Check out the press release here. Exciting news on the home automation front!

Check out the press release.

RESTON, Va. & TORONTO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–ZoomSafer, the leading provider of patented solutions to prevent distracted driving, and Five Mobile, it’s Toronto-based software development partner have created an innovative application for BlackBerrys that offers Canadians a simple and
inexpensive way to comply with Ontario’s new hands-free cell phone law.

“Driving a car is difficult enough without the distraction of talking on a phone,” said David Kelly, former Acting Administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and President of Storm King Strategies, a safety consulting company. “We need to do everything possible to have people put down the phone and make law enforcement’s job easier.”

“ZoomSafer is hands-free software for BlackBerrys that automatically injects context into the driving experience and helps motorists make better decisions,” said Matt Howard, CMO and co-founder of ZoomSafer. “By using ZoomSafer motorists in Ontario can eliminate the temptation to text and email while driving and still use their phones to make and receive hands-free calls.”

“As a Toronto-based software development company we’re thrilled that our efforts with ZoomSafer are enabling our neighbors here in Ontario to be more focused and less distracted while driving and to comply with the new law,” said Ameet Shah, Vice President of Business Development at Five Mobile.

Watch this video to see how ZoomSafer works. Register here to try
ZoomSafer FREE.

About ZoomSafer Inc.

ZoomSafer is patented software for mobile phones to prevent distracted driving and help motorists make better decisions, reducing accidents, saving lives, and saving money. For more information, please visit www.zoomsafer.com.

About Five Mobile

Five Mobile creates compelling, robust and scalable mobile applications for brands and enterprises across a multitude of different platforms and handsets. Five Mobile helps take your idea from concept to completion, leveraging extensive experience and proprietary processes. Visit Five Mobile at www.fivemobile.com.

Innovative Mobile Software Prevents Distracted Driving and Uniquely Compliments Safe Driving Laws

Reston, Virginia – July 1, 2009 – ZoomSafer, an innovative provider of mobile software and services to prevent distracted driving, has partnered with Five Mobile of Toronto, Canada to develop custom software for multiple smart-phone platforms as well as a web-based user registration and management portal.

“Five Mobile is the perfect software development partner to help us prevent distracted driving,” says Michael Riemer, Co-Founder and CEO of ZoomSafer. “Not only do they have deep experience across a full range of smart-phone platforms, but they have a deeply practical approach to building applications that people will actually use in the real world.”

Based on the ZoomSafer patented design, the development effort will uniquely integrate multiple technologies including location services, call management, voice services, and social media in the context of a users driving experience.

“ZoomSafer is an incredibly compelling and timely application. The need is obvious to anyone and everyone who has a phone and drives a car. We’re looking forward to partnering with ZoomSafer in support of this important and ground breaking effort,” says Ameet Shah, Co-Founder, Five Mobile Inc.

Distracted driving is an increasingly dangerous epidemic with current studies showing that texting while driving is more dangerous than drunk driving. In response to these disturbing trends US and Canadian legislators are moving quickly to pass new safe driving laws.

“Although legislation is an important component of any solution, laws alone are not the answer,” added Mr. Riemer. “At ZoomSafer we’re dedicated to preventing distracted driving by delivering solutions that people will use, not because they have to, but because they want to.”

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About ZoomSafer Inc.
ZoomSafer provides innovative mobile software and services to help people drive safely, have fun, and stay connected. Uniquely designed for today’s highly mobile, text-happy, and hyper-connected society – ZoomSafer offers solutions that prevent distracted driving for young drivers, prosumers, families, enterprises, and government organizations. For more information, please visit us on the web www.zoomsafer.com.

Visit ZoomSafer Blogs:
www.iDriveFocused.com
www.BerryFocused.com

Follow ZoomSafer:
Twitter @idrivefocused
Facebook (People Against Distracted Driving)
Linked-In (People Against Distracted Driving)

About Five Mobile
Five Mobile creates compelling, robust and scalable mobile applications for brands and enterprises across a multitude of different platforms and handsets. Five Mobile helps take your idea from concept to completion, leveraging extensive experience and proprietary processes. Visit Five Mobile at www.fivemobile.com.

Hi everyone,

Just a quick note to let everyone know that we’ve launched Score Mobile for BlackBerry today. Check out the press release when you have a moment, and *definitely* go download the application. Download it here! A lot of hard work went into this, and we’re proud of the end result!

“YouTube For Ebooks” Reaches iTunes App Store Top 4 In Two Weeks

Toronto, Canada (March 26, 2009) — Wattpad, the world’s most popular ebook sharing community, today announced that its popular iPhone application has propelled to the Top 4 spot in US, Canada, Australia and many other countries just two weeks after its launch on the App Store.

