bluepulse, a product of Bluepulse Pty. Ltd in Sydney, Australia may just be the first company to have “cracked the code” to one of the single most significant and confounding problems faced by mobile developers, carriers, handset manufacturers and most significantly end-users.
The company has developed a proprietary technology platform called OADP (Open Application Delivery Platform) which when combined with their SPOT (Small Portable Object Technology), the company claims (and my experience so far as well as that of a number of people besides myself) confirm that their bold claim, that they’ve overcome the barriers of
* compatibility
* connectivity
* billing
* distribution
IS TRUE.
In the real world this means that regardless of phone or carrier, you can download their bluepulse software platform, install a few widgets that are available either free, can be developed by the end user or professional developers or purchased, and in just a few moments experience a substantially similar experience as any other user on any other phone and any other network.
I previously blogged about bluepulse over at my other blog, MobileCrunch where I suggested that we may be seeing the first giant application success of Mobile 2.0. Let me go one further. If what I’ve experienced and what’s been reported to me bears out to be true over some time, what we’re really seeing is the kind of essential technology development that will make Mobile 2.0 possible! Bold words to be sure, but until the barriers come down and users everywhere can have a common experience regardless of where they are or what phone or carrier they have we’ll never see the sort of mass adoption and use that we enjoy with the PC.
In fact, this is a topic that I think bears much greater analysis and discussion; the disparity in sameness that is a huge barrier to global adoption. As much as the IEEE and other standards bodies spend bickering over standardization, why is it that as much as I know about phones, I have to poke around like a newbie every time someone hands me a phone I’ve never seen before? You’d think with the great reduction in number of entry methods on a typical phone (a keypad vs. a keyboard) it would be simple enough to arrive at some basic standards that hold true no matter what the phone.
Think about this for a moment. When you log on to a PC there are some basic steps that are always the same no matter what. You log in, either click a desktop shortcut or the “start” button on your taskbar and from there you activate programs and go about your business. With a phone about the only standards are that you dial numbers and hit send. For mobile data the rules go out the window. This is why bluepulse excites me so much. I put it on several phones from the high end Motorola A1000 smartphone to the Nokia N90 to the Nokia 6820 with its brilliant (but tiny) screen. Although the display real estate is really different the display itself and the operation of the program and the widgets I’ve installed.
Although not all the widgets are free there are enough that you can get a real feel for the application, particularly since it includes a chat client that consolidates AIM, Yahoo, MSN and ICQ into one interface (think Meebo for phones as Mike Arrington at TechCrunch put it).
The one complaint I have relates to pricing of the widgets that are not free. Fees are billed in credits which you can buy with a credit card or (if you’re in Australia) via SMS. The problem is that it’s a little confusing keeping track of what you’re really being charged. If I buy 2000 credits, which is apparently the smallest increment I can buy (and which costs $25) and a widget is 8 credits a day how many days will it take to use up my credits? Of course the answer is 2000/8 which equals 250 (days), but I would suggest that a simple conversion is done that provides end users with some additional information to include cost per credit in your local currency ($25/2000 = $ 0.125 per widget) and your daily spend is calculated based upon the total pulse credits required for your widgets times whatever your cost per pulse credit happens to be. In other words, for US a credit is one and a quarter cents so 8 credits equal 10 cents. Thus, if my daily spend is 8 credits, I’m spending 10 cents per day. I think making this all transparent would be very useful as people gain a lot of comfort from seeing that what they’re buying is only a few pennies. Clarity brings confidence and confidence is what supports purchases.
Anyway, although I’d blogged this before, I felt that this was something too important to overlook and since I don’t know which Mobhappy readers also check out MobileCrunch, I though it would be a good idea to post this here too. I’d deeply appreciate feedback from readers on this too. If you’ve tried bluepulse could you please comment your experience along with your carrier and your phone? I’m trying to get an idea of just how far this “universal compatibility extends. Also, do tell what widgets you’ve tried especially if you’re using some beyond their free stack. Thanks.
