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Posted on June 1 2007 by Jag @ 3:19 pm
At the beginining of March I went to check out a gastropub called William IV not too far away from my neighbourhood. It’s located on the Harrow Road in NW10, technically in Kensal Green but a stone’s throw from the top end of Ladbroke Grove. London bus Route 18 (a bendy one) goes right past it, or if you drive you can park in the nearby Sainsbury’s car park. The food in this pub is implausibly Tapas, and given that I like to think I know my Spanish-style food well, I was pleasantly surprised; the food was ace! It’s a bit pricey for my liking, but if you go on weekday lunch-times (or anytime on Mondays and Tuesdays) you can take advantage of a 3 for 2 offer which makes it more appropriate value. 5 or 6 dishes are more than enough for two at this place IMHO; they come as they come, and I would have to say that if you like your tapas you will definitely like this place! Click on the “click here” below for a couple of images of our visit. The accompanying music is When Tomorrow Comes by Eurythmics (Lennox/Stewart/Seymour) from 1986. I like this song because it brings back fond memories of when life used to be a lot simpler.
Those who are familiar with the style of tapas will appreciate that this kind of eating is a process of exploration and discovery of more-or-less-single-bite morsels of simple, but tastily, prepared bits of meat, fish and veg. Which brings me nicely along to the subject of “widgets”. Or mobile widgets in particular. Where to start? This could get extremely technical, but I’ll try to maintain some sanity by keping it as simple as poss. At the core of it all “widgets” are simply computer programs that run on your computer. A bit like your word processor or spreadsheet or whatever you fire up on your computer or laptop. But unlike your favourite word processor or spreadsheet program, widgets are smaller, more single-purposed programs. In other words, if you liken your word processor to a classic main meal consisting of several ingredients combined together to produce a complex combination of flavours in perhaps sufficient quantities to leave your stomach bloated when you finish, then a widget will be like a tiny little appetiser with a simpler, less-complicated flavour which leaves you wanting more. A bit like tapas I suppose. So, unlike your word processor, which will allow you to typeset a complete book if you want it to, complete with diagramming tools, equation editors, word counts, indexing and grammatical checking tools, a widget will typically do something a lot simpler and more focussed. Like what for example? Er …. like display a little icon that gives you a rough indication of the 3-day weather forecast for your locality for example. Crucially, this example alludes to another feature of widgets commonly accepted in conventional wisdoms: they occupy just a little space on the “desktop” of your computer screen; and are always there to be able to be “glanced” at whenever you wish. Or else they can magically appear on your desktop at the stroke of a button. In a particular stretch of the Eurythmics slong that’s playing in the background you will hear Annie Lennox singing the following: Every star was shining brightly, just like a million years before. And we were feeling very small, underneath the universe.
And this nicely (albeit somewhat tenuously) illustrates another aspect of widgets that defines them: there are loads of them “out there”. A universe of small useful little widgets. A universe within which you can go round collecting widgets which you can instantly download to your computer’s desktop to provide you something small, simple and useful to look at from time to time. In order to be useful, widgets probably have to be connected. Connected to the Internet for example. So that you could have a news-ticker widget, a stock quote widget or an Manchester United football team live match-score widget. The possibilities are limitless, such is the magic of being connected to the Internet. By now you might be excused for wondering what’s new about this widget concept, I mean we already have access to all this wonderful connected stuff through our Internet browsers surely? And we’ve had for quite some time too, no? The answer is yes and yes, but what’s new about widgets is that they run outside your browser. The idea is that this makes them even more convenient because just like you’ve found collecting browser bookmarks and URLs for the last 10 years incredibly useful, widgets are even more useful because you don’t even need to fire up your browser to get at useful snippets of stuff. They’s always just there, on your screen, quietly updating themselves whenever they need updating. You just get on with what you normally do on your computer, and then glance occasionally at your collection of widgets that you placed strategically around your screen earlier. You could also argue that some “widgets” are also old hat and that you already have them – e.g. the BBC News ticker for example. Well yes, but the BBC News Ticker (which has been around for donkey’s years) was created by the technical folks at the BBC who probably used complicated professional software development practises that go with creating programs for computers. Like using a complex programming language like C++ or Java etc. and managing the creation of the software in the traditional manner of software projects: feasibility, design, development, testing etc. all of which costs a lot of time and money and access to data and systems that only the staff at the BBC have access to – and therefore out of reach of the casual software developer who probably doesn’t do that sort of thing for a living. And this characterises the final aspect of widgets that sets them apart from other small computer programs: they are crafted in the language of the web; i.e. HTML, Javascript, Flash etc. And it’s because of this (being crafted in the language of the web) that there will be millions of them; a universe of widgets. Because someone, somewhere out there, will have created a widget that does the one thing that they particularly like, and you might like it too.
