What's New in HTML5 - Week of February 20, 2012

HTML5 is gaining momentum in the war for multimedia dominance, but Flash still wins, according to gaming source One More Level.  Read original content

For better performance with HTML5 web content Microsoft recommends Internet Explorer 10 over other platforms.  Read original content

GamesMadeMe Founder and CEO Juha Paananen states “The browser will become the dominant platform on desktop and mobile and people will start to expect that they can play the same game and be part of the same experience on all devices…most games of the future will be designed so that you can access them from anywhere.  Read original content

Sencha has launched a new program to assist Adobe Flex developers to become more productive migrating to HTML5.  Read original content


Microsoft is bypassing HTML5 and launching native mobile apps for its customer relationship management (CRM) software, stating they’re watching HTML5 closely, but the focus “is to provide the best possible experience on native devices today."  Read original content

Despite some limitations, gaming platform Zynga is embracing HTML5 for its cross-platform aspect and other numerous advantages says  Zynga's CTO Paul Bakaus.  Read original content

The HTML5 accessibility website (http://www.html5accessibility.com/) has scored Mozilla’s Firefox way ahead of other Windows browsers for HTML5 accessibility support.  Read original content

According to Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox, the mobile web will edge out mobile apps in the long term, as technologies like HTML5 improve.  Read original content

Microsoft highlights HTML5 in a Valentine’s Day browser demo.  Called “Love is in the Air” (http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/performance/loveisintheair/), the demo experience “brings together hardware-accelerated HTML5 canvas, SVG, CSS transforms & transitions, WOFF, audio, and more”, according to IE group program manager Rob Mauceri.  Read original content


AppMobi has made its playMobi HTML5-based game development SDK available for beta testing.  The SDK will provide tools for development of games in iOS, Android and Facebook platforms.

The beta version of Google’s Chrome 18 browser is now available, and it includes GPU-accelerated rendering to allow games and animations built using the HTML5 Canvas tag to run faster and smoother.  Read original content

How does HTML5 fit into your mobile strategy?  Wilter du Toit, CEO of Virtual Mobile Technologies, weighs pros and cons in an opinion piece in IT News Africa.  Read original content

HTML5 doesn’t work in IE, won’t be ready until 2022, and isn’t “ready for prime time”.  These are three of the ten myths a Microsoft developer says is holding HTML5 back.  Read original content

Websites to explore that help you learn more about HTML5.  Read original content

StackMob, the cloud-based platform for mobile developers, has announced the launch of their hosted HTML5 service for desktop, tablet and mobile.  Developers can also use the new service to host HTML5 running in native apps.  “Eventually, HTML5 is going to win because of this network-connected device world.”  Read original content



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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Volunteer
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility analyst, consultant and blogger. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Enterprise Mobility, Old Age and UX

I must confess the older I get, the more I like my iPad.  Why?  It is easier to read and you can see more information on one screen.  This has got me thinking about mobile UX.  Am I the only one who thinks as technologically sophisticated baby-boomers get older they will gravitate toward tablets?

When SAP launched their first few mobile apps they all looked different.  They each used different icons, colors and styles.  However, the next year SAP changed them to all fit the same design style, color schemes, icons and menu systems.  They wanted all the apps to work in a similar manner.  They standardized to improve the UX and address change management issues.

This is a lesson for us all.  Most large companies, anticipate supporting many different mobile applications, but few have thought through UX design and how they should leverage design and UX standards across as many apps as possible.

Next week, I will be participating in a webinar titled, The Role of User Experience (UX) in a Mobility Landscape along side mobility expert Tom Parish and Endeavour's design manager Hitesh Ruwala.  If you would like to participate please register here.  The topics that will be covered are:
  • UX & its Importance 
  • Myths & Facts about UX in Mobility
  • The Mobile UX Approach
  • Do’s & Don’ts for good UX
  • Trends in UX

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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Volunteer
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility analyst, consultant and blogger. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Mobile Marketing News Weekly – Week of February 20, 2012

The Mobile Marketing News Weekly is an online newsletter that is made up of the most interesting news, articles and links related to mobile marketing that I run across each week.  I am specifically targeting market size and market trend information.

