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When I returned from India in March I came back with an idea for a mobile application that I decided to enter in the Android Developers Challenge. The app was a new spin on publishing your mobile photos when you are traveling (if you are curious to hear more I’m happy to demo it).There was only 4 weeks left in the competition, but that was just enough time to build it and polish it up for submission. So on April 14th I submitted my app and went into hibernation for a day or two to combat my sleep deprivation.

Shortly after I learned there was 1788 entries, so I new the competition was going to be stiff. The first judging round was to select the top 100 entries, and ran until around April 30th. After that a second round began where a new set of judges evaluated the top 100 from the previous round to select the top 50. Because my app was a client server app I could see that during the second round judges from Spain, USA, and Japan were demoing my application on May 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 6th. So this meant i had made it in the top 100 apps (top 5% overall) and now was being evaluated to compete for the top 50 slots. If I scored in the top 50 it would mean 25K USD and entry into the invite only round in June for a bigger prize of 275K USD. So by this point my adrenaline was rushing, I now had a 50% chance of being in the top 50 (top 2% overall).

So I was waiting on pins and needles to receive the results. On Friday May 9th I received an email from google that my app was not in the top 50. So it was disappointing news, but on the other hand I never expected to be in the top 100 in the first place with so many great apps and stiff competition. A lot of people complained about the judging process, and that judges didn’t spend very much time evaluating each entry, I don’t really think it’s worth complaining about. As with any thing in life, the judging is not going to be completely perfect, and if anyone feels their app should have won they should channel that energy into releasing the app for the public to decide. Ultimately it’s not the critics opinion that matters it’s the people that actually use your app.

So with the news I got on Friday I took some time to think about my next moves, and I have decided to go full steam ahead with this idea, firstly concentrating on an iPhone client so I can sell it in the Apple AppStore this summer. I also need to think about how to find a good iPhone developer or two that would like to get involved with this project. I’m going to San Francisco June 8th - 18th, partly for Apple’s WWDC, and also to meet up with some other developers and see where things go from there.

Today I took an 80 kilometer bike ride from Amsterdam to Harlem and then from Harlem along the North Sea Sand Dune bike route up to The Hague. The weather has been incredible and the sand dune route is one of the best I’ve rode in the Netherlands. The end result was lots of time to clear my mind and I’ve returned with renewed energy for my mobile development. I’m excited about what will come next! 2008 is certainly a big year for mobile. By years end there should be at least 10 million people walking around with iPhones, most of which are keen to install applications!

This is probably the the coolest thing for mobile phones that I’ve seen in 2007. By now a lot of you have probably seen the QR codes on business cards or other media that allow you to snap a picture of the QR code with your mobile phone and it redirects you to a website. Kind of cool… but Mosey Codes take this idea quite a bit further.

The idea is that the Mosey Code can act as a virtual repository where pictures, video and sound can be stored. When someone views a Mosey Code via their phone’s camera it displays the stored media. And because this technology has a network aspect to it, the content isn’t static, new users can add there own media to the particular repository/portal that they have found.

So a basic Mosey Code looks like this:

Here are some cool examples of what the author Tom Gibara of Mosey Codes has done so far:

Today was the official beginning of Fall. But you wouldn’t have guessed it, it was 22 and Sunny here in Amsterdam. We really missed out on summer weather here in Amsterdam this year so today was exceptional. Jeniece and I decided to dust off the touring bikes and go for a little ride. We go biking regularly, we’ve even biked to France and back, but this summer was just not that nice for it so we weren’t out as much. Anyways this is the first year I have a GPS unit, so I turned it on during our ride so I’d have a birds eye view of the course we took for later. So here are a couple of pics of us out on the ride and the map to show our mini ride. In the future rather than taking a screenshot, I’d like to embed the interactive map in my blog with the track and photos on the map. Google now allows you to embed nice flash maps in your blog, but not with custom layers drawn on which is what I’m doing, and embedding a javascript google map control is a bit heavy for just a blog post. I’ll have to add making a Google map bike ride UI to my todo list ;-).

Over the last week I’ve been busy with some projects that had me writing some software for my mobile phone. Up until now I typically used my phone to call, text, play casual games on the train, read an RSS feed or two using the reader that came with the phone, but I was barely using the Internet. I just figured because my phone has a standard numeric keypad it would be too much of a pain to surf.

