Please join us at the 2011 All About Mobile conference, taking place November 15, in San Francisco.
From the Desktop to Client-Server to the Cloud...All About Mobile is the premier ISV conference for the next transformation of the Software Industry -- going mobile!
- Keep up with the latest All About Mobile news with the Twitter hashtag: #allmob
- Look Who Attended our 2010 conference -- you'll find more than 100 software executives leading the mobile revolution.
- Check out the Presentations: Videos, Slides, Interviews, and more are available!
Mobility News 
Interview with new SIIA member Socialize
Thu, 02 Feb 2012 14:38
I was delighted to recently welcome Socialize to the SIIA membership. I had a chance to catch up with Daniel Odio the CEO and Co-founder to learn more about the drop-in social platform. Read my interview with Daniel below.
Rhianna: Welcome to SIIA! Tell me a little about Socialize and the benefits for making apps social.
Daniel: Making apps social boosts app discovery (downloads) and user engagement (impressions). It creates a viral loop where users share content with each other and their social networks, which leads to more downloads, which leads to more users, which leads to more social actions all over again.
Rhianna: This week you made an announcement about notifications. Why is this feature significant?
Daniel: SmartAlert notifications “Bring users back” to the app. For example, when a user makes a comment on a piece of content in an app, and subscribes to that thread, and then another user comments on the first user’s comment, the first user gets a SmartAlert notification inviting them back into the app to see what the second user wrote.
Rhianna: You recently moved your company to San Francisco. Obviously, the Bay Area is the home of many great technology companies. How important is it for technology start-ups to be local to the Bay Area? Or does it matter?
Daniel: It’s critical. There’s a great article on my move west at http://go.DanielOdio.com/west. The environment in the San Francisco bay area is world class and results in the ability to make connections, make key hires, and iterate on the business at a speed that is unmatched anywhere else in the world. As I like to say, San Francisco is “Mecca for Geeks.”
Rhianna: You recently participated in a panel led by the Department of Homeland Security at CES. What are some of the privacy and security issues you face versus the traditional software/hardware vendors? How do you address and ease these fears?
Daniel: Often times the least secure part of a device is the human using it. And that’s where we focus – in this realm security concerns are mixed with privacy concerns. Oftentimes, users don’t know the implications of their actions by design – we work hard to abstract a level of complexity into an easy-to-use service. This means we bear a responsibility to ensure the user doesn’t compromise themselves in ways they don’t even realize. A big chunk of the value we add with our social infrastructure offering is to give the user ways to navigate privacy issues in easy to understand and friendly ways.
Rhianna: Finally, look ahead for me 18 months, what will be the biggest trends in social?
Daniel: Two big trends are converging and we’ll see them in full force in the next 18 months: The explosion of interest-based social, and the power of the Open Graph. Interest-based social isn’t the same thing as the social graph we all know from Facebook. It’s way bigger and more powerful. It’s the connections we all share based on interests, regardless of ‘friend’ status. For example, interest-based groups include people of the same ethnicity, people who love zinfandel wine, co-workers, people who love to sail, and the list goes on. We are all comprised of a series of interests, and for the first time, technology (and mobile in particular) is enabling us to map all those interests and connections, and begin to monetize them.
The Open Graph is an initiative by Facebook to get everyone to share all of their actions – what songs they are listening to, what they are reading, etc. This confluence of mapping interests to people and sharing of all actions will mean the power and reach of social will be exploding in the next 18 months. More about this topic at http://go.danielodio.com/interestgraph and a screencast on why mobile is way bigger than most people realize is at http://go.DanielOdio.com/waybigger
Rhianna Collier is VP for the Software Division at SIIA.
All About Mobile Goes Hybrid
Fri, 11 Nov 2011 19:05
All About Mobile Goes Hybrid – Check out this video promotion featuring Rhianna Collier, Vice President of the Software Division at SIIA as she discusses the two ways to hear from our amazing line up of speakers. Taking place in San Francisco, CA November 15, 2011 click here to learn more about the conference and learn how we are accommodating the mobile workforce.
LBS = Location-Based Services, Not Stalking
Thu, 27 Oct 2011 15:40
The new wave of mobile and cloud computing presents a tremendous amount of innovation and opportunity. Together, the combination of innovative new devices like smart phones and tablets, along with centralized cloud-based storage and computing power, promise to transform how we work, consume media, communicate and live our live. The recent proliferation of these technologies is only the tip of the iceberg.
Perhaps the most visible innovation to users comes in the form of mobile apps providing information, services and communication in a way that was unimaginable just five years ago. Increasingly, substantial functionality of mobile apps derives from location-based services (LBS) that customize users experiences based on where they are.
Of course, with the opportunities always come new challenges.
On Tuesday, a bipartisan group of six Senators sent a letter to the FTC and DOJ expressing serious concern about “stalking apps,” mobile apps that allow “someone to continuously and secretly monitor another person’s movements and whereabouts.” There are clearly legitimate uses for individuals to be able to track others, such as the case of parental tracking of children’s location, or even allowing individuals to decide to allow others access to their location information to stay connected.
However, it goes without saying that some apps are designed and openly marketed to individuals seeking to “stalk” or “spy” on an unwitting victim. They clearly are designed to run secretly, or are undetectable. They are an invasion of privacy and pose a real threat to public safety.
The Senators appropriately reference some of the good work that is being done by the industry to combat this challenge, particularly that “all major carriers take precautions pursuant to voluntary industry guidelines to notify a wireless user that he or she is being tracked through one of the services” that they provide within users of a calling plan. Additionally, the leading smartphone and tablet platofrm providers have adopted policies that include removing any illegal apps that are identified. Spyware isn’t new, it’s been around and used to spy for quite some time. Fortunately, the technology industry has done an excellent job of providing tools for individuals to monitor and combat this phenomenon.
So, this is another case of good technology—LBS—being used for bad purposes. As always, it’s critical to make sure that laws and regulations are applied to stop the malicious applications without thwarting the technology. The obvious flip side is the benefit that LBS can provide for locating missing persons, particularly children. It would be a shame to lose this critical new technological tool.
SIIA is confident this balance can be created, through the application of technology and voluntary industry measures, as well as targeted enforcement for bad actors by the FTC and other regulators. We look forward to working with policymakers and regulators to enable enforcement against apps that inappropriately facilitate stalking.
More broadly, SIIA is actively working with a broad cross-section of stakeholders to develop to voluntary privacy principles and best practices for mobile app developers, and to establish transparency about the collection, use and protection of consumer data. We are confident that such practices, along with current laws and regulations, can ensure the level of safety and satisfaction that users deserve, and that will enable continued explosive innovation and growth.
David LeDuc is Senior Director, Public Policy at SIIA. He focuses on e-commerce, privacy, cyber security, cloud computing, open standards, e-government and information policy.
