse." We just released it three weeks ago. The app lets you access
native language, recordings that are video recordings. But we don't really know exactly
how people will use this app. We have all sorts of ideas. We could spend the next year
developing our ideal app before we release it. Instead, we thought of the smallest possible
feature set that we could possibly bear to release and we released that. And you might
look at the app and think, "Oh, what are they thinking?" But what we're doing is we are
working with people who are interested in using language that they don't, that they're
not native in and working with them to figure out, to test the use-cases and to see what
features they need and what the app really resonates with. And this is, you know, sort
of a practice Vogel development. And I think it's a really neat opportunity because you
have this mobile app that people can use in their real life and you can witness how people
use it in the context of their real life interactions. >> COTTER: Excuse me. I think people really
want something they can use in their everyday, and that's why in our case with Cooking Capsules,
it's something that makes life easier. And that's what I want from an app. I want something
that--there's too much going on already, too much complications so something that simplifies
your life; so the simpler the better. So you know, you said the very least feature set
that in the beginning that's what we're doing too. It's just watch, shop, and make. I mean,
its watch a little cooking show, like two-minute cooking show, find out how to make something;
shop with your built-in ingredients list on your way home; go home; make it with your
checklist. And, you know, and there's such a temptation to keep adding all these bells
and whistles and, of course, you know, everybody's saying, "Oh, you could do this and you could
do that," and say, "Oh, yeah, I could do that." You know, but you got this really stop and
be very deliberate about what you add because I think really what people want is simplicity
and that's what I want too. >> GHOSH: Something of interest to me is like
to see how people are using their mobile phones outside the U.S. especially in emerging countries.
While I hear stories about mobile phone being the only communication mechanism in that city
or village and they share this phone amongst the community to talk. Sometimes that's also
the only way they are accessing the Internet. That's pretty powerful.
>> COTTER: Uh-huh. >> GHOSH: That's really powerful. I heard
stories about farmers in Brazil using the mobile phone. There's one mobile phone. They
use it on an hourly basis to check the prices of coffee beans in international market so
they can time their setting of coffee. That's pretty, pretty amazing.
>> NEEL: I think, ultimately, technology should make people's lives better. Help them make
better decisions. Like you said, helps simplify their lives. So when, fortunately, when I
was creating my app, our community is very vocal. So you were talking about how do you
create things that customers want and how do you know that you're doing that? So we
also tried to keep things very simple. And, you know, I thought about people, what do
they need when they're out and about, you know. Like I said, making better decisions,
should I buy this thing now or should I buy it later? You know, do I want to be more socially
responsible and buy a used one? I'm a business owner and if I don't get that--return that
communication, I might not get that sale. And so I need to maintain my business and
keep things going while I'm out and about. So, those were some key things that we looked
at just hours and hours of listening to our customers to help create a better product
in the end. >> BRODBECK: I think I definitely agree with
everybody here that start with like a base feature set, right, and then iterate upon
that and keep it as simple as possible. And one thing that, you know, I definitely learned
is people don't have a lot of time when they're on their mobile device, right? It's usually
a short period of time. They're at the doctor's office or, you know, on the train or something
like that. And so, you know, at YouTube, we definitely took that into consideration when
we were designing the UI. For instance, when we added related videos to be closer to the
video thumbnail on the watch page our views went up, right? Just an easy way to expose
more content so people can, you know, find it very easy in a short period of time. But
then, I'm also constantly surprised by mobile. Two things that, you know, I don't understand
how people, you know, why they're using it this way and it's very surprising. Which is
why, like mobile for instance, we thought that browse would be more popular on mobile
than search, right? Because it's kind of difficult if you don't have a QWERTY keyboard to type
in you know the name of the video. But actually, what we found was that people search more
instead of browse on a mobile device. >> CORZINE: Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of unexpected
that you get depending on who your audience and who your users are. Yeah, I noticed that
the same way as we were setting up that social network online or on mobile and doing a barebones
framework. The same kind of thing like we kind of have an idea of what people how they
used it and we kind of understood what some of the things were they need but you set up
with that barebones and you put it out there, and you really listened hard and you worked
closely with your community manager or the person who's doing the, taking care of feedback.
And, you know, you just rapidly put stuff out there that people demand if they're screaming
for it. It's a good idea to try to work it into if you can align it with your business
strategy. Work it into the, what's you're releasing. How many of you guys have worked
with WAP? Or is anybody working on an agnostic platform? Is it mostly, are you mostly working
with apps, you know? Doing the WAP site, no? Okay. Sarah, I expected you to be more agnostic
with phone gap and... >> ALLEN: Well, specifically, I'm not doing
any WAP stuff. But, I do a bunch of cross-platform work and it--while--And I have a consulting
company, which is helping me fund my little start-up. And my partners and I still have
separate jobs and I have a business where we do mobile apps for people. And we've used
a couple of technologies where mobile is a technology that let's you build a single source
and Ruby code and HTML and CSS and build the same app across multiple platforms. And PhoneGap
is another one that let's you do multiple cross-platform targets. And those platforms
will let you target a number of different platforms; which is really helpful if you
have a pretty broad, if you need pretty broad adoption and if your App has a UI that works
well with fairly standard UI elements. For something that is very integrated with video,
it doesn't make a lot of sense if you have game-like interaction. It doesn't make a lot
of sense. But for the majority of mobile apps, if you want to just extend your presence to
mobile using one of these cross-platform frameworks can make a lot of sense.
>> CORZINE: And some of you may have known Symbian opened up that, I think in the last
week, Android is considered much more open than Apple's iPhone platform. Do you guys
have any, you know, comments about some best practices working in either/or, and kind of
what you like or why you either--if you made the decision or if you helped made the decision
which direction you went with deciding which platform you want to go into? If we can talk
about that a little bit, that'd be great. >> CHANG: So, I can speak a little bit about
how I guess Wells makes their decisions. It basically was a time-to-market thing and also
a demand based on how many users are on that particular phone. So at the time, we were
responding to iPhone because there was, we could tell that there was a huge spike in
users that were using the iPhone. And it only made sense for us to jump into that whole
industry of creating an iPhone app, so that's how we kind of got started with that. And
there definitely is a ramp up in learning Objective-C if you don't already and a whole
process around getting that application into the store which--with Wells, I wasn't really
that a part of that. But with my own App with Chictopia, it definitely did feel some of
the pains with putting that in the store which, you know, I, it's interesting for if you're
coming from a technical background, you learn a new language. So for me, I mean I was happy
to do it. But, you know, just to expect that, there is a little bit of transition with that.
I think one of the appeals with that Palm is trying to do, with the Palm OS, is that
it they're trying to make it a lower barrier to entry and make it just, you know, using
HTML and CSS and you're able to, you know, put up an app easily. As well as, you know,
with, I believe, Android with it being Java based that a lot of people are already using
Java. And there's a lot more people that know Java versus Objective-C, that it makes it
a lot easier for people to create Apps on there. And I personally think that's going
to take off a lot faster than Palm but yeah. >> ALLEN: Yeah, I want to add something about
WebKit. >> CORZINE: Sarah is a developer.