“iPhone now accounts for nearly 30% of our mobile traffic,” said Eva Lau, COO of Wattpad. “We are extremely proud to have accomplished this milestone in such a short period of time.”

Wattpad is the most popular destination for reading and sharing ebooks. Users have instant access to hundreds of thousands of novels, short stories, fan fiction, essays, jokes and more through Wattpad’s website (www.wattpad.com), mobile website (m.wattpad.com) and mobile applications. Wattpad has delivered billions of pages from its 100,000 plus strong ebook library. With cumulative downloads fast approaching 3 million, Wattpad is also the most popular mobile ebook application. Wattpad mobile application works on most mobile phones and smartphones such as Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, LG, Sharp, Sanyo, Panasonic, RIM Blackberry and Apple iPhone / iPod Touch.

More information about Wattpad is available online at www.wattpad.com.

Wattpad Now Available for Apple iPhone and iPod Touch

Check out the press release!

The decision making process for how businesses select a mobile development partner varies a great deal in the industry, and certainly across the various verticals. We’re often approached by companies who have gone down a particular path with a partner and eventually become unsatisfied with their work and ask our team to come in and “clean up the mess”.

Price is generally a motivating factor; many companies select a partner with the lowest price due to their internal resource constraints. Given the current economic climate, this is not surprising. Of course, this strategy is hit or miss in terms of how the developer performs. For companies that are serious about their mobile initiatives, this is not a viable option.

When responding to an RFP, we often include in our response a list of questions that we recommend our prospective clients ask other potential vendors to help them understand their capabilities.

Some general points to consider when selecting your mobile application development partner:

Mobile Experience

Many companies claim they can develop mobile applications… If they don’t have proof, I would definitely challenge that! Mobile application development requires a different skill set than traditional web and desktop development. Mobile development experience is critical if you want your project to be completed on time and without surprises. Do they have reference customers? If not, can they provide examples of their work?

The RFP Response

As alluded to previously, the level of detail a particular company can provide in their development quote is often indicative of their experience and abilities to perform the task. Particular attention should be paid to the effort associated in the task breakdown. How much time is spent on design versus implementation? How much time have they allocated for Quality Assurance? How realistic are their estimates? Inexperienced development shops usually under or over quote by a substantial margin.

Communication

When outsourcing work, an effective communication plan is a critical component. This is an often overlooked component. Are the resources fluent in the language your team speaks? Are they available at the same time your team is available? Can they speak intelligibly about your product in the event they are required to represent your company or product in front of others?

Development Methodology

There are pros and cons to the various development methodologies used out there. Five Mobile and many of it’s customers prefer an agile mobile process as an approach to developing mobile content. Understanding your potential vendor’s development methodology will help your team understand the level of interaction required.

Design and Architecture

The proper design and architecture of an application is an obvious area where inexperienced shops will fail. Designing for portability and scalability is an important factor when selecting your vendor. Mistakes that are made early on are often costly to fix at a later date, so spending a little extra time up front can save your team considerable agony down the road. What about the implementation? Have the developers designed the application in such a manner that will allow for it to be easily adapted to additional platforms?

Final Payload

It’s often taken for granted, but understanding what the deliverables are and what access you have to them is paramount. Specifically, does your team get source code and the tools required to re-build that source code? Do you own the final product, source, and tools? Are there any 3rd party licenses required? Is the code well documented in a language your internal team can understand? Have the developers included the appropriate design documentation so that your internal team could potentially pick up this project and move forward?

Support Plan

How will your vendor support you after delivery of the content? What is the warranty on the code and binaries? Are they available to troubleshoot? What’s the likelihood that this company will be around in a year to assist you should you require help then? With some of the companies we work with, we effectively serve as their mobile arm for a period of time and then eventually help the customer transition to utilizing in-house resources.

Future Proof?

One of the most often overlooked, yet vitally important aspects to software development for mobile devices, online and desktop, is whether the code is robust, scalable and ultimately future proof. In the event that your product is a success, it’s likely that one will want to iterate on that version. If porting is required, how will this affect future releases? Can the developer recommend a strategy to manage this?

Asking these questions should help you select the appropriate partner that help your mobile initiatives become a success!

Having been in the mobile space for a number of years, I’m often asked by prospective customers whether they should develop a mobile website or create a downloadable application that runs on the handsets. The short answer is, it depends on what your trying to accomplish.

