With February just beginning, the mobile world is gearing up for Mobile World Congress (MWC), which will be taking place in Barcelona, at the end of the month. It’ll certainly be interesting to see what new products and features will be announced at the show. From the ongoing trends (some of which Mike Amundsen recently discussed), I’d expect to see a number of announcements of IoT products.

The good old measure of progress, mobile subscriber penetration, doesn’t cut it anymore. Now, the real measure is how many other connected devices a subscriber uses – iPads, Smart TVs and even fridges (who wouldn’t want a Galaxy Kitchen or an iPad Mini?) This is just the start of a revolution in connectivity, which will make it easier than ever to consume information and equally easy to emit a lot of information, often through social networks.

But there is another aspect to this – not only will you be able to post your own information but there will be all kinds of devices that can “sense” information about you. I expect to see a lot of this at MWC – sensors and cameras scattered around the floor, mapping passers-by to Facebook profiles and other personal information. Obviously, the capturing and cross pollination of this information raises all sorts of privacy issues.

It will also have a number of significant ramifications for mobile developers. First, there will be a new wealth of information available in the form of Web service APIs, as most of the data will be stored in cloud. The sheer scale of this new information-rich world will require apps to leverage cloud processing capabilities in order to be truly effective. This will create opportunities for enterprises to rethink their mobile architectures.

Second, mobile developers will need to use standard protocols for authentication and authorization. OAuth and OpenID Connect are key standards for protecting resources and allowing app users to authorize apps to leverage their information. Will these standards address all the privacy issues mentioned above? Probably not but they will make it a good deal easier for app developers to comply with privacy laws and regulations.

Third, the most successful app developers will be those that are able to provide a seamless user experience (UX) across multiple devices. This is because the end user of the near future will naturally expect all apps to know about other sessions that user had with an app across all of his or her many smart devices. Devs will therefore want to migrate sessions across devices, to bolster the UX.

If you’re going to MWC, come and say hello to the Layer 7 team. We will be located in the App Planet area Hall: 8.1 Booth: A47. I hope to see you there!

To follow-up on my previous post about Layer 7’s hackathon activities, I wanted to provide an update on more events we’ve been involved with, as well as mentioning some of the exciting things we have planned for 2013.

Las Vegas Mobile App Hackathon (November 16-17)
The local developer community is thriving in Sin City, which may be a surprise to many. I was very impressed with the talent of the developers in Vegas, most of whom were writing native Objective C or Java for their iOS and Android apps. Also, the local PhoneGap user group manager was onsite, providing support for Adobe’s app development framework. The apps produced were quite polished and impressive. Several included API integrations while others came with plans for future Web integration of APIs, to add context and information.

Miami Mobile App Hackathon (December 14-15)
This hackathon brought an impressive group of sponsors together including AT&T, Microsoft Azure, Blackberry Dev, GitHub and – of course – Layer 7. With over 200 signups and some highly technical evangelists sent by the sponsors, I was excited to see what kinds of apps would be produced. The developers mashed together numerous Web services using native code or PhoneGap. It was great to see the local developer community come together, with numerous local start-up incubator leaders onsite scouting for new talent and investment opportunities.

For 2013, Layer 7 will once again be joining the AT&T Hackathon team for several events. Many organizations with APIs powered by Layer 7 will be promoting their APIs and providing prizes at these events. Stay tuned – we’ll be helping evangelize a lot of great APIs in 2013!

Find out more about upcoming Layer 7 Hackathons

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2013 is starting in Las Vegas next week and cloud computing is on the agenda. You can be sure that a technology has moved out of the hype cycle and into everyday use when it shows up at a show like CES, known more for the latest TVs and phones than computing infrastructure. People don’t really need to talk about cloud any more; it’s just there and we are using it.

Of course there will always be a place for a little more talking and I’ll be doing some of this myself as part of the CES panel Privacy & Security in the Cloud. This discussion will take place on Monday Jan 7, 11am-12pm, in LVCC, North Hall N259. The panel is chaired by my good friend Jeremy Geelan, founder of Cloud Computing Expo, who honed his considerable moderation skills at the BBC.

I’m planning on exploring the intersection between the cloud and our increasingly ubiquitous consumer devices. We will highlight the opportunities created by this technological convergence but we will also consider the implications this has for our personal privacy. I hope you can join us.

When a mobile app is dependent upon APIs, many new challenges are introduced to the developer. To provide the best possible user experience (UX), a mobile app should be snappy and responsive. Often though, in the reality of cell phone networks that are bottlenecked and over capacity, a dependence on a fast data connection can lead to a UX nightmare.

Tomorrow (that’s Friday November 9) at 10:30am, I’ll be discussing the challenges of mobile app UX at QCon in San Francisco. In a presentation called “HTML5 Cross-Platform Mobile Apps Integrating APIs”, I’ll be outlining significant challenges around API-driven mobile apps, as well as mistakes developers commonly make, and suggesting best practices for addressing them.

I hope you can make, if you’re at the show. Also, be sure to visit Layer 7 at booth #11.

Layer 7 recently partnered with the folks at AT&T, to be a frequent sponsor on their hackathon circuit. AT&T hackathons provide a launching pad for developers to come solve big problems, learn about APIs, get inspired, win prizes and possibly launch new products. Take a look at the Layer 7 site for information on upcoming hackathons and join us if you can! In the meantime, here’s an overview of some recent AT&T events we participated in.

Mobile App Hackathon, Denver, CO (August 17-18). Layer 7 brought payment APIs that gave developers tools for integrating payments into apps and we were onsite providing technical support for iOS, Android and HTML5. Layer 7 also provided Apple TVs as prizes for the team that achieved the best technical integration of our customer API. The winning app was Open Perks, designed to make redeeming digital coupons and loyalty rewards easier.

Social Good Mobile App Hackathon, New York, NY (September 25-26). Apps built over the course of this weekend aimed to solve major social issues – for example, by alerting people when blood donation banks need their certain blood type or by improving support systems for alcoholics. We were there to offer onsite technical assistance and help teams with user experience/user interface design as well as general prototyping best practices.

Hack Across the Pond Mobile App Hackathon, London, UK (October 5-7). This hackathon – produced in partnership with the MIT Sloan Business Club and the UK Trade & Investment Agency – aimed to bring together developers in Boston and London. Utilizing simulcast video streaming, developers worked together on projects at both sites. We were onsite in London, providing organizational and technical assistance.

New York City Mayor Bloomberg’s Truancy Task Force & NYC Digital Hackathon, New York, NY (Oct 12-13). Onsite at AT&T’s downtown NYC office, we were again honored to be included in a prestigious group of sponsors. We gave a presentation on How APIs are Changing the World and it was a pleasure to work with and provide technical support to members of New York’s thriving, innovative developer community.