>> ALLEN: Oh, yeah. Just speak to the developers in the audience. But I think it's important
to even realize, you know, as a business owner or making any decisions or technology decisions
about mobile that it's really exciting that we're seeing a lot, seeing a number of different
platforms adopt WebKit. So it's on Android and iPhone and now, Palm. BlackBerry has announced
that or has acquired a company that has a WebKit-based browser. Unfortunately, I hear
that BlackBerry is still planning on doing its proxy server. So you'll get dumb down
HTML pages for web applications, which is very unfortunate. BlackBerry, please change
that, if you're watching. But in terms of application development, you can, what a number
of the cross-platform frameworks do or you can do in your application is you can put
a little mini web browser embedded into your app so that you can develop your application
in HTML and CSS. And with the WebKit because it's got such sophisticated graphics capabilities,
then you can end up having something that looks just a native UI and have it run it
across most phones because actually developing in five different languages and then getting
that, it maybe fun for the first release, but then it stops being fun.
>> CORZINE: Makes developers very popular in mobile; job security for developers. Ladies,
get into development please. >> Community for the developers.
>> ALLEN: Exactly. >> COTTER: So I think the question was sort
of what... >> CORZINE: What practices and...
>> COTTER: Right. Yeah, I've only have ever been on Android so far and the reason that,
yeah, I don't even know how to address best practices exactly but, the reason that we
chose the Android is because it was before, that was before either of the app stores.
I mean, it's before Apple's app store and before the Android market even existed. But
there is the promise of the Android market. I mean, it wasn't explicitly stated but it
was like we're opening this out for developers and there is sort of a--do you remember that
kind of PR thing? There was like a, what, tell us what it was. It was like, "We wouldn't
be doing our job if we didn't provide some conduit for which developers could distribute
their apps." Or something like that. And that was sort of the refrain. Yeah, and that was
right. And so I knew that there was going to be something approximating a store of some
sort or some way to distribute the app eventually. So, and then I, you know, I came from a web
designing background and so just got into mobile just when this Android buzz started
happening. And just when the Android developer challenge had been announced, I found out
about that. And I'm not a programmer. I consider myself kind of a developer but I'm not a programmer,
I'm a designer and an experienced designer and, you know, look and feel whatever so I
approached programmers. And on the Android message board found all these programmers
who wanted to develop something but didn't have an idea or didn't have, you know, whatever.
And so we ended up, you know, entering the Android challenge and winning the top 20 of
the Android developer challenge. And so, you know, I'm all for Android. I'm a big fan of
Android after the $125,000 from the challenge. But no, I just think, I've always believed
in the promise of it. And I'll never just, you know, say, "Oh, well. This is, you know,
iPhone killer. This is better than iPhone." It's just the whole concept of it; the whole
openness of it. And the fact that there's all of these devices and not only the just
handhelds but all these other devices possible and that's kind of why we've started with
Android. And I think it is nice to do a cross platform but like you said, you know, it's
great to have it on other platforms but then you have to maintain it, you know. And that's
no small task to keep doing updates for all these different platforms. So I think you
kind of have to pick and choose. >> GHOSH: Well, of course, I'm bias so all
I would say, I would love to see great apps in Androids.
>> NEEL: And that's the plug for the evening. So, we obviously evaluate each platform based
on the reach. We want to obviously reach the largest amount of customers that we can. We
obviously support the majors because that's when they give us the largest reach. I'd say
we probably got our biggest bang for the buck with the iPhone app because we basically came
out with the announcement of the App Stores. That was a huge both PR opportunity for us
as well as just a lot of our customers. We were going to, we have an annual conference
call "eBay Live" and a lot of our customers were watching. They're already managing their
business like, you know, checking their business on the actual Safari browsers. So we also
use a lot of WebKit implementation because we basically create one version of the site
and internationalize so there's a lot of just cost saved in that way, so.
>> ALLEN: Are you using WebKit in your mobile app?
>> NEEL: We are. Item Description and PayPal over the native app and new features to come.
>> BRODBECK: I know at YouTube we definitely have a very multi-faceted approach, right?
We had a downloadable application and then we also have the iPhone App and then we had
the mobile website. And personally, I'm a very big fan of, you know, the mobile web
just because, you know, globally, there's a larger reaching and it's more scalable in
my opinion but so definitely like cross platform. >> CORZINE: And I know one of you told me
a story about how Steve Jobs said he loved your application. So, anybody else want to
tell their tales of triumph and how much Google loves their application and gave you lots
of money? Or, you know, just, let's talk about some of the like a really great things that
happened and came out of your mobile development. And, you know, an anecdote would be great
if could talk about some of the good things because I know we just talked about, "Oh,
yeah, it's hard," and you got to pick one platform. But, yeah, tell them some of the
good stuff. Karyln, do you want to start? Because you're blushing.
>> NEEL: Are you referring to me? No, so Jobs said, he called us, he loved our--he called
it, "This is the meat and potatoes app of the top 10." So, when we worked...
>> CORZINE: Which is good if you're vegetarian, right?
>> NEEL: But, yeah, we were meat and potatoes, so. Honestly, that whole process was quite
interesting. I mean, there was like a lot of people being considered for the announcement.
And so, it was--I felt like I was on American Idol, seriously. And everyday, we go back
and make our pitch and, you know, there was some major companies that didn't practice
their keynote everyday and they got on stage and choked and so they didn't make the final
cut. But it was a very interesting process; very fun.
>> ALLEN: I can tell a story? >> CORZINE: Yes.
>> ALLEN: So, one of my partners, Glen, just went on a trip to Japan with one of our advisers,
Tye Roberts, who is the CTO of Gracenote. And he took Mightyverse along with a few dozen
Jap phrases in Japanese so you can go and look on Mightyverse for, "I am Ty Roberts,
CTO of Gracenote" and other exciting phrases. But he actually, they did, we'll have a little
movie that's coming out soon. But he went to, he recorded like, "Where can find great
coffee?" And they went to, they stopped in the subway in Tokyo and played this phrase
for this Japanese woman in the shop and she spoke rapidly in Japanese in ways that they
didn't understand. But they, we had done several used cases before and prepared for this and
so they had the phrase, "Can you show me on the map?" So, she went and got a pen and showed
them how to get there and they took the next subway stop to this great coffee spot and
had great coffee in Tokyo because of our great mobile app.
>> ALL PANELISTS: Yey! >> CORZINE: That was great. Good going.
>> COTTER: Well, I guess I kind of told you a bit about the Android developer challenge
but that was, when you said, winning American Idol, that's what that felt like too, you
know. And the aftermath as well, like the past years has been like, you know, everybody's
waiting for your next album and its like, "Yeah, oh, no! How do we all do that?" you
know. >> NEEL: It's a lot to live up to, huh?