Those of you familiar with The Long Tail* (yawn) will get this aspect of widgets. Well that’s the theory anyway. So, to summarise widgets: they’re:
And so, whilst the public at large are still to get used to the idea of widgets making their lives simpler on their desktop computers, the conveyor belt of hype is already churning out the concept of “mobile widgets”. Yep, today you can get widgets on your computer, tomorrow you’ll get widgets for your mobile phone. When tomorrow comes you’ll be able to collect widgets (from a universe of widgets out there) for your mobile phone, using your mobile phone. And the theory goes that because widgets are small, single-purpose morsels of goodness which don’t take up much room on a screen, they’re much better suited for mobile phones because for anything to work well on a mobile phone it has to be small (there’s isn’t much space on a mobile phone screen), simple to use (like with one thumb and a pair of eyes) and take up zero brain cycles (because using a mobile phone has to be zero-effort). Some people go so far to say because of this mobile phones will actually drive the explosion of the widgetosphere. Warning: technical bit: The theory says that where mobile web and WAP supposedly failed, mobile widgets will succeed, and everyone will love ‘em. I am quietly optimistic. Actually, I’m quite hopeful. But not because there’s anything technically revolutionally or problem-solving about widgets per se, but because the very fact that this stuff is closer in ideological terms to the “Internet way”, the greater the probability of there arising a long term fix to the real problems that have plagued the adoption of Internet applications on mobile over the years, namely a combination of the interdependencies of: bad usability, bad distribution economics and bad platform fragmentation. The bigger the developer community you expose these challenges to (or the more of Google’s PhD-qualified staff that get on the case), the more likely solutions will be found. There’s no guarantee of success, just a higher probability of succeeding. I hope this explanation was useful and/or entertaining. And even if it wasn’t I hope you enjoyed the pictures and the music. And for those of you who live in London and like Tapas, I hope you might have added the William IV pub to your “must-try” list. (This article was created as a submission to next week’s Carnival of the Mobilists, a weekly roundup of the best articles about all things mobile. Each week the “Carnival” is hosted by different bloggers writing about the industry. This week’s Carnival [number 75] is hosted at Vision Mobile. Next week’s Carnival [number 76] is hosted at MTV’s Greg Clayman’s Twofones blog.) ——— * “The Long Tail” is basically another way of saying that just a handful of really popular websites are used by masses of people frequently (e.g. Google, BBC, Youtube, Myspace), , but the vast majority of the websites out there are those that are visited infrequently, or have only a handful of users. It’s that vast majority that are “The Long Tail”. I particularly like the way that an Amazon employee was said to have described it: “We sold more books today that didn’t sell at all yesterday than we sold today of all the books that did sell yesterday.“
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Route 79 Reflections on a bus journey home |
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| From London: By a British, European, 2nd-Generation Indian. Probably confused - but proud to be them all! Half of my journey to and from work is a 20-30 minute bus ride: London Bus Route 79 - between Alperton in West London and Kingsbury in North West London. I very frequently get pissed-off and frustrated waiting around in the DARK, WET and COLD - waiting for the 79 to turn up. But I have to be eternally grateful for the quality thinking time I get to myself. | ||
Nice summary Jag. I like your reasoning for why widgets suit mobile devices (not sure about the Eurythmics analogy though).
Comment kindly left by Stu — June 1, 2007 @ 6:28 pm
Hi Stu, thanks. And I agree that the Eurythmics analogy is a bit tenuous, but it was a good excuse to include a song that I like in the article!
Comment kindly left by Jag — June 1, 2007 @ 7:30 pm
Interesting! I have certainly been uninterested in WAp and internet on the phone. Maybe its my eyesight, or I have a mortgage so can’t afford BB on the computer AND data for phones. But if these mobile widgets (modgets, mogets?) can provide (is that the right term) rss feeds on a phone, I could keep up to date faster with your blog, like on the bus (and all the others I can’t bear to miss). But you’ll tell me I could be doing that now anyway with current technology?!
Comment kindly left by flashgordonnz — June 1, 2007 @ 8:14 pm
I use widgets and have for some time and note that OS like MacOSX and Vista have them embedded all over the place.
Do telcos believe that widgets will provide the compelling reason to take on data services? Since I dont own the latest mobile phone I’m not even sure what data costs or what speed you get (3g=384kbps?).
I’d like to see widgets that talk to each other or peer widgets. A diary widget could for example by “talking” to a weather widget insert an entry into my diary (a la outlook style) that it’s going to rain today…that would be a really cool and useful feature.
Comment kindly left by z_dead — June 1, 2007 @ 10:35 pm
I only know about widgets because of Ivan Popes excellent Snipperoo. I hasten to add I am not a technical genius but can do a little bit of code and stuff like that. Self taught. But for some reason I find widgets quite hard to understand. They are next on my list to grapple with properly.
