The Short Names

This is the moment in which Motorola (NYSE: MOT) shows us whether they have what it takes to turn the company around.

At GigaOm’s Mobilize in San Francisco today, Motorola’s CEO of Mobile Devices Sanjay Jha took the stage in front of a packed and energized auditorium, to say its answer to its problems is “Moto Blur,” a social-networking platform that the company has developed to run on top of the Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Android operating system. The first phone will be the Motorola CLIQ, which will be sold exclusively by T-Mobile USA. Jha: “The Android operating system gives us the platform to mobilize the internet. The bottom line is that it’s a modern, well-architected platform written from the ground up.” (Release.)

T-Mobile’s Cole Brodman joined Jha to announce that they will sell the phone exclusively starting in the fourth quarter. No word on how much it will cost. “Our customers are used to seeing innovation from T-Mobile and getting the must-have devices.” He stressed the network will be prepared to handle the additional traffic the device uses, which might become a determining factor going forward as consumers use data and weigh down networks. “Our network is equipped to handle increase in traffic. We have spent $9 billion on the network in the last four years. We have a modern 3G network that will reach 200 million people in the U.S. and reach 250 cities. It is a great time to be introducing a product like this.”

More on how BLUR works after the jump…

The Moto Blur concept aggregates all of your social networks, and then distributes the information into various widgets that are available on the phone’s home screen. Messages get one bucket and status updates in another. The address book also draws from all the networks, providing options for how you contact someone—via SMS, Twitter, email, etc. The phone is linked to a portal online that allows people to track a phone when its lost or from there you can wipe it clean. A user online only has to log back in to a device with a username and password to pick up where they left off.

Pricing for the device was not announced and its unclear what kind of data plan it will require, or whether there’s additional costs involved for the online back-up (Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) charges for a similar service, called MobileMe.). Clearly, the starting price for smartphones as of recently is $200, so to even have a chance at being competitive, Motorola will have to beat that—and better yet, they should beat it.

After the initial announcement this morning, Jha explained in a chat with GigaOm’s Om Malik the idea behind BLUR in terms we understand today—Apple’s iPhone and RIM’s BlackBerry. He said the platform melds Apple’s idea of having access to tons of applications with BlackBerry’s niche of integrating the apps—like email—deeply into the phone. Together, they have the apps and the tight integration. “The iPhone has one, BlackBerry has the other, but we have combined them in a meaningful way for social networking.”

A similar Motorola phone called DEXT will also be distributed internationally with Orange in the UK, Telefonica (NYSE: TEF) in Spain and America Movil in Latin America. Motorola will not stop there. Jha said a second Android phone using Blur will be announced shortly and will be launched in time for the holidays.

Yahoo vet Brad Garlinghouse, the author of the infamous Peanut Butter Manifesto, is back in the portal business—and in a big way. Garlinghouse, who left Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) last year (part of that company’s brain drain), is joining AOL (NYSE: TWX) as president of Internet and Mobile Communications, spearheading the portal’s global efforts to expand the reach of AIM/ICQ, e-mail and SMS services. His role on CEO Tim Armstrong’s team doesn’t stop there: he’ll head AOL’s Silicon Valley operations from its Mountain View campus and also will be the West Coast lead for AOL’s VC arm, AOL Ventures. The latter fits in with his most gig as senior adviser at Silver Lake Partners.

Communications is one of AOL’s newly devised five strategic areas and, until now, also one of the most glaring gaps in the top exec ranks. Garlinghouse’s background makes him almost uniquely qualified for the job: nearly six years at Yahoo, starting as VP-communication products and leaving as SVP of Communications and & Front Doors. His responsibilities at Yahoo including Yahoo Mail and overseeing Flickr and Yahoo Groups. Before Yahoo, he was CEO of Dialpad.com, general partner at @Ventures.com and worked at @Home Network as well as SBC Communications.

—Moving from peanut butter to … In the Peanut Butter Manifesto, the four-page 2006 memo that wound up in the Wall Street Journal, Garlinghouse explained why PB isn’t a great way to describe a company: “I’ve heard our strategy described as spreading peanut butter across the myriad opportunities that continue to evolve in the online world. The result: a thin layer of investment spread across everything we do and thus we focus on nothing in particular. I hate peanut butter. We all should.” The blunt memo made Garlinghouse a folk hero of sorts, someone who was willing to say the emperor is naked. Now he gets the chance to put his own management ideas to work—within Armstrong’s construct, of course. Can he move away from the “jack of all trades, master of none” approach that too often afflicts portals?

Until now, most of Tim Armstrong’s hires since he joined AOL (NYSE: TWX) as CEO have been in advertising or the business side, including a number from his former employer Google. Newest hire Brad Garlinghouse is a switch in both cases: a product guy from portal competitor Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO). Garlinghouse was exploring companies big and small as possible landing points, working as a senior adviser at Silver Lake Partners, when Armstrong called with an unexpected opportunity just weeks ago. Tuesday, he’ll be introduced as AOL’s president of internet and mobile communications. He spoke with paidContent on the eve of the announcement. Some excerpts follow:

What’s your remit for AOL? When I came in to run Yahoo Mail a long time ago, it was #3 in the industry, their messenger products were #2 in the industry. Today, they’re both #1 in their segment. Obviously, that’s part of the remit—hey, how can we go revitalize and really create wow, great consumer experiences around AOL’s core communications properties. But also it’s broader than that: how do we do that in mobile products, how do we do that participating at a very senior level in product discussions? …

I believe very much in the viewpoint that great products come from great teams. AOL certainly has its challenges attracting and retaining talented people. One of the things that impressed me the most during my interview process and the diligence I did is Tim has done an amazing job getting throughout that organization excited and the morale trend line at AOL is actually really positive and that’s incredibly hard to achieve. People are incredibly excited at all levels … People believe in authentic leadership with clearly articulated ‘here’s where we’re going’ and Tim brings that.”

