MobileGuru.nl

Which of these 3 awesome tablet devices will you buy this autumn?

Peter Evers — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 14:28:34 +0000

After the release of the iPad everyone knows what a ‘tablet’ is. And every other tech company is working on its own tablet these days. So right now you might think: Hey, am I going to buy an iPad or not? But during this autumn that question is going to be a lot more complex. Let me show you three devices which are due to be released this autumn and will probably be quite a bit better than the iPad.

Let’s start with the Kno, it has two screens:

Samsung’s Galaxy Tab is one of the first tablets to run on Android:

Qualcomm’s Mirasol is more of an e-reader with a color screen but will be great for browsing too:

Impressed? Confused? It’s probably going to be even worse when I tell you Blackberry is working on it’s BlackPad and Motorola is working on the Stingray tablet.

Tutorial: How to use App Inventor to build and publish apps

Peter Evers — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 12:02:59 +0000

About a month ago, Google announced App Inventor, a great service to build Android apps without any coding skills. I was all over it from the start and very happy when I received my beta invite about two weeks ago. Together with Mark Visbeek, a proper designer, I decided to take a leap of faith and build an app for Overdose.am in one night. And one long night it was, and then another one. But I’m quite pleased with the result. Let me tell you how we did it.

Focus on design

To start off, we had a good long look at all the functionalities App Inventor has to offer. One thing we noticed from the start is that it’s merely impossible to do anything with dynamic content in the current version of App Inventor. There is a developer who created an RSS script, but although it’s a nice accomplishment, if you can’t code it won’t look good. We were confident that we could still create a pretty useful app without the website content, a link to the website would be good enough for the first version. After all, a mobile app shouldn’t be a small version of a website, but an opportunity to offer your users additional features that use all the stuff that makes a mobile phone different from a pc. Besides, we had something many many developers don’t have. A designer. So we decided to focus completely on a great design, better than many other apps to be found on the Android Market or App Store.

Ignore App Inventor’s limitations, use what’s available

App Inventor doesn’t offer any RSS input, doesn’t really allow you to embed media content and gives you only one screen for your app. So essentially it is still very limited. However, it does allow you to use the accelerometer, location sensor and orientation sensor, which is pretty neat. And there’s a very easy way to create lists too. There’s even a barcode scanner in it! All in a easy-to-use drag and drop interface. We used these features for a Shake to Share functionality that lets the user share the Overdose app on Facebook by shaking the phone, a list with a featured song, playlist and artist that connects to the Android Spotify app and a list with the best spots in Amsterdam that connects with the Google Maps application.

Publishing the app

Although you can download your app’s .apk file from App Inventor, it doesn’t allow you to set an icon for your app or publish your app in the Android Market. We’ve found a workaround for both these problems.

If you download the .apk file from App Inventor and change the .apk extension to .zip, you can unzip the app file. In the app folder, you must delete the METAinf folder and change the ya.png icon with your own. Make sure the icon file name stays ya.png though.
Now you need to sign the app again, to create an .apk file again. We found a befriended Android developer who was kind enough to help us with this.
So we had an .apk file again, which we tried to upload to the Android Market. That still didn’t work, the Android Market publishing engine recognizes the App Inventor code and gives an error. However, we knew that we had another chance with GetJar, the app store that distributes apps for every handset.
GetJar accepted our app and now you can download it right here. You can also just scan the QR code below. Have fun!

Google Voice launches its very own phone booth

Peter Evers — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 09:32:32 +0000

Remember how every new medium needs to refer to an old medium before people finally understand its value? People finally understood the value of TV when they were showed a classic play on a tv screen. The first thing on the radio was people reading books out loud. And to get people used to making free phone calls (like we all did when we were young and helpless in the pre-mobile era) Google introduces their brand new phone booth. The phone booth promotes Google’s free phone call service Google Voice and will pop up at universities and airports across the US somewhere before the end of this year. The phone booths allow visitors to make free calls, just like the collect calls we made to tell our parents we were in trouble (or on holiday ;) ). Obviously if everyone would have an Android phone with Google Voice installed on it, these phone booths would be completely redundant.