Comment kindly left by rockmother — June 2, 2007 @ 12:33 am
This already happens:
http://blog.landspurg.net/webwag-mobile-beta-open-experiment-true-mobile-widgets-today
But mobile widget does not need to be ALWAYS connected, they just need to be synchronized. For instance, reading a “note widget” might be relevenat even if you are in the subway=not connected, as long as the relevant information is here.
That’s why the technical challenge are different, the usage pattern are different, the input methods are differents, and the answer might not be always the same one than on the web.
Comment kindly left by Tomsoft — June 2, 2007 @ 7:01 am
Flashgordonz: I know how you feel. Regarding data charges for phones, there are signs that this is getting cheaper and more plentiful with time. And yes, I would say that regarding RSS feeds, some phones already natively support that, not all but some of the higher end ones, like Series 60 Nokias or SonyEricssons. Actually – if you go to http://www.route79.com on your mobile phone, this website detects that you are coming in on mobile and serves up a specific mobile version that is easier to navigate in a small screen and faster to download, less data etc.
Z_dead: your question re telcos and data: well the situation right now is that beyond voice and text (which currently provide the revenues in this service industry) there *must* be something else because when the growth in the former starts to slow down (which it is doing in some markets) then the latter has to provide the growth. Charging for data at a flat rate by definition offers no long term growth because if everybody took up flat rate plans then you would reach zero growth again, and probably a lot faster than with voice and text. Look at what’s happened with broadband, if there’s no money left in it for an operator then it becomes a pure cost/margin play – which leads to consolidations or else you start to bundle broadband with other things, like TV, telephony, etc. i.e. things you can peg some growth and margin to. Widgets are not necessarily the answer – in fact probably not, but they are part of the story which is all about making it easier to do other things on your mobile that you don’t normally do today. But your point about no understanding of speed etc. is a testament to how zero-effort people treat their mobile phones. In fact on most consumer classes of 3G phone today the maximum downlink speed is 384kbps, but under widespread use in any particular cell you are more likely to get 128 or 64. (The uplink is 64kbps.) The point is that the average user doesn’t need to know this, they just need something that works without them thinking to hard about it. Something that works and something that they would value (i.e. pay for) but not something so expensive that they wouldn’t want to pay for it. And regarding widgets that talk to each other. This is also on the “conveyor belt of hype” at the moment, but there are some serious issues that need to be overcome first – like security and sanctity of monetisation models – e.g. on the latter for example if a an ad-funded widget is “mashed up” with another ad-funded widget then how do the original widget developers ensure that the mashup will display the ads correctly? And how will the advertisers ensure that their ads will be displayed?
Rockmother: You are a bit liek me when it comes to dabbling with code etc: self taught, but stick to the “don’t have to code” tools most of the time. Ah yes, Ivan Pope and Snipperoo. I like Sniperoo because it’s soooo like Ivan himself – doesn’t pretend to be something that it isn’t. I particularly like the “some are adverts, some do things and some make you laugh” description. In the case of Snipperoo, the widgets demonstrate all of the characteristics I mentioned in the above article, but are targeted for running inside web browsers, as opposed to on your computer desktop or mobile phone OS.
Tom: Thanks for your comment! Ah yes, Webwag, I sat next to your colleague Florent at the MoMo London widget session a couple of weeks back and we had good chat. Indeed, I even helped him with his live flickr widget demo for the audience that evening! I agree with your point re not having to be always connected – I omitted that from the above article because I felt that it was adding firther complexity to an already difficult subject (this is not really a tech-focussed blog), but you are right, mobile widgets in particular need to be able to be robust in a connection-limited environment. And I agree with you that mobile context brings a whole set of new challenges that are different from those that normally manifest in a PC/desktop environment. As you know there is a whole camp of people out there who believe that the desktop experience crosses over to mobile without change (or that it *should* do), but I do not subscribe to that. It might do so for a small number of geeks, but not for the masses. This is why I say that widgets are not the answer to the “great apps on mobile” problem. Widgets are predicated on “just another runtime” for developers to exploit. Being able to code mobile widgets doesn’t automatically grant the right to the developer to produce a usable application, nor an application that works om every phone, nor an application that can be discovered by everybody, nor an application that makes money. These challenges exist whether you do widgets, Java, C++ or whatever. Which is why mobile widgets are more about the long tail than they are about the few things that make a lot of money. Cheers!
Comment kindly left by Jag — June 2, 2007 @ 10:26 am
Hi, Jag.
could you please write a post on the new cafe on Kingsbury road. I saw it recently never seen it before, its opposite the ‘kingsbury friut and veg’ shop a bit further up from phone city, there is also a new indian sweet shop, a bit like ‘Ambala’ also.
thank you . omar.
