Open Gardens

About Open Gardens

Open Gardens is published by futuretext

Rated 8/10 on Blogged.com

About The Open Gardens Blog

I (Ajit) founded the blog on May 26, 2005 based on my vision and philosophy of OpenGardens i.e. the philosophical opposite of 'walled gardens' especially as applicable to the mobile data industry.

Today, the OpenGardens blog is one of the few blogs that span both the Web and the Mobile domains.

The blog covers wireless/mobile applications, open networks and mobile web 2.0. My vision behind the OpenGardens blog has been :

The blog is about the Mobile data industry and Digital convergence('Mobile web 2.0')
Analysis is more important than story/controversy. I don't believe that bloggers are true journalists. The blog is not about the latest 'story' but it's more about independent analysis/viewpoint
The OpenGardens blog is broadly about opening up the networks, growing digital usage and digital businesses i.e. we don't advocate closed networks, broadcast media etc
It is about disruptive digital technologies

Founder & Chief Blogger Ajit Jaokar

Ajit Jaokar is the founder of the London based publishing and research company futuretext (www.futuretext.com) focussed on emerging Web and Mobile technologies -including Web 2.0 and Mobile Web 2.0.

His thinking is widely followed in the industry and his blog, the OpenGardensBlog (www.opengardensblog.futuretext.com), which was recently rated a top 20 wireless blog worldwide

In 2009-2010, Ajit was nominated as part of the Global Agenda Council on the Future of the Internet by the world economic forum. He hopes to use this opportunity to further extend the pragmatic viewpoint of the evolution of Telecoms networks in an open ecosystem.

(Note: The Network of Global Agenda Councils plays a significant role in shaping the global agenda by monitoring global issues and elaborating recommendations to address them. Each Council, comprised of 15-20 Members, serves as an advisory board to the Forum and other interested parties, such as governments and international organizations. The Global Agenda Councils also act as the intellectual drivers of the World Economic Forum's Global Redesign Initiative, an unprecedented international, multistakeholder and multimedia dialogue that aims to develop a 21st-century vision of global cooperation. Members of the G20, the UN and other International Organizations have pledged their support for this initiative. )

Ajit is best known for his books Mobile Web 2.0, Social Media Marketing. Two new books ('Open Mobile' and 'Implementing Mobile Web 2.0') are being released in 2009.

His consulting activities include working with companies to define value propositions across the device, network, Web and Social networking stack spanning both technology and strategy. He has worked with a range of commercial and government organizations globally including The European Union, Telecoms Operators, Device manufacturers, social networking companies and security companies in various strategic and visionary roles

His recent talks and forthcoming talks include: CEBIT 2009;MobileWorld Congress(2007, 2008, 2009); Keynote at O Reilly Web20 expo (April 2007);Keynote at Java One; European Parliament – Brussels – (Electronic Internet Foundation); Stanford University's Digital visions program;MIT Sloan;Fraunhofer FOKUS ; University of St. Gallen (Switzerland); Mobile Web Strategies (partner event of CTIA in San Francisco)

Media appearances include BBC – Newsnight – 3phone launch; CNN money; BBC digital planet

Ajit chairs Oxford University's Next generation mobile applications panel and conducts a course on Web 2.0, Social networking, Mobile Web 2.0 and LTE services at Oxford University.

Ajit lives in London, UK, but has three nationalities (British, Indian and New Zealander) and is proud of all three. He is currently doing a PhD on Privacy and Reputation systems at UCL in London. Ajit is a fan of animation especially Tom and Jerry, Tintin and Asterix and likes the music of ZZ Top and other rock bands

You can contact me at ajit.jaokar at futuretext.com

You can follow me on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/AjitJaokar

See a video of my talk at CEBIT in Hannover
(intro in german - presenttion in english)

► MORE

March 20, 2007

My talk at Ajaxworld: A brief summary of main ideas covered..

Yesterday, I spoke at Ajaxworld in New York on Deploying Web-Based Applications to Mobile Devices Using AJAX Techniques.

This is my third Ajax world(after New York and Santa Clara last year) and I am pleasantly surprised as to how many people turned up this year for my talk!

Ajax on Mobile devices is a subsidiary topic from the main conference (i.e. Rich Internet Applications on the Web) – and hence to see so many people attending what was in effect, the last session for the day, is great. In fact the room was full – and there were some people outside the Hudson Suite – where I spoke.

I can think of three reasons for this uptake:

a) RIA (Rich Internet Applications) is becoming mainstream – be they Ajax or Flex. For instance, for the first time, Oracle was an attendee and also a sponsor

b) Mobile Ajax is unexpectedly in the news thanks to iPhone and Mobile Widgets(The Mobile Widgets I predicted more than a year ago, iPhone was unexpected to all and will be significant for Mobile Ajax as I spoke yesterday – especially if Dashboard widgets make it to the iPhone)

c) And finally, there is widespread support from almost all browser vendors. Here in Europe, we focus on Nokia and Opera – but there were a number of questions about Windows Mobile – something I need to clearly brush up on a bit more!

Here is a slide summarising the top five things to take away from the talk

Some notes

a) By three musketeers, I mean the trio of technologies : Mobile Ajax, Mobile Widgets and WICD

b) The quickest benefits for Mobile Ajax are based on accessing the Web / enterprise data(because these applications don’t need access to device APIs). The best example of this type of service is Soonr

c) Mobile Ajax is more than a pretty face! See an article which I wrote a while ago elaborating this i.e. look beyond the UI to the broader architecture

d) Long tail applications and Widgets!! .. Mobile Ajax is the foundation of Mobile Widgets and Widgets span the Web and the Mobile Web(thereby enabling Long Tail applications)

Thanks to team at sys-con . Someone at sys-con said I am almost part of the family and they always help me out since I am one of the few regular European speakers. Thanks to Jeremy, Faut, Dion, Laurie and Megan for all your help.