Companies and organizations that make such huge investments in their brand suddenly realize their website, often times their core offering, looks bad or does not work on mobile devices. In a world where budgets are almost always tight, they look to do something out of nothing to address this problem. They want to be available to the growing smartphones and tablet-using masses. They need something. 

Something like a mobile version of the website that drive wads of new business in. That something will work like the existing web application with minimal changes to the existing infrastructure. This something should be cheap enough to look good on the financials and make management happy by launching in as short a time as possible. That something will hopefully not rankle the feathers of the folks in IT. Meetings will thus ensue to initiate the search for options on how to bring that mobile something to life. 

The first direction, possibly the priciest, is to rewrite the user interface of the existing site or application using responsive design principles (HTML5 is the term frequently used). That way no matter what browsers and devices are used to access the site, the site will scale its user experience and look good. Aside from its cost, this approach is also likely to be time consuming and risky. The company will be messing with existing, stable, working technology that may be mission critical. The required testing and verification processes will therefore take time, cost money and, well, we don’t want that. 

The second direction would be to build or commission a new mobile web application on top, or alongside, the existing core application. Instead of seeing the regular, or desktop, website, mobile device users will be shown this dedicated version. This approach will likely take a fair amount of time, and still cost a substantial amount of money. The site would look great and work quite well. Again, taking a while and still requiring a noticeable financial investment are not what we are looking to do. 

The third option is UsableNet, NetBiscuits and services like them. UsableNet is a great fit for brands who want something mobile relatively quickly and without overspending. Instead of developing a new website, UsableNet acts as the go-between on your application’s behalf. Suppose you are Amtrak and want to give mobile users the ability to reserve tickets to your trains. You start out by letting UsableNet take on all mobile traffic to your website. UsableNet then builds the webpage and also connects, or integrates, with your existing application to make the functionality happen. If you’re Amtrak, that means your reservation system. And after some integration work, voila, you have a mobile something. 

Now don’t get me wrong. Doing all that is definitely impressive. UsableNet is also nothing else but usable on virtually all connected devices, even those 5 year-old flip phones with a browser. Pretty nifty. And IT is happy because they do not need to deal as much with deviating from the status quo or take on a lot of risk. The crown jewel of an app the company depends on remains safely untouched.

There is just one problem with UsableNet. It looks really, dramatically, plain. Some would even venture off to say it looks quite awful. The desire to support as many mobile devices as humanly possible leads to compromises in looks, sacrifices in user experience. This would be especially jarring to smartphone users who are more accustomed to polished experiences.

It's just a room for a night.

And when things do not look too good, when the application may be a bit slow or even clunky to use at times, brand suffers. The brand’s constituency – users, clients, consumers, partners – all have expectations that arise from the brand. The company invested in making those constituents believe in brand values. Does such a UsableNet experience really deliver on those values? Is having a mobile site that is slow and sometimes aggravating, one that is just unpleasant to use, better than not having one at all?

I would contend that no.

While some constituents may bear with the clunky UsableNet experiences, others will just go elsewhere. Worse, they may even get angry in the process. Instead of booking with a mobile device on Amtrak’s UsableNet version, they will go to a mobile-friendly booking site to reserve. This will cost Amtrak commission, a cost borne out of the need to have a something out there. To others, especially in areas like luxury where brand building investments are considerable, a decision to go with UsableNet can be even more harmful. 

Tablets make matters even worse for those who make such a compromise. Tablet users often prefer to see the desktop site. Our ‘something mobile’ works on flip phones but all too often ends up making tablet users give up and feel the brand is just cheap. Those users will head on over to the competition or to an upstart capitalizing on the opportunity to do mobile right. Nothing is clearly becoming a better choice. 

Suppose you skip UsableNet. What about the flip-phone wielding masses? Doing nothing may leave them out in the cold. That may be true but is increasingly no longer the case for a growing number of brands. The mobile market is experiencing a rapid bifurcation between Internet-enabled and voice-oriented devices. Smartphones are exploding in popularity while a plain mobile phones remain popular. 

