Mobile App vs. Mobile Web. Fight!

At this early phase of the mobile era, an interesting paradox has emerged.

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When you log onto your computer at home and go to Facebook, most of you will type "facebook" into your browser.  Some of you might click a bookmark in your browser.  You certainly don't locate and open up the Facebook Desktop app Version 1.2 for OS X (such a thing does not exist).  However, on our internet-enabled mobile devices we behave quite differently. Strangely, we have trained consumers to expect the distribution of services on mobile to come via apps instead of the open web.  Why is this?

ROUND 1.  FIGHT!

Advantages of Mobile Web
  • Write once, run on any device.  In theory.  In practice this is not always so smooth thanks to different screen sizes / interface quirks of devices on the market.  But overall this is a net-win for the business, maintain one codebase that works across multiple platforms.
  • Massive distribution.  Again, in theory.  If something is on the open web then anyone can access it at any time, but accessibility is not the same as reach - what good is open distribution if consumers are searching for your service in the app store anyway...
  • Play by your own rules. Providing a service on the open web there are no terms of service for your business to agree to, no middlemen to give a percentage of your revenue to, and no hand of god to anger and see yourself shut down on a whim.  The same cannot be said for those playing in walled gardens such as the app store.
  • Instant Deployment. Found a bug? Patch it and deploy the update.  Now it's fixed for everyone.  With the app model, the bug is only patched when the distributor approves your patch and, crucially, when a consumer actually gets round to downloading it.
Advantages of Mobile App
  • Access to Native APIs. This means that your app can do things like take a picture with the device's camera or receiving push notifications. Access to device functionality is a huge stumbling block and probably one of the main reasons businesses create native apps instead of web apps.  Could an app like Instagram be made 100% web-based if it had access to the camera API? Absolutely yes and it would likely be better for it.  That so many businesses have to make a decision like this is unfortunate.
  • Consumer Bias. We have trained consumers to look for things in the app store. When you download something from the app store you press a button and get a shiny icon on your home screen. This is good.  Web bookmarks are less shiny and although the means exists to place a bookmark on the home screen, it is not a common consumer behavior and more of a power-user action.
  • Profit. All parties to the app economy have a somewhat simpler path to profit than the open web. One-click purchasing means consumers have ultimate ease-of-use and as a bonus don't have to give up credit card details to anyone - conversions stay high for app developers. The app economy owner claims a transactional fee.  It is an altogether smoother experience than the clunky purchasing flows of the open web which are entirely different depending on which site you are on.  This also means there is a direct incentive for the app economy owner to further improve the experience of the app economy and indirectly lure developers away from the open web.
ROUND 2. FIGHT!

Popular apps need access to device APIs.  The camera.  The photo album.  It's not a giant leap of logic to assume that device manufacturers would be unwilling to give web-based access to device APIs if it means that app developers can sidestep their app store economies and deploy near-native applications to the open web. Too much money and opportunity would be lost. There would also be some security concerns since at the end of the day a device manufacturer does not want bad things to happen to their customers (e.g. visit a malicious website, your phonebook gets deleted), hence a regulated environment is the safest.

I wonder though if there's a happy middle ground for both the developer and the device manufacturer.  What if web-based device API access was regulated with a license fee and an agreement? Then both the criteria of profit and safety would be fulfilled and the developer is free to exploit the advantages of the open web with the advantages of native APIs.

ROUND 3. FIGHT!

One thing that's going to be much harder to change is consumer behavior.  While in the mobile web of the future you might be able to build Instagram entirely as a web app that sits at Instagram.com and any user on any device can log on and take retro photos with their device's camera... all is lost if at the end of the day the consumer expects to find your app on the app store, download it and get a shiny icon.