>> COTTER: Yeah, it is, it is. But, yeah, but when I really thought I was dreaming was
Wired Magazine chose us as their top pick for an indie Android apps. And that was just,
I couldn't sleep that night. I was just, you know, at geek heaven, right? And then, time.com
chose us as their favorite, or the woman who wrote it, chose as her personal favorite Android
app. And then, she wrote an article for Time Magazine about cooking apps, which, you know,
there really weren't cooking apps until we started this. I mean, there was maybe a few
but none of this, you know, none really to speak of until, you know, time had passed.
So now, there's this article about cooking apps and then she chose us and our little
six recipes. She said, "The six recipes were thorough and it turned out to be my favorite,
this little Android app." So that was exciting; exciting time, so. Lots to live up to so stay
tuned, we'll try. >> CORZINE: Anyone else want to comment? Anecdote?
No? How about abject failure, poor, misery? Come on, Corinne, I know you have a story.
>> ALLEN: Oh, can I tell you about our first-use case?
>> ANG: Yes. >> CORZINE: Talk about the first-use case.
>> ALLEN: We've been getting a series of user tests. Actually, they're not user tests because
we're not testing the users. All my usability design friends can correct me. So, we put
together a bunch of Italian phrases for another adviser who is going to Italy, who didn't
speak a word of Italian. And so he's got the Mightyverse app and he goes into this store
and he has found, you know, a delightful platter that he wants to buy and he finds some suitable
Mightyverse phrase to connect to the shopkeeper. And it plays the phrase and then the shopkeeper
starts talking excitedly in Italian for 10 minutes. And he feels completely alienated
and he decides that Mightverse is maybe not for him. So yes, from this, we really learned
that certainly at this point in our development, Mightverse really works well if you have some
fluency in the language. Some, you know, you can sort of have some hooks and you're going
to actually be excited if somebody babbles to you in their language rather than being,
you know, freaked out because you don't speak a word of it. And that kind of learning is
really invaluable, but it was a little sad right afterwards.
>> COTTER: User feedbacks sometimes in the market can be humbling. I mean most of the
time, ours has been really, its almost always the same. It's, "We love it, more recipes
please." And sometimes, they dock us because we don't have a lot of recipes. And sometimes,
they give us four stars because they love it and they want more recipes. It's kind of
funny the perspective but every once in a while you'll get one like, "I hate it."
>> CORZINE: Or, "You suck. Why don't you fix this? I'm never coming back again until the
next day." >> COTTER: It's not really the most useful
feedback. You know, "I hate it." Okay, what do you do with that exactly? But anyway, it's
entertainment. >> CORZINE: Christina, anything over you want
to share? Or about your new, are you bringing your new site to mobile, or.
>> BRODBECK: I mean, we plan to bring it to mobile right now. I mean, we just, yesterday
we launched in beta, right? So we're starting small, right? Hopefully, we'll bring it to
mobile. >> CORZINE: Yeah, I add some stuff, add some
things. >> CHANG: I just want to, I guess, shares--it's
partly best practices, I guess, which I forgot to touch upon on that last question. But,
you know, when you're designing anything with mobile and when you work for a bigger company,
because I--there's a lot of talk about, you know when you create your own one, you know,
a little app that's you and maybe another person. You can control kind of how do you
want to do it and it's great to do. Keep it simple. But then when you get into a big company
you have your different lines of, you have your business, you have your development folks
and you have testers. And just to have them all kind come together and figure out what
do you want to do on the app they can get kind of challenging because you from a technical
point of view you want to make sure you want to get it, the business wants always to get
it out as fast as they can. And if you're a developer you want also do that but also
make sure it's right. And there's always a lot of compromise back and forth. And then
when you have the business such as what we had, we had a little bit of just confusion
of, "What do you even want on this app?" And if businesses know what they want on the app,
how can you really just kind of follow and keep up to pace. So we had a lot of those,
you know, challenges with, you know, with some of our development cycles. So just kind
of word of thought is that, you know, that's one aspect that I think that people kind of
miss. Another thing also as a best, well, another challenge we had, because we came
from developing mobile applications before iPhone. We had to kind of figure out how do
we use, get the WebKit look and feel for iPhone on the Safari, you know, browser and, you
know, make it look like you're coming from an iPhone without like creating a whole new
parallel code base. So we had like a whole bunch of, you know, challenges around that
which I think even now I still doubt because there's still, you know, non-iPhone apps out
there that have browser capability. And so you have to keep in mind who your whole audience
is. It's not just your smartphones. It's still, you have to think about the little ones that
don't have that still and are, you know, using your application, you know, on mobile. So
that's, that's something that we try and cater to. We also had--and just even testing because
there's basically how many phones out there? And being able to safely think that you've
covered all of your bases for all different phone types can be quite a challenge when
you're going through your cycle. It makes it a lot easier when you know you're just
doing like an iPhone app or an Android app. But when you're doing, you know, a mobile
application for your browser on your phone, it actually is quite heavier on the QA cycle.
So I don't know if anyone here is at all experience with that too but it's...
>> CORZINE: Oh, yeah. >> CHAN: Yeah. It's definitely, you know,
a pain point. >> CORZINE: Right, yeah. And let's not forget
design because it's very important in mobile. And designing when you're deciding what platform
you design for. There's all kinds of structure, it's very different from the web as I'm sure
many people know already. And following some best practices so especially if you're doing
like, oh, you know, things for browsers, you don't want to break the page and all those
great colors that you put in and all the tiny prints like, "Take your phone outside and
look at your page in the sun." And this is, you know, how people are going to be looking
at it and using it. Just to remember that human beings are looking at this and that
they want information fast. Don't load too many things on the page because it won't--yeah,
it won't call back from the server fast enough. If you know, I think the rule is what, 2 seconds
if they don't get the page back they start to think it's broken. So it's even faster
than on the web. They have more tolerance on the web on a computer than they do on the
phone, so. Just to keep those kinds of things in mind. I saw and quickly plugged, there's
a woman in the Mid-west named Barbara Ballard who has a fantastic design library for mobile
if people are interested in that area. And she's really a great person. So check out
her stuff online too. >> ALLEN: Yeah, I totally agree that if you're
doing mobile make sure that there is somebody who does visual and interaction design on
your team. If there isn't, find somebody. A visual and an interaction designer who knows
their stuff is going to make your code be 5 million percent better. But I wanted to
chime in but, about what Corinne was saying about use cases and stories. In building mobile
apps for other people, I found that if people can actually articulate how somebody who would
use their app, they are on the path to success. And it's amazing how many people can't do
that when they have decided they want to build the mobile app. And there is a tremendous
number of people who think that what they need to do is take every feature on their
web application and stuff it into a little tiny mobile app. And if everybody can't do
everything that they could possibly do on their website or in their desktop application
that they will have failed in their agenda to release their first version of their mobile
app, because all of their users are asking for this. So I would, I think that's...