Also read Enterprise Mobility Asia News Weekly
Also read Field Mobility News Weekly
Also read M2M News Weekly
Also read Mobile Commerce News Weekly
Also read Mobile Health News Weekly
Also read Mobility News Weekly

Google studied online shopping behavior for the U.S. in the 2011 holiday season, which revealed a number of interesting stats. 41 percent of those who used mobile phones to shop made a purchase directly on their smartphone. 46 percent researched an item on their smartphone, and then went to a store to make their purchase. 37 percent researched an item on their smartphone then made their purchase online. Read Original Content

While actual mobile-shopping purchase transactions accounted for only two percent of e-commerce sales in 2011, the Kellogg Shopper Index – in a survey of 1,400 consumers -- found that more than half of in-store shoppers report having occasionally used their Internet-enabled mobile devices as a price-comparison tool while in stores. Read Original Content

SToday, xAd, one of the largest mobile-local ad networks in the U.S., has released its quarterly Mobile-Local Search Stats, a first-to-market report on mobile-local search usage and trends. Based on data from comScore, the growing smartphone market resulted in an influx of users accessing local information via their devices, up two percentage points from 75 percent (as reported in Q3) to 77 percent. Read Original Content

Verivo is a leading provider of enterprise mobility software, Verivo helps companies accelerate their business results. Its unique technology empowers teams to build, deploy, manage and update their mobile apps -- rapidly and securely. Verivo’s mobility platform is used by hundreds of companies in numerous industries, worldwide. This newsletter is sponsored in part by Verivo.  To learn more, visit www.verivo.com

A new report from Juniper Research indicates that augmented reality technology will generate $2 million in 2012, but will jump to as much as $714 million annually by 2014. Augmented reality mobile marketing revenue will largely be driven by subscription-based services, advertising and AR-based app downloads. Read Original Content


According to the "Mobile Audience Insights Report", 80 percent of the on-the-go audience preferred locally relevant advertising, and 75 percent were more likely to take an action after seeing a location-specific message. Read Original Content

Mobile Commerce News Weekly - Week of February 20, 2012

The Mobile Commerce News Weekly is an online newsletter made up of the most interesting news, articles and links related to mobile payments, mobile money, e-wallets, mobile banking and mobile security that I run across each week.  I am specifically targeting market size and market trend information.

Also read Enterprise Mobility Asia News Weekly
Also read Field Mobility News Weekly
Also read M2M News Weekly
Also read Mobile Marketing News Weekly
Also read Mobile Health News Weekly
Also read Mobility News Weekly

UK bank Barclays has launched a smartphone app allowing money to be sent and received using a phone number. Barclays is touting the app as the first European service that enables person-to-person mobile transfers, and allows customers to send a maximum of £300 a day and receive a daily total of £5,000. Read Original Content

The number of mobile users expected to use an NFC-enabled mobile phone as a metro rail or bus ticket is expected to grow from less than 1 percent today to 13 percent by 2016, according to a new report from Juniper Research. Read Original Content

According to Google, 62 percent of restaurant related searches on Valentine's Day were from "high end mobile devices or tablets." The volume of searches for restaurants was up drastically between February 7 and Valentine's Day, from all devices. Google says that desktop searches spiked by 142 percent, tablet searches by 135 percent, and by 359 percent on mobile devices. Read Original Content

Tech Endeavour structures a mobile application as a multi-layered application consisting of user experience, business, and data layers. The mobile application development process starts with definition of the mobile application, understanding key components, learning scenarios where it will be used, learning key patterns and technology considerations as well as identifying specific scenarios such as deployment, power usage and synchronization.  This newsletter is sponsored in part by Tech Endeavour, http://www.techendeavour.com/.

PayPal said the financial information of customers using its in-store payments service is safe a day after a Visa Inc. executive suggested it lacks security. PayPal is testing a service in some Home Depot stores that allows customers to make purchases by typing in their mobile phone number and a personal-identification number. Read Original Content


Many in the industry believe that NFC will be the next must-have mobile phone feature, and there’s a lot of activity around these radio communication chips. Three areas to keep an eye on for innovation this year are pairing, paying, and play. Mobile payments are another growth area – partly because it is a shiny new idea, but also because it allows mobile carriers to start another revenue stream. Read Original Content

More on Mobility and 4D Field Services

I wrote an article a few months ago titled, Mobility and 4D Field Services, in which I shared the four dimensions of mobility and field services.  These dimensions are similar to the GPS coordinates (length, width, height),  plus the addition of time.  This weekend I was reading a book titled, Stray Voltage, War in the Information Age, by Wayne Michael Hall.  In this book he takes a concept I wrote about, 4D Field Services, and adds two more, cyberspace and cerebral.

