Let me start off with it is great that SkyFire is launching in the UK, more browser competition is a good thing and no where more so than on the mobile platform.  This isn’t meant to be an in depth review or critique rather a brain dump following a a conversation I had yesterday
with SkyFire and in part a response to RobK’s article over on Mobile Industry Review.

I have concerns about SkyFire.  I raised this on Twitter yesterday briefly so I will try to articulate them here in the hope that it will i) spark more discussion and ii) hopefully set me straight.

Architecture
Up front I am not an architecture expert but even I can see that essentially what SkyFire are doing is providing a proxied web cache server-side so that response times client-side are nice and snappy.  That’s a good thing.  The flip side is that everything you do in the browser is done through SkyFire’s caching servers.

Do your banking on the mobile and it’s cached.  Browse for some interesting PRON and that’ll get cached to.  Now this may not sound like a big problem, afterall ISP’s often cache frequently accessed content to improve response times and reduce upstream bandwidth so read on.

Privacy and Your Information
Remember when Google first launched Chrome and people got all in a tiz over the EULA and how effectively it gave Google a seriously strong hold over well everything one did online?

Google backed down on that one and  I only hope that the provisions in question are not backin the newly revamped v.1 release.

Well SkyFire has some pretty interesting terms in their Privacy statement also.  Aside from collecting a bundle of personal information on signup they also grab, store and dive around in those logs of everything you do.  Whilst the privacy policy clearly states that anything that leaves SkyFire or it’s partners to be used for advertising generation is anonymised I’m not such just how comfortable I am about having every single part of my browsing habit correlated with my personal information anonymised or not.

The other side of the privacy issue here that bothers me right now is that whilst SkyFire have placed caching boxes UK side, there is no mention of where within SkyFire my personal information is stored or U are a  hell of a lot more robust than those in the US – where SkyFire corporate is based.

Don’t think this is a potential problem?  Just go have a dig around the web about some of the provisions in US legislature regarding federal access to your information.

There is a really good reason why in 2007 the French Government banned it’s  employees from using RIM Blackberry devices in official capacity when all email goes via RIM’s US based servers.

User Experience
There are many components to a great user experience (UX).  SkyFire’s browser looks great, the caching technology provides responsive rendering (assuming the UK servers are up) and overall it’s a nice little browser to use so plus one there.

Another aspect to UX of a web browser though is usability.  Not usability of the software itself (that’s fine) but of the web sites being rendered themselves.

Back in the day web designers built web pages to suit different browsers, screen resolutions and so on.  Then IE kind of won out for a while but along came CSS and content separation from layout.  All of a sudden it was possible to fairly easily create fluid, dynamic layouts easily repurposed for different delivery channels.

Today savvy web development accepts that the mobile platform is rapidly gaining acceptance and is in all likelihood going to rule the roost  in the not too distant future.  To that end they take account not only of the reduced screen real estate but also of the subtly differing uses of popular websites by mobile users.  For example viewing Flickr.com and m.flickr.com give slightly different view points on the same content.

Apple gave a nice nod towards this being a sensible approach when they threw the iPhone to the baying masses.  The Safari browser will render sites in their full glory allowing you to scroll around and zoom in and out effortlessly.  BUT applications builts around the iPhone are more list orientated to take account of the form factor, fat fingers instead of precise mouse pointers, and also the need for simpler easily navigable menuesque structures.

So far few have complained of this dual approach being a bad one.

SkyFire are currently claiming one of it’s killer UX features is it’s ability to render full size web sites in their original glory.  No, no, no.  This is not a killer feature.  The demo I was given showed the YouTube homepage squished down to fit a QVGA screen.  Now true enough it looked like the original and sure the video ran really well (good skills there) BUT you couldn’t read the options, comments or pretty well anything without an electron microscope.   Showing a facsimile of a site does not automatically create a great experience.  That’s why YouTube have i) a mobile site and ii) an api allowing third parties to create differing and more suitable experiences based on the form factor being used.

Now I know I am banging on about this a fair bit, but it is a massive bug bear of mine.  You see I currently only have a netbook (all the ‘real’ kit is in storage still).  Much as I love this little thing the screen resolution of 1024×600 can let me down.   Or more to the point web developers that insist on constricting layouts to suit their own design aesthetics leaves me cold when they just don’t work.  Sites that require me to squish the display or scroll the entire desktop just to click a confirm button are an instant and never revisited FAIL.
Why would I want to do this on my mobile as well?

But in SkyFire’s defense I do openly admit and applaud their commitment to bringing full sized sites to the mobile – afterall until web designers get their act together and allow for this form factor shift we need easy to use browsers that can give us some help.

Open vs Closed Source
Does anyone know?  I asked if the core of SkyFire’s browser was proprietory to which I was given a yes, but as to any parts being open sourced a blank stare was the response.  This is not the place to enter into a debate on the pro’s and con’s of open vs closed source (IMHO there is a place and need for both, often within the same product) but I suspect that as the majority of those likely to install SkyFire over a default browser on their phone may have a vague understanding of the issues it seems only sensible for SkyFire’s people to be able to give a coherent answer.