>> CORZINE: Which is not true. >> ALLEN: Well, I mean, if you aggregate what--especially
if you have a mature product, this is really tough. So I'm making fun of people. But it
is a really tough call. And you have a mature product and you're talking to a thousand customers.
And if you aggregate what a thousand customers are asking for, you will find that they want
every feature that you have because there's a reason that they're in there, right? And
somebody wants to access them on mobile. So it is really tough but the more that you can
have a really focused story like Corinne was saying, the more you can be successful.
>> COTTER: The more that you can look at it as a different platform that you can provide
different things rather then just being an extension of the website. I think that's a
lot people and a lot companies say, "Oh, we've got to go mobile." And what they mean is,
"We've got to take all our brochures and all of our, you know, our website and just cram
it unto a mobile phone somehow," you know. And that's not really what it's about. It's
about, you know, offering something uniquely, something specific to mobile, something that
you can only do that's only useful because it's with you. And I don't know, I think there's
too much pressure to just duplicate like you said, just replicate everything from a website
and it's not practical. Or is it really desirable? >> BRODBECK: Yes.
>> GHOSH: So the other thing that we have seen is consider the uniqueness and the nuances
of the specific platform that you're developing an app for. So, just thought you have a very,
very successful app on one platform, just bringing it over to another platform doesn't
guarantee success. So sometimes we have seen other app do very small changes in the UI
flows. A few UI tweaks the interaction changes. That is huge from an experience perspective.
So I just wanted to bring that up as well. >> NEEL: I would also add to being very brief
and very focus with whatever you create and thinking about the user on the go, is to maybe
not just think about mobile but think about how every channel might work together to offer
a customer experience. How someone might use your product on the go. How someone might
use your product in their living room? How someone might use your product on the computer?
Thinking about how all of those things come together, it gets very interesting. I've also
really enjoyed some of the simplicity that I've created on mobile and bringing that back
to the computer, that's been really fun as well, so.
>> CORZINE: Karyln, are you volunteering to host a cross platform discussion?
>> NEEL: Maybe. >> CORZINE: Is that what that was?
>> BRODBECK: Yes. I definitely agree with everybody that keeping it simple is the most
important thing, I know. So we originally had our, you know, very basic mobile website
version which is, you know, you use the up and down keys on your phone to literally go
down. But, and then we're like, "Okay, let's make something that's cool," right? And we
tried to have, you know, a much more like scroll bars and things like that in the UI
and it just didn't work, right? And then when we came out with our mobile website, the touch
screen version, right, we went back to with the linear layout and we found that even though
it's touch screen, linear layout definitely worked best. And I think you know the most
basic that you can keep something and don't put too many, you know, too many extra visual
features in there and things like that, it's probably the best.
>> CORZINE: Let's talk about the future a little bit, a future. I know several of you
have some opinions about where you think things are going next and what you would like to
work on next. Let's talk about mobile future, you know, things like, augmented reality and
projector phones and the potential of like, maybe, one day seeing actual TV on your phone
networks. Oh, did I say that out loud? But, what do you guys think about what's coming
next and what would you like to work on in the future as well? And that could be five
minutes from now or 10 years from now. >> CHAN: I guess it's sort of a general kind
of technology, but I see, you know, now that we have a lot of touch kind of stuff with
screens and with, you know, with the phones that I foresee kind of like--if you guys have
seen Minority Report, you know, where basically it's sort of--excuse me, a virtual kind of
projection of stuff where you end up, you know, moving a computer. I actually really
see that that is something in the near future. It's--I think it's going to be there. One
thing I think is really cool that I see now with just the phone screens being so big.
The bar code usability basically going more to a paperless world more than we do now where,
you know, you just scan your receipt for a movie or the airlines and you just use that
and that's your, you know, ticket to go in. You just have it on your phone, you don't
have to print out anything else and I think that's really neat. I think a lot more things
are going, or a lot of people are going to accept that and have scanners for your phone
and as screens get more sophisticated and you know, crisper.
>> ALLEN: So I'm looking forward to phones becoming faster, that must be obvious. But
I do think that something interesting happens when computers become faster you start, you
know, in the types of leaps that we've seen in the last 10 years with mobile and the last
20 years with desktop computing. You'd start to be able to do fundamentally different things
that, and of course, higher bandwidth that--we start to see the right, right--immediately,
I think we start to see these lines between the mobile and the desktop blurring. You know,
like, we should be able to toss a document from our phone to our desktop like that, you
know, what's his face, you mentioned, Minority Report. And I think that, that, you know,
that line blurring even more like why should I have to actually think my phone, why do
I have to make contest decisions about these things, the phone could just figure it out
for me. And making interfaces intuitive is actually very, very hard. And it does require
to manage amount of computer power, and I'm really excited about when we can start to
do more and more interesting things because the phones would be faster. And I really think
that we haven't scratched the surface of what we might do with these phones because we're
a little constraint by our desktop gooey origins and I think as we start to have this different
input mechanisms and, you know, we start to really be able to do more interesting things
with the camera and the video recording, and the voice recording and we have more and more
of those--more and more of those APIs accessible to application development and not just stock
on some other chip on the phone as they are in some platforms. I think that--I think it
will get very exciting. >> CORZINE: Do you feel, like, that's maybe
why we're behind several countries as far as our phone development goes? It's not just
the carriers, it's our imagination as well that they are hitting the Internet for the
first time on their phones and we have desktops, we have expectations? Do you have any sense
of that or feelings about that? >> ALLEN: I absolutely. I mean, I think that
I'd love the stories I've read about cell phone novels in Japan. Have you guys heard
about this? Where--so in Japan there are people who create novels by typing into their cell
phones and they get published on websites and some of these have been so popular that
they even published these books, but the idea is that they're not only can you author them
in your cell phone. But then they're formatted for your cell phone so you can read them on
your cell phone. And this just speaks to, you know, in a place where they're--most people
access the web through a mobile phone rather than through desktops because landlines are
so expensive there. Almost every--this phone is the ultimate personal computer because
you don't share your phone with anybody the way you share your, you know, most people
in the United States, not probably most people in this room, but most people in United States
share their computer with somebody and I think it just, it creates a completely different
experience and completely different usage model.
>> CHAN: Just for your last question. My--one of my old bosses who--he's originally from
India and he was saying how he came--he went back there once and everyone was just, you
know, doing stuff on their cell phone. Stuff like even, you know, buying a soda from a
vending machine, it was, just payment through the phone and that stuff that's, you know,
definitely not here. But I think one of the reasons also that, you know, they do use a
lot of their cell phone and not--and we don't is also, you know, money as, you know, like
for instance in India--almost everyone there has a cell phone, but they cannot necessarily
afford to buy a PC desktop and they might not have you know, the power capability that
also house that and, you know, the stuff that goes along with it. And, you know, just even
financially, it's--makes more sense for them just to have everything mobile.
