techype

Spinvox

noreply@blogger.com (raddedas) — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 15:32:00 +0000

Some interesting news on Spinvox, a company who's MWC stand design I have always rated as top notch - after $100m funding, with 250 employees, they appear to be struggling to pay salaries. Instead, they seem to be offering employees share options instead of salaries - I am in all in favour of offering share options on top of wages, but instead? Can you eat options somehow?

More worrying is the suggestion that the more big deals they get (having already got some huge ones with Telefonica), the more funding they need - which makes their voice recognition technlogy sound a little unscalable... read the comments and find out why: almost all of the recognition is done by humans, hence the need for such a headcount and lack of scalability / chance of profitability.

Big confidence trick on the VCs? That seems a little harsh, but you have to question why they rate themselves so highly :)

More On Skyfire

noreply@blogger.com (raddedas) — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 21:43:00 +0000

I wrote previously about what I thought about smartphone-only browser Skyfire's chances to make any money for its investors, but at that point I hadn't properly used it. I just did, on a Nokia E61 (3G S60 smartphone with QWERTY keyboard, not very nice to use itself but modern and relatively high spec), and I can't say I was overly impressed.
In theory it has the best AJAX support of any browser - in practice it proved why AJAX is not fit for mobile UIs yet. I ran a quick test on Flickr, the kind of site that ought to be in the standard test suite for web 2.0 browsers I'd have thought, and tried to tag a photo (which uses some funky AJAX, for those that don't have Flickr accounts).
It took me about 2 minutes to navigate through to a photo - various clicks did not do what I expected (ie. what they do on a desktop) - during which time I decided that the zooming system is quite clever, but ultimately quite annoying and not as good as a nicely reformatted page which takes account of the screen size (like Webkit / Opera) or indeed anywhere near as nice as a pinch and zoom iPhone affair.
Despite the browser emulating a mouse pointer (I always dislike this as a UI system with handsets that don't have proper pointing hardware), CSS rollovers weren't shown at all which is a shame as the new Flickr home page makes very good use of them when showing you recent events.
On reaching the photo I wanted to tag, I clicked on the 'Add a tag' link and waited. And waited. (A simultaneous test on my laptop on another photo suggested it was not Flickr slowing things down). After 4-5 seconds a textbox appeared, I entered the tag, clicked 'Add' and waited several more seconds. Then the tag appeared.
So on the one hand, Skyfire handled the AJAX as well as it could within the constraints of the handset. But on the other, whilst faster than reloading whole pages, the AJAX experience wasn't exactly super quick and responsive - something I find essential for me to bother using AJAXy features on a real PC.
The AJAX speed isn't Skyfire's fault of course, it just shows the limitations of the medium - many years after 3G was launched it still isn't widespread and still isn't fast. Maybe HSDPA will work better, but the whole experience didn't convince me that I want to do anything serious in a mobile browser any year soon...

Trutap - Riot-E for the IM Generation

noreply@blogger.com (raddedas) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 17:17:00 +0000

I was just commenting on Tom Hume of Future Platform's riposte to everyone's favourite pundit, Ajit, over the rapid and expensive demise of Trutap, when it struck me - Trutap has to be this bubble's version of Riot-E.

For those who don't know, Riot-E were the original mobile badboys/money wasters - these guys were so visionary, they signed up the rights to the Bridget Jones mobile game for a six figure sum back when mobile games were SMS-based (and tiny). They had giant dollops of Nokia cash and they spunked it left, right and centre with little to show for it at the end except some great stories - such as the time the CEO started naked wrestling in covered in olive oil in one of Helsinki's top restaurants, realised he couldn't buy his way out of it, and so led the whole company on a naked charge through the centre of town back to the office. But hey, they do that sort of thing in Scandinavia. The documentary is excellent and well worth a watch for anyone interested in either tips on how to invest VC cash for maximum fun, or an insight into the Finnish psyche (things get messy at the end).

The point being - you have to hope there are some amazing stories of champagne jacuzzis in private jets to explain how that $14.5m got spent, because there is no rational way a boring conventional company should spend that much to create what in the end is a <$1m fancy JavaME IM and social network aggregation client. Sadly I haven't heard any stories of this nature - so Trutap people, if they exist please share!

