I admit that it is not easy to synthesize the concept of “mobile web 2.0”, not because the concept is not, in itself, defined and realistic enough, but because the variables which are in play to define it are quite articulated and elude the attempt to synthesize.

For those who intend to deepen their knowledge of the topic, there is a very interesting text available written by Ajit Jaokar and Tony Fish which is entitled Mobile Web 2.0, published by Futuretext; it requires (it is worth mentioning) an attentive read and is quite challenging (also due to the fact that the many graphs which it contains are not always so easily understood).

For now, I would like to attempt a synthesis of one of the central features for the understanding of mobile web 2.0, the concept of “social”. In fact, in mobile web 2.0 “social” is the creation and “social” is the fruition of contents. By “social” it subsequently depends on a logical sequence of surprising simplicity, a great part of the salient characteristics of the mobile web 2.0. The route is the following.

In mobile web 2.0, the creation of contents centres itself on the mobile device, capable of “capturing” the content, in multimedia format, “at the point of inspiration”, that is, in the exact moment in which the inspiration and the opportunity exists to do it. The creation of contents is “social”, therefore, since it centres itself on a myriad of little writers and editors scattered all over the world (potentially every one of us), everyone in possession of his own mobile device, and is capable of changing the traditional equilibrium of power between publisher and media content (but here opens a theme which deserves a chapter apart!).

Also the fruition of contents in the mobile web 2.0 occurs, to a large part, through the mobile devices and is “social” in the sense that it is shared, unlike the old model of the “walled gardens” and articulated according to a taxonomy no more established univocally from high, but rather, decided in a diffused manner thanks to the use of tags (that is why we talk about folksonomy or rather common taxonomy, from folks+taxonomy).

The “social” creation and fruition of contents brings further logical evolution: the combination of “social” contents evolve in “collective” intelligence, made by people who, by interacting between themselves, express opinions statistically, attentively considered, and, therefore, “intelligent”, from which the concept of “wisdom of the crowd”, wisdom of the masses (which could correspond to the more familiar latin ‘brocardo’ “vox populi, vox dei”!); a fitting example given by the evaluation system of vendors and buyers on eBay. Collective intelligence is founded on the law of great numbers, therefore, that, adequately managed and evaluated, is the motor of web 2.0 and of mobile web 2.0 (this is the sense of the notorious motto “harnessing collective intelligence”). And exquisitely social, to not say “democratic”, it is also the attention given to the “long tail”, the long line of the minor web sites, also those which are improvable and improved in a context typical of web 2.0.

So there you go, that is the long conceptual declension of the term “social” which covers a good half of the concepts of mobile web 2.0. The rest is essentially centred on the user experience, and merits a separate discourse.

Versione italiana

Ammetto che non è facile sintetizzare il concetto di “mobile web 2.0”, non perché il concetto in sè non sia abbastanza definito e realistico, ma perché le variabili in gioco per definirlo sono abbastanza articolate e sfuggono al tentativo di sintesi.

Per chi intende approfondire l’argomento è disponibile l’interessantissimo testo di Ajit Jaokar e Tony Fish che si intitola appunto Mobile Web 2.0, pubblicato da Futuretext; richiede (è bene dirlo) una lettura attenta e un tantino impegnativa (anche perché non sempre i numerosi grafici che contiene risultano di facile comprensione).

Per ora vorrei tentare una sintesi di una delle colonne portanti per la comprensione del mobile web 2.0, il concetto di “social”. Infatti nel mobile web 2.0 “social” è la creazione e “social” è la fruizione dei contenuti. Da “social” dipende a cascata, in una sequenza logica di sorprendente semplicità, gran parte delle caratteristiche salienti del mobile web 2.0. Ecco qui di seguito il percorso.

Nel mobile web 2.0 la creazione dei contenuti si incentra sul dispositivo mobile, in grado di “catturare” il contenuto, in formato multimediale, “at the point of inspiration”, cioè nel momento esatto in cui c’è l’ispirazione e l’opportunità per farlo. La creazione dei contenuti è “social”, quindi, poichè si incentra su una miriade di piccoli articolisti e redattori sparsi sul territorio (potenzialmente ciascuno di noi), ciascuno in possesso del proprio dispositivo mobile, ed è tale da cambiare i tradizionali equilibri di potere tra content publisher e media (ma su questo si apre una tematica da affrontare a sè!). Anche la fruizione dei contenuti nel mobile web 2.0 avviene per buona parte attraverso i dispositivi mobili ed è “social” nel senso di condivisa, in contrapposizione al vecchio modello dei “walled gardens” (giardini recintati) e articolata secondo una tassonomia non più stabilita univocamente dall’alto, bensì decisa in maniera diffusa grazie all’uso dei tag (perciò si parla di folksonomy, ovvero tassonomia popolare, da folks+taxonomy).

