Apples + Oranges
by Imran Ali
France Telecom’s citrus-y mobile operator, Orange has just opened registration for a trio of mashup events due to take place in various European cities this coming Winter; this ‘roadshow’ comes hot on the heels of Orange’s San Francisco R&D labs successful mashup event earlier this year.
I’d like to think the timing of the registration is a canny attempt for Orange to capitalise on its flailing negotiations to carry iPhone in France - but as a former Orange employee, I know for sure that they’re not that smart…
However coincidental or accidental, Orange has cautiously been embracing the developer community and Web 2.0 culture for a number of years - in sharp contrast to the joint Apple+AT&T bitchslaps recently delivered to iPhone users.
Orange’s Pikeo and Bubbletop services, though hilarious imposters of Flickr and Netvibes, were designed from inception as vehicles to engage the developer community with Orange APIs. Though Orange’s execution has often been unimpressive - their sincerity in seeking to navigate unfamiliar territories of open development is laudible, relative to other mobile operators, though sadly unremarkable in a wider sense.
So, if you feel mobile operators are needlessly closed platforms, events such as these are your opportunity to impress upon them the value of participation…register for Orange’s London, Paris and Madrid Mashup events at the Orange Partner site…
{ Disclosure: I used to work for Orange and I am quite literally allergic to Apples! }
UPDATE: Oops…looks like BT’s collaboration with Coghead might actually be more ambitious than Orange’s mashups. BT plan to equip the Coghead authoring environment with access to core APIs such as call control, location lookups and conferencing. Wow…scriptable telephony?