I was so wrong! Once I had the phone apps I wanted installed and web pages that are important to me bookmarked I was all set. I realized I was able to quickly check the web content I’m usually checking when I’m at my laptop without any pain. Everything was only 1 or 2 clicks away.

Some of the cool stuff I’ve been playing with:

1. Gmail phone app: On google’s mobile page they have an installable Gmail phone app. You only need to login the first time, after that launching the app brings you right to your inbox. It’s easy to quickly scroll through messages and see if anything new has come in. Reply functionality is fine, T9 kicks in and it’s just as easy as sending an SMS.

2. Google Reader m-page: On the same mobile page for google there is a link to a google reader page optimized for mobiles. You only need to login once and the credentials are stored in a cookie in your browser. First screen is a random mix of all the rss feeds you’ve already set up on google reader, you can mark things a page at a time as read. I think this is a good first page as I’m often going there if I’m killing time and a random story does the trick. The one negative is that when I clicked on linkes to my individual RSS feeds I got a 404 error, so there is some sort of bug between the Google Reader app and my Sony-Ericsson browser.

3. Mobile Facebook : Man this mobile web-app impressed me. Again once I logged in once I don’t have to do it again. The initial page shows me stories from my news feed from my friends, their current status, my inbox. From there I can view a simple version of my profile, other people profiles and photo albums. Really nice and quick, something I’ll check frequently on my phone.

4. Mobile Youtube:  Simple web-app  that gives you the features, top rates, recently added, or a search box for your favourite Youtube vids. Playing them on my current GPRS connection is way to clunky though, so you need a nice 3G connection to enjoy it (more motivation to get a new handset asap!).

5. EQO: EQO is an installable app that takes care of all your instant messaging and international calling needs. In terms of IM you have access to AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Google Talk, ICQ and Jabber. Once your logged in you can run EQO in the background so you can do other things with your phone but still be connects with Gtalk.

The other thing you can do is place international calls for 1.7 cents a minute plus local air time. Basically when you are in the EQO phonebook you dial the international number into the app. It then comes up with a dialog with a local number and prompts you to call it. Once the local number is dialed you hear it ringing through and the person you are calling is none the wiser. Perfect for calling Canadians when I’m on the road ;-).

6.  Widsets:  This is the freaking coolest app of the bunch! I cannot speak highly enough about it. Basically it’s iGoogle or netvibes for your phone. But these guys new exactly what to do to make it nice for the phone. You select the widgets you want, and bam, you get nice icons on the main screen, one screen holds two or three widgets and you can scroll left or right to move to other widgets you have selected.

T he reason why a widget platform is even more useful for the mobile than a widget platform for the computer is that there is a lot of web content that is not mobile friendly. Since this widget platform is open, anyone can take there favourite web site mash-it-up into a widget that looks nice on the phone, and there you have it, you don’t have to wait for every website to come up with there own mobile strategy. There are litterally hundreds maybe thousands of widset widgets already.

The ones I currently have on my dashboard are:

i) Wikipedia: widget is a search box, gives me a nicely formatted wikipage back matching my result

ii) Techcrunch: all the latest storied from techcrunch.

iii) BBC news: just what you’d think it’d be :-).

iv) Ebay: lets me search for items on ebay, great to price check when i’m in a store thinking about buying something that looks to expensive.

v) IMDB: search box to give you the # of stars of a particular movie. Good if you’re going to blow some money on cinema tickets.

vi) Nu.nl: Keeps me up to date with the Dutch news

vii) Digg, Newsvines, etc etc… so many possibilities

I hope I at least inspire you to go out there and make the most of your mobile phone!

I recently bought a TomTom Bluetooth GPS receiver to play around with for a project I’m working on. Since I had it I decided to try out a few mobile apps for mapping and navigation. The mobile I tested on was a Sony Ericsson K550 which is a midrange phone with a standard GPRS connection (the phone has EDGE but my carrier is Vodafone doesn’t do EDGE, and I’m still holding out for a HSDPA smart phone with querty keys + touchscreen + wifi). So the point is I wanted to find out what works on an average phone.