What Am I Missing About Bluepulse?…
Oliver seems to be really into Bluepulse. After I saw the posting at MobileCrunch I signed up for a Bluepulse developer kit. I’m one of those propeller-headed folks, being of the general mind that knowing how things work out under the covers nor…
Oliver,
Could you please respond to Mike’s post?
http://www.thisismobility.com/blog/?p=91
I was wondering the same thing but figured I wasn’t nerdy enough to really parse it all out. Mike doesn’t have that problem.
Scott
Just so you don’t think we’re victims of groupthink, I have to respectfully say I can’t share Oliver’s enthusiasm for this product. It’s hard to see what will make it succeed when pretty much every other attempt to route around mobile carriers has not. I’ll let Mike speak to the technical issues, but Tom Hume does a nice job of summing up some of the other issues.
The major problems are the install base and the payment mechanism. Anything that counts on people downloading and installing software to their device to get its foot in the door is still going to be nothing more than a bit player — perhaps a huge marketing push from somebody with a product like Yahoo could change that. Additionally, I find the claim of any device, any carrier a bit dubious — that’s something that’s been repeated too many times in this industry for people to believe it.
And I’m supposed to pay some unknown company in Australia upfront for stuff I’ve never seen nor used — on top of data traffic? I don’t see how that’s preferable or easier than just paying my carrier through an existing channel (ie monthly bill or prepay) for services on the portal, or using free or premium SMS services.
I do think the idea of mobile widgets is a good one — I’ve said so before — but it’s a little early to say that Bluepulse has cracked it, particularly when the likes of Opera, with plenty of existing relationships with handset manufacturers and operators is competing in a very similar space. One could make a convincing argument that its strategy of focusing on the technology, rather than trying to be the content provider too, is more sound.
Hi Scott, Oliver’s asked me to respond.
I’ve tried to address Mike’s concerns, along with a few others, back on the bluepulseblog.
We’re stoked that Oliver is excited about bluepulse - so are we - however, in its current iteration think of bluepulse as we describe it on our homepage - ‚Äúthe easiest way to access the internet services you need from an ordinary mobile phone.‚Äù
The focus is on delivering a fast, usable, low-cost platform for delivering mobile content and services to as broad a mobile audience as possible. As consumers upgrade their handsets over time, we’ll be able to drop MIDP1 support and add more goodness to the bluepulse client. Maybe one day it’ll be only Symbian, UIQ and Smartphone we need to support. In the meantime, it’s important we keep as low a memory footprint as possible (62k max in MIDP1) so we’re limited for the time-being on adding cool new coding features.
Nevertheless, the bluepulse client allows a content publisher or app developer to write a mobile app once, and it will be compatible with >250 handset models across MIDP1, MIDP2, Symbian, and a bunch of other handsets (e.g. Treos) that can run it in JRE with some fiddling. Today. And a consumer with a very low-end, regular phone can see a link on a content publisher’s site saying, “get our content/service on your mobile now” and be pretty sure that (carrier idiocy notwithstanding) the publisher’s widget and the bluepulse client will all download and install smoothly and quickly. Today. Once it’s installed, because it uses the phone’s own UI, the client and the widget will appear as familiar as the handset’s own apps, helping encourage real repeat usage.
We expect that “adoption” isn’t really our challenge, it’s the developer’s. The client is so small, is usually installed with the first widget the consumer asks for, and only needs to be installed once. If the widget you’ve built is cool enough, installing the client is not a significant hurdle - like installing a Flash plugin to use a great Flash-powered app.
It’s not something that excites developers because of the cool developer tools. However, once you start to think about the broad audience you can reach, it’s worth thinking about what’s possible with even a pretty simple set of XHTML and media types, such as this retail music widget. Maybe neither of these will change the world, but the best ideas don’t always rely on bleeding-edge dev tools.
If a mobile developer’s “Plan To Change The World” begins this way, “(1) Get everybody to upgrade their mobile phone…” they’ve already blown it.