That web apps are not welcome on the app store is Apple's (or Android's) business prerogative.  Why give scrappy web app developers who are independent to the app store economy a piece of the spotlight when there are so many other $1 apps with in-app purchases and subscriptions etc to feature? Same goes for the shiny icon which is tremendously important for creating the sense of ownership and retaining the consumer - a consumer can't go to your mobile site and click "download" to "get" the web app and shiny icon.  They have to go to Options > Add to Home Screen (who does that??) or Options > Save a Bookmark or something other than simply the word "download" or "install". There's sadly no API for initiating a home screen add.

JUDGEMENT

For interests to be aligned between the device manufacturer and the web developer, there needs to be some mutual benefit.  Clearly, access to native APIs in a web based app would create massive opportunities for developers. Device manufacturers should seek to enable that to their own benefit.  Regulated API use could be one step towards that. And remember it's not just hardware features that developers could benefit from accessing.  I am certain that developers would go crazy for a one-click payments API that can be used on the open web, that simply uses the app store credentials of the mobile device user.  This negates some of the advantages of the open web (e.g. "play by your own rules") but for traditionally brittle actions like payments, speaking as a developer I will accept convention over configuration any day.

I am hoping for a future where we see something called the App Store Web API. It will provide native API access to device features (such as camera) for web-based applications and it will provide a plug-and-play payment system using App Store credentials for web-based applications.  Everybody wins.

Oh and bonus points if Apple, Android and Blackberry can work on making it an open, common standard so we don't have to write device-specific code :)

Steve Jobs

Looking at my last post on this blog I feel very somber.   

It was written only a month ago and in it I talk about Steve Jobs as he was still with us. 

Now he is gone and the world has lost a great man.  A cutting-edge visionary, an inspiring preacher and someone who has moved the world great leaps and bounds forward - sometimes with us kicking and screaming, sometimes with our exhilarated approval.  I like many others mourn heavily the loss of Steve Jobs and even typing this out now some two weeks after his passing, tears well up in my eyes.  

I've been an Apple user for over 12 years, have bought nearly every product they released, would always stay up until 3am in the morning to watch the Stevenote product announcements, have been fascinated with Steve Jobs life story (read the books, watched the movie!) and more recently have become part of the iOS ecosystem building apps for iPhone and iPad.  Apple is a massive part of my life.

There have been many, many tributes to Steve Jobs but one of the most emotional ones for me is by Steven Colbert.  Himself a huge Apple fanatic, his farewell message to Steve is at once reverential and very human.  It is impossible to not shed a tear in the last 10 seconds of this clip.

I will always remember Steve Jobs.  He will continue to be an inspiration for me and millions of other people, that much is certain.  I wanted some way to be reminded of him always, so that I can feel motivated to never fear, never listen to naysayers and never give up on my dreams and ambitions.  Almost by fate, I attended an art exhibition called 100 Faces by 100 Artists last night and bought a piece by artist Calvin Ho.

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I love this piece as it reminds me that Steve Jobs - for all his strategic genius, his flawless stagecraft, his inspiring, dogged ambition of his beliefs - was a man, a human being just like you and me.  He wore goofy bow ties when he was younger, he messed up now and again, and as he got older some things were hard for him to see so he'd put his glasses on his head like that.

That's how I'll remember him.  A man who showed the world they can do insanely great things.

Rest in Peace.

Presentation Skills: Steve Jobs vs. Tim Cook

Tim Cook the new Apple CEO will be presenting the iPhone 5 to the crowd at an Apple event on October 4th.

I've never seen Tim Cook present but even if you're the world's best presenter, following in Steve Jobs' footsteps as a savant on the stage... would be somewhat daunting.

So I went on a search - what is Tim Cook like in front of an audience?  To set the tone, here is Steve Jobs giving a commencement speech at Stanford in 2005:

Steve Jobs does an excellent job captivating the audience early on.  He tells them straight up that he's going to tell 3 stories so the audience knows exactly what they will get (so there is no uncertainty that leads to lack of attention).  He then proceeds to tell a very personal story - this is important as the audience feels they are getting information that no one else will get.  Steve gets his message across by telling a story that everyone in the audience can associate with (going to college, doing what you love) and outlining lessons to be learned from that experience.  Even the tone of his voice is interesting to listen to, as it lilts up and down.

