Sports brands take the lead in wearables

In late January, Nike introduced the FuelBand, an electronic bracelet using accelerometers to measure a wearer’s activity throughout the day and present them visually via Bluetooth to their mobile phone and through USB to their computer. Late last year Jawbone also entered the game with its Up device, which measures sleep as well as activity levels.

This isn’t the first incidence of mobile devices being used in a wearable fashion or for measuring activity. After all, Nike+ and a pedometer are now built directly into all iPod Nanos, and bracelet carrying cases for Nano have long been popular. But one new technology in particular is about to throw open the wearable space like never before.

The power of low power

Bluetooth has been the most popular method for bridging between our different hardware, and it’s worked well, but it isn’t without problems. The short range wireless technology is notorious for eating up battery and losing connectivity, but a new evolution of Bluetooth has arrived that promises to bring an end to these problems.

To understand Bluetooth Low Energy, a new subset of Bluetooth’s latest 4.0 version, you must first understand the difference in philosophy between this Bluetooth and its predecessor. Traditional Bluetooth was connection focused – it maintained a constant link, even when data wasn’t flowing, and through that link it could send large amounts of information that let us remotely control game consoles or talk on our phone headset.

Where traditional Bluetooth was for constant streams of large data, BLE is for an infrequent stream of small data. It is truly designed to enable an “internet of things” because our things, our watches and shoes, have data that our web services and smartphones can use.

Bluetooth Low Energy, does a more efficient job of saving energy by using a pulsing method that keeps devices connected without chewing up a battery. In fact BLE devices can last years on just a coin cell battery. It also works over shorter distances so it avoids crossed frequencies. So what do companies need to know to start diving into BLE?

How companies are reinventing their products with BLE

Although BLE and Near Field Communication are often lumped into the same category as short range wireless technologies, the market is actually more prepared for BLE. Bluetooth 4.0 was silently included in the iPhone 4S, and it is also being included in an increasing number of Android phones including the Motorola Droid Razr. According to Bluetooth, by 2012 all new smartphones will be made Bluetooth 4.0 ready.

The Bluetooth company is trying to make it easy for manufacturers to receive what they’re calling Bluetooth Smart Ready certification, requiring only that products be:

…built to Bluetooth v4.0 specifications with GATT-based architecture, feature a dual-mode low energy radio, and allow for the device software to be updated by the consumer. Manufacturers of Bluetooth Smart Ready devices should also provide a way for third parties to create and distribute applications that receive data from Bluetooth devices.

Here’s a look at a few manufacturers who are already building Bluetooth 4.0 products:

Casio
Able to operate for two years on the same battery, Casio’s new G-Shock watch connects to a user’s smartphone to alert them to calls and emails without requiring them to have to reach into their pocket or purse for their phone

Dayton Industrial
Typically chest strap heart monitors require a special watch that wearers can use to monitor their heart. By using BLE, Dayton Industrial’s new chest strap will be able to pair with any BLE enabled smartphone. This cuts down on the company’s hardware costs and let them leverage the processing power and interface of smartphones.

Have questions about Bluetooth 4.0? Want to find out more about how software development and product development can happen in tandem, or how using the smartphone can extend your product, email me at rachel.youens@mutualmobile.com.

In the first quarter of 2012, our Machine-to-Mobile (M2Mo) team will analyze the opportunities made possible when companies pair smartphones with previously non-connected machines – from medical equipment to household appliances, construction tools, and even football helmets.

How is M2Mo Different from M2M?

M2M refers to any exchange of data between multiple physical machines that allows for a more efficient or effective workflow. Forrester’s Michele Pelino identifies three common elements across all M2M solutions – hardware, software, and network connectivity. She goes on to define M2M as:

Technologies that collect and transfer information on the condition of physical assets or people.

Though this broad definition covers a wide array of technology pairings, including GPS, RFID, and NFC, there has been a distinct explosion of innovative solutions in which a consumer mobile device is the key enabling factor. We identify this specific subset of M2M as Machine-to-Mobile, or M2Mo.

Why Does M2Mo Matter Now?

