I thought this article was interesting in overall tone and a specific quote:

Modifying the software for each phone’s display is a matter of brute-force labor. There’s no intellectual way around it. Yahoo! is one of the few companies that’s been able to pull this off, but only because they have an army of Ph.D. hackers working for them.

Thanks! The primary design for the content adaptor was done by one non-Ph.D.–me–with plenty of help from the resident “phone whisperer” and a talented team of fellow non-Ph.Ds. It’s not a matter of “brute force” at all. The only way to solve the problem with finite resources is to understand developers, understand the problem space, and be smart about drawing a line between the two (and being flexible enough to handle the inevitable unknown).

One thing is certain: the industry is changing fast. A mobile app working great today will look dodgy in a year, and be obsolete in two years. It’s not clear if this will stabilize at some point, or keep shifting..

But I’m curious about what the rest of you think. Is mobile the next big thing, or a huge sand trap? Comment below. -m

Here’s a NYT article on Yahoo! Mobile, including a picture of the “warroom” where I spend a few hours on a typical day. The sign on the back wall says “platform team”, and on top of that “Maru” in Kanji and roman characters. -m

Here’s a great comparison site. Try out some searches you might run from your phone and let me know: which one did you prefer? Why? -m

Today Yahoo! launched oneSearch on their other front page, m.yahoo.com. OneSearch has been available for a while, but only from within Yahoo! Go. Now it’s available to millions of mobile devices equipped with a data connection and XHTML browser.

The basic premise behind oneSearch is to replace the tri-modal search box, where you have to say whether you are searching the web, local, or images, with a single all-knowing search box. Available context information, such as your zip code, is used to guide the search. Internally, the application is smart about figuring out what kind of things you might be looking for. For example, someone searching for “pizza” in a mobile context is probably more interested in a list of restaurants (with reviews) than in a list of hyperlinks. Behind the simplicity of a single search box, there is a great deal of work going on to make your life easier.
Ever since Yahoo! Go betas (and gammas) started coming out, folks have been asking me how else they could get access to this application. Now it’s easy.

Not too long ago, the front page relaunched simultaneously in 19 countries. The new design was simple, and based on a new platform called Sushi, as mentioned in published sources. OneSearch shows off the power of this approach, even though this launch didn’t cover 19 countries…yet. (Getting access to local data for movies, restaurants, sporting events, and so on is no small feat.)

As I said before, this is only a small part of an overall strategy that has been years in the making. Much more to come. Watch this space. -m

Spotted under the headline Windows Live Search for Mobile Goes Final, Still Great (like they were expecting it to suddenly plummet in quality?) on Gizmodo. It’s a 114k jar file that runs on my SLVR, where Yahoo! Go isn’t yet available yet, so points for that. Search suggestions show as you type, hugely useful on a klunky 9-key entry situation. They use an interesting UI to hold search results, densely packed–6 down the screen–with a status bar on top, and each search result marquee-scrolling back-and-forth as needed. A detail page can zap you in to map mode or set up a call.

My standard test search–a little offbeat but still plausible–for mead near Sunnyvale produced disappointing results. The meadery within walking distance didn’t show, and of the top 6, two were duplicates. Scrolling down to the 10th result, though, did show an interesting, useful result, albeit 60.15 miles away: Knowne World Meads. I wanted to visit the web site, but here lies another problem: there’s no web integration. None of the search results include a URL or clickable link.

For all the hassle, I’ll stick with Opera Mini and my favorite search engine, thank you. -m

Check it out. -m

A few more tidbits on the Softbank Mobile turnaround, for which helped architect the mobile platform.

SoftBank phones have a “Y!”-button which links to Yahoo!-keitai. Yahoo-Keitai! offers a list of official sites, new services (e.g. a new communicator service), and also access to free mobile internet sites through the YAHOO directory, as well as access to YAHOO services, such as YAHOO-auctions.