Here is Tim Cook giving a commencement speech at Auburn in 2010:

It is a pronouncedly different experience listening to Tim Cook speak. Tim decides to talk about "some discoveries" after a lengthy intro, then recites an Apple (corporate) history lesson.  It's a decidedly less approachable speech and - personally speaking - I find it far less engaging.

I am very curious to see Tim Cook's presentation on October 4th.  All eyes will be on him and I wonder if he will have had coaching, and if his stage presence at the event is significantly different from the above.  The keynotes are also a collaborative effort and I'm curious to see whether the help of professional writers (who I'm sure helped out during Steve Jobs' keynotes too) will have an affect on the impact.

It may sound like I'm hand-wringing and waiting to see the guy bomb - that's definitely not the case.  I'm sure we all want Tim Cook to come into his own as a presenter and follow in Steve's footsteps in that regard, it's just going to be interesting to see if he can pull it off the first time or if it's going to take a few attempts...

The Best Pizza in Singapore

Like 99% of people with a blog and a twitter account, I think of myself as an expert food critic.  

My zeal for this topic is most likely grounded in the fact that I love cooking and therefore have a critical eye for quality of ingredients, technique and consistency, while the fact that I was a restaurant waiter at some point around 16 years old means that I'm also highly critical of service.  In a nutshell I am a JOY to eat with.  Never eat with me.

I didn't realize it at the time but Tokyo is amazing for pizza.  I'm not talking about those daft fast-food corn, mayo & still-moving tentacle pizzas  that you read about on BoingBoing.  I'm talking about authentic neapolitan style pizza that you seem to be able to find in abundance, because Japanese chefs have an innate drive towards the delicate art of NAILING IT.  You see this all over Japanese culture in general, but I see it in their pizza.  Perfectly crispy and chewy, high quality ingredients, drizzled with a little olive oil, baked in seconds in a tremendously hot brick oven.  These places seemed to be everywhere in Tokyo.

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Above: That's what a neapolitan style pizza should look like.

Which is why, when I arrived in Singapore I wasn't afraid.  I was complacent - I thought if pizza that good was a birthright to any Tokyo-ite then surely Singapore - a nation whose #1 pre-occupation is shoving food into its throbbing maw - would be able to one-up it.  Good pizza would be everywhere, ubiquitous.  People would feed it to their pets.  Oh how I was wrong.  I have, since landing on May 1st, been on a quest to find the best (neapolitan style) pizza in Singapore.  Here are some places suggested to me, along with my ANGRY BLOGGER EXPERT (TM) thoughts.

Sole Pomodoro

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Someone (a famous food blog, dun-dun-dunnn) recommended this place and when it arrived, even before I tasted it, I knew I wasn't going to like it.  One thing I consider a cardinal sin is to use dry herbs on a pizza. It's lazy, tastes bad and makes it feel like you're eating sawdust.  Sole Pomodoro's pizza was liberally covered in dust-like dried herbs.  You take a bite, they stick to the roof of your mouth, it's just an awful mouthfeel and looked like something a child might make at home after discovering the parents spice rack for the first time.  It's a shame because in terms of vibe, I loved the place - open to the road, warm but not hot, exactly how I like to eat.  And you know, the dough base itself wasn't that bad.  But those herbs were such a huge fail that I won't be going back.

