Sunday, January 22, 2006

MobileCrunch » bluepulse; first look at a mobile 2.0 giant

For those of you that don’t know me, I’ll let you in on a secret. I hate to be wrong. That’s not to say that I’m never wrong or that I don’t admit it when I am, but I really detest being mistaken. This leads me to avoid situations where I might discover to my horror that I was in error. So it says quite a lot that straight out of the gate and with less than 2 hours of personal playtime using the application, I’m suggesting that bluepulse will be one of the first category dominant players in mobile 2.0. Heady stuff, but lets take a look at what makes me think that this application from a company down under by the same name deserves such high praise.

Blue pulse is built on something called OADP or the Open Application Delivery Platform. This platform provides access to mobile applications and content through virtually all mobile phones and various wireless devices. Unlike most of the applications available today that require extensive customization and porting to be used on the hundreds of different devices and dozens of different carriers, OADP allows developers to develop mobile applications without having to worry about porting, connectivity or billing. This is a major advance, a major advantage for bluepulse and a primary reason why I’m predicting big things for this company. The complete explanation of OADP and bluepulse’s SPOT technology which has patents pending in 123 countries is a bit involved so I’ll leave that to you - the more propeller-headed amongst our number - to click here to glean the finer points.
The components that make up the OADP are the bluepulse management and application delivery software, proxy tools for NEBA’s and client software for wireless devices. The OADP is based on Bluepulse’s’ revolutionary ‘Small Portable Object Technology’ (SPOT) which as I said above, has a slew of pending patents in more than one hundred countries.

The main reason this is so important is what this platform does for the developer - it allows the developer to write once and have his or her application work on not one or two but dozens or even hundreds of devices nearly right out of the box. bluepulse empowers developers to create new applications and get them delivered free in near real time to phones and networks worldwide.

From an end-user perspective, bluepulse is equally cool because it is equally flexible. No more does your carrier dictate which applications you can or can’t run. It doesn’t matter if you’re on Cingular or Verizon and the only charges for the basic software are your standard fees for data based upon your pre-existing carrier agreement. My test went smoothly from start to finish. I decided to load the software onto the Nokia N90. Installation was straightforward and there were no surprises to mention and within a few minutes I had loaded up my Yahoo Chat client with the buddylist exactly as it was on my PC. I was also able to subscribe to a few blogs, both pre-entered content like Slashdot and Wired as well as my own favorites like Techcrunch and MobHappy.

If there was any one thing I could complain about with bluepulse I’d say that it’s light on content, but this is merely an artifact of the newness of the application suite and my suspicion is that before long a dizzying array of options will present themselves to bluepulse users. In fact, much as I loathe being wrong, since I’m already sticking my neck out I’ll offer yet another prediction/suggestion.

I think that eventually some kind of rating system or digital gatekeeper will have to be deployed to help end-users find the best content and the most functional applications. Particularly since many of the more sophisticated and/or desirable applications and content will be fee based, I think it’s important for the end user that they don’t feel cheated by virtue of their own bad selections. A try it before you buy it option might be very handy and would go a long way towards encouraging consumers to explore, experiment and ultimately buy a lot more of what’s for sale.

An email that my partner at TechCrunch Networks forwarded to me from bluepulse’s VP of Answering Questions, Alan Jones suggested that we’d be curious about their revenue model and why they hadn’t specifically made certain that the software ran on smartphones and he’s right. I’d like to know more about both. In the meantime, one: of the coolest things about the current bluepulse beta is that it is free. I sincerely suggest that you get a move on to your phone and pay a visit to their site before this changes.

By the way, for the curious, bluepulse also has a company blog: bluepulseblog.blogspot.com. For those of you that take my advice and give bluepulse a try, I’d be curious to see who thinks I’ve called this one correctly and who thinks I’m…god forbid….wrrrr….wrrooo…nope, can’t say it. enjoy.