One of the things that helps is Tim hasn’t had to do a massive cutback. That’s fair but by the same token he has been transparent. … He has said to his team, ‘We have to make sure our cost structure is aligned with our business opportunity.’ And he has said, ‘We’re going to have to look at that.’ He has gone on the record on that topic. … One of the things I’m impressed with in the opportunity here is as this spins out from Time Warner, instead of being managed to numbers for Time Warner, which really was harvesting it for cash flow, all of the sudden it’s like, hey, listen, let’s make this thing hum. Let’s really revitalize it and rebuild a lot of the products and the consumer experiences. Some of those things will be AOL branded, some won’t.”

If Yahoo’s peanut butter, what’s AOL? “I’m going to work on that. I don’t know my answer to that yet.I’ve been there not even 10 minutes. Some of the challenges I articulated, which (new Yahoo CEO) Carol Bartz has been proactive in trying to address, I feel like I see already a kindred spirit in the leadership that Tim has brought to bear on AOL in his first 100 days.” 

MocoNews Contributor Jeremy Laws was formerly SVP of Universal Pictures Digital Platforms, where he headed up the film studio’s mobile initiatives. These days he is more likely found blogging at Cabana Mobile.

At a Mobile Entertainment Forum event earlier this week in Los Angeles, Sam Sarkar, a senior exec for Infinitum Nihil, Johnny Depp’s production company [photo left], took to the stage to provide some valuable perspective on the roller-coaster ride the mobile entertainment industry has been on over the past 10 years.

His thesis was that fits and starts are inherent in emerging businesses, and that in the development of every medium, the business model is what makes it viable, but the artistry is what comes to define it.

Sarkar suggested that television didn’t really begin to realize its artistic potential until the late 60s or early 70s, despite having public debuted in the late 1920s. He told an interesting story about how television’s inventor, Philo Farnsworth, was so frustrated by the vacuousness of the medium that he wouldn’t permit the device in his home. It wasn’t until the broadcast of the moon landing in 1969 that he was able to concede that it was worthwhile invention.

Even on the internet, which has been a consumer phenomenon for almost 15 years, we’ve only begun to see traces of its potential as an entertainment medium with stuff like Will Ferrell’s “The Landlord” for FunnyorDie.com and LonelyGirl15 on YouTube (which ended up being professionally produced). But these are one-offs and lots of companies have failed trying to recreate their success.

In mobile, the potential of the medium was first teased with the ringtone (a legit consumer phenomenon) and now again with the App Store…but these are still early stages of what Sarkar characterized as Alien (as in the movie) Evolution…I’m still trying to fully decipher this amusing analogy, but I think the gist is that it’s going to be a sometimes painful path, full of surprises, but ultimately the monster potential will be revealed. Sarkar reminded the group that the record companies didn’t invent Rock N’Roll…artists did, and similarly, he believes, artists will define the mobile medium.

Sarkar demonstrated several experimental iPhone Apps from a Singapore-based company called Omnitoons that he thought were interesting and hinted at the creative potential of mobile media. They included a photo essay about refugees in the Swat Valley featuring the work of photo journalist Kevin Coombs, a mobile manga version of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and some text-based Asian ghost stories augmented with photos and sound.

In conclusion he asked the audience to think about how to commercially make old stories new again in the medium and to imagine the new ideas and stories that will come to it and from it.

Again, great perspective. I think many of us, who consider ourselves mobile entertainment “veterans”, are getting battle weary waiting for this to become a real business or become a truly entertaining medium. But 10 years really isn’t that much time in the development cycle of a medium…it just feels that way in our time compressed, multitasking, quarterly reporting, 140 character thought-byte world. We need to take comfort/pride/heart in the knowledge that we are, in fits and starts, building the steel structure that will support a giant (and hopefully creatively interesting) business that will be important for generations.

—UK mobile spectrum talks: British business secretary Lord Mandelson has declared himself “encouraged” by a meeting with the country’s mobile industry on how the networks carve up mobile broadband frequencies and expects a resolution of “remaining issues” in the next few days. Independent spectrum broker Kip Meek published a series of recommendations in May and more proposals from him are due “shortly”.

—UK measurement Mobile industry ody GSMA has signed up ComScore (NSDQ: SCOR) to be its official mobile internet metrics measurement partner in the UK. The GSMA and the UK’s five mobile operators earlier this year announced a new mobile browsing measurement scheme, Mobile Media Metrics, which ComScore will now operate. The data will be verified by ABC Electronic and the first results are out in Q4 this year. Release.

—TomTom: The Dutch satnav maker is bringing its real-time HD Traffic services to device users in Italy, in an exclusive partnership with Vodfone Italy. The service, which provides traffic reports, fuel price data and local Google (NSDQ: GOOG) search, goes live in the middle of 2010. HD Traffic is currently available in the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland and France. Beligum and Portugal are being added later this year. Release.