-m

Congrats to Opera Mini on its first anniversary. I just installed it on my new SLVR, and the download is an astounding 98k. Why can’t more software be this lean? And yes, Y! search came as the default. -m

My second career as a hand model has been exposed, by a blog post from the guys behind Yahoo! Messenger. BTW, I have even more stickers now, including one of those Flickr stickrs seen in the shot. -m

P.S. The photo is credited to Yodel Anecdotal, which is another blog. Did anyone catch when that first showed up? URL anyone?

(Press release) Starting today, Y! is the exclusive search partner for Opera Mini across more than 100 countries. The release also names “oneSearch”, going live later in Q1–definitely something to keep an eye on. -m

The new Flickr Mobile site is up, joining the recently-launched m.upcoming.org. Notice a trend in mobile URL design here? Expect to see more of this from Yahoo! and other places.

The interesting thing about these URLs is that they don’t end in .mobi. There are technical advantages (cookies) to staying with an established domain name. What are your plans, if any, for dot-mobi domains? -m

Monday I’ll be at the Mobile 2.0 event in SF. If you’re there, look me up! -m

So, the question I posed here was what effect Number Portability would have on #3 carrier Softbank Mobile customers in Japan. Would they leave for greener pastures, or would lower prices and free Yahoo! content (not to mention a bit of advertising) attract new subscribers? Yep, file this under good problems to have. -m

ZDNet Asia offers a rare glimpse inside Yahoo! Mobile, including the code name for a current project I’m involved with. Read on to get an idea why I keep saying to expect big things soon in this space. -m

Just ran into this. Nice! Mobile mashups are getting some serious momentum.

To elaborate on my previous comments a bit, the concept of what people find usable differs between sitting at a desktop and sitting/standing/running/driving with mobile in hand. Desktop sites aren’t optimized for these kinds of use patterns. Ergo, fertile ground for lots of mashups. You were getting tired of the Maps API + X formula anyway, right? ;-) -m

Lots more going on at Yahoo! Come join the fun! We’re specifically looking for PHP, SQL, DHTML, XML, and JavaScript folks. And if you have some knowledge of video codecs, definitely get in touch. -m

Today Softbank Mobile launched a new mobile service, delivering tons of Yahoo! Japan content, powered by Yahoo! US technology, to Softbank Mobile phones. This is notable for a few reasons:

• In the past, content of this caliber been inside paid walled gardens in Japan. Opening this up could be the tipping point for a shake-up in one of the most amazing mobile markets.
• This is the first time a carrier has been in so close with a content provider. If this works out (and leading signs are very good), it could be a model for the rest of the world.
• I’ve seen some of the new hardware from SoftBank Mobile. The phones are great and–through tight Y! integration–go a long way toward solving longstanding UI problems related to the mobile web.
• Number portability is coming to Japan, I believe beginning today on October 24. Once this gets momentum, user bases could shift rapidly. Today is the ideal time to be playing a strong card.
• Apple rumors continue to swirl around SoftBank. I’m giddy at the thought of iPods accessing the web through my code. :-)

So, watch this space. More good things are coming. -m

Another cool thing on the way: this Friday is the first public Yahoo! Hack Day. I’ll be out on the lawn for sure. If you’ll be there–look me up. Since the presentations come rapid-fire at the end, here Chad Dickerson has some tips on presenting in 90 seconds. -m

Spotted via Weinberger. Hiawatha Bray of The Boston Globe writes about Yahoo’s continuing foray against DRM, led by David Goldberg. -m

I just have a feeling I’m going to need this some day. -m

Yahoo! Mobile has a new look–the first of many changes in the pipeline. The refresh brings the mobile site in line with the recently relaunched main page. -m

Interesting, but not surprising. The source article talks about revenue share unhappiness, but that seems like a bit of a stretch for a deal only inked six months ago. There’s some more interesting analysis in there as well.

It was the open secret in the industry that both Voda and T-Mobile were beginning to have their doubts about their marriage with Google. Now the honeymoon is over rumors are mounting that both operators are ripe for a new union with Yahoo or a white-label solution – or both.