Stop Press: Not Everything At 3 Is Illogical

noreply@blogger.com (raddedas) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 13:28:00 +0000

Frank Meehan, CEO of 3 UK's custom handset manufacturer INQ, is sounding dangerously like he (and hopefully, by extension, 3) have some sort of clue. This would be dangerous new territory for an operator, hitherto not known for getting much except the value of fat voice revenues.

I clicked on the link explaining the new 3 Facebook phone with some trepidation, expecting it to be the standard load of 2.0 rubbish, but was met with the following quote:

"Communications is what the mobile industry should be about. The industry has forgotten its core roots; to make communication easy. Operators are trying to take over music, take over the camera business. They've totally missed out on what has been the key driver – the Internet. Most packages are voice and text. Yet on the PC, you have email, social networking, VoIP."

I'm not especially inclined to think nice things about people who harp on about social networking and anything with a version number, but this does signal that INQ are exploring an interesting direction which ought to be a natural extension of a personal communications device for the mainstream. If they really can get 3 to buy in with "affordable, transparent pricing" then they may be onto something.

Whilst I'd love to leave this post as a purely positive one, there is the minor problem of what will happen when people actually start using mobile data - something that has been concerning Dean Bubbley recently, quite rightly.

I think the real fun will start when operators find it impossible not to offer affordable flat rate data, and people actually use it - they will be stuck between commercial pressure to cut data tarifs and buckling infrastructure requiring major upgrades (to the backbone as well as a general expensive move to 4G). Throw in increased pressure on the bread and butter voice, SMS and roaming prices just in time for a long deep recession, and you have a rather potent problem brewing. Maybe the time to get out of operator shares...

3 Ways To Buy a SkypePhone S2 On 3

noreply@blogger.com (raddedas) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 12:01:00 +0000

A friend just tried to upgrade his SkypePhone to the new Skypephone S2 on the 3UK network - he is 14 months in to an 18 month contract. The prices he could pay:

£105 to upgrade 4 months early (with all the lock-ins of a new contract);
£76 to purchase a reconditioned used handset;
£60 to buy a brand new Pay As You Go handset (which he could use with his contract SIM).

Would anyone at 3 like to explain how that possibly makes sense?

I guess at least if you buy the reconditioned one it ought to work, wheras maybe the new PAYG one will have to take a trip to the repair shop before it's usable?

Carnival

noreply@blogger.com (raddedas) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 14:49:00 +0000

Ubiquitous Thoughts decided to include our last post on this week's Carnival of the Mobilists despite the cynicism, nice :)
This week's Carnival also has some other good posts, and something from Ajit.

iSkoot Pull Fast One on VCs

noreply@blogger.com (raddedas) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 15:15:00 +0000

Congratulations today must go to iSkoot, "the company that brought Skype to mobile phones" (well technically, only one of the companies to do that as Skype themselves have done it too, as have a whole raft of other companies with even shallower business models than Skype itself).

They have now raised a $19m third round of funding from some people in suits, bringing their total ~~fleecing~~ investment up to $33m.

The purpose for this cash injection was to build an applications platform for AT&T. Presumably AT&T want this platform so much, they won't pay for it - but presumably the suits think it is worth at least $19m, and probably a lot more. AT&T have 71.4m customers right now, and operators usually give say a 30-40% revenue share to the people who do the work, so $19m would need $47.5m in sales, which is 66 cents per customer. If you wanted to also beat the interest rate a bank would give you on the same cash, you'd probably need to up that sale price; if you wanted a profit (shock, horror, etc) you'd want to clear over a dollar from every single AT&T customer.

Decide for yourself how ambitious that sales target is, given the usual proportion of customers who download premium applications for their phones on any given network (excluding the early iPhone App Store goldrush, that is, which AT&T can't access).

So - what is this app platform that will generate so much revenue? It's a service to bring "social networking, email, RSS feeds and eventually services like Twitter" onto low-end phones. Right. Forgive me but isn't Twitter (aside from being pointless and loss making) already available, through the wonder of SMS (that extremely high margin data service that operators love above all others)? Are AT&T crying out for services that cannibalise those SMS revenues by generating greater use of GPRS/3G bandwidth (given away for near-free these days, but costing the operator a lot to maintain and scale infastructure)?