Devices known as ‘texting phones’, as well as RIM’s Blackberrys, are ceding market share. They are being replaced by lower-end Internet-enabled alternatives. Internet-enabled Android smartphones offered by prepaid carriers like Cricket and MetroPCS lead this trend along with the older, more affordable iPhone variants. This new low-end has capable browsers that can render most mainstream, or desktop, experiences. 

Consumers with voice-oriented devices – the flip and candy bar phones – will not normally look to access the web on their devices. There will be less of an expectation to have web browsing capability on the devices’ small screens. Users will also look to minimize costs and as such, not have a data plan associated with their device. The bottom line is that the number of users who access the web on such devices will be minimal. The conclusion: UsableNet’s rich device compatibility list no longer matters. You will not leave anyone ‘outside’ by not leveraging UsableNet. 

Usablenet is quite aware of this situation. In the last year the company made strides to make its mobile web solutions more brand aware. American Airlines, Delta and US Airways – all clients – have now substantially different websites on the Usablenet platform. Other brands, though, appear to be more at ease with one size fits all. Hotel chains Hilton, Starwood and Fairmont are just the same site experience. It’s a room you rent, right? How about clothing brands like PacSun and Garnett Hill? The same.

So what direction should one adopt in looking to get something mobile out there? Accept the reality that it will most often cost a bit more in time and money to accomplish.   You can finally take a sigh of relief and stop caring about devices with limited capability and aim high. Smartphone users are worth the investment. If you build it and they find it (i.e. invest in traffic generation), they will come and they will spend. It’s a fact. And if you cannot do it right now, maybe do nothing. Taking the middle ground, the compromise may just end up hurting your brand more than helping it.

Yup, you see it right: the desktop store comes through inside of the iPhone app.

Lesson:
If you embed a web page, do make sure it’s mobile friendly.

Hope it’s an error.

Does anyone use the iPad on the go like this? Is the iPad truly passing onto the realm of Moleskine notebooks where you carry the thing around in your hand (it’s just too heavy for me)? If I was creating a commercial for Samsung’s new Galaxy Note – which actually comes with its own über stylus – I’d look at this.
Otherwise, very neat app indeed…

Thanks to my colleague Dolphy Fernandes we managed to discover the culprit. The iOS Simulator used by XCode loads file in a case insensitive manner. To it, a file called A55.jpg and a55.jpg are the same. iOS on devices, on the other hand, is case sensitive. Hence, A55.jpg will not load if the file name you are attempting to load is 'a55.jpg'.

Hope it helps…

My Parallels Windows 7 VM was running using shared networking. I needed to have it be accessible outside the host so I switched it to Bridged Networking using the host's Ethernet device. At that point something weird happened: the VM would connect to the network, get an IP address assigned, but it would report failing to get to the network gateway. It failed to see the outside Internet. Trying all sorts of Windows networking tricks did nothing to alleviate the situation, with Windows reporting that 'unauthenticated domain'. 

The solution: removing Virtual Box using the script that comes on its dmg installer, restarting the Mac host and starting Parallels again. Suddenly I was able to connect to the network just fine. 

Hope it helps others.

OCI8 relies on OS X having several client libraries and tools from Oracle installed on OS X. For most intents and purposes download the 64-bit version of the following files under the title "Version 10.2.0.4 (64-bit)": 

• instantclient-basic-10.2.0.4.0-macosx-x64.zip
• instantclient-sqlplus-10.2.0.4.0-macosx-x64.zip
• instantclient-sdk-10.2.0.4.0-macosx-x64.zip

Registration is required for all downloads.

Once downloaded, unzip all three files, which will look like this on your file system

Now, create a separate directory (which I called instantclient_10_2) and copy the contents of all the files included in these subfolders into it, which will look something like this:

The next step is to copy the necessary files into your OS X dynamic library and bin directories (as described here). Open a terminal window and go to the directory above the one you created containing all the files you unzipped.

sudo cp instantclient_10_2/sdk/include/*.h /usr/include

sudo cp instantclient_10_2/sqlplus /usr/bin

sudo cp instantclient_10_2/*.dylib /usr/lib

sudo cp instantclient_10_2/*.dylib.* /usr/lib

Now move to the /usr/lib directory and create the following link:

sudo ln -s libclntsh.dylib.10.1 libclntsh.dylib

To test, open another terminal window or tab, and try to run Oracle's SQL*Plus tool using
/usr/bin/sqlplus. If it worked, you are almost there. Exit SQL*Plus by entering quit or simply Ctrl+C.

