Mobile Portland

With 12 years in mobile and smartphone development, four rounds of funding and modestly successful products, Elia Freedman brings a unique perspective to the rise of iPhone's AppStore and growing a business.

In this presentation he lays out what he's learned and how that has impacted current business decisions as he attempts to re-build Infinity Softworks.

Read more about Elia Freedman and Infinity Softworks at his blog on mobile and business and the Infinity Softworks site.

Building an iPhone Business: A Look Back to Look Ahead

Monday, April 27th, 6 pm
AboutUs offices
107 SE Washington St., Suite 520
Portland, Oregon 97214
RSVP | Map | Add to your Calendar

Thanks to Gail for an informative presentation tonight. Lots of information in these slides. I can't recommend her class more highly. It is a tremendous bargain. Course information is available at http://learnthemobileweb.com

Slides are available below.

Best practices for the desktop web simply do not apply to mobile web development. Mobile is a totally new medium. A standards-based approach to mobile web development produces a usable, adaptive and discoverable mobile web experience for featurephones and smartphones. Gail will lead a discussion about the importance of standards-based mobile web development a this month's Mobile Portland. She will cover markup fundamentals, design principles, content adaptation, usability and interoperability. We will explore and critique mobile standards and best practices authored by the W3C, dotMobi and similar organizations.

About Gail

Gail Rahn Frederick is a mobile software architect at Medio Systems in Seattle. She leads a software team that delivers mobile search and discovery products to operators and publishers. Her work spans mobile web sites and native applications on most mobile platforms. Her products target 500+ device models and have been deployed to 10+ mobile operators in 6+ countries in North America and Europe. Gail is a mobile web enthusiast who teaches standards-based mobile web development at Portland Community College. Her classes teach mobile markup languages, mobile design and usability, content adaptation, best practices and defensive programming for the mobile ecosystem. Students build content-adapted mobile web sites as the class project. Course information is available at http://learnthemobileweb.com

Meeting Details

A Standards-Based Approach to Mobile Web Development Monday, March 23rd, 6 pm AboutUs offices 107 SE Washington St., Suite 520 Portland, Oregon 97214 RSVP | Map | Add to your Calendar.

Thanks to Paul Dockter for presenting last week at Mobile Portland. It was a great presentation and discussion. Here are Paul's slides:

Mobile Tagging creates a bridge between traditional media and mobile lifestyles by using 2D barcodes which can be read from a mobile phone camera. The potential applications of this are wide-spread and have been successfully used in Japan for years, but there are barriers to adoption in the US. Despite these barriers, both Microsoft and Google have recently announced plans to utilize 2D barcodes. Businesses are warming to the idea of using these codes to help people get to mobile content quickly. The question is how quickly consumers will warm to the idea. Asia has traditionally led the way when it comes to mobile technology, and if this continues to hold true, it won't be long before we see mobile tagging spread in the U.S. Paul Docktor will lead us in a discussion about mobile tagging, how to use them, their potential and the barriers to adoption at this month's Mobile Portland.

About Paul Docktor

Paul is an Enterprise Architect in Intel IT's Strategy, Architecture and Innovation group and is focused on Intel's Online Presence.

Meeting Details

Mobile Tagging — Paul Docktor Monday, February 23rd, 6 pm AboutUs offices 107 SE Washington St., Suite 520 Portland, Oregon 97214 RSVP | Map | Add to your Calendar

Thanks to Nat and Chris from Night & Day Studios for such an informative presentation Monday. Everyone seemed to get quite a bit out of the discussion. And I can testify to the fact that my 2-year-old loves Peekaboo Barn even if she can't really play with it without her Dad nervously clutching the iPhone at the same time. Nat and Chris graciously not only provided their slides, but also updated them to make them easier to follow for those who weren't at the meeting. The slides are embedded below or can be downloaded here.

Many local companies are contemplating the opportunities created by the iPhone App Store and whether or not to change their focus to build iPhone applications. One local company that has taken the leap is Night & Day Studios. Night & Day Studios is a media production and software development house in SE Portland. They got their start developing kiosks and other exhibit media for museums.

The iPhone gaming market has taken off in a way that few anticipated. There now are more than 1,500 iPhone games available from the App Store. One of the more popular games is Fieldrunners.

Fieldrunners has been a top ten paid application in the iPhone App Store and has over 2,000 reviews. It has been hailed by Curt Schilling as "fun as hell new app."

A year after making a splash with the announcement of the Google Android platform for mobile phones, Android-based phones have finally hit the market. The G1 from T-Mobile and HTC shows an early version of what is possible on this new platform.

Sean Sullivan will be talking about what Google Android is, what it means for the market place, and how developers can start building solutions for this new mobile phone platform.

August 25th, 6 pm, AboutUs Offices

Today mobile devices know where we are, who we talk to, how much money we have in the bank and has access to corporate data, personal photos and other sensitive information.

Data and identity theft due to mobile phone theft and vulnerabilities are rising concerns. However, with both businesses and developers mobile security usually takes a back seat to features, convenience and time-to-market.

Ken Westin, the Founder and CTO of GadgetTrak, will lead a spirited discussion touching on mobile security and privacy.