Guru Gear helps you to find the good stuff

Peter Evers — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 13:35:50 +0000

So today, just one day before my holiday, I was looking for all the right books to read. It was quite a hard job to pick the right ones. There’s so many titles that people I work with have been telling me about and there’s so many great books I read about on blogs and websites about the digital industry. It wasn’t easy to pick the right ones, but I managed to make a good selection. And then I thought about what I just did. I had essentially been curating an enormous selection of books. With all my knowledge and experience in the mobile atmosphere, I knew exactly what I needed to read.

And because I made the selection, I can now tell others. So that’s exactly what I did. I added a “Guru Gear” section to my website. In this section you can find all the products I’m writing about and all the books that have inspired me to write those articles. Keep an eye on the selection, because I will change it every once in a while. Chances are you might find something useful in there. And by buying it through Guru Gear, you’ll make a donation to this site too, at the exact same price as anywhere else. How’s that for a win-win situation?

Amazon starts selling apps…or ‘active content titles’

Peter Evers — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 21:47:26 +0000

Yesterday I got an e-mail from Amazon, telling me they released the first two Kindle active content titles. So Amazon has officially kicked off their app store now. Although they prefer to call them “active content titles” instead of apps. When I wrote about Amazon’s announcement of the Kindle App Store earlier this year, I did mention that “..the e-ink technology is an opportunity to build apps people use for a longer time than just reading an article or playing a game, think crosswords or sudoku’s…” And, although this was an easy one, the two titles Amazon are releasing are from the same category. They are Shuffled Row and Every Word and to be fair, they are far from impressive. Both active content titles are classic games in a Kindle template.

However, I have to admit it’s hard to come up with very compelling app ideas when the e-paper makes it impossible to use any sort of motion. But let’s wait and see if the Active Content for Kindle will offer us more than revivals of old-school games.

iPhone users are very, very loyal

Peter Evers — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 20:01:04 +0000

Since the second quarter of 2010 Android is the leading smartphone operating system in the US. With 32% of US based phones running on Google’s OS, it seems that the big volumes of Android phones that are flooding the US market have finally resulted in the biggest piece of the pie. Apple comes in third with 22% of the market, after Blackberry, having 32% of the market. And as with many things, it seems that the US market is a great predictor of the European market. More and more, it seems that Android, iPhone OS and Blackberry are the three operating systems at the top of the market. Nokia does have a large EU market share too, but doesn’t seem to be able to come up with a compelling operating system and is rapidly losing out smartphone market share.

So when we zoom in on the three big players, what can we learn? Well, Nielsen Research released some interesting insight about customer loyalty among these brands today. Like displayed in the graph below, Blackberry users are the least loyal ones, and iPhone users the most loyal customers. An impressive 89% of all iPhone users doesn’t want anything else than an iPhone, while only 42% of Blackberry users want another Blackberry as their next phone. Android comes in second, with 71% of Android users not willing to switch to another brand. Interestingly, 21% of Android users wants an iPhone.

There’s something in between e-ink and LCD, it’s called IMOD

Peter Evers — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 09:04:18 +0000

In my last post about how the Kindle and iPad are companions instead of competitors, Ernst-Jan Pfauth asked an interesting question in the comment section. He asked if there’s a device on its way that merges the iPad’s color screen and video capability and the Kindle’s e-paper technology. The answer is yes. This autumn not-so-fancy tech company Qualcomm releases it’s Mirasol e-reader. It uses a brand new technology, innovated by Qualcomm itself, called IMOD. IMOD stands for Interferometric Modulation. Which basically means that the screen isn’t back lit, but utilizes the light that shines on the display to energize the screen. How’s that for some environment friendly technology? Below are two clips, depending on what you’re interested in, watch the first one for an explanation of the IMOD technology or the second one for a demo of the Qualcomm Mirasol.

The iPad and Kindle are companions

Peter Evers — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 16:42:50 +0000

Let’s settle this once and for all. I’ve been writing quite a couple of articles about the Kindle and the iPad. For a lot of Apple fanatics it feels like Apple’s is taking on yet another company that thinks they can build better products than them. But it’s not like that at all. The Kindle could be considered as a tablet computer, but it has only one real thing it’s really good at: letting people read books. An iPad has a screen with backlight, and everyone knows proper reading sessions will eventually be very uncomfortable for the eyes. However, the iPad is great for much more other stuff like video, gaming and browsing the web. I’ve been trying to explain this to people quite a lot, but Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, definitely did a better job than me on this on TechCrunch TV today. Have a look, it’s just six minutes. Don’t have the time or no sound available? You can read the most important quotes below the video.