OK, but what about the other (more useful) services? RSS and email have been available on all feature phones for a while, and things like the GMail Java app can be used even on the pretty low-end devices.

But wait! There's a USP! iSkoot have a very special magic at their disposal which allows them to integrate deeply into every phone - "Skype, for example, is so deeply embedded in the software stack that Skype contacts are integrated directly into the phone's address book". Would you pay $1 to have your Facebook contacts added to your phone? Personally no (all the ones I know well enough to talk to on the phone are already in there), but maybe some people would. But how is this deep deep deep integration achieved?

Well, the conventional way on the GSM range of handsets supplied by AT&T would be to use the JSR75 PIM API from inside JavaME, available (to any developer) on most of the mid- to high- end devices (and probably a few of the low-end ones too). Not really a $19m USP then...

Could it be something more? Well, iSkoot do appear to have done some of the customisation of the Skype-branded Amoi launched on 3 in some territories a while back. V1 was pretty flaky but a good effort if you have a high tolerance for bugs in your phone's UI - I haven't tried V2 yet... this does indeed feature a lot of customisation, achieved through a lot of customisation effort. This much customisation could be ordered by an operator with AT&T's clout, though doing it to their range are off-the-shelf Nokias, SEs, Motos, Samsungs etc would slow down handset launches, increase the risk of bugs and recalls (this has happened to Orange a few times with their simple front page rewrites) and cost a hell of a lot. iSkoot may well be able to do the work, but would AT&T want them to? It would appear AT&T at the very least don't want to pay for it...

Of course, I'm sure I'm not seeing the big picture here, every operator in the world will need this so there's got to be a hockey stick graph in the PPT somewhere - but, as most of the companies like Facebook are bringing themselves to mobile quite happily, Twitter is custom designed for SMS, etc etc, I remain uncertain why the whole world will need this $19m platform.

Please, someone, show me the light! Or if that is impractical, send me $19m to the usual address and I'll see if I can come up with something similarly world beating...

Pepsi Roll Out Massive Proof That QR Codes Don't Work Outside Japan

noreply@blogger.com (raddedas) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 17:49:00 +0000

Pepsi UK have been persuaded to roll out a massive QR code promotion on cans of toothrot, which should hopefully prove once and for all that slick marketing agency types should not be trusted, and QR codes are a waste of time outside of Japan. This is not news but I reckon this may be the biggest amount of money wasted proving it in the UK...

I ran into someone at an event a few weeks back who had a QR code attached to her name badge, and one on her business card - guessing the answer, I asked her why. She said I could quickly snap it with my phone to get her contact details... then did admit that actually, in her experience, they often came across with the wrong number and some other info missing. She was hot and I was borrowing the new N96 for the night which in theory has native barcode integration (Nokia have offered this in S60 for some time) so I decided to give it a go anyway. Three minutes later we concluded that the photo app didn't seem to be recognising the barcode at all (bad light? user error? who knows) and that just handing over a piece of card is not without its advantages.

The point being - only one major UK phone platform has native QR codes, and it isn't yet sufficiently mature to "just work" like the ubiquitous readers in Japan. Users won't type in a URL to download and install a dedicated app simply to avoid typing in a URL or number, so... those who in theory can do this actually can't, and the rest won't bother to try. Plus ça change...

Same Old, Same Old

noreply@blogger.com (raddedas) — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 09:05:00 +0000

So it would appear that the iPhone App Store success had more to do with scarcity of apps at the start than a sustainable exciting new model, which shouldn't really be a surprise. It's the same thing that has cursed all other mobile app portals, though having a PC-based iTunes interface has helped a bit.

Moto on Touch - plus ca change...

noreply@blogger.com (raddedas) — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 20:57:00 +0000

Having just been rude about Samsung's touch attempts, I should add that Moto have thrown their own new effort into the mix - the Krave ZN4 (singalling some new sort of naming convention from Moto, keeping the weird spelling but relaxing the four letter word rule).

What's so special?

It has a dual touch screen. Get this - not just a main touch screen, like normal phones, but a second transparent flip down cover which is also a touch screen! Because... like... you can flip it down to lock the phone, but it doesn't lock! So... WTF, I give up.