La creazione e la fruizione “social” dei contenuti porta all’ulteriore evoluzione logica: l’insieme dei contenuti “social” evolve in “collective intelligence”, fatta di persone che interagendo tra loro esprimono giudizi statisticamente ponderati e quindi “intelligenti”, da cui il concetto di “wisdom of the crowd”, saggezza della massa (che potrebbe corrispondere al più familiare brocardo latino “vox populi, vox dei”!); un esempio calzante è dato dal sistema di valutazione di venditori e acquirenti su eBay. Intelligenza collettiva fondata sulla legge dei grandi numeri, quindi, che adeguatamente gestita e valorizzata è il motore del web 2.0 e del mobile web 2.0 (è questo il senso del famigerato motto “harnessing collective intelligence”). E squisitamente social, per non dire “democratica”, è anche l’attenzione data alla “long tail”, la lunga coda dei siti web minori, anch’essa valorizzabile e valorizzata in un contesto tipicamente web 2.0.

Ecco quindi che lungo la declinazione concettuale del termine “social” si snoda una buona metà dei significati del mobile web 2.0. Il resto è essenzialmente incentrato sulla user experience, e merita un discorso a parte.

Adobe Max is the annual conference which Adobe dedicates to designers and developers in order to offer them the opportunity to learn about new and emerging technologies, deepen their knowledge of technical issues, exchange experiences amongst themselves and with experts of international level.
At the Adobe Max 2007 European edition, which will take place from 15 to 18 October at the Barcelona International Convention Centre (Ccib), Comtaste’s Chief Executive Officer Marco Casario will hold a speech entitled “Extending and Creating New Flex Components”, the table of contents of which we can now provide as a sneak preview:

Flex Component Framework Overview
Flex Component Life Cycle
Extending Flex Components
Building Loosely Coupled Components
Using Template Components
Understanding the Invalidation and Validation methods
Tips and Tricks

Versione italiana

Adobe Max è la conferenza annuale che Adobe dedica agli sviluppatori ed ai designer per offrire loro l’opportunità di conoscere le novità e le tecnologie emergenti, approfondire tematiche tecniche e confrontarsi tra di loro e con esperti di livello internazionale.

All’edizione europea che si terrà dal 15 al 18 ottobre 2007 presso Barcelona International Convention Centre (Ccib), il nostro CEO Marco Casario terrà uno speech dal titolo “Extending and Creating New Flex Components” di cui riveliamo in anteprima i contenuti:

Flex Component Framework Overview
Flex Component Life Cycle
Extending Flex Components
Building Loosely Coupled Components
Using Template Components
Understanding the Invalidation and Validation methods
Tips and Tricks

"360Conferences" is a brand new concept of conference organization created by the keen eye of Tom Ortega and John Wilker, well known protagonists of the international Adobe users' community.

The 360 number not only indicates how wide and complete the topics' treatment in such conferences is: it also recurs because the entry fees are kept as low as 360 USD or Euros (which is definetly a more than affordable amount for a high level 3-day conference) and the available tickets are limited to 360 units (more or less).

In other words, 360 is a magic number which encompasses a successfull formula for conferences!

In occasion of the next (and first!) European 360 Conference appointment (April 2008 in Milan) totally dedicated to Adobe Flex, however, a particular problem arose and is now being examined: US speakers' trip to Europe is pretty expensive while the 360 formula does not include any form of reimbursement for them!

After the first protests related to the unforeseen reimbursements for the speakers' flight and/or lodging, Tom and Mike had the great idea to submit a question to the entire community: should the 360 formula be adjusted as a consequence of the long distance flight, or should it be kept unchanged, even though some speakers might not participate for budgetary reasons?

The survey can be accessed here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=yGMLUk_2f4IRYXqoobzijRuQ_3d_3d

while the live results may be seen here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/sr.aspx?sm=vYl0EBqFwQOrWCuur46_2bDfittExkiV1oYuHuVUgA6k8_3d

You are all invited to tell yours!