(1) GMM Google Maps for Mobile:

GMM is a freely available Java midlet. It supports GPS for a limited number of devices that have in built GPS but doesn’t do bluetooth GPS but it does provide you with basic google maps functionality: i.e. find a location or get directions from a to b, in map view or satellite view. I found the zooming in/out to be extremely slow and hard on my bandwidth. Just zooming in and then scrolling through my neighourhood resulted in a few hundred kilobytes of data in a matter of seconds… not exactly what you want from your mobile mapping software.

(2) Mobile Gmaps:

Mobile Gmaps is another freely available Java midlet. This mapping app lets you choose what mapping provider you want to use for the mapping: Yahoo, Windows Live, Ask.com or Open Street Map. The funny thing here is that it is named Gmaps but they no longer have google maps as a choice for mobile mapping provider. It worked no problem with my TomTom GPS device and found me on the map. However I had the same problem as with the Google maps app, regardless of the provider moving and zooming on the maps was brutally slow. It’s becoming very clear that if an app just pulls the maps from the web and doesn’t do any optimization for the phone you really need 3G for it to function reasonably. The most interesting part of this piece of software is the “Services” or better said, content layers you can choose from to display on the map. It allows you to add content from Subway Maps, WikiMapia - user generated points of interest info, FON - free wireless hotspots, Traffic Info, and any Google earth KML file. This is really the holy grail of mobile mapping. If you are going to have rich content that scales and is useful to any user, the user needs to be able to choose the layers that are of interest, and if you have a whole community of participants adding to and keeping the info up to date you can bet that it’ll beat the info any mapping provider can provide, at least in the long term.

(3) Wayfinder 7:

I came across this Java app on the Fun+Downloads section pre-programmed into my phone by Sony Ericsson. This software is not free but you get a free 30 day trial. I installed it and it worked instantly with my TomTom GPS device, showing me exactly where I was in Amsterdam. The maps and content layers are provided by TeleAtlas. What was very impressive is that I could zoom and move around the maps naturally unlike my earlier experiences. The maps are still coming in over the net and are not-preinstalled, but they clearly have been optimized in some way (i.e. maybe they are vector based so maps and content layers are separate pieces) so it’s not so hard on the band width. The funny thing about the content layers is when I was looking at Amsterdam fairly zoomed out, the only POI that show up on the map are churches and gas stations… don’t know why churches have such a big priority, but anyways… when I actually zoom in I do get bars and restaurant POI. Wayfinder has many other features including voice directions, optimizing directions for pedestrians or cars, or toll vs non-toll roads, and it will even warn you about speed cameras, so this can be used on foot or in the car. Overall this is by far the best mapping solution I’ve found so far for my midrange mobile phone. I only wish I could find something free that is similar in quality ;-).

BTW I highly recommend the TomTom Bluetooth GPS receiver. It takes about a minute to get an initial lock, but once it has the lock it doesn’t lose it and I’m free to put it in my pocket, jump on my bike, and ride around recording my route or using my mapping software.

I will try to evaluate other mapping software as I find it. Please feel free to recommend something if you have a favourite.

I recently started using the social networking site for movies: Flixster. I found it because my friends started adding the Flixster Facebook app. So I was curious and wanted to see what it was all about. The interface is really slick and easy to use and I found it to be an excellent resource for the following reasons.

1. It allows me to keep a list of my favourite movies. I am so bad with names of movies, actors and directors. But over the last 15 years or so I’ve seen a lot of really excellent movies. Sitting down and thinking about what they were and reconstructing the list from my memory was a lot of fun. Now I have a personal records of all the greatest movies I have seen. It’s like the diary I never kept!

2. I can’t argue IMDB is the most complete movie database on the planet. But besides there list of top movies of all time, its more for looking up movies you already know instead of a movie discovery tool. On flixster after I input my list of favourite movies, I filled out a survey that matches me with flixster movies with compatable tastes, so I added them as friends. So with this information the recommendation tool can work its magic. It offers me movie suggestions one by one based on the movies I like, and the movies my friends like. After flipping through the recommendations I can add the movies that seem interesting to a a list of “Movies I want to see”. Now I always have a list of good movies I can watch, and I no longer have movie block, stumbling around in circles on IMDB. Nothing beats the power of the people!