>> COTTER: Question? What is the question? >> CORZINE: How about the future?
>> COTTER: I got so absorb. Yeah, I was in Japan, in my mind. I'd like to go to Japan
just on a field trip and just check out what they're doing over there. Wouldn't that be--let's
do a field trip. Can Google sponsor? >> CORZINE: Yeah, Google, sponsor us. Field
trip. >> COTTER: I do think there's just such imagination
in Japan. I mean, I don't think it's happening anymore but there was--what was it, SoftThink
that had OS on the--oh, it's too far back at my brain I think to totally remember but
it was, it was a very immersive experience. I mean it was almost like a--well, it was
a little virtual reality. I mean it was like--and that was a sort of standard on your little
phone. My friend Ericka here probably knows about it but, yeah, it was just standard.
I mean, it was just--and it wasn't just kids using it, it was 30 something and all kinds
of people using it and it was--because it was so intuitive and even though it was really
almost videogame like where it's cute little, you know, cute little characters punching
in the doors and opening a door. I mean, there was actual commerce going on and all that
kind of thing and I don't know what the current state of that is, but I mean things like that
seemed to go over very much. I mean people--the adoption rate of things like that is so much
higher somewhere like Japan. I mean that people just...
>> CORZINE: Yeah, the last startup I worked out was a Japanese company and that's what
they were trying to bring over was that kind of a virtual goods and avatar-based reality.
The issues that we ran into here, like, they can do all these great stuff in Japan because
they have really robust network. They have flash on their Nokia phones, the handsets
were--so much were--we were constraint by both the carriers that there's no flash supported.
So, you know, that there is a little bit of technical catching up or leapfrogging that
United States now has to do in order to get to that place.
>> COTTER: Yeah, also just catching up to Europe. I mean, now that, you know, things
are finally kind of changing with the carriers but, I mean, that's been years and they don't,
I mean, everybody in Europe knows what a SIM chip or would it, you know, yes, what a SIM
chip is, you know, like just--I mean I remember my aunt in her 50s or whatever, who's talking
about the SIM chip and I'm like that's so interesting, you know. I don't even--I, you
know, I barely knew what to do in terms of just what--how to handle having a mobile phone
over there and my and dabbled my cousins, like, "Oh, just, you know, just go to the
store and get--or I'll give you my junker phone and then just, you know, just fill it
up and whatever." And I'm like, "Oh, they're just so cool, you know." Just put some minutes
on it or whatever and hear that sort of more foreign to us. But, yeah, but I'm excited,
of course, about all the, you know, cooking related things, you know. I'm kind of, I just
love, I mean cooking up as itself I think just comes from me being sort of a futuristic
and interested in how things could be so much easier and how technology could be such a
part of your life and such a powerful time saving way and also just enhance your life,
not just, you know, for the utility of it but just for the pleasure of it, the enjoyment
of it. And so I just love the idea of all the things that could potentially happen with
appliances, you know, refrigerators, ovens, countertops, you know, having a screen on
your countertop. I mean even these new iPads that came out, you just think, "Oh, wow."
You could just have that, you know--it just started my wheels training about what would
cooking councils look like on that? And what are the, you know, different things that we
could do with that medium since that's a whole different medium from the mobile phone which
is a different medium from the web, which is a different medium from print, you know,
and how can you kind of take elements of all those and maximize it into what's offered
that's new, with these new things coming out, so.
>> GHOSH: So, mobile phones having better hardware, faster hardware, bigger screens,
I'm kind of excited with two, two categories. One is AR, augmented reality. You'll see Layar,
it's a web browser in Android market as well as Wikitude. These are like you hold your
phone out; there is information overlay on top of what you're seeing. You are traveling,
you hold it out or the phone sees and tells you. It's like your personal guided tour.
So I feel like that's--there's a huge, immense potential of crazy, crazy Apps there. The
other thing I feel like we'll see a lot is--mobile devices have not been traditionally been a
gaming devices. We have seen a lot of games, really good games, but I think, like, with
a faster processor, GPS graphic, graphic processors as well as great controllers and hardwares.
I think we are getting into spaces where gamers, game developers would seriously consider those
devices as serious games. We hear a lot of games being multiplayer, cloud-based. So I
think we are going to see good titles in the game space and thus, on mobile devices as
well. >> NEEL: So, I'm not going to burn the dead
horse of mobile payments but you know, Emma Commerce (ph). But I think they're going to
see a lot of workarounds and a lot of things coming. Already in Miami-Dade County and to
Los Angeles, they have pilots where you actually can pay now--pay for your parking with your
phone. So I think we're not going to have to wait for the device makers, the carriers
and the banks to figure this out and figure getting the chips in your phone. I think you're
going to start to see workarounds from companies such as Paypal, et cetera, to get around that.
I'm also very interested also in the interfaces coming to your home. I would like to see interactive
television go a lot faster and a lot further. I'm very tired of Comcast and DirecTV and
experiences that we get, "Yawn." We'd love to have, you know--see the stuff with the
appliances move forward a lot quicker. I mean, imagine your, you know--in the morning, your
refrigerator tells you to bring your umbrella because it's going to rain this afternoon.
It tells you what medications to take. It tells you your resting metabolic heart rate,
and hey, you better not eat that. So I just--it can't come soon enough.
>> BRODBECK: I really like where things are going right now with, you know, being able
to connect to the cloud with your mobile device. For instance, when I lost my Palm Pre and
I had to get a new one. It was great that everything was there once, you know, I got
my new device. Something I would really like to see happen more is, you know, mobile education.
For instance, you know, like people in Africa being able--you know, that's the primary way
that they're connecting to the Internet, right? And having some way that they could, you know,
watch a lecture or something like that and then interact with the teacher. I don't know,
personally, I think that's--I'm very passionate about that so that's really interesting to
me. >> ALLEN: Yes. I think when I got [INDISTINCT]
I might end up being one mobile device per child. I mean, you know, these days, mobile
devices have such power that, you know, we'll probably see that happening first, which I
think is really, really exciting. >> CORZINE: Okay, we're going to start to
wrap it up so we can do some Q&A, and the last thing I'd like to ask from you, speakers,
I'm going to put you a little bit on the spot. In one line, maybe two, tell me how to succeed
in mobile, plug whatever it is you're working on, and let me know if you're hiring, that'd
be great. >> ALLEN: We can start in the middle?
>> CORZINE: Yeah, we can start in the middle. Okay. Because I know you have to think about
that, we kind of put you on the spot. >> ALLEN: So, to succeed in mobile, try something,
get experience, really understand the platform whatever the heck you're doing, and then you'll
do great things and focus. To plug my own stuff, download the Mightyverse iPhone App.