I am just back from the Web2.0 Expo of Berlin (5-8 November). Besides sharing "Choosing the appropriate RIA technology" with Marco Casario (that was the title of our joint speech) I also had the opportunity to attend several speeches during the 3 days expo.

Two words, or concepts, particularly caught my attention because they were mentioned recurringly throughout most of the speeches. They are:

1.widgets

2.social commerce.

I already knew what they are but I did not know that, mutually related in a circular manner, they are going to play a fundamental role in the web 2.0 ecosystem. I will try, as usual, to syntesize the matter:

• the possibility of initiating successful communities is (nearly) over. There is, in fact, a wide number of communities already in place, and it is increasingly difficult to tap on people’s shoulder and ask them to join a brand new community

• widgets represent the future of communities because they help the users get the preferred contents and services out of the communities. Therefore widgets permit selective participation to several comunities at once

• social commerce (or we-commerce) represents the future of e-commerce; this model, in fact, will give the online commerce sufficient visibility thanks to active support from users, each participating to the editing of contents related to the products being sold, and thus helping to promote such products whithin the communities which they are part of

• social commerce is therefore based on communities, so widgets are destined to play a role in social commerce as well! And it is easy, after all, to think of widgets helping people sort the desired items out of the multitude of proposals existing on the web.

By the way: www.zlio.com is an actual example of a social commerce business model already in place, while www.stardoll.com is based on an extraordinary business model which, gearing the belonging/social needs of humans(remember Maslow?) is capable to sell virtual staff for real money!

While choosing the most appropriate RIA technology for a project, we should consider several factors:

1. the reach (% of users who will be able to get the RIA experience with their installed browser and plug-ins)
2. the availability of open source vs. commercial products
3. the company’s internal knowledge
4. the development time (time to market)
5. the community and support infrastructure

In addition to the above factors, that we can define as “supporting considerations” to the process of choosing the most appropriate RIA technology, we should consider a 6th factor which consists of the “intimate” suitability of a RIA technology to manage:

- Users interaction
- Rich media content

At Comtaste, we have defined the following chart to describe the positioning of 6 different RIA technologies respect the 2 above mentioned parameters (each measured in terms of several features): Ajax, Adobe Flex, Java FX, Lazlo, Microsoft Silverlight 1.1 and XUL .

The chart has been named “the RIA domain” because it represents, like for a mathematical function, the area within which an application can be defined as a Rich Internet Application. It corresponds to our personal feeling and experience as RIA developers.

This chart has been included in the slides presented by Marco Casario at the Web 2.0 Expo of Berlin. The complete set of those slides can be found here.

Comtaste has just launched its new training courses on Adobe Flex3 and AIR for late spring-early summer 2008.

First courses to be scheduled are:

"Flex 3 and Flex Builder 3: Developing Rich Internet Applications with the new Flex 3 SDKs" (Milan and London 26-29 May, NYC-Manhattan 2-5 June)

"Developing desktop applications with Adobe AIR, Ajax and Flex" (Milan 14-17 April, NYC-Manhattan 9-12 June, London 23-26 June).

Our educational proposal, designed and set up by Flex expert Marco Casario, is mainly the result of our strong experience in real world enterprise projects.

Our courses reflect our clients' training needs that our consultants have encountered in the day by day running of enterprise-class projects, where Flex and AIR are also connected to backend applications under robust and rigid JEE architectures or other server side technologies.

Training programs and other details on company's website www.comtaste.com/en/training.htm

The ROI index is a synthetic yet meaningful parameter used to express the benefit of making a project, as well as the benefit of making a certain choice related to a project, for example the technology to be used.

During my speech at the recent 360Flex Conference in Milan I presented the benefits achieved as a consequence of adopting Flex to re-design an enterprise application.

After an overview concerning the practical methods that can be used to evaluate the benefits and to calculate the Return On Investment (ROI), I presented a real-world case of an application for banking operations.

In that case, the benefit was measured in terms of the time saved to execute an ordinary operation (cashing a check) by using the Flex re-designed application respect the time that was formerly necessary to execute the same operation by using a "common" Oracle form-based application (simple html using the "traditional" logic of 1 click=1 page).

A tipically physical kind of measurement (time saved) was then translated into an economic parameter by valueing the time by the standard hourly wage of the staff involved in the operations of that kind.

The final passage was the calculation of the ROI formula.

The important and evident result was that the use of Flex contributed to leverage the ROI formula numerator (return) and to decrease its denominator (investment), for a double action of increment on the final result.

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The slides of that speech can be found on SlideShare