M2Mo has reached a tipping point through a confluence of factors that make these solutions not just possible, but also realistic:

• Stable Platforms -  iOS and Android have matured to the point that many organizations now rely on these platforms for mission-critical tasks. A clear example of such faith in mobile devices is the FAA’s recent approval of iPads as replacements for paper charts in commercial cockpits.
• Cheap, Ubiquitous Technology - For the first time ever, companies have access to an array of cheap sensors that can be integrated into almost any hardware or physical asset. Data from those sensors can be securely transferred to low-cost mobile computers that most of your employees already carry with them at all times.
• Widespread Access to the Cloud - Internet-connected smartphones can sync all activity to a secure cloud, which executives and employees can use to visualize and crunch data in real-time. Near-global access to Wi-Fi and 3G network speeds have made possible an always-connected M2Mo cloud.
• Qualified Talent – Debates about a mobile developer shortage aside, there is now an army of qualified mobile engineers whose resumes include not just a few but dozens of enterprise or large-scale consumer mobile deployments.
• Market Demand – “Mobile Maturity Models” from Forrester, IDC, show that, for many companies, the early exploration phase in mobility is nearing its end. Most large companies have already deployed more than a few mobile applications, and in many cases these early-adopter projects achieved lackluster results. Today, the onus is on the Chief Mobile Officer (or equivalent) to identify initiatives with a near-term, measurable ROI. From what we can see, M2Mo deployments generally have a much larger impact on the bottom line than the more common marketing, customer self-service, or employee services mobile application.

Time to Get Educated About M2Mo

In no other mobile solution type are cross-functional capabilities as critical as when hardware companies are asked to function as software companies (and vice versa). In this blog series, running throughout the first quarter of 2012, we’ll explore opportunities and case studies in M2Mo from a number of different perspectives. Sign up below to receive this series by email, and send your feedback to m2mo@mutualmobile.com.

Thus far there have been a handful of notable deployments of iPad in enterprise, with companies like Audi and GE embracing the tablet paradigm, but not quite enough to roundly declare iPad  an enterprise winner. Which is why it was surprising when Forrester’s latest report showed iPad sales in enterprise increasing by 68% in the next year.

So if we aren’t reading about massive enterprise deployments of iPad, then where exactly is this 68% percent growth coming from?

Adoption will be led by users, not companies

Apple’s biggest iPad sales team are the users themselves. As Forrester points out, the company has made only small amount of formal effort to sell in the enterprise space, so the people driving this major adoption aren’t Apple sales people, but rather the employees of major companies.

In the past, companies handed down devices to their employees and employees were forced to adopt them. However, the change to an “always connected” work environment has meant that more employees are using their own devices for their jobs and this is leading to a consumerization of IT. Whether they like it or not, “iEmployees”, as Unisys calls them, are forcing IT departments to bend to the adoption of their devices of choice, and enthusiastic senior staff members are championing the adoption of iPad.

This isn’t just happening within large companies either. Another one of Forresters insights was that many small business owners are also adopting iPad because they can use it for both personal and business use, and startups like Square have responded with tools to help them make their iPads into business tools.

But will other software companies and service providers be ready when iEmployees become the norm?

Mobile will become a deciding factor in vendor evaluation

The “consumerization of IT” doesn’t just affect the IT departments of large companies – It affects every software and service provider in the enterprise space. As companies move to these mobile devices, they are going to expect the service providers they work with to meet them there, and this will become an increasingly large differentiator when companies are evaluating vendors.

Particularly in the field enablement space, SaaS companies are under pressure to take their product that has been trapped in desktop work stations and get it out into the warehouses, sales floors, distributions trucks and travel routes where it can be most useful.

When Markley Enterprises took their existing warehouse management system and starting using it on iPads rather than from a central work station, they found they were able to reduce the number of steps warehouse employees had to take by 30% and saved them a 1,000 hours a year in order entry time.

Old mobile vs. new mobile

Mobile isn’t an entirely new concept for many of these enterprise SaaS companies – they’ve long used specialty rugged equipment, but industry surveys are showing that companies are increasingly unhappy with these devices. 22% of businesses in a 2011 IDC study that the present generation of tablets defined by Apple iPad, are more suitable to their needs rather than their present equipment, such as traditional tablet devices or vertical application devices. Although the study doesn’t dive deeply into why, a one reason may be the large ecosystem of apps that exist for these devices means that they can be used for multiple different purposes, including word processing or employee training.

The senior CEOs and VPs that are driving the adoption of iPad within their companies are the same one who will be making the company’s purchasing decisions for software vendors – something important for SaaS companies to remember as they plan their 2012 mobile strategy.

Below are some of the biggest emerging opportunities for mobile in retail, and ways that forward-thinking retailers are solving their biggest pain points using tablets, smartphones and short-range wireless technology.