Here is a quote from Hall, "Information superiority is firmly connected to making decisions that are superior to an adversary's and combines information technology and intellectual power to create conditions with which to make better decisions."

Hall is making the point that with mass volumes of data that is collected in the field using remote sensors, data collection technologies, M2M and mobile solutions we need to improve our operational strategies and ways of thinking.  The data can provide us with real-time "situational awareness," but can we understand it and use it to make better decisions for our businesses?

More from Hall, "Human beings will need to improve their thinking capabilities to cope with the increasing complexities of the world...people will depend more on visualization to help understand complexity quickly.  Visualization will fuse data and information and display the result in a multimedia format.  Visualization will allow the integration of data, information and knowledge from all sources and will allow for the integration of numerous contributors."

There is power in taking all of the real-time data inputs that you have, integrating them, analyzing and displaying it visually on a map with powerful info graphs in real-time.  This can help us quickly understand what is happening in the field.

In my mind I see a field services manager using an iPad.  He can look down at his iPad at anytime and see the location of all his assets, resources, work crews, jobs (past, present and future) and equipment.  He can see bright yellow circles for all job status that are running over their estimated times, he can see work crews in transit and he can see all locations of upcoming jobs on a map.  In one quick glance the manager can understand where there are challenges, trouble spots and customer issues.

The visualization of this information allows for rapid and good decision making.  This is a true competitive advantage.  How do you estimate an ROI on that?


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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Volunteer
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility analyst, consultant and blogger. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Kevin Benedict's Video Comments: Enterprise Mobility a Transformational Event

What does the word transformational mean?  When I researched it I came up with, "A marked change in form."  I believe enterprise mobility fits this description.  It is taking many traditional business solutions and ERPs and changing their form via mobile applications and mobile extensions.  In this segment of my Video Comments, I talk about the transformational impact of enterprise mobility.




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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Volunteer
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility analyst, consultant and blogger. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Field Mobility News Weekly - Week of February 20, 2012

The Field Mobility News Weekly is an online newsletter made up of the most interesting news and articles related to field mobility that I run across each week.  I am specifically targeting information that reflects market data and trends.

Also read Enterprise Mobility Asia News Weekly
Also read M2M News Weekly
Also read Mobile Commerce News Weekly
Also read Mobile Marketing News Weekly
Also read Mobile Health News Weekly
Also read Mobility News Weekly
Also read Mobility Charts Weekly

The Expressway Authority of Thailand and the Land Transport Department have earmarked Bt15 million to install RFID cameras to detect speed violations on Bangkok expressways. Read Original Content

Glacier Computer has announced the availability of a sunlight readable display for its T510K – 10-inch rugged tablet. "The new sunlight readable display option is perfect for mobile workers who are in and out of vehicles or need to use the T510K outside. The 800 NIT display offers optimal readability in direct sunlight", said Ron D'Ambrosio, CEO, Glacier Computer. " Read Original Content

A commercial version of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters’ Keurig Vue coffee brewer will debut in the fall and will incorporate Vue paks embedded with RFID technology.  The paks are designed to simplify the brewing experience and ensure quality and consistency for users who are unfamiliar with the brewer. Read Original Content

Since 1995, Syclo has enabled hundreds of companies in 37 countries and industries supercharge their businesses with mobility.  This newsletter is sponsored in part by Syclo. http://www.syclo.com/.

Aqua Tek S Rugged iPhone case is made for the iPhone 4 and 4S and offers protection from drops, falls, and accidental spills. The case will even allow you to take your iPhone underwater, up to 20 feet. The built-in solar battery and solar charger also charges your iPhone. Read Original Content


To help prevent RFID theft from credit cards researchers are working on an on/off switch. A simple technology to achieve this end is being worked on by researchers at the Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering that would see the simple act of placing your finger on your card would turn in “on” when you go to pay for something. Read Original Content

M2M News Weekly – Week of February 13, 2012

Welcome to M2M News Weekly, an online newsletter that consists of the most interesting news and articles related to M2M (machine to machine) and embedded mobile devices.  I aggregate the information, include the original links and add a synopsis of each article.  I also search for the latest market numbers such as market size, growth and trends in and around the M2M market.