Bella Pizza

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I'm British and tend to avoid conflict at all costs due to our cowardice-thinly-veiled-as-pacifist nature.  But Bella Pizza is one of the only restaurants I've been to in the last TEN years where I have actually sent food back to the kitchen.  I ordered a margherita with buffalo mozzarella and waited, rubbing my hands together like a cartoon villain.  When it arrived, it was a bright shade of yellow.  It doesn't take a smarmy git to know that buffalo mozzarella is WHITE and in fact the only type of mozzarella that is yellow is that hideous, non-mozzarella that you can buy in supermarkets, sometimes pre-grated to remove the flavour further.  I asked the waitress (quite politely) why the pizza is not white on top, and that I believe the kitchen have not used the cheese that is stated on the menu.  To her credit, she said she would get another one for me right away - and about 10 minutes later I received a similarly-yellow pizza (they still insisted on using the yellow stuff!) with some blobs of half-melted buffalo mozzarella strewn on the surface.  And, quite likely, spit, sneeze and jizz.  I won't be going back for their pizza, but they have a decent wine list at least.

L'Operetta

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I had been hearing a lot about this place and even met the owner by chance at an event who seemed to take great pride in his menu.  When I showed at their Boat Quay restaurant up my expectations were very high after seeing this video:

Which is the very definition of the art of NAILING IT.  They have the right oven, they use fresh ingredients, they don't overload the pizza, it's cooked in literally seconds, and they use olive oil.  When I uncontrollably rubbed my face on the screen, I could even almost taste it.  Arriving at L'Operetta you might be taken aback by the auspicious, fine-dining setting.  There's table cloths and amuse bouches - it's not really the kind of setting I like to enjoy my pizza in but I went there with an open mind.  When the pizza arrived, I could see at-a-glance that they had nailed it.  This is neapolitan style pizza and it tasted exactly as I remember it back in Tokyo at all the amazing pizza places there.  Guess what nationality the chef is?  Japanese.  This restaurant was written and directed by M Night Shyamalan.

My one criticism of L'Operetta is that despite the fact they serve perhaps the best example of neapolitan style pizza in Singapore, they seem to be trying really hard not to be branded as a pizza restaurant.  When I went the first time, pizzas were relegated to the back of the menu - giving priority to the pricey and frankly boring (but well-executed) modern Italian cuisine at the front. When I went the second time the pizzas had disappeared off the menu and I was told that you have to ask for the pizza menu separately in a kind of puppy-dog-eyed Oliver Twist fashion.  Strange behavior in my opinion.  Singapore has a bunch of competent Italian restaurants but if L'Operetta embraced the fact that they do some of the best pizza in Singapore they could own the market and become THE place for neapolitan-style pizza.  But I'm not in charge, I'm just a guy who likes pizza.

Mozza

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I'll start by saying that I think Mario Batali is awesome.  He cares about food and is an encyclopedia of all things Italian and rustic - so again, I had high expectations.  There are some quirks to eating at Mozza:

1) Utensils come in an envelope on your table.  I'm not sure what the idea behind this concept is, other than making it feel like a tacky theme restaurant.

2) You must order EVERYTHING at once.  We were told that adding things onto your order at a later time will result in your WHOLE order going to the back of the queue in the kitchen.  This must be the stupidest rule I've ever heard! There are no winners in that situation.  It's bad for the customer as they feel pressured to order right the first time and can't order more if they see something they like later and it's bad for the business as it discourages add-on orders (i.e. MORE MONEY for the business).  The only thing it seems to benefit is the kitchen's convenience, which is strange to prioritise over the customer or business earnings.

That said, the pizza at Mozza is excellent - but has a personality of its own.  It's not classic neapolitan-style, it's a crackly concoction with gigantic bubbles.  It was rather fun to eat and I would definitely go again.  But if you go, remember the rules or it's No Pizza For You.

Overall Verdict:

There are still some places for me to discover I'm sure.  But out of the above places, L'Operetta wins my cold, black purist heart. It's the closest I have had to really good Neapolitan-style pizza in Singapore which requires high quality ingredients and the right hardware (read: massive brick oven).  Mozza however is a close second - but is not true Neapolitan style, it's just delicious in its own original way.