My opinion is that folks are starting to realize that there’s a lot more to life than being really, really ridiculously good at search. -m

How hard could this be? A six month project if three engineers are doing it in a garage. Five years if you put one hundred programmers on it.

Guy Kawasaki

-m

A few pics up on Flickr. Still recovering from travel, more soon. -m

Yeah, help still wanted. I’m looking for a markup and standards guru to work with me on a cool Mobile project. Can you list five different types of CSS selector off the top of your head? Can you map all five to the equivalent XPath? Can you spot semantic markup by reflex? Do you daydream about microformats or scribble down BNF during idle moments? Do you obsessively check the TR page at the W3C?

If you answered YES to the above questions, send me your CV. Include “Yahoo!” somewhere in the subject line. -m

I spend a Pareto portion of my work day in three applications: jEdit, Firefox, and a terminal.

I hang around Emacs (and VI)-loving folks all day. Emacs. jEdit. Emacs. jEdit. The tension is palpable. :)

Maybe their influence is starting to rub off on me. Here’s what I want: Dear readers, can you provide comments on any tips to achieve any of these in Emacs?

• I keep about 20 files open at a time, in multiple “sessions”. With one dropdown in jEdit, I can switch to a different 20 files in a different session, all open and ready for editing. When I start the editor, I don’t need to individually open files.
• I use a plugin to show a bunch of tiny tabs at the bottom, so I can see what’s open at a glance.
• Text selection with shift+arrow keys, and copy and paste with Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V. PgUp and PgDn working. (Just like my web browser)
• Ctrl+W to close a tab or workspace. Ctrl+T to open a new tab. (Just like my web browser)
• Ctrl+S to save (Just like my…you get the picture)
• I’m not a heavy mouse user, but when I do use a mouse, I should at least be able to select text with it.
• Line numbers showing on each line.
• Nice fonts (no small feat on BSD).
• Here’s the kicker: I want to attach in from a remote computer (on a different OS) and have the same experience, same files already open, and so on. Here, jEdit isn’t helping (unless I go VNC, but that’s a big hammer…)

I’ve talked about this before, though my environment now is a little different. (For one, I am now making basic use of GNU Screen for my terminal sessions.) Basically, I want an editor that works like all the other software I use all day, instead of making me remember an entirely different set of key bindings. Every extra bit of my limited wetware storage claimed by my tools detratcts from the stuff I really need to be thinking about. Comments? -m

It’s no secret that Yahoo! has two different photo sites. And two different social bookmarking sites. Until pretty recently I thought this was craziness. But gradually I’ve realized the power of this approach.

You take a smaller, hipper embodiment of an idea alongside a mainstream site. The resulting double-threat can’t easily be matched be either fresh startups or entrenched players. The smaller site can keep innovating and experimenting away, while the larger site adopts the best ideas and keeps improving without freaking out their base. It’s effective. Car companies have known this for years.

Now, my second realization: The W3C is doing the exact same thing with XHTML 1.x and XHTML 2.x+XForms. -m

Lots and lots of blog traffic on Google Spreadsheet, but I haven’t seen anyone make a key point:

The underlying message is: full-blown applications in the browser are now real.

Many smaller players have been doing things like this for years, just as many smaller player were using Ajax before it had a catchy name. But as soon as it had a name and a big player (again, Google) behind it, it left the launch pad in spectacular fashion.

The era of Web Applications has begun. Don’t think that Microsoft Office should be afraid–it’s even bigger. -m

For better or worse. In no particular order.

1. Affordable unlimited data plans
2. Google getting into the operator business
3. Yahoo! getting into the operator business
4. Affordable phones not tied to carriers
5. The iPod phone
6. Development of strong AI (yes I say this about everything)
7. Development of decent agent software
8. Affordable unlimited voice plans
9. Collapse of network neutrality
10. An active mobile WebStandards task force (ok, not overnight, but still important)

-m

Check out the presentation page, with a link to the paper. Because someone asked, my name got top biling due to the prestigious “alphabetical” reference system. -m