Also read Enterprise Mobility Asia News Weekly
Also read Field Mobility News Weekly
Also read Mobile Commerce News Weekly
Also read Mobile Marketing News Weekly
Also read Mobile Health News Weekly
Also read Mobility News Weekly
Also read Mobility Charts Weekly

Frost & Sullivan's report, European Smart Meter Markets, finds that the smart meter revenue in Europe is expected to grow from $318.4 million in 2010 to $1.93 billion in 2017 at a compound annual growth rate of 29.3 percent. Read Original Content

According to ABI Research the compound annual growth rate of global insurance telematics subscribers will grow by 90 percent from 2010 to 2017. That's an increase from 1.85 million telematics users to a whopping figure of 89 million. Read Original Content

ABI Research has predicted that the market for smart appliances will grow to reach 24 million shipments during 2017. Read Original Content

ClickSoftware is an SAP mobility partner and the leading provider of automated workforce management and optimization solutions for every size of service business.  This newsletter is sponsored in part by ClickSoftware - http://www.clicksoftware.com/.

Recently there have been a number of bold predictions for the M2M market. Cisco predicts there will be 50 billion devices by 2020, and IBM has recently predicted that by 2015 there will be 1 trillion devices connected. Read Original Content


Eight out of ten executives believe overall utility smart grid investment will continue to rise in 2012 according to a new study by Zpryme. Zpryme surveyed 312 executives in the U.S. energy, smart grid and utility space on their overall 2012 smart grid sentiment. Read Original Content

According to GBI Research, the cumulative number of smart meter units installed in Europe is expected to grow from 7.6 million units in 2010 to 105.99 million units in 2020 at a compound growth rate of 30.2 percent. Read Original Content

Mobile Health News Weekly – February 13, 2012

The Mobile Health News Weekly is an online newsletter made up of the most interesting news and articles related to mobile health that I run across each week.  I am specifically targeting information that reflects market data and trends.

Also read Enterprise Mobility Asia News Weekly
Also read Field Mobility News Weekly
Also read M2M News Weekly
Also read Mobile Commerce News Weekly
Also read Mobile Marketing News Weekly
Also read Mobility News Weekly
Also read Mobility Charts Weekly

The worldwide mHealth market will grow to a revenue opportunity worth $23 billion by 2017, according to a new report conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Read Original Content

The global market for mobile health applications for smartphones is expected to nearly double in 2012, rising to $1.3 billion, according to a new report. Read Original Content

AT&T has launched a beta version of the AT&T Developer Center ForHealth, a cloud-based platform designed to help mobile health app developers create integrated applications. Read Original Content

Webalo technology eliminates the need for traditional mobile application development tools and custom programming to provide in hours, instead of weeks or months, mobile access to the specific enterprise data and functions that smartphone and tablet users rely on to do their jobs.  This newsletter is sponsored in part by Webalo, www.webalo.com.

Auburn Community Health Clinic is now offering a new online appointment registration feature through a partnership with iTriage, a free mobile healthcare app that lets patients access medical information online and from their smartphones. Read Original Content

Google allegedly is planning to unveil a medical category for apps in the Android Marketplace, according to iMedicalApps.com. Read Original Content

Bristol City Council Housing and Mobile Field Services

Bristol City Council Housing
The Bristol City Council owns 28,000 homes that need to be maintained and repaired.  For those of us that own even one home, we recognize how much maintenance is required.  These homes, however, are rented and come with the added challenges involved with maintaining rentals.  In fact it takes 300 field service technicians full time to keep up with the work load.

In order to efficiently complete all the work needed, they sought to improve productivity, document and manage worker's skills, identify the tools required, and provide optimized routing between jobs.  They also needed to figure out a way to improve scheduling to optimize productivity.  They worked with their systems integrator Capgemini to come up with a solution that would save them £2.7 million per annum in operation costs.

One of the biggest challenges was communication with 300 mobile field service technicians that were on the move and working in remote locations.  Capgemini solved this part of the puzzle by deploying ClickSoftware's enterprise mobility solution.

Councilor Anthony Negus, Cabinet Member for Housing, Property Services and Regeneration, said, "We will be able to better response to tenant needs, for example by offering  greater chic and certainty about appointment times, and by making sure that the majority of jobs are successfully competed on a first home visit.

Today, the field services industry is experiencing some incredible advances in business strategies that are made possible through mobile technologies.  I have written a number of articles on this subject that you may find useful:

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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Volunteer
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility analyst, consultant and blogger. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Interviews with Kevin Benedict