I feel like I’m having a movie watching renaissance. You think after watching years of indie, art house, and foreign films you are well informed and already know about the good stuff. But Flixster has shown me that there are _so_ many movies that I’ve missed or don’t know about that are worth watching.

There is a lot of hype over Internet TV services theses days. Joost, Bablegum and the list goes on and on. An important point to remember is that this is really a race for who gets to control the distribution of the video content. However there is an alternative to having the future of digital video being controlled by corporations, Miro. It’s a great service that I just tried out today. As they say:

“Miro is a free, open-source software project led by a non-profit organization. It’s a platform that benefits everyone by keeping online video open. Our organization isn’t controlled by venture capitalists or stockholders, which means we always put our users first.

Open video will only have a real impact if it can reach a mass audience. Your ideas and efforts work better than any paid marketing campaign, because it comes from somewhere real.”

Now this really gets me excited. Even better, I run Ubuntu and they already have a Linux version which is more than can be said about the other InternetTV applications. I gave it a try and it’s really quite cool.

1. You can search and download video from YouTube, Veoh, and others.

2. You can collect video RSS feeds of your favourite programs in the player. So it’s like a video version of Google Reader in some ways. (It came with a feed of Democracy Now! installed which give the Miro people an extra point in my books :-)).

Looking forward to using it regularly!

It’s been one year already since Jeniece and I married. We just took a long weekend in Les Baux de Provence to celebrate. The pics are up at http://travischoma.fotki.com/1st-anniversary/. It was great to escape the 5 weeks of rain we’ve been having in Amsterdam. We rented a car for the weekend which was a bit of change since we usually bike or do urban trips. But the Toyata Prius Hybrid was awesome. Only used 17 euros worth of gas after 3 days and it had a Hertz Neverlost navigation system which made navigating through rural Provence super easy. We checked out Arles (where Van Gogh went crazy) and Aigue Mortes on the cost where they left to start the crusades…. Besides the site seeing it was just nice to kick back and enjoy the food and wine and atmosphere at La Riboto de Taven a small hotel/restaurant just outside of Les Baux.

I had the pleasure of attending The Next Web Conference held in Amsterdam at the Tushinski Cinema in. It was thoroughly inspiring to have so many like minded people talking about where the web is going. It helped me realize that I should take my own startup idea full steam ahead, especially because I didn’t even hear the word travel mentioned all day! The highlights of the conference for me were:

1. Saul Klein from Index Ventures talking about funding opportunities for startup’s in Europe. He was an angel investor in last.fm that sold this past week for 280 million.

2. Tariq Krim from Netvibes. He spoke about the different widget platforms i.e. Facebook, iGoogle and Netvibes and how he sees things converging on an open standard for widgets. It really made me think that it may be high time for me to stop thinking of the web in terms of pages!

3. Rod Beckstrom gave a more philosophical talk about Decentralization on the web and how it relates to Starfish ;-). Very sharp talk, I will definitely check out his book, when I get a chance.

About a week ago I got back from my trip to Korea. Here are the photos from the trip. It was an awesome experience and my first time in Asia and a good chance to reconnect with my old friend Joel Clemens. Also have to give a big thanks to my uncle John, his wife Rina, and baby Ian for being such great hosts. The highlights of the 7 days included:

1. A visit to the Demilitarized Zone and the Joint Security Area between North and South Korea. Very strange place, the tension is high. You can’t wear jeans, or point with your finger. Yet they still sell North Korean products at the souvenir shop in the Observation center.

2. Staying overnight at a Buddist Temple (The International Lotus Lantern Meditation Center) . We got to live with the monks for 24 hours. This means we went to temple, chanted, meditated, ate, and even did chores like weeding the garden. Highly recommended!

3. We happened to be in Korea during the week leading up to The Buddah’s birthday. This meant lots of special celebrations including an amazing parade through the heard of Seoul. The floats were great, here is an example of a couple exceptional ones:

4. All the great food we ate! Korean food most often is served up with many many appetizers so it’s sorta like going for tapas. And the variety of street food! Also we had alcohol made from rice which you add sprite too, and you end up with a refreshing beer like drink ;-).

If you want to see more of the trip there are some interesting pics of all the temples I visited and the Ancient city of Gyong-ju in the photo album link at the top of this post.

This trip has definitely sparked my interest in Asia, so I expect more Asia trips will follow ;-).