“We don’t need full motion video, the Kindle is all about reading. People want a purpose built device, where every single design decision has been made in order to optimize the reading experience.”

“You know what the number one thing is that people are currently doing on their iPad? They’re playing a game called Angry Birds, where you throw birds at pigs and then the pigs blow up. You know what the number one thing is that people are doing on their Kindle right now? They are reading a book by Stieg Larsen.”

“Kindle Books are buy-once, read-everywhere. With WhisperSync you can read a little bit on your Blackberry, read a little bit on your iPad and then for a two hour reading session you get the Kindle in.”

“Most people have never even seen an e-paper display, they do a double take, because it is so different.”

“I think we live in a multi-device world, you’re going to have an iPad, a smartphone, a laptop, and when you want to sit down and read a 300 page book, you have a Kindle.”

“Every internet connected device is good for Amazon, because they make it easier for people to shop on Amazon. Every new device gives us an incremental tailwind.”

“From the data we’re getting from WhisperSync we’re seeing a strong usage pattern. We can see people moving between devices all the time while they read a book. That’s why we are so focused on buy-one, read-everywhere.”

There might be a virus on your Android phone

Peter Evers — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 09:18:28 +0000

Sorry for the potential shocking title, but according to mobile security company Lookout the massive success of the mobile application has caused a rapidly growing number of mobile security threats. The founders of Lookout already demonstrated this back in 2005, when they exposed private data of celebrities attending the Academy Awards ceremony. The rise of mobile apps has made this threat even bigger, because lots of mobile apps you have probably installed on your phone access your private data in a potentially insecure way. To make sure your private data is safe you can download the free mobile virus scanner, Lookout’s main product. It is available on Android, Blackberry and Windows Mobile.

To further research the potential danger of mobile apps, Lookout has started the App Genome Project. In this research project 300,000 free applications have been scanned on potential security risks. And only days after the release of the results there are already a couple of apps that are heavily blacklisted, such as all wallpaper apps by Android developer Jackeey. Over a million users have downloaded these wallpapers, needless to say, you might want to check your phone and uninstall them. And, although no one wants to give away his or her private data without consent, these rogue apps do not have access to your Google Checkout Account. So don’t worry about that.

In the infographic below you can see the results that came out of the scanning of 100,000 Android and iPhone apps (yes, iPhone user, you might be at risk too). Click it to enlarge it.

The great power of Foursquare badges

Peter Evers — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 10:05:26 +0000

What once started out as a kinda nerdy service, Foursquare has now reinvented itself and closes some interesting commercial partnerships. The social networking service that helps you check-in at places you go to, like bars, restaurants and clubs, has recently started a partnership with the American cable network VH1. The partnership consists of celebrity tips on places to go and trying to win the VH1 Fanatic Badge that gets you unlimited access to Livenation concerts for a year (check out the commercial). This kind of partnership just has to work, VH1 can steer Foursquare users to the places they like them to go to, by sending out celebrity tips and on top of that, they encourage users to check-in as much as they can to earn a special badge, resulting in maximum exposure on Foursquare. No banner can top that, for sure.

And it’s not Foursquare’s first clever partnership. Earlier this year they partnered up with Warner Brothers for the movie Valentine’s Day and selected fifty romantic venues in New York, that users could check-in to earn a special badge to go and see the film. Also, they partnered with the American TV show How to make it in America for which they designed four special badges for users that checked-in to the places from the show. And that’s not all, Foursquare has other great deals with Zagat (weekly “Meet the Mayor” interview about restaurants) and Harvard University (special Harvard badge).

I remember seeing a talk by Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley at Mobile Monday Amsterdam back in November last year (see clip below). It was pretty inspiring to hear him talk all about the value of the data Foursquare was collecting and the plans he had with it. One particular thing I remembered, is that the fact that Foursquare only seems to be about nightlife is just a result of the prototype they started out with. The prototype got really popular and they had to keep the service working well, so had no time to set Foursquare up for other types of behaviour. But in a way, you can use Foursquare to stimulate any kind of behaviour. For instance, parenting, Foursquare could give out their special incentive, the badge, if parents check-in with their kids at healthy restaurants or theme parks. This way, Foursquare educates parents, and stimulates the actual execution of this education through badges. I can totally see this work for any kind of behaviour.