The Learning Technologies Exhibition 2010 (Jan 27-28) at Olympia 2, London will be introducing an innovative event guide for the participants and the visitors… an event guide that’s not printed, but mobile – event2mobile! Visitors can access the mobile event guide for the show on their smartphones by visiting www.event2mobile.com/learningtech.

event2mobile is being provided to Learning Technologies by Web Spiders, the Mobile Application Development specialists. It is a platform that allows event managers and organizers to give visitors access to events through mobile devices. In essence, event2mobile can turn any mobile device into a portable event guide!

Having event2mobile on mobile phones translates into a useful and hassle-free experience for attendees to various events, conferences and seminars. There are no maps/ papers to carry, booths and participants can be located easily. Attendees can view their locations on a floor map, make notes, attach images and perform various other additional activities that an event guidebook would not allow them to do.

The Learning Technologies Exhibition would be using this as an extension of their printed event guide, to instantly communicate live updates, announcements and bulletins. Sponsors and participants can also use event2mobile as a platform for event marketing.

Web Spiders, as a leading custom solution provider in the field of mLearning Product and Content Development, will also be exhibiting at the 2010 Learning Technologies Exhibition (Stand no. 126).

On Friday the 8th, the Spiders lit up the Conclave Club rooftop (Whatchamacallit) once more, for the New Year bash and Annual Awards Ceremony. The evening was cool, but the party was hot… an extraordinary cocktail of dizzying dance, delicious dinner and mad merriment!

The only person who probably regretted the whole affair was probably the DJ, who barely got a chance to pause the music, from the wee hours of evening till late at night! Fortunately, the Awards Ceremony and scrumptious dinner provided the poor guy a few opportunities to rest his weary limbs!

Of course, the party was also a cool respite for the industrious Spiders after a hard day’s work, and the Annual Awards for exceptional performance rewarded all those who’d made their mark in 2009. As always, choosing the winners was difficult, with the CEO even remarking in jest, right on stage, “Those who are here… and those who are better… my best wishes to all for a wonderful 2010!”

Absolutely… we’ll make sure it is!

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

A Very Happy New Year 2010!

As we send our wishes to colleagues and clients, we all very well know that only positive actions can truly make the year “Happy”.  I am very pleased to list some great events and actions below at the start of the year – both on a business and personal front. (Blame it on PowerPoint… I use bullet points for everything now!)

1. Bangalore Office: In January we start our Bangalore office in India, in addition to our Kolkata development centre. I am also very pleased to welcome back Sadhan Biswas as VP. Sadhan had left Web Spiders 2 years ago to join Accenture, and rose to the position of a senior manager. He has happily confirmed that Web Spiders easily tops in both the quality of projects and fun and learning @work. We are glad that he has joined back. Incidentally, we have also won against Accenture on client projects, due to our agility and flexibility in both service and new technology.

2. NY Move: We are moving our East Coast US Office to Manhattan, New York. I will share more on this later. For now, we look forward to resonate with the energy of Big Apple which has always been motivating.

3. New Year Gifts: Every year we send out gifts to our clients in the December-January months for the festive season. This year, we did things a bit differently and donated money to child-welfare related local charities on behalf of our clients. In the US we gave $100 per account and in the UK a consolidated GBP 1000 to the Rainbows charity. Majority of our clients wrote back, thanking us for this gesture. I’m really glad this was appreciated and we have now decided to find more opportunities throughout the year to help children and others in need.

4. Nabadiganta Flyover: Have you noticed the colorful look of the new Nabadiganta flyover? It’s Kolkata’s first colored flyover, and Web Spiders helped the city to make its choice. Kolkatans voted overwhelmingly for a ‘cream with rust pillars’ color scheme, along with a green zone below. You can click here to read the Times of India coverage on the flyover and Web Spiders’ innovative solution.

