Hi there, been quite some time since I wrote something down here. But I’m back with some great news! Starting from February 9th I’ll be at Online Graphics in Kortrijk, working together with Miquël Vermeulen on our SBP-project called MobileJuice. I can hear you thinking right now, what the hell are those 2 going to do there. Well, let me explain.

What is SBP?

SBP (Small Business Project) is a module we have at school. Its purpose is to teach us some marketing knowledge. You have to develop your own business idea and prepare everything like you would if you would really start that company (businessplan with a financial plan, marketing plan, commercial plan,…). But only a few of these projects actually go ‘live’. Together with Miquël I chose to go live because we really believe in our idea (at first our group counted five members, but only the two of us wanted to go through with it). Last Thursday we had to give a final presentation in front of an audience consisting of experienced businesspeople whom we had to convice that we got what it takes to survive in the cruel businessworld :). Armed with a shiny keynote-presentation and a lot of guts we tried to do just that! And I think we did pretty good :).

What the Deuce is MobileJuice?

We chose MobileJuice as our company name and “Squeezing Your Phone” as the main tagline. So we want to squeeze everything out your phone, basically meaning that we want to unlock the full potential of your smartphone by bringing you cool mobile applications and games. We believe that 2009 is a very important year for mobile. The iPhone has been a real catalysator to this whole thing. People want information everywhere they are and they want to view it in a way that best suits the device they are using. So we really believe that now is the good moment to jump on this fairly new market.

We are offering 2 types of products. On the one hand we want to deliver mobile applications to consumers (B2C: Business To Consumer) through the AppStore (iPhone), Handango (Windows Mobile) and Pocketgear.com (Windows Mobile). On the other hand we want to deliver mobile websites to companies (B2B: Business To Business). A mobile site is totally different from a desktop website. The screen of a mobile phone doesn’t allow to have a lot of information on it. So we need to provide the user with good information shown in an efficient way. Next to that we also offer mobile applications to companies. Some companies like to (for example) check their stock at any given moment. Wouldn’t it be supereasy to give the appropriate employees a smartphone with our application installed on it so they can check out the current stock of all the items without having to run to a computer somewhere.

So currently we are only developing applications for iPhone and Windows Mobile, we’ll be expanding to Symbian OS and Blackberry soon. That way we reach the biggest part of the smartphone market!

We already got 1 application completely sorted out, it just needs to be developed So hang on, more news about our first Business to Consumer application coming soon. (Together with a neat commercial I made)

So you go.. err.. ‘live’?

Yes we do, thanks for asking. This means that we are going to do an internship in our own company (MobileJuice). Other non-live-students are doing an internship in an existing company. So we don’t get the real experience of working together with other developers in a company. But thanks to Online Graphics we get some of that experience. These kind people gave us a room in their company because they also believe in our idea and want to help young entrepreneurs like us. We also get support from Netlog, who are going to help us develop suiting Netlog applications to our mobile applications. So thanks Netlog (especially Folke Lemaitre) and Lab9/Online Graphics!! These companies believe in us and it’s so good to know that real experienced people are behind us. Also thanks to Claudia Eeckhout, the SBP-representative for our group. She really pushed us and motivated us to believe that what we had was good. Claudia is a really good motivator. So thanks to her because I maybe wouldn’t have gone through with it without her.

So that’s it, I hope to bring you all more news about MobileJuice soon. I’m super excited about my first steps in the business world. 

Greets

Yesterday I went to the mobile seminar hosted by The Reference at NH Hotels in Ghent with 2 colleagues. We arrived just on time and I was immediately impressed by the beautiful venue. It looked very nice and was well organized.

We started a little bit to late but I didn’t bother. We got welcomed by someone from The Reference who passed on the mic to another employee of theirs. He introduced us to the new mobile landscape and told us that he believed it wouldn’t be like this right now without the iPhone. I agree with him because the iPhone was the first ever device who brought the internet into your pocket. The figures that I saw from Google last week clearly proved that. This person also had some interesting figures, for example 38% of the phones in Belgium are 3G ready but only 9% is using 3G at the moment. While in other EU countries like Germany, France and Italy approx. 30% use 3G. It’s obvious that the cause for this significant lower number in Belgium is because of the high cost data rate plans in Belgium. He also wanted us to know that 2009 will be the year of mobile, it’s a booming business. I’m motivated to hop on the mobile “train” and contribute. Again we were made clear that a desktop site and a mobile site are NOT THE SAME. You should adapt to the device the visitor uses to browse to your site. The Reference reviewed 40 websites from the biggest companies in Belgium and they concluded that only 14% is “mobile ready”. They had this tool which they used for in-house testing of these sites. It was interesting but quite repetitive because I’ve been to Web Goes Mobile last week.

Next up was a French mobile specialist from Lille, his session was in French and he spoke very quickly. I was suprised that I understood 80-90% of what he said. He wanted to make clear that there is a new trend arising. Companies want a mobile site and sometimes a mobile application, to attract users to the brand, to give them a feeling of participation, they  want the user to feel part of the brand.

He showed us Google Mobile Ads and Admob, a way to make your applications cost-free but win money from advertisement. Another thing I didn’t know about was that the W3C also has a standard for mobile called W3C MobileOK.

After a short break they showed us 3 cases: De Redactie + Sporza, Telenet and Truvo. The Reference had been developing these mobile sites for these companies and I have to say that I really like the mobile site from De Redactie. I would like the possibility to view videos from Sporza on my smartphone aswell. But they said it was in the making. De Redactie + Sporza sites were testcases and have been approved by VRT now, the results are good. This, again, proves that 2009 will be the year of mobile! The sites made for Telenet (Zita) and Truvo were impressive aswell. These sites are automatically adjusted to the type of device. If u have a low-end smartphone then you get the low-end version, without images.

Last but not least was Siruna. A spin-off from a Belgian university. They made this impressive online tool called Composer (visit it at composer.siruna.com) to transform a desktop site into a mobile site. I’ll try out composer myself and blog about it later, it looked very promising though. This company helped The Reference to develop the sites for VRT, Telenet and Truvo. They also developed sites like imdb.siruna.com, delijn.siruna.com and www.filebeeld.be (where you can see images from cameras on the Belgian roads to see if a certain traffic jam is big or rather small).

Afterwards we all got down to the bar and were treated with wine and some snacks. It was another fun seminar, it’s cool to go to these events, meet people and get connected! Thanks to my buddy, Robbe Vandecasteele, for the picture!

Greetings

Let me start off with telling you who I am, I’m a 20 year old Multimedia-student @ Hogeschool West-Vlaanderen (PIH) in Kortrijk.  I’m passionated with designing (in Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator) and coding (I like to work with Java and ActionScript).

Other hobbies of me are watching television series (Fringe, Heroes, Lost, Dexter, Family Guy,..) and listening to a wide variety of music, from groups like Pink Floyd and The Doors to nifty electronic music by, for example, Boys Noize. I enjoy going out with friends, being in contact with other people and sharing experiences.

The reason I created this blog is to share with you what I’m all about and so on, I want to evolve to become a better developer and designer and I think it would be cool to see this evolution on my blog. I just got back from what you may call a teambuilding weekend with all the guys and a few girls from the Multimedia-course. It was very inspiring to me and it made me get really excited and determined to grow and try to reach a higher level. I hope I can eventually get there.

So, welcome here and check back soon.