Yay. Tell me what you do with it, send me mail. If you need a Mobile App or a web application,
you can also hire my team at Blazing Cloud. >> COTTER: How to succeed in mobile? I guess
I'm still figuring that out. I mean, we're not profitable yet but you know, that takes
a while, so succeeding in mobile and in terms of that, you know, still trying to figure
all that out. And so--but yes, I guess just keep it simple. I guess there's different
approaches, you know, you can neither do the sort of throw it out there rapid iteration,
scrap it if it's not working approach, or you can really do the long brain-storm, come
up with the idea, refine the idea, really get the user experience idea. But keep it
simple nothing, you know, and that's kind of what we did. I think we put a lot more
thought into it from the get-go and I think that is kind of important no matter what project
you're doing what--to like you said you need user experience designer. It's amazing how
little this is understood. Like how programmers just want to program something without it
having been designed first. It's sort of like building a house without blueprint, you know,
it doesn't make any sense. So, I think one way to succeed in mobile is really to think
about it in advance of even starting to think about building it. I mean at first, think
about the user experience, think about the person using it, think about the actual consumer
and what they're going to do with it and why it's useful. Make something that's truly useful,
you know, or fun, you know, it's fine too. But just think about the user first because
it's amazing how much that doesn't happen, so. Anyway and--oh, yeah and download Cooking
Capsules. Right now it's the Cooking Capsules Taster, that's on the Android market, and
I haven't checked numbers super recently, but we have over 60 thousand downloads so
far which is really cool. And we have eight recipes and the first one--it's four French
ones, four Indian ones, and we're coming out with another ones very soon that's a brunch
recipe. So, eight brunch recipes, like how to make your own Eggs Benedict and quiche,
and whatever things like that. So, anyway, keep a lookout for that and let us know what
you think and follow us on Twitter at Cooking Capsules, and say hello.
>> GHOSH: So how do you succeed in mobile? I think I'm going to repeat here, focus on
end-users and be very, very agile. And yes, we are hiring.
>> NEEL: I'll start with that too. We're hiring. No, just getting it out of the way. How to
succeed in mobile? I would say if you have an idea or a spark or anything, go after that.
And if you--if you're a developer and you don't have a background in user experience
or vice-versa, partner with people network and get together with people, I mean, because
they can push you on your ideas and make them even better. So I would just say, to get started,
get out there, partner with someone and get your ideas out there and people see that you
have great ideas and the next thing you know, you're creating the next experienced for mobile,
interactive TV, et cetera. >> BRODBECK: Makes sense. I'm going to have
to agree with pretty much everybody here is keep it simple, also launch early, iterate
often, right? I think that also works for just online in general and check out pickv.com.
It basically--it's a dating site that matches people off of their common interests like
their favorite movies, music, TV shows and books.
>> CHAN: Yes. I mean I agree with everyone here but essentially, you know, when you're
creating something on mobile, figure out what it is--the problem is that you're trying to
solve for your user and work out some design flows of how that will make sense for the
particular device that you're thinking of developing on for. And my little plug, check
out chictopia.com, it's a fashion social media site so it connects people that are inspired
and with fashion whether you're looking for inspiration or out there to express your style,
you know. It's a way to connect with people that have a common interest in fashion like
you and we're also hosting a conference in New York for New York Fashion Week. So if
you happen to be--and basically, it's discussing, you know, the topic of how online has really
affected fashion and social media, how that's impacted the fashion industry. And, so if
you are in New York next week, we have a conference on February 13th, so, you know, please check
us out. >> CORZINE: And, I guess--see mine would be,
you know, take your craziest idea and shop it around out there because it's likely that
someone else will either really like it or have the same crazy idea and go big and then
edit it down. And, you know, do the stuff that you're really interested in because the
passion will keep you going. And let's see, my Twitter is @krismet, K-R-I-S-M-E-T, my
shameless plug. I don't Twitter during my events but I Twitter other times, not while
I'm working. And now we're going to open it up to Q&A and also remember that we have desserts
and coffee in the side. Yes. >> My question is for Corinne. I wanted to
know how you got Wells Fargo to let you do their iPhone App, being the big huge monstrous
organization they are. Why did they do this inhouse rather than just farm it out to somebody
because I've seen other larger organization--I work for a large company, we have mobile Apps,
you know, and you going and you look, oh, we bought somebody or we shipped it to Estonia
or something like that, and it works great, it works fine. So I think it's really, really
cool that you, actually, you're on a place where you actually got to do something like
that. So maybe you could just talk about how you got to do that?
>> CHAN: Sure, well, you know, to be honest, I think they, you know, the business folks
actually did look at third parties to assist us with creating the iPhone App. But, what
happens with that is there is a lot of overhead in the negotiation, you know, of getting the
contract and to then produce the timeline to produce the actual application. What it
turns out, we're also doing some work in Parallel to that, some in-house work in parallel to
doing the negotiations and what we found out is that, you know, we could actually get a
time to market even faster because we happen to have the expertise in-house. So we just
chose to go that path this time. It's not to say, you know, I'm not there anymore but
it's not to say that they may not use, you know, they may use another company for the
next iteration so it's... >> [INDISTINCT].
>> CHAN: We are mobile development so, we did have some people that had picked up Objective-C
and, you know, did at least the necessary things that we were required for the feature
set that we wanted to put out there. >> Hey, Karyln, can you talk a little bit
to that too? eBay have something like 4 billion hits a day and it is a very big company and
it has in-house mobile? >> NEEL: Yes, so we have an in-house mobile
department. We do all of the development for the WAP site in-house. For iPhone development,
we still farm it out, however, all of the requirements and designer done in-house. For
our first release on the iPhone application, we did that in five weeks only, so smokin'.
So in order to move that quickly, we kind of needed to basically have that access non-stop
during that time. I worked with a lot of outside agencies and in-firms, it does require a lot
of hand holding, I find, so just based on the customer background and knowledge and
just having to move fast, that's been our approach so far.
>> I work at Stanford University where we have the luxury of having an amazing class
called Introduction to iPhone Programming, it's all free, available online and through
the iTunes store and it's all video and Apple actually sponsors the cost which is just great
and I'm just wondering if there's anything like that for the Android platform because
it's actually how I learn the program for the iPhone and it would be amazing if you
have a resource like that for Android. >> GHOSH: I'll definitely check back, it'd
be awesome to have one. >> Oh.
>> GHOSH: I hear we are working on it. >> you have to plug-in your ear. Okay.
>> I keep hearing about the debate between PDA development to become a robust versus
the mini-computer becoming smaller. So where is that debate and how relevant is it to you
guys? Have you guys ever heard of that? >> Anybody, anybody?
>> CHAN: No, I can't comment. >> ALLEN: Well, I'm--I really don't care to
be frank. Basically, I evaluate new devices as they come out whether they'd be something
that seemed like we're seeing Linux on mobile devices right? And I think that's probably
what you're referring to as a mini-computer getting smaller.
>> Right. Or you know, just being usability. I mean, where do you think that's planned
this one? Our consumers want to have, you know, the bigger PDAs are do they want smaller
computers, you know? >> ALLEN: I think they're just emerging of
it and I think people don't care what chips that's inside, right? And right now, the distinction
between a PDA or a phone and a computer is really that its chipset which is arbitrary.