5. Web Spiders Mission: Finally, we have been doing a lot of introspection in December, and though the world economy is coming out of the global slowdown, we know and understand that things will not be the same. We have set strategic targets for the next 2 years and aimed to accurately define what we do best, which has resulted in a mission statement which will be published on our website shortly. Our competencies of Mobile Software Development, Rich Apps using Flex/AJAX and Enterprise Content Management all become the tools or competencies to deliver our mission.

Here is a version for your quick review (though actual words might be tweaked a bit in the final version).

Mission Statement: To drive revenues and profitability of our clients, by providing product development and digital marketing services, through a best-shore model.

With Warm Regards,

Siddharth Jhunjhunwala

Key to Google’s Web apps development effort is its Google Web Tools applications. GWT (Google Web Toolkit) is an open source set of tools that allows Web developers to create and maintain complex JavaScript front-end applications in Java. This week, Google released the second version of GWT, Google Web Toolkit 2.0.

“Developers are impatient because their users are impatient,” says Dave Glazer, Google’s director of engineering. “We all—when using and building software—just want to get things done. The theme of GWT 2.0 is building faster apps and running them faster.”

This version comes with various improvements and features (including a Speed Tracer tool), plus a new way of creating UIs. Using GWT, developers can quickly develop and debug AJAX applications in Java using the Java development tools of their choice. Essentially, Google’s GWT 2.0 is now the only serious competitor to Adobe Flex.

An overview video highlighting some of the new features in GWT 2.0:

This is a significant update to the Google Web Toolkit, providing features designed to help speed up load times and performance. Google uses GWT in the development of its own Web applications like Google Wave and the newly rebuilt AdWords advertiser interface. Google Web Toolkit turns Java code into JavaScript, which can then be run natively in Web browsers. GWT has been designed to help developers bridge the differences between the various browsers.

A prominent feature in the latest GWT release is the Speed Tracer, a performance profiler that works with the Google Chrome Web browser. Speed Tracer is not tied to GWT applications; it can be used to profile and analyze the performance of any Web apps.

Here’s a quick introductory video to see the Speed Tracer in action:

Web apps are at the core of Google’s online strategy. Consequently, it’s not surprising that Google is focusing on helping both itself and also the wider developer community to build better Web applications.

Hello from Web Spiders UK!

Phew… it has been a whirlwind year for me with trips to Finland, Switzerland (ITU exhibition), Channel Islands, London as well as our office in Birmingham.  On my travels, when speaking to people at different levels about Mobile Internet, the response has almost been “Yes, it’s the next big thing.” or “I can see it being big in 1 to 2 years time”… Well, actually the time is now! In October this year (2009) Tesco launched an iPhone application for shopping and in November Sky have launched “Sky Mobile TV”, an iPhone app for viewing live TV such as news and sport.

This adds to Ocado who already have a mobile commerce iPhone application and eBay who launched, as reported by BusinessWeek in October, “its iPhone application alone facilitated $380 million in sales this year”

Google have recognised this as well by providing “Google Analytics for Mobile”.

With this in mind, and in the recognition that big brands are doing it, business will need to take a serious look at mobile as a new channel to take.  Organisations will now not only need a website but also a mobile version of it, to assist SEO but more importantly allow browsers on handheld to have viewable information and useable functionality.

I have given a few highlights of some research statistics I have seen in the past few months below from various publications that all point towards the take off to Mobile Internet and Applications. Take into account RIM also launched the Blackberry AppWorld in April 2009.

“Mobile internet becoming a daily activity for many.”

- Comscore, March, 2009

“Big in Japan –Up to 25% of a retailer’s sales can come from m-Commerce.”

- Internet Retailing, May 2009

“Mobile buyers tend to be repeat purchasers with a higher order value than average consumer, and it can be important for them to complete transactions with ease even if it means spending more.”

- eMarketer, September 2009, Jeffrey Grau

“In the next decade, the mobile Internet will replicate the success story of the PC-based Internet as social networks, widgets, search engines or company websites adapt for mobile presentation.”

- Forrester Research, August 2009

Some of the barriers that people still talk about are cost of the handsets and also connectivity.