Geek News Central 2006-01-24 #139…
This is probably one of my top shows put together in recent weeks had a lot of energy tonight, their is some very important information that you are not going to want to miss in this show. I have some……
Hi Carlo,
Just addressing a few of your points:
We think this is something so easy to use, it doesn’t actually have to be on the carrier’s default ‘deck’ to get distribution. Customers who like it can distribute it to friends virally via SMS. Content publishers have just as much distribution potential than carriers, and more reason to be enthusiastic about it. It can be installed by WAP push, premium SMS, or over WiFi or Bluetooth networks. Shortly before Christmas, a rock music festival promoter was able to build a bluepulse widget to provide mobile info for concert-goers in less than a week and at no cost other than their time - this does not have to be limited to big media and entertainment companies. Lots of little distribution opportunities substitute for one big one.
Absolutely, a non-exclusive distribution deal with a portal, handset maker or multi-market carrier would help enormously. But I’ve actually worked on the product side of distribution deals for several years at Yahoo!, and I know we can’t walk in to Yahoo! and ask for one without some evidence that we can get some viral growth on our own first. Got to show we can walk before they’ll help us fly.
Hey, not fair, that’s not a claim bluepulse has made, so far as I’m aware. Others may have summarised our claims in those terms. But the detail is: if you’ve got the correct internet settings installed correctly on your handset, it’s a MIDP1, MIDP2 or Symbian handset, and your carrier hasn’t dumbed it (or your internet connectivity) down to prevent you installing non-carrier software, it’ll work. Our handset testing team is actually the same size as our dev team, and the team has been testing now for years. We have >250 individual handset models explicitly supported. We have usage data on customers using bluepulse on a variety of networks in all major markets. I don’t know if any other player in this space is as committed to broad handset compatibility, but it’s our main focus.
Not sure why unknown Australian companies worry you more than, say, unknown American companies - is it the Croc Hunter thing? Don’t worry, we won’t hurtcha, lil fella!
but I better reiterate that the bluepulse client, bluepulse widgets, and many of the 3rd-party widgets are free to install and use (ex-carrier’s data traffic charges.) Further, we do allow you to buy credits via premium SMS, and we’re able to put it on your carrier bill, should your carrier agree to let us.
Indeed! It’s so convincing, it is our strategy. We’ve spent four years focusing solely on the technology. Here’s a free SDK, you can use it to build and distribute mobile widgets on the platform, free of charge (except for revenue share if you choose to charge customers for it). Here’s two example widgets we’ve built to get you started, bet you can do a better job - it’s not what we do. We’ll keep extending the range of handsets we support, and extending the features we support on the client, and making the platform faster and easier to develop for.
You said it yourself:
…totally, we’re basically singing from the same hymn sheet. But if a handset manufacturer released a widget dev platform, only the people with a handset from that manufacturer would ever try to build one. And in order to drive new handset upgrades, a manufacturer would only ever release a widget tool that was compatible with a small number of their latest handsets. A tiny fraction of the mobile development community building widgets for a tiny percentage of the potential mobile audience? Sounds too much like the status quo to me.
“Hey, not fair, that‚Äôs not a claim bluepulse has made, so far as I‚Äôm aware. Others may have summarised our claims in those terms.”
http://bluepulse.com/business/index.php
“Your content and applications, on any phone, anywhere…”
I should also point out I don’t harbor any ill will towards Australia or Australians (would that make me anti-antipodean?). The simple point is that to access any premium content, users are being asked to send money with their credit card halfway, three-quarters of the way or whatever around the world to some unknown company. The location isn’t particularly relevant.
Carlo, I don’t know about the US, but at least here in Australia “premium content” is billed TO the phone provider, who adds the cost to YOUR bill. Hence, the service provider acts as an escrow agent of sorts… your credit card doesn’t do anything “halfway, three-quarters of the way, or whatever” around the world.
I realize that Josh… but until Bluepulse gets billing arrangments in place to cover every carrier around the globe, non-Australian users are left paying with their credit card.
One of the most frustrating things for those of us moving across from publishing on the web to now getting content onto phones is the complexity of understanding how to make things work on the seemling endless varieties of phones. So the OAPD offering from Blue Pulse seems like an exciting solution.
I plan to interview Ben on my podcast in the coming weeks - (Mobile Media Show - and will commend him on his valliant attempt to put a cable car on what is otherwise a steep and rugged road ahead.
However, reading all of these interesting posts from people like Tom, Steve, Mike and Carlo I want to respond to Oliver’s call for comments on how we are finding it.