Improved inventory management

By waving their hand across a shelf, the latest inventory management systems allow a store employee to immediately tell what items need to be restocked and re-ordered, and then to immediately place new orders right from their mobile device. In 2011 Wal-mart introduced a large-scale RFID tagging system on each item of clothing that allowed them to track items throughout the supply chain. Previously considered cost prohibitive, this mobile technology has dropped in price and is becoming an accessible and cost effective way for companies to deter theft (from employees and shoppers) and keep shelves stocked with the products customers are demanding.

Alternate payment systems

Rather than the customer coming to the checkout counter, today, the checkout counter can come to the customer. Apple has led by example by giving their sales associates hand held POS checkout systems, and companies like Guess and Disney have followed suit. These POS solutions let retailers process transactions faster to reduce customer waiting times. Stores can also put checkout into the hands of shoppers and allow them to use their phone to scan merchandise or even order and pay remotely.

Employee training

With an almost 50% turnover rate, training and recruitment are an expensive inconvenience for retailers. Companies are turning to mobile, and particularly tablet computers, as an effective way to bring new employees up to speed. The intuitive touch interface of mobile has proven easy for a wide range of employees to understand, and new lessons and inventory updates can be automatically pushed out to devices. Companies including Sears and Audi have introduced iPad employee training programs.

Customer loyalty

Since the introduction of Starbucks’s mobile loyalty program in January 2011, about 3.6 million customers have joined the My Starbucks Rewards program and 2 million have achieved gold status. Loyalty programs allow stores to alert shoppers to deals, encourage repeat visits and collect valuable market research data. Although there are many off-the-shelf solutions for loyalty programs, companies like CKE Restaurants who are behind Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr., have opted to create their own custom solutions after finding them to be the most effective way to ensure accurate rewards and redemption.

All of these solutions are possible today, but the prohibiting factor for many retailers is that they represent a new level of sophistication that goes beyond simply developing mobile software. These evolved solutions require mobile device management, tech support, and hardware accessories that are new to most retailers and that are too broad for most mobile developers to handle.

Retailers will need to seek mobile developers prepared to develop full solutions, not merely pieces of them, and to provide the ongoing support that protects the investment.

HTML5 was tremendous for mobile – but it isn’t magic. The most recent iteration of the web’s most prominent language has been claimed to do everything short of curing cancer, and while it may be landmark for mobile, it’s important to recognize it isn’t a cure-all.

HTML5 offers lots of benefits, and companies like Linkedin and Facebook have been putting it on the map with hybrid apps that blend HTML5 into their native code. For these companies, HTML5 is helping them to iterate faster, deal less with the problems of cross platform development, and increase app speed…but it isn’t solving these problem altogether.

Here are some of HTML5‘s most common myths demystified, and a look at the places where HTML5‘s web technology actually can inject a little magic into mobile

1. It will solve all our cross platform problems

As with most things in life, if it sounds too good to be true, it likely is. Whether it be on web or within apps, HTML5 is not yet a cure all.

There are platform companies offering solutions that put HTML5 inside native wrappers that can appear across every platform. These promises are essentially true, but leave out important details of how the user experience might differ between platforms (from use/non use of native controls to performance of animations, etc.).

Even the best of the best mobile browsers have their differences between the various platforms – from how CSS is applied to what API access is granted (accelerometer, gyroscope, etc.).

In the words of Alex Linde, Yahoo’s director of mobile advertising, we’re in a state of ‘write almost once, run almost everywhere’ but still a ways off from full cross-platform solutions.

2. Any Web developer can do it

By many companies’ reasoning, if it’s just an updated version of HTML, then they can save money by passing off HTML5 work to their existing web development teams. Coding for mobile is very explicit on the CSS3 front – something that is left out of most HTML5 conversations. If you take a desktop developer and throw them into this without having had experience coding for the flexible box model – the idea that your site uses the space it is given without widths or heights (-webkit-box-flex for distribution) – you get a sub-par experience.

Bottom Line: Mobile is a different environment from desktop, and an engineer not accustomed to mobile will struggle.

3. I’ll be able to update the HTML5 within my app remotely so I can make changes without resubmitting

When it comes to iOS, HTML5 within a native app still has to be uploaded with the code base when it’s sent to Apple for approval. Otherwise, an app could be sent looking like one thing and then be changed remotely (possibly violating Apple’s approval.)

4. HTML 5 will kill the app store model

This is one of the mobile community’s favorite debates, and while we can’t predict what will happen long term, we can tell you that as of today, while HTML5 web apps are powerful, there are still advantages to an app store model.