Taking each of these points:

Cost: Manufacturers are already in a competitive market and trying to stay ahead of the game by providing internet friendly functionality. With major manufacturers such as Samsung, RIM (Blackberry), Nokia and Apple (iPhone) all adding these facilities, I believe network operators will try to push (maybe discount) these phones with the carrot of gaining more revenue from Internet browsing. The price of the iPhone, for instance, will be especially interesting to watch over the next few months as O2’s exclusivity to sell this has ended and Orange is now able to sell the device. As the technology advances (like with computers), prices will also come down.

Connectivity: Whilst at the ITU Telecom in October, the major talking point seemed to be the evolution and adoption worldwide of WiMax Mobile, providing 4G connectivity.  Providers such as Yota in Russia and Packet One (P1) Networks in Malaysia are really driving the way.  Whilst in the UK, the Mobile WiMax Acceleration Group (M-WAG) has been running for a while but national mobile WiMax looks like it is on the distant horizon.  In the meantime, the choice could be to develop a native downloadable mobile application rather than a mobile enabled website, so that the application is using the resources of the local device.

The uses of mobile applications can be wide ranging; not only covering mCommerce but also solutions like mLearning (mobile learning), entertainment (mobile TV, games, etc.), process automation (surveys, inventory management, email, sales database access), marketing/ brand campaigns, even CCTV and much more.

Within Web Spiders, we have seen strong interest in our mobile application development capabilities, specifically our mCommerce offering cart2mobile (www.cart2mobile.com); but some retailers are delaying “to see what happens”.

It will be interesting to watch how mobile Internet develops, but with Christmas just around the corner and new generation of mobile phone handsets (like iPhones) bound to be in people’s stockings, I can see that organisations who don’t start to quickly look at this channel and plan a strategy… well, they might get left behind. (If someone has already installed your competitors’ mobile application, will they then go back at a later date and install yours when it becomes available?)

Neil Burton, Web Spiders UK & Europe Business Development Manager

Neil will be presenting at the Online Information & IMS exhibition on Thursday 3rd December at 3pm on “Mobilising Applications to Improve Commerce, Automate Processes and Provide Access to Information”.

Further Reading:

1. WiMAX in Russia – Perspectives from a Leading Service Provider
2. Mobile internet usage on the rise
3. Tesco iPhone app goes live
4. Live UK football for iPhone users
5. Europe mobile Internet usage to reach 39% by 2014

Incisive Media, one of the world’s fastest growing B2B information providers, and the organiser of Online Information Exhibition and Conference and Information Management Solutions (IMS) 2009, has gone mobile with the website dedicated to these two events. Incisive Media carried out the project in collaboration with Web Spiders, mobile application development specialists.

These events, which are attended by more than 9,000 visitors from 70 countries across the globe every year, will be held at the Olympia Grand Hall in London, UK, from Tuesday, December 1 to Thursday, December 3, 2009. The website (www.event2mobile.com/onlineinformation) is now accessible from any Web-enabled mobile device.

The website was ported to mobile version using event2mobile, a mobile based platform developed by Web Spiders, which makes it easy for event organisers to make details regarding the events available on any mobile device via a URL.

Neil Burton of Web Spiders commented, “This is excellent technology which will allow visitors to the exhibition and conference to have portable, instantaneous, show information at their fingertips. Web Spiders has seen interest in mobile websites as well as applications grow exponentially and is delighted that the Online Information team recognised the value it adds to the event”. Neil will represent Web Spiders at the event on Thursday, 3^rd December to carry out a presentation on how applications can be mobilised to improve eCommerce, automate business processes, and provide access to information.

Entry to the conference is free to all attendees, provided they register in advance. Otherwise, an admission fee of £15 will be charged at the gate. Details regarding the registration process are available on www.online-information.co.uk (Twitter tag: #online09). In order to view details on the entire conference, you may use the URL www.online-information.co.uk/conference. You can also call + 44 (0)20 7316 9126. Visitors attending Online Information conference will be provided with badges, which will allow them to attend the co-located IMS 2009 exhibitions as well.