UPDATE 26th September 2011:

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It turns out that L'Operetta has a much more casual outlet that IS focused on pizza - it's called Pizzeria L'Operetta and it's located at Icon Village in Tanjong Pagar.  I tried it out and the pizza is perfect, and the menu is very much all about the pizza.  Unfortunately what it makes up for in pizza and celebration of the pizza, it loses in ambience as the environment is a little too clinical for me to enjoy; it's in an indoor shopping mall, opposite a salon.  It was also very quiet when I went.  But still, great place for a neapolitan pizza fix!

Jam - The Story So Far

I've been making a lot of jam recently.

Here's some of my creations so far.  I will be doing a jam-themed event at some point so if you like bread and you like things on bread, stay tuned :)

Most of these are super easy but total crowd-pleasers! There's really nothing not to like about wads of pork or crab smothered over bread.

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Arugula and Parsley Jam
Herbal, peppery and sweet, it's a really interesting combination.

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Carrot Jam
A really simple French-style dish. I could even serve this alongside chicken or fish.

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Chilli Crab Jam
I made a tub of this for a house party recently and it was wolfed down in about 10 mins.

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Xiao Long Bao Jam
This hits all the right spots. It's meaty, brothy, but at the same time you have the hit of vinegar and ginger. Awesome.

How to Cut a Mango

Been a while! I've been busy with all things Cookpad.it - we just launched our iPhone app a couple of weeks ago which makes it super easy to create & share recipes.  Go have a look :)

I made a youtube video! It shows you how to cut a mango:

Why post this up to youtube? Allow me to explain... 

Recently I was alerted to the fact that one of my old, old youtube videos - How to Make Gyoza - has elicited all sorts of weird and wonderful and frightening comments on youtube. Some of my favourites being:
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Fun!

As a fan and proponent of borderline internet stalking, I thought I might encourage more of this behaviour by posting up more cooking / how-to videos.

So the mango vid the first one.  It's really basic and I haven't really sorted out the sound in my new kitchen yet or given much thought to the titles etc.  For now I'm just going to try to share some cooking tips and see what happens.  Unfortunately though I don't think my hands look as sexy in the latest vid so homemades71 might be a bit disappointed and unsubscribe and / or burst into a violent rage and hunt me down for some axe-in-face action.

 

The Big Reveal - Cookpad.it

Finally I can start talking about what I'm up to!

SPOILER: Check out the site here http://cookpad.it

The last you heard from me I was quitting my job and leaving Japan.  Since then it's been a quiet 2 months on this blog.  Here's what has been going on...

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My plan at the end of April was to move to Singapore - I had already booked the ticket, packed my stuff and my PEP pass had been approved.  I was going to take my time to figure things out when I got to Singapore - maybe start a web production agency, or a social gaming company, or build iPhone apps for fun & profit.  I was set on doing my own thing.

Along comes a shiny spanner that throws itself into the works.  

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2 weeks before I left for Singapore, Japan's biggest recipe website (and a publicly-listed company) Cookpad http://cookpad.com approached me with their plans - they wanted to go international, and would be setting up an office in Singapore.  Would I like to be on board?  For those of you who know me, that was a very interesting proposition.  I am *intensely* passionate about food and cooking, and even started my own recipe site a long time ago http://opensourcefood.com which was acquired in 2009.  Would I like to do that all over again except bigger, better, with the additional challenges of the new iOS/Android smartphone environment and a mission to find a revenue model that can sustain the international site independently of the Japanese site?

Hell yes.  Yes, I'm very interested.

Which brings us to today.  I'm Director of International Product for Cookpad (Pte Ltd!) based in Singapore and for the last 2 months we've been building the international version of the site from scratch.  We built a very quick MVP version, put it in front of users at offline gatherings that I've been organising, and iterated on feedback.