I mean, it's like people don't understand the difference between a desktop App and a
browser App even though, as technology is for like, well of course, ones on your desktop.
But, frankly, they're both on your desktop and nowadays they look awfully the same. And
so I think people, people sometimes they want big screens and sometimes their screens' too
big to carry with them. And I think we're going to see more mix and match type of things.
We'll see a lot of experimentation with this all in one kind of things like the iPad and
I certainly hope we'll see more, more things that, you know, get near each other and exchange
data. So, I think it's going to be like--I kind of remember reading about when motors
were first developed and you would buy a motor from the Cirrus catalogue and then you'd get
your coffee grinder and your attachment and then get your different attachment that allowed
you to do things with your motor. And I think that's where we are with computers, you kind
of get your computer and you attach things to it and then maybe you get another computer
that sort of in the form packed or a mobile phone. But where seeing these chips invented
everywhere and they're going to be in the refrigerators and counters and watches and
earrings and you know, whatever. And you know our--whether we like it or not, the objects
around us are just going to get smarter and I think they'll...
>> COTTER: And cheaper. >> ALLEN: And cheaper.
>> COTTER: Or less expensive. >> ALLEN: Yes.
>> GHOSH: So I have a question for you from an App developer perspective. How do you see
like exporting your App on these devices some of which are like larger screens some are
smaller or some are in between? >> NEEL: Actually, I was going to speak to
that exact point is what we're seeing here is, at home, and on the desktop, you get these
screens that are getting larger and larger and larger, and then on the other side you
see smartphones and things such as the iPad and, on and on. And so creating for these
type of experiences is starting to get very difficult because you're seeing things get
wider and wider. So how do you create an experience that can work on this huge monitor as well
as on this tiny phone? So it gets very challenging to maintain all of those experiences and I
wonder how we're going to do that in the future? >> ALLEN: Well, I think that as the machines
get faster, it's easier to have this intermediary frameworks that help, right? Like, 10 years
ago, you had to do everything really custom for the each device and you had to write native
code that was really, really highly tuned and it was very, very expensive in terms of
time and effort to create a mobile application. And, so it wasn't just that the carriers stifled
creativity, just the effort it took stifled creativity. And I think that now it's much
easier. There's there these frameworks that do you UI for you. You can have these different
affordances that the platform gives to you, and I think that just as we've seen with desktop
development, when we got bigger and bigger screens the platforms did more for us. And,
I think that either the device manufacturers are going to do some stuff that really helps
or developers will invent it on top of that because it is inevitable. If you have to continue
to develop software for five different, fundamentally different platforms you will invent a way
to make it easy because, you know, otherwise you lose your mind. So, I think that it is
a challenge and it's an interesting challenge and we have, you know, it'll be awhile before
we figure it out but... >> I like someone to address the future of
Mobile Apps versus tools developed in the cloud. Specifically, a few days ago, I wasn't
aware of this but, I guess, Google voice for the iPhone was disallowed, it's 1.5 by Steve
Jobs. He just didn't want the App, it competed or whatever. So, immediately, Google went
around and you can get the exact sound Google voice by just going on the iPhone on the web
so what's the difference here of developing Apps as opposed to going on the cloud?
>> ALLEN: I can speak to that. I think the most, I--maybe my corner of the world but,
it seems like most mobile applications have their fingers into the cloud anyhow. And web
applications are having more and more powers that are kind of like mobile applications,
you know, in terms of being able to access the device capabilities. You know, click the
call being the simplest one, and then you can have voice controls which then you're
talking on your telephone but you're doing things that you might expect or happening
on your native--on your phone through an application. And, you know, I don't remember who was talking
about like developers will find work around, right? The--when you can't do it on the device,
you do it in the cloud. If it's more convenient to do it in a cloud you do it there. The--you
need to do it on the device when it's offline, when you can't reach the cloud. But, hopefully,
you know, that more and more we're getting coverage everywhere so maybe it won't matter
in a few years. So I think right now, we do have some challenges because, you know, instead
of you have to build whole bunch of [ph] code in one place and it won't run in the other
place and you have to shift strategies when technology or organizations get in your way.
But I think that just, you know, right now, we have a lot of choices and that can be a
painful thing and it can be a really delightful thing. I hope that answers your question.
>> Hi, I'm an executive director of a non-profit and we work to get sixth, seventh, eighth
graders interested in science and technology. And I think that these teenagers are really
untapped market for mobile applications. And I'm wondering if you have any ideas of where
I can go or just off the cup ideas about how we can get teenagers to appreciate and love
technology through their cell phones and developing mobile Apps for them?
>> ALLEN: I think that's a great age to target for developing. I got myself boxed for a minute
and say that I think programming is a life skill. I think every fourth, fifth, sixth,
seventh, eighth grader should learn to program, not because they will become software developers
but because if you have that kind of thinking you will succeed in our world 20 years from
now, 10 years from now. Because every software application you use has an expert feature
that you kind to have to be a programmer or think like a programmer to use, so really
apply what you're doing. And there are a number of different organizations working on ideas
for teaching kids to program. I think there's a challenge in mobile devices because most
kids don't have smart phones and those are the easiest ones to program. But if you could
get smart phones in the hands of kids then they could be programming in languages like
Ruby or JavaScript, which are very accessible to Navas Programmers.
>> So what do you guys think about mobile money? Have you touched upon it before and
you talked about the future but, I mean, I definitely see a future being mobile money.
I just came back from Kenya and it was remarkable to see on my iPhone someone sent me cash.
So what do you guys think about that? It's altered jailbroken [ph] and locked that's
why I could do that. >> CHAN: I think we do that today, right?
I mean with... >> NEEL: Paypal has member to member, look
I can send you money but are you speaking from bank, okay.
>> [INDISTINCT]. >> NEEL: Right.
>> [INDISTINCT]. >> NEEL: I think a lot of the third world
countries too--like a lot of people don't even have bank accounts so, they'll go in
and get the phone and use that basically as their bank account. So, part of it's infrastructure
obviously... >> [INDISTINCT].
>> NEEL: There's a lot of things we should have here.
>> [INDISTINCT]. >> GHOSH: One of the challenges is interfaces
are not standardized so it's very difficult to talk between them so I have been in mobile
like standards. A few years back and the challenges we faced are the banks have different interfaces,
their current different organizations have different interfaces and it was very difficult
from our perspective to develop an App that could talk to basically anyone. So that's
one of the challenges. So I know there a lot of challenges organizations can create. Cause
[ph] organizations and banks are trying to solve it, but it's really, really a bottleneck
and a challenging process. >> CHAN: You know, I think that could be the
direction where we're going. I don't see it any time in the near, near future just because
I think even the US public is really kind of hesitant to do stuff that can just if,
for instance, if their phone was stolen, or you know security-wise that when it comes
to their money, I think the US is a little more hesitant about making it easier sometimes
for people to access their accounts. So I think that tends to be a challenge, but then,
you know, basically security regulations and all of that to that slow it down.