New abilities are being added all the time, but HTML5 web apps can’t tap all the elements of a smartphone that a native app can. Currently, HTML5 can tap native resources such as GPS, gyroscope, accelerometer, etc., but it cannot tap things like push notifications or local phone data. An HTML5 web app also has limited storage on the device, so there will be limited offline functionality. Right now and HTML5 app can store 5mb locally, enough to save a fair amount of text for reference, but not enough for rich media or heavy functionality. There are also elements of security and discoverability that can accompany being in an app store.

HTML5 apps are moving closer to native functionality all the time, and a move to web apps could allow developers iterate more quickly and circumvent the cost and scrutiny of Apple’s walled garden, but they don’t yet come to the table with everything native apps do.

5. I can just convert my Flash into HTML5

Have you ever taken a foreign phrase and entered it into Babelfish and seen what resulted? It’s usually not pretty. Whenever you’re having a program change one language to another, it rarely (if ever) turns out well. Performance is key on mobile, and conversion programs will never be as efficient as a developer hand-rolling solutions in a Flash alternative (ex: HTML5 video player, SVG (scalable vector graphics), the canvas element and CSS3 webkit animations and transitions).

It’s important to remember that HTML5 is still a web based technology and, like any tool, it should be used for the jobs it’s best suited for – those jobs where web-based technologies excel (element animations and transitions, site/app layout, etc.) HTML5 is also still in its infancy. The official HTML standards are not expected to be ready until 2014 and there are still more functionalities to come.

Although the 2011 mHealth Summit presented dozens of panels on a spectrum of topics, the running theme that extended through nearly all of them was the ability for the government and infrastructure to catch up with the pace of mobile technology.

In 3 years, the mHealth Summit, held in Washington D.C., has grown to be one of the largest gathering of healthcare and technology experts from around the world. Healthcare  stands to be one of the areas with the most to gain from mobile but standards and regulations also make it one of the most challenging.

Mobile represents one of “the greatest technical breakthrough of our time to address the greatest problem of our time,” said US Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius in reference to the healthcare crisis during her keynote speech at the conference, but there’s work to be done before mobile can begin returning on all it promises.

Here are five of the most common topics that wove their way through the 2011 conference.

1. Remote patient monitoring

Proposed changes to the Medicare could greatly reduce the number of home visits patients receive, and the Obama administration has suspended the Community Living Assistance Services and Support Act in order to keep baby boomers from burdening the system. In the near future patients will get less fact time with doctors, and providers will rely more heavily on remote patient monitoring in order to keep up with patients. One of the biggest opportunities in this area came from the panel on short range wireless, which looked at embedding NFC or Bluetooth into everything from bandages to respirators. This technology leverages the smartphone as a bridge between medical equipment and doctors, but interference between radio frequencies within a hospital environment are one of the regulatory concerns that still exist for short range wireless technologies.

2. Incentivizing mHealth for providers

While the technology displayed at the mHealth Summit was indeed impressive, impressive isn’t enough to get providers on board. A system must be worked out to effectively reimburse providers for using these technologies, otherwise they become more of a threat than a benefit. One of the biggest ways this is being addressed, said Stephen Ondra of the health affairs wing of the Department of Veterans Affairs, is that accountable care organizations will receive incentives for reducing costs and that by 2015 the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare will use a value-based payment model to pay physicians based on the quality of care they provide, rather than just the cost.

3. Government approval and standardization of mHealth

Reimbursement isn’t the only area where the private sector is reliant on the government for progress. For mHealth initiatives to succeed there must be proven testing and certification process for devices, and government agencies are only catching up to the progress of mobile technology. This year the FDA reached out to developers to better understand how they can regulate mobile products, and received one of the largest responses ever.

4. Privacy of medical information

Although the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act has fairly clear governance over how medical information can be stored on devices and servers, there are still many question of privacy when it comes to the nascent space of mobile in medicine. According to Patricia Wise, vice president of health information systems for  the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, fewer than 30% of facilities have mobile device use policies and roughly 75% of mobile health users look up personal health information. Medical institutions may have been slow to adopt mobile, but physicians have not, and device management and policies must catch up to how mobile is being used.

5. Empowering patients

The role that patients play in the own wellness can’t be ignored, and one of the top discussion points at the conference was how mobile can be used to give patients feedback and transparency into their healthcare. Verizon Wireless COO John Stratton used diabetes as an example of a condition where 95 percent of the care is done by the patient. By using positive feedback loops and using mobile to surface how lifestyle choices are affecting their health things like compliance and readmissions can be greatly impacted.

November saw a major change to the face of Mutual Mobile. Things got a little hairy around the office.