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And today we just launched the official "Beta" at http://cookpad.it with an improved design and some new features, and will be launching our smartphone app in July.  There's lots more cool stuff coming... but I won't give too much away :)

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Our mission is to make cooking more fun for everyone.  That's a broad goal but within it are I think two sub-goals:

1) Create a place where authors feel a sense of pride in the recipes they publish

2) Create a place where even beginner cooks can get started and improve their skills over time

One thing that differentiates us is that we're all about step-by-step photos.  We kind of encourage them.  Here's a step-by-step recipe I made for the perfect burger patties - when there's step-by-step pics the recipes just look so much more human and approachable, I feel a sense of achievement as an author that I'm really helping someone to cook, and readers of the recipe appreciate the easy-to-follow photos.  Of course, this is a lot of work for the author but it's so worth it, and at Cookpad we're going to work super hard to make sure the process of creating a recipe like this is as simple as possible for the author.  Our upcoming smartphone app will help with that.

So if you're into cooking please join us at http://cookpad.it and show us how to make your favourite recipe, step by step!

Where does this leave Littlecosm and other side-projects?  They are on hold for now - Cookpad is a full-time responsibility.  I will be releasing a couple of simple iOS games later this year though, to scratch a more wacky, creative itch (read: Zombies / Ninjas / Dinosaurs).

I'll leave you with some pictures of the cooking events I've been organizing in Singapore, to introduce people to Cookpad.it!

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End of Two Eras

Today is my last day as Web Director of Glamour-Sales.

It's been a incredible journey these past 1.5 years and as a team we've done amazing work.  We started from scratch and now successfully compete head-on with international flash-sale sites like Gilt and Brands4Friends.  It has been a privilege working with such a creative and hard-working group of people.

Flash-sales is great fun.  One day you're selling high end jewelry, the next day you're selling luxury wellington boots.  For a creative person it's a playground - adapting your copywriting, designs, incentives etc to today's products.  On the technical side the nature of flash-sales presents its own set of challenges - for example building out an e-commerce infrastructure that can cope with sudden, massive spikes in transaction activity when a flash-sale opens.  As Web Director, my role was to oversee the design and the technical side of the business and it was tremendously fulfilling.  I would not have traded my time at Glamour Sales for anything else.

One of the most difficult things we all face in our careers is knowing when it's time to move on.  Nobody can tell you when this is, you just have to decide whether to follow your instinct or not.  For me, that time has come - I have every faith that my team will continue to do great work, and I will remain an Advisor to the company.  It's simply time to work on a new challenge.

As if one life-changing decision wasn't enough, I have also decided to leave Japan after living here for almost 9 years.

My feelings about leaving Japan mirror the above - I love Japan, I love living in Japan... and yet, my instinct says that it is time to move on.  9 years is a long time, there are other countries to experience, new adventures to be had.  I'm sad but excited at the same time.

End of April is my move-date.  Destination: Singapore.

Littlecosm - running on desktop, ipad and iphone

Here's a little demo showing you one of the secret missions I have with Littlecosm - to produce a game that runs on desktop, ipad and iphone... all running on the same codebase.  It's written in HTML5 / Javascript.  No Flash.

Now imagine a company that makes games like this, and we have half-a-dozen different titles.  That's where I'm going with all this.

The fun starts in Singapore in May.

Color

I won't comment on the $41 million round they just raised.

However, I do love a founder who can tell a good story about what his company does.  

Being able to distill the mission of the company down to a short, memorable anecdote that anyone can understand and demonstrates value without being overly hyperbolic is a dark, entrepreneurial voodoo art.  Here's the money quote:

So imagine you're at a family member's wedding. Bridesmaids are snapping pictures of the groom. A friend is shooting video of your kooky cousin singing along with the band on stage. Your sister is taking pictures on the dance floor. With Facebook, all these images wouldn't show up online for days, weeks, or months even. On Color, the images are available all in real-time, no hassle.

Sounds like it's worth something.