>> [INDISTINCT]. >> ALLEN: I don't think it's cultural like
there, I mean, there's cultural differences that make it longer to adapt, adopt here but
I think you're right that it is inevitable. Like it's just too easy and there are ways
that, you know, to make it have the privacy protection that we, you know, people demand
here and have the security and address the security issues which frankly had been addressed
overseas in some ways much better than we have we're addressing here. But I think that
when those things happen then, you know, we won't need credit cards, we'll have you know,
these electronic transfers and it'll make commerce much easier and more fluid. I do
think the--and I do think we'll see micro payments being much more cost effective and
that will change the types of things that we buy and how we pay for things. And I think
it will get interesting in that way because credit cards create some odd pricing models
that we currently have. And the things that I think we'll see that are part from commerce
and part from just the power that having a computing device be attached to you or carry
around with you will do is it'll give individuals more power to be small business owners to
conduct commerce, to be producers even if they don't have their own business. I think
we'll see user-generated content, so called "be monetized" so that--you're seeing that
a little bit now with Youtube and what not. But it's still pretty rare and you kind to
have to be a professional even if it's so called user generated content, but I think
we'll see that individuals with individual skills will be able to use those skills to
produce you know, whether it's writing or spoken language or applied whatever skills
they have wherever they are and you know and contribute to the economy in ways that we're
not seeing, I think a lot of our skills being used today.
>> We have a few more questions and we could always carry on this conversation over coffee
in a moment. >> Hi. Have any of you developed for the iPad
and if you haven't why and if you have what specifically--did specific to the iPad not
just the iPhone? >> ALLEN: I guess that would be a no.
>> COTTER: I just heard about it the other day.
>> NEEL: We've examined our App on it and it looks awful. Don't believe what you saw
in the videos. It blows up basically one pixel into two so, your App can't be reinterpreted
seamlessly. >> My question is...
>> COTTER: ...I worry about that, you know, how--if the whole App Store is there and it's
intended for these small devices and then all of the sudden, it's just...
>> NEEL: Well, I would question though... >> COTTER: ...rendered on a...
>> NEEL: ...should we just reinterpret a small App for that device? I would want to create
a whole new experience. >> COTTER: Right, right, me too.
>> [INDISTINCT]. >> NEEL: Yes. Yes, but I would want to look
at the--how to create a better experience per mobile experience, since the mobile device
rather than just the straight desktop experience which can be overly complex anyways.
>> I have a sort of a two part question, this is more about mobile ads, I didn't hear anybody
talk about that. And, well, in general, the mobile ad seen and what do you guys think
about that? And the second part of my question is more about Android and do you have something
equivalent to AdSense for a mobile Apps similar to how ads since it works for someone's web
application or something new? >> GHOSH: So I'll take the Android question.
So, I'm from the Android team. So, Android to--from Android perspective, we develop a
platform. It's a Google monetization product is very, very separate from the android platform,
so. >> Well, didn't Google buy admop? Did I not
hear that right? >> GHOSH: Yes, but I cannot comment to that.
>> Oh, okay. Okay, sorry, sorry. Anybody else wants to speak to that monetizing on mobile?
>> COTTER: We just started mobile average and we just started using AdSense relatively
recently. And, you know, I hope that overtime--I mean, I think you have to have a lot of users
in order to really render results from it. I mean, because we've been pretty popular
in our right but, you know, I mean, honestly, we just put it--we just integrated it a few
months ago. And I just got my first check for a $138, so if that gives you an idea like
how. I don't know if I should admit that but I'm hoping that overtime, you know, as we
build our offering that, you know, offering since we have many Apps and many impressions.
And also because we're kind of a niche market but, well, anyway, I mean everybody eats right,
so, it's not. I like to think of it as to think of it as not that specific. You will
go, "Oh, it's for foodies. No it's for people who eat." Anyway...
>> Christina, could you comment on that? How did you guys monetize YouTube on mobile?
>> BRODBECK: I can't talk about that. >> You can't talk about that? Okay.
>> COTTER: All right. >> Hold on one second. Oops, sorry.
>> Yes. >> ...a bug to this--so, what's limiting you
for not putting a lot of recipes on your site? Because you said only aid and I would think
you can put a gazillions and your monetization model can be, "Okay, give me an idea in AdSense
you can download, you know, 20s recipes, something like that.
>> COTTER: Right, yes. >> Okay, some kind of discount when you go
to trade or do you...? >> COTTER: Right.
>> I mean I'm thinking a lot of monetization models here.
>> COTTER: Yes, it sounds, it sounds funny that we only have eight recipes and the reason
is that, that we're actually producing these cooking shows that accompany each one so.
So I kind of look at it more like--and obviously, you know, we're building, you know, we're
going to have to build the volume. We can't just live on these few recipes alone but at
the same time, it's like there are collections of recipes and where our quantity is. I mean,
people are looking for quantity and they go, "Why would I go there if I could get millions
of recipes, you know, on Google or something." You know, if I could just Google and get all
these or go to, you know, these other sites or whatever. And the--I think what's unique
about us is that our quantity is within each recipe. So each recipe, you get a whole show
that tells you exactly how to make it. You got what tools you need, you know, further
information about it and, you know, the shopping list and then how to make it. And so it's
sort of like how many--at the end of the day, how many recipes do you really need in your
arsenal? So, I mean if we can slowly grow this nice library of really in depth and this
really easy and in depth experience that's kind of what we're going for because, you
know, frankly, it's easy to get thousands of recipes places but it's not as easy to
get that kind of experience. And that's what we're looking for and we're actually producing
the show so that's what takes time.
Yeah. >> [INDISTINCT].
>> COTTER: Right. Yes, there's, you know, there's a lot of--there's a lot of really
exciting business models for, yeah. And that's one of them. Yes, that's one of them, is the
location based stuff is huge, I mean, yes, just--I mean, that's what's so exciting about
it because I think we have this sort of fertile ground for as these technologies come about
and partnerships with different companies where, you know, if we're making--if we're
making fondue, we can sell the fondue set through Williams-Sonoma or whatever. You know,
we can have all kinds of product placement. So, it's a matter of, I think really what
we're trying to do now is gain traction, and get attention and get more users and then
kind of team up with different companies who want to promote their...
>> [INDISTINCT]. >> COTTER: We should try to talk about the
over coffee because you don't have a mic... >> CORZINE: Yes, we do have coffee and dessert
ready and the speakers will be available for as long as they are free to discuss. I need
the speakers to stay up front for a moment. And thanks again, Angie, and Google. You guys
were great. Angie, go to a Girl Geek Dinner-- bayareagirlgeekdinner.com and give her suggestions
for other talks. She is a very nice person and does a great job.