Feels like my much hated old RAZR2 V8, which had two QVGA screens (both of which lit up when the handset was open, contributing to terrible battery life) and a set of controls which allowed your pocket to turn the ringer off without you knowing, reply to texts without opening the phone, etc

How American - expensive inefficient redundancy to do things you didn't really need to do, very slightly quicker than you could otherwise have done, whilst missing the basics and burning extra power to get there.

Still, at least it isn't another RAZR...

Samsung Touchscreens

noreply@blogger.com (raddedas) — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 20:43:00 +0000

You know a technology has hit the mainstream when Nokia gets round to adopting it - touchscreens have now clearly hit that point.

Samsung got in a bit earlier, so what are they up to?

Well, if you use the Tube you won't have been able to escape ads for the Omnia, and just before that they were pushing the Tocco hard. The spec sheets look different - the Omnia runs WinMob, the Tocco runs the the proprietary Samsung OS with touch stuff kind of shoehorned in; the Omnia has that bendy touchscreen technology you can be quite accurate with if you have long fingernails, the Tocco has that hard one which is fat finger only.

With all these differences, it is great to know that Samsung have managed to create a consistent experience from both - they're both shockingly bad. Oh, witht he same ugly icons. But it is the user experience that will enrage you til you swap your SIM out.

The Tocco has some stupid widgets on the front page, which allow you to drag around an icon that when clicked lets you change the background image (which you can't see any more, because the icon covers half of it) - but can't be extended to put custom things you actually want on it. Like a poor gimmick that you tire of in under a minute, rather than a good feature. The rest - well, it's the normal Samsung UI, but with touch. That pretty much describes the thought put in, and it works as well as it sounds.

The Omnia forgoes the usual WinMob stylus, but, stupidly, doesn't really customise the UI very much at all keeping the fiddly icons and widgets you just can't click with a finger - you need a stylus. The customisation does extend into the UI a bit though - they have the useless widget thing on the front page, and three different styles of scroll control depending on what screeen you're on - WinMob standard, some sort of tiny up/down arrows in the centre of the footer (impossible to independently hit without a stylus, and poor scrolling so you really don't know where you're going) plus a sort of thin scrollbar with a side button which pops up. It doesn't work well so don't worry trying to work out what I mean. There are many times when you're presented with a WinMob dialogue with six links packed together in a tiny fraction of the 240x400 screen, which is otherwise empty, and you just can't choose which one ends up being selected when you press the screen. If there is a usability / user experience team, now would be a good time to quit in shame.

Shockingly, LG (of all people) managed to create a better UI with the Prada a year back, and Samsung still haven't beaten their countrymates. LG even released a dev site last week - times really are changing...

Apple won't be worried.

Designer Confusion

noreply@blogger.com (raddedas) — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 14:45:00 +0000

Apparently, "Since its March 2007 debut the Prada Phone by LG has been recognized as one of the world's most sophisticated handset combining innovative design with technological breakthroughs including the first complete touch screen."

Yes, that's right, the first complete touch screen ever. On anything? Well I assume they, like everyone else, know all about the touchscreen microwave in 2001 so they probably just mean the first on a mobile handset. Because of course all touchscreens on handsets prior to 2007, from 2000's Ericsson R380 through the Sony-Ericsson P800 and right the way on up to 2006's HTC TyTN were not, in fact, complete touch screens. No, they were all bereft of something, despite offering touch recognition over their entire screens. Possibly a designer logo or something.

It certainly has nothing to do with a lack of buttons, because the Prada has three on the front and a whole load round the edge. It may be to do with finger control instead of the more conventional stylus favoured by the UIQ and Windows Mobile devices that came before it - but that would assume some sort of definition of 'complete' hitherto unknown to me...

Alternatively, the press release may purely talking about phones that might be owned by people who would actually buy something because it had 'Prada' written on it. That is understandable, of course - the plebs really aren't worthy of consideration, and the P800 was certainly not marketed at the world's fashionistas.

How Many App Stores Does The World Need?

noreply@blogger.com (raddedas) — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 11:37:00 +0000

Can anyone replicate the success of the Apple iTunes App Store? Plenty are trying in the standard 'me too' world of the press release and the 'visionary' VC, but have they a hope in hell?