You now have the Oracle tools installed. Now, to install OCI8, which we will install from the PECL repository. In a terminal window enter

sudo pecl install oci8

[If you see an error here, you may not have Pecl or Pear (PHP package managers) installed. In that case look at these installation instructions]

OCI8 will download and will eventually give you the prompt:

Please provide the path to the ORACLE_HOME directory. Use 'instantclient,/path/to/instant/client/lib' if you're compiling with Oracle Instant Client [autodetect] :

In response enter:

instantclient,/usr/lib

We are doing this because Oracle is not installed on our local machine. If it were we would respond with the path to Oracle's installation directory. Once entered, PECL will compile and build OCI8. Once done, it will ask you to enable the extension in your PHP configuration. To do that, open php.ini and add the line (normally among the list of extensions):

extension=oci8.so

Once done, you can start Apache again using

sudo apachectl start

To test the installation, enable the HR account in your Oracle installation and run a PHP file such as (make sure you replace the password and database server IP or name in the code):

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< ?php
$c = oci_connect(&#39;hr&#39;, <password here="">, &#39;<server ip="" name="" or="">/XE&#39;);
$s = oci_parse($c, &#39;select city, postal_code from locations&#39;);
oci_execute($s);
print &#39;&#39;;
while ($row = oci_fetch_array($s, OCI_NUM+OCI_RETURN_NULLS)) {
print &#39;&#39;;
foreach ($row as $item)
print &#39;&#39;;
print &#39;&#39;;
}
print &#39;
<table border="&quot;1&quot;">
	<tbody>
		<tr>
			<td>&#39;.htmlentities($item).&#39;</td>
		</tr>
	</tbody>
</table>
&#39;;
oci_free_statement($s);
?&gt;
</server></password>

Superfood Kale In The Limelight : The Salt : NPR.

Acer is sticking by netbooks.
Samsung is not.
So who’s making a mistake? Did tablets kill the netbook?

Tablets are certainly on fire right now. Not tablets per se, the iPad that is.
Kids want tablets and parents agree, as they are spreading light wildfire in the enterprise. It seems like Steve Jobs managed to invent an entirely new computing and entertainment category based on early failures of others. Again.

While you can attach keyboards and stands to tablets, seed entire accessory ecosystems, tablets remain content consumption tools. The can attach themselves to other devices as controllers and rich user interfaces – a future I am truly stoked about. But writing serious documents, creating stuff – they are not ideal. To create, a keyboard, a real keyboard, seems to still be a necessity.

Netbooks are not hot, have a normally cramped keyboard and are not sexy. They are cheap, have lots of storage space and can do 80% of a desktop’s work (outside of gaming). Yes, the OS is not glamorous and the user experience is just bearable. Yet the killer feature for a Netbook is price. Utility over cost is the netbook’s forte. You need something small and cheap to write or work on extensively – it’s Netbook time. And while tablet prices are falling, the utility gap is still there. Not fun device, work device.

Samsung is doing elevating itself from packs of generic device makers running common operating systems. Their Android phones attempt to be cooler than others with the same OS. Now, they look to escape the cost-focused realm of Netbooks. Consumers don’t care about extra bells and whistles or superior design. Nokia proved it. There is no room for frills. Samsung does not belong here anymore.

Acer on the other hand is about cost management. About no frills. Like Asus and other fellow Taiwanese equipment makers they control more of the manufacturing stack and know where to squeeze pennies. They cater to areas where cost is still the primary concern and know how to live off of it. And for my wife, who wanted something to Facebook and do web-based everything on – an iPad would not have been the right thing. It would have been cool, by why waste the money? We’ll see how that goes once we get the netbook we ordered on Black Friday.

Got this Bluetooh keyboard this evening for $20. So far, it’s working pretty well. My first impressions:

1. Connecting to the iPad was quick and easy.
3. Select, copy and paste work pretty much like they would on the Mac. Arrows are used in text field as you would on the desktop/laptop
4. You still use your finger to tap around.

Hope it keeps working…

Cue – A gesture icon system — Some Random Dude.