Developing for the Mobile Web

Web development on mobile phones has long suffered from a very rigid platform and the inability for mobile browsers to keep up with current web technologies. This is slowly changing, partially due to the recent spikes in Smartphone handset sales. With many handset manufacturers attempting to clone the iPhone’s usability and appeal, a larger focus has been placed on the content on mobile phones, which in turn, requires better software to render this content. For example, both the iPhone and Blackberry Bold browsers can view HTML pages and process JavaScript. Technologies such as Flash have been rumored to be coming in the near term, but it will take some time before its supported on a large number of devices.

The “Pros” for Developing Mobile Web Applications

• The cost of supporting a mobile web application is relatively cheap in comparison to a downloadable application
• Accordingly, the speed at which a mobile website can be created is relatively quick
• If you have an existing high traffic web destination, developing a mobile version makes sense as your site already has a brand attached to it and a loyal following
• Higher-end devices are beginning to support existing desktop browser capabilities thus making the delta between your mobile and desktop browser experience smaller
• Deployment of a mobile website is quite simple
• The mobile web allows you to develop on a single platform and target the broadest set of launched across all handsets

The “Cons” for Developing Mobile Web Applications

• Currently, mobile websites are unable to take advantage of device specific features
• Ex: For the same reasons you can’t use a website to burn a CD, you cannot use a mobile website to access your phone’s contact list
• This is why high traffic sites such as Facebook will create both a mobile website and downloadable application
• Relatively speaking, interfaces on mobile websites are quite poor and clunky resulting in a less than desirable user experience
• Currently, support for AJAX and DHTML technologies is quite limited
• Despite developing for a single platform, developers must take into account mobile device idiosyncrasies across different handsets, firmware versions and operators
• Users must be connected at all times… there is no concept of an “offline mode”
• With the increase in mobile handset vendors, there has also been an increase in browser fragmentation
• On the web, typically developers are focused on Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorer and Safari
• In the mobile space, there are 10+ relevant browsers and many more in development
• Mobile website owners must rely heavily on 3rd party sources such as Device Atlas to understand device characteristics

Developing Mobile Applications

Similar to the mobile web, the native capabilities of handsets have improved and so have the associated SDKs. If you’re watching how Apple markets the iPhone, its all about letting users know that their device is more than just a phone. Specifically, they showcase applications created for the handset that leverage it’s unique capabilities. In general, Apple has done a fantastic job of making users feel comfortable in downloading content to their handsets. It’s not only helped them, but it’s opened up the floodgates across other platforms.

The “Pros” for Developing Mobile Applications

• Mobile applications can interact directly with the device obtaining useful information such as location, contact lists, accelerometer functions, etc. This is critical for a “mobile” application
• Having the ability to control exactly what is displayed on screen allows for customized (and optimized), rich user interfaces directly on the device
• User interactions can also be directly controlled via the possible inputs (touch, voice, keyboard, etc)
• In your mobile application, you are able to store reasonable amounts of data directly on the handset in a secure manner as opposed to storing everything on a remote server (slow!)
• Performance can typically be optimized for each handset and platform
• Mobile (Smartphone) development platforms are improving quite rapidly
• Developers can create a consistent look and feel throughout their application
• Measurement in terms of how users interact with an application is possible

The “Cons” for Developing Mobile Applications

• Unless proper design measures are taken, upkeep and continued portability of your application is difficult to maintain.  This happens to be something we specialize in
• There are 5-6 relevant mobile application development platforms to choose from, and understand which ones best suit your needs can be confusing
• Within these platforms, additional fragmentation exists at a per device, firmware and operator level
• Typically, developing rich mobile applications is more costly than creating a mobile website
• Mobile applications may require porting to additional platforms and this takes up front consideration
• A single, publicly available source for data across all mobile handset characteristics and attributes as they relate to the individual SDKs does not exist
• Testing can be time consuming and costly as mobile applications must be tested on the physical handset
• One needs to understand the various carrier requirements if an “on deck” strategy is preferred

In conclusion, it very much depends on your organization’s goals with regards to the mobile application. If it’s simply an extension of your mobile website, is heavily content focused and does not require an interactive user experience, then the mobile web may be a better choice. If one requires access to device functionality such as location or the contact list and have an appropriate development and porting strategy formed (either internally, or through a partner) that will help minimize the effects of device fragmentation, then developing a mobile application makes sense.

Hi everyone, welcome to the Five Mobile Blog! We’ll be using this as a vehicle for communicating some of our thoughts on the mobile industry, our experiences with the different development platforms we deal with and of course, the latest news at Five Mobile. This also serves as the official launch of our re-branded website. Tell us what you think!