Revenue Model
SkyFire have not yet publically announced their revenue model, although they will admit to already being in receipt of some advertising cash – I believe from Google adwords.  If I’m reading the Privacy policy right the whole product is designed to create a managed channel through which they can fairly accurately create profiles for users and throw advertising at them.

Whilst I personally think this type of advertising model is beyond broken I will admit right now it delivers.  What bothers me though is that for SkyFire to succeed it needs lots of users, signed up, browsing and creating complete profiles.

Without overtly stating that by signing up SkyFire will be collecting and onselling the right to advertise at you it all just seems a little well, underhand.  Afterall who else out there actually reads those T&C’s that have an easily clickable “Agree” button?

I co
uld, and indeed would love to be wrong here.  Given SkyFire’s complete control over the channel they are potentially putting themselves in a very good position BUT IMHO they really really need to be upfront  about what they are actually doing, why and how.

So for now I’m happy to see SkyFire on the scene, as a Beta product it’s well polished and offers up a far better experience than other S60 browsers for sure but as web developers get more savvy and the advertising models that underpin so much of today’s online business get deconstructed, disrupted and destroyed I just hope that SkyFire have a really good plan.

Came across this snappy little visualisation of one’s Flickr graph over at marumushi.com earlier. Just enter a username and it will explode out one level of contacts.

It’s by no means perfect, a little slow and doesn’t pick up all the meta-data behind profiles correctly. Also I suspect the Flickr API would groan with 2 or 3 levels but what fun that would be.

As previously mentioned I am the lucky recipient of pretty well no mobile service at home.

I get no calls, no sms and therefore no voicemail, no indication that someone has tried / is trying to get hold of me.

For those of us lucky to live in Europe or the US there are alternate VM services to the operator, ones which by the very process of being delivered outside of the operator’s network offer hope.

I’m not going to run through them all – there are quite a few, but essentially they fall into two camps;

• Camp 1: Send you a copy of the actual vocal recording (and notifications of it’s arrival) via email or sms.

• Camp 2: Send you a transcripted text version of said recording (again via email or sms).

A recent discussion I had with Ewan over at Mobile Industry Review revolved around whether a particular company in Camp 1 (HulloMail.com) was actually a competitor with one in Camp 2 (SpinVox).   In my opinion they are most definately competitors with each other. Why, well they compete for my attention with a service that is designed to replace the operator’s own voicemail, and realistically (and practically) I or any other user will choose just one provider.

More importantly BOTH camps offer and are much needed competition to the operators (as a note HulloMail.com have and I believe still do offer operators a whitebox version for integration).

However it’s not the competition that interests me so much as how these services create competition.  They are both disruptive in that the services are provided outside the network, at the edge if you will, are self-provisioned by the user and have business models that draw attention away from the stock operator service.

Why they work is simple: there are users like me for whom the standard integrated voicemail just fails badly and services using alternate delivery channels solve a critical problem.

And unless the operators quickly learn that their current closed network practises & cynical marketing (free voicemail – really?) are actually creating a marketplace for edge of network services then those wonderful cash-cow positions  they hold will rapidly be eroded by the innovative.

In New Zealand much scorn was poured upon the mobile duopoly of Telecom NZ and Vodafone.  God knows I dislike the later as much, if not more so than the next man, but that is a post for another day.

But for a country of less than 5 million and yet a similar size to the UK (i.e. pretty sparsely populated) generally mobile comms was pretty decent.  I mean, take the little (130,000 people) town we resided in, Tauranga.  At home I was a good 7 miles from the cell tower BUT maintained either a 3G or 3.5G (HSDPA) signal 24×7.

Right now I’m living in the South East of England, Kent to be precise.  We’re about 25 miles from the centre of London, 5 from the M25 – hardly the back of beyond.  I can see a cell tower from the upstairs bedroom window (about 8 miles away) and know full well that there are a few more I can’t see that are closer.

Can I get a reliable signal here.  Nope.  Upstairs with line of sight maybe, just maybe half a full set of bars.  Downstairs – where I want to work – nothing.  Not even a GSM signal capable of sending an SMS let alone holding a voice call or data.

And it’s not as if I hadn’t done some research before choosing a network – I asked loads of people, rang a few customer service desks (although how a guy in Mubai is seriously going to understand localised signal problems in the Garden of England I don’t get).

After looking ThreeUK seemed the best bet with coverage for 99.5% of the UK.   Actually looking at Three’s coverage map we should have full blown 3.5G!

So new (back) to the UK, job hunting and such I have to hand out my contact details daily.  But missing those calls has been a regular occurrence as of course not only does the call not come through but neither does the SMS letting me know or the voicemail message from Three.

Scuppered.

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