Comment kindly left by omar — June 3, 2007 @ 6:26 pm
hi
Comment kindly left by omar — June 3, 2007 @ 6:27 pm
Hi Omar, now that you ask, I surely will. I think I know exactly which ones you mean as I saw them appear “out of nowhere” a few weeks ago! Cheers! (Cannot gaurantee I will in next few days but you could always check my Flickr pics at http://www.flickr.com/photos/route79/ as it is more likely I will capture images and commentary of them there.)
Comment kindly left by Jag — June 3, 2007 @ 7:14 pm
First, I haven’t listened to Annie Lennox in a long time. Yeah, she’s that good and the song just made me feel good. Second, your pictures are amazing coming from a cameraphone. I have one of those do-it-all phones and the pictures suck. Third, i still can not get over the fact that the brits are actually serving food that looks and tastes edible. I was studying at Oxford some years ago (not prepared to reveal my age) and the food was atrocious. Whenever, we wanted to eat something besides the college grub, we would eat spaghetti at Mrs. Browns or eat those street cart burgers. Fourth, i didn’t understand the whole discussion on widgets. I always thought widgets were those things that the roadrunner always ordered from the acme company.
Comment kindly left by Radman — June 4, 2007 @ 5:54 pm
Thx for your comment Radman. Yes, it’s a “feelgood” type song. You’d be surprised how good the images are from the current generation of cameraphones.
Re food: sounds like you were exposed to the worst of Brit food at Oxford! I’m hoping that things have changed significantly since then. London/UK is full of foodie surprises and gems if you look for them! I remember he Roadrunner ACME widgets too!
Comment kindly left by Jag — June 4, 2007 @ 7:13 pm
Thanks forthe further info. I will soon have to think about budgeting for a new phone!
Comment kindly left by flashgordonnz — June 5, 2007 @ 2:17 am
I had a brief conversation with Annie Lennox about dogs once. It was in the 80s, and I haven’t seen hide or hair of her since.
Widgets are cool in that, as limited as they are, they have the capacity to look online for some things, and in the guts of your device for others. Problem is, it’s often a matter of trust in assuming that n’er the two shall meet, and that what’s in your guts will never go dancing across the wires. It’s kind of like the way you trust that tapas chef to have washed his hands after relieving himself, and before preparing your delicacy.
Be wary, ye the widget collector. The more of these mini-apps you drop on your machine, the more anonymous each one becomes.
Later this year, and with little fanfare, Frogans technology will be released. Frogans are even more simplified than widgets in that the Frogans Player is the only app involved (kind of like an invisible browser) and the documents that come up like “widgety” mini-sites are authored using only a single XML-based language. No JavaScript, no HTML, no CSS, no wierdness. Okay, no sound, no video. But no access to your system resources either, and no writing their contents to disck, and each one can have as many shapes and looks as it has pages (unlimited).
Anyway, frogans won’t replace widgets. But they’re likely to catch on for computers, and later for mobile, for many of the same reasons driving the widgetisation of the Internet. And since you don’t collect them, but rather you collect their addresses, you can enjoy as many as you want without having to house any.
They’ve also got some wild user-interface features that make using them particularly enticing.
I told Annie that pit-bulls can be quite charming in the right environment, but that I wouldn’t get another one.
Comment kindly left by Joe Cady — June 5, 2007 @ 3:10 pm
Good luck Flashgordonz!
Joe: thanks for your comment; wow, you met Annie Lennox and chatted about dogs! Your points about widgets, anonymity and security very well made too. Frogans sounds interesting – will look out for them! Thanks.
Comment kindly left by Jag — June 5, 2007 @ 8:01 pm
Personally, I think SMS is a much better platform for mobile “widgets” than any of the alternatives. If it won’t fit in 140 characters, then it won’t fit on most cell phone screens. Data costs = sms costs. Computing costs approach zero on the client side. And all-you-can-eat SMS is becoming more and more available here in the U.S. – My hope is that your text message will become the command line. Personally.
Comment kindly left by Steve Smith — July 20, 2007 @ 2:26 am
Then again, I actually use and like my command line. Which might make me a geek on wheels.
Comment kindly left by Steve Smith — July 20, 2007 @ 2:28 am
Hi Steve, thanks for your comment! I agree that SMS is the ultimate when it comes to ubiquity!
Comment kindly left by Jag — July 23, 2007 @ 7:39 pm
Hi there, I just came across your blog by accident as was looking for a review of tonky gorilla.
i havent been to that pub you mention, William IV, but have driven past it and it looks nice.
I would also recommend The Island in Kensal Green on College Road. quite a chilled out place and great for localish drink . It plays good music too.
Thanks
Iqqy
Comment kindly left by Saima — July 24, 2007 @ 5:46 pm
Cheers Iqqy! The WIlliam IV is quite nice – especially on a weekday lunchtime. And thanks for the tip re The Island, must check it out at some point!
Comment kindly left by Jag — July 27, 2007 @ 11:07 am