This year was Mutual Mobile’s first to participate in Movember and the staff, both male and female alike, went all in to raise more than funds for the global men’s health charity. Even for those unable to wear their dedication on their face, Mutual found opportunities for every employee to get in on the game….literally, one of the company’s biggest money makers through the month was a massive game of high-stakes ping pong.

32 players took to the tables to compete in a bracket tournament that sorted out the company’s best players and in the process raised $20 per entrant.

From a development side Mutual Mobile engineers brainstormed a way to mustachio vast numbers of people all at once via an iPhone app using facial recognition to place mustaches on faces in a photograph. Buoyed by the popularity of Movember, Stachematic quickly soared to a top position in the app store and made Apple’s new and noteworthy list. To date, the app has been downloaded more than 150,000 times around the world.

In total, the “Mutual Mobros” were able to raise over $4,000 for charity and for a month, we got to pretend that we had an office made up of Tom Sellecks and Burt Reynolds. The facial hair may have fled come December 1, but the good feelings last long after razor meets face.

The harsh reality is that Honeycomb, the tablet-optimized version of Android, has a penetration in Android of only 1.8%. Based on some educated guesses from analysts, for every 1 Android tablet there are approximately 8 iPads sold. It doesn’t have to be this way – with tablets being used by 11% of Americans, there’s no reason why Android can’t be growing the same sort of marketshare they’ve gained with smartphone.

I believe firmly that much of the future of Android tablets rests with creating an ecosystem of well-designed apps. Design stretches far past custom graphics in this sense and can be seen in a beautifully simple flow.

In my presentation at the second Android Developers Conference, I’ve created a workshop to help draw out the designer in every Android developer. Starting with an understanding of the Honeycomb design paradigms available and ending with user testing, this is a crash course in user experience design for the development-minded.

You can find my presentation embedded above and links to a few of the apps I’ve called out as examples at the end of this article. I’d love to hear feedback from both designers and developers, be they iOS or Android, and find out your opinions on how we can use user experience design to boost Honeycomb. Join the conversation at on Twitter by using the hash tag #tabletdesign

Websites:
• Lovely UI
• Android  Patterns

Apps featured:

Books:

After Jessica arrived in Austin, she realized the clock had suddenly reset itself to count down to the couple’s anniversary. Matt had planned a romantic picnic in the park, and thank goodness it wasn’t a movie date where Jessica had silenced her phone, because midway through she received a push notification from the app displaying “Will you marry me?”

Jessica said yes and the couple are due down the aisle next year. Check out Matt showing off his romantic app to a broadcast news station in the above segment.

Among the hundreds of new features included in iOS 5, facial recognition is one of the most promising and presents use cases ranging from novelty to security.

In the spirit of Halloween we decided to use the feature, which can identify faces and accurately measure the distance between features, to place creepy zombie faces on our staff. This is a simple example, which you can watch in the video above, and it only scratches the surface of what facial recognition can do.

Apple has been securing facial recognition patents for quite some time now for everything from the ability to match who you have taken a photo of to those people listed in your contacts, to on-screen manipulation similar to what we see with Kinect. Thus far the only direct application of facial recognition in Apple’s native apps is in the camera, but it’s open for developers to use and apps are already showing up in the store that tinker with this new ability.

Marketing and advertising

For marketers the connection is pretty direct. They have already been using primitive hacked versions of facial recognition to virtually put items of clothing on shoppers, or on a more simple level just letting them overlay images of clothing onto their photo. Real facial recognition makes this process easier and better looking than ever. What’s important to recognize though is that facial recognition still requires a level of processing power that iPhone 4 isn’t quite prepared for. This is why Apple only included the real time camera face tracking in the new iPhone 4s and not in the overall iOS 5 update. Older model devices can easily do facial recognition from a photo, but they can’t yet accomplish it in real time without greatly compromising the functionality of the app.

Security

Facial recognition also offers promise of a real biometric security device for our phones. Scam fingerprint scanning security apps have been popular for ages, but they do little more than run an animation and offer no protection. Rather than a password gateway, our phones could soon recognize our faces and allow us access to the phone, or even offer multiple user accounts for a phone.

User experience and research

And finally, although it sounds a bit creepy, facial recognition could offer us new insights into how users are experiencing apps. By tracking where a user’s pupils move across an app,  we can more accurately understand their difficulties. This sort of pupil tracking could also one day be used to make the iPhone an ideal choice for the handicapped, able to control their device simply by moving their eyes across it.

We are in the very early stages of this technology, and not just in mobile. Devices like Kinect are presenting new possibilities and ethical quandaries every day. But we need to remember that facial recognition isn’t just a new gimmick and that as it matures, we need to keep pushing for new useful applications.