Sony Ericsson Labs was recently opened to the public. Labs is a somewhat new direction for Sony Ericsson, showing stuff that’s still in beta and may in some cases never appear anywhere else. To tell us a bit more about Sony Ericsson Labs I asked one of the main drivers behind the project, Thomas Bailey, a few questions.
Developer World: How did Labs come about? Tell us a little bit of the history behind the site.
Thomas Bailey: We wanted to drive technology awareness and interest from a different direction by sharing the various prototypes we create. In addition we wanted to join the conversation with anyone interested in helping shape future applications and services.
The project was about 8~months since we are quite distributed but the actual site design and implementation was done in less than 2 months. We made use of Drupal with an emphasis on configuration rather than writing of new modules with an initial showing at JavaOne 2009. (DW note: the site was built by NodeOne, you can read their summary of building Labs here.)
Sony Ericsson Labs is somewhat different in that we launch it in a “as is” state and will work on it in the open. My hope is that Sony Ericsson Labs can be one way to be more personal in how we communicate – blogs, Twitter, real names and faces etc.
DW: Where do you see it going? What’s the future of Labs?
TB: If I quote Christoper David, Head of Developer and Partner Engagement, during our recent JavaOne 2009 keynote:
“We are putting the platform out there for you guys to create really innovative applications”.
I would like Sony Ericsson Labs to become a forum for third-party developers to showcase this innovation built upon Sony Ericsson platforms and supported technologies.
DW: Any application or type of application you would like to see on Labs?
TB: I think vertical applications that do simple things really well are going to be well received – an example might an application that uses your location to give you a weather forecast where you are for the week. The emphasis needs to be on the user experience and making the most of the supporting technology, such as Project Capuchin or JavaFx together with accelerometers and location-based services.
So, while Labs is starting out as a display of our internal beta projects, in the future we will open up for external developers as well. That’s a very good reason for you to put the Labs RSS feed in your favorite reader and follow the http://www.twitter.com/selabs Twitter-account, don’t you think?