I downloaded and installed it and although it is running fine on my Nokia 6680 (not too cumbersome on the memory, which many other widgets seem to be) I am not compelled to use it and this is where it becomes tricky. I think Tom is right when he says “it’ll suffer from the chicken-and-egg situation of needing an audience before content providers address it in large numbers”.
There are also some practical things that I feel lets it down. I tried the “Send to a friend” option and my friend received an SMS with an invitation to download the application, including the comment that it will cost “$5 to set up”. That’s not necessarily the ideal “share” situation, particularly when my friend can go and download it for free at the website like I did.
I also tried the IM system but was unable to get that working. I put my settings in for MSN and then added a Buddie, but when I did so I was told I had already added that Buddie, when clearly I hadn’t. Again, Tom’s words “Is BluePulse for the average user? How will the average user get it?” rang true as I am not an average user. I am reasonably technically capable, I fiddle around on my phone a lot more than others and I have a vested interest in getting it working. I actually want it to work so much I’ll try in four or five times. Will the average user?
Yes, the MSN is in Beta, so perhaps there are teething problems there. But if I am an “average user” getting the product now, will I care to come back when these issues are resolved and when there are more cool things in there.
I am very happy with reading my RSS news in my Opera Mobile browser and I have the movies, tv, horoscopes through my subscribed services on my carrier portal which are cheap and already billed directly to my phone bill (so I don’t have to worry about working out the credits system, which I found difficult to understand because nowhere did I read what the cost was per 1000 credits - did I miss something here? Oliver seems to have found that information).
I really, really, really want BluePulse to work. If you guys can get the handset makers to preinstall it on everyone’s handset and there are a whole lot of cool apps running (smoothly) inside it then I would be very tempted to not only go and try using it again (regularly) but I would also want to develop my content to work inside of it. Without that, I am afraid it may just not have the smarts to get us all hooked.
Hi Everyone,
Carlo, you seem to have missed an important word when you quoted bluepulses compatability claim.
You quote the site as saying:
“Your content and applications, on any phone, anywhere…”
In actual fact the text on that link says:
“Your content and applications, on almost any phone, anywhere…”
In this context I think ‘almost’ is an important qualifier =)
Luke, it’s really not very nice to change the text of your site after you get called out on that, then come back here and try to make me look like an ass.
Particularly when the Google cache shows the old page.
[…] Earlier this week, one of my esteemed colleagues here at MobHappy gave a really positive review to a piece of mobile software called Bluepulse. Some people, myself included, weren’t as enthusiastic — which is fine, we all can disagree — and said as much in the comments. Somebody going by “alan” from the company was happy to play along, responding to questions and criticism. That’s great, that’s what it’s all about: taking part in the conversation. […]
Carlo Longino uses Google cache to call Bluepulse on their B.S….
Over at MobHappy, Carlo Longino relays an excellent case study in why companies need to “be sincere in their communications with blogs,” and what can happen when they’re dishonest. Earlier this week, Carlo posted some critical comments about a mobil…
ouch!
Here is Carlos’ blog entry about the shifty moves from Luke. Burn.
http://mobhappy.com/blog1/2006/01/27/how-not-to-deal-with-blogs-a-case-study/
Hi Alan,
‘I know Ben can‚Äôt afford to buy anybody a drink while he‚Äôs there, that‚Äôs for sure.’
Indeed he couldn’t. I am assuming the address of Bluepulse as per their website: Suite 1206/3 Kings Cross Road, Rushcutters Bay, 2011, Sydney, Australia is the same one below?
1206/3 Kings Cross Road, RUSHCUTTERS BAY
Modern two bedroom apartment in the prestigious Altair building. Featuring two large equally sized bedrooms, built-ins, internal laundry, integrated stainless steel kitchen, generously sized living area and two large balconies one offering spectacular NE views of Sydney harbour and the other with views to Botany Bay. Building features pool, gym, security parking and concierge. How much for this luxurious Sydney office A$725PW - I hope to hell someone is living there too!
Perhaps a more meagre setting for a head office might do the trick. More money to pay for important business trips, development and staff training - ouch!; not conceirges and swimming pools. But I aint gonna tell you guys how to suck eggs.