Arguably, Apple have only managed to be successful with wireless applications because they have tethered them to the PC, requiring cable-based syncing from a desktop app in much the same way that the geekier mobile customers have been doing with GetJar and Handango for years. Heaven forbid a user might want to bypass the desktop tether – that's not what the wireless experience is about, after all.

They can only do this for two reasons – the device treats apps as first class citizens in the very simple UI structure, encouraging use, and because iTunes already existed as an essential part of the handset's infrastructure. iTunes existed long before the iPhone and its App Store, and for a very compelling reason – a music player is no good without music, and digital music is the sort of content that must be synced between a player and a bigger storage system, which means a desktop computer. Apple executed both the hardware and the software well at a critical turning point in the market, and now owns that market (though arguably iTunes is only a so-so music management tool, and took ages to sell very much).

Wither the recent app stores, then, without this strong heritage and compelling existing service to piggyback on?

Blackberry may have a chance. Much like the iPhone, Blackberry users are a very loyal niche in the marketplace with very specific needs, cash rich and tied to their devices. As a glorified email machine, it is tied to the desktop and there are existing mechanisms for corporate rollout of apps etc, along with a well known and easy to use development system (OK, it's god awful for developers, but it is possible to write apps with minimal fuss).

Microsoft have dropped the ball for so long it has probably rolled off somewhere and can't be picked up again. The platform is buried under custom UIs these days, and has no coherent customer base, pushed on the one hand to US business users and on the other to PAYG users as own-brand operator handsets like the SPV, the XDA etc. Seems a remote forlorn hope an app store would in any way revive it, even though the desktop sync experience can be better than average for contacts and the like.

Android has no users. One day that will change, but by how many? Hard to say right now.

The rest probably won't be seeing iTunes App Store numbers, ever.

The operators hurriedly announcing app stores are making non-announcements, they have had app stores for ever in the form of their stifling content portals. They can send out BREW or Java apps just as well as they can send out games, and in many cases have been doing so. They have long been poor at content discovery and they serve a wide range of devices which most developers can't effectively address (though it is quite possible to do so if you know what you are doing).

The handset manufacturers probably will try and compete, probably by rehashing their current game portals, which do very little business as far as I am aware. Buys them a press release but not much more.

Nokia are the obvious exception here, as they have been aggressively pursuing a service strategy in the form of Ovi, and they have enormous market share (a lower percentage than Apple's iPods, but vastly more shipped units). Could Nokia emulate iTunes in this respect?

It is possible. They could. But they won't.

Apple has sold primarily music devices – the iPhone is an extension of this, and probably some users don't use it much for music (or video and other media consumption), but even if they don't those same users must still use iTunes to update firmware, and just to charge the battery over the USB cable. Apple have managed to make firmware updates so simple users actually don't mind doing them, something Nokia has never managed despite some serious effort, releasing firmware so buggy it's amazing any user could stand to use it without an upgrade – 6600 anyone? So we can probably concede that most users of the iPhone will have synced at least a little music with it, and will probably have been familiar with iTunes from their iPods even if not – very few non-technical grannies bought iPhones, but plenty have bought Nokias (mine, for example). The App Store then becomes a natural extension of this default behaviour.

Nokia has sold plenty of music players, just like it has sold plenty of cameras and GPS units. I have some. I've personally barely used the camera on my phone and never used the other features, however, and I suspect I am not alone in this (though many consider me to be somewhat akin to the Amish in this respect). You buy a Nokia because they used to be easy to use, and you naively hope they still are. Or because you tried a Motorola once and suddenly realised even the new Nokias aren't that bad. Why would you sync with your PC? It's just a communications device, often supplied without a data cable, and one which is very unrewarding to sync with (though it has got better). You can (and should) back up your contacts, but the number of Facebook “I've lost my phone, please send me your contact details” groups I have seen suggests many people don't. There's no driver like there was with iTunes, and retro fitting one to leverage even new handset sales will be an immense challenge that requires considerable more focus than Nokia have thus brought to bear.

A closed iTunes clone will not work. As discussed, there is not enough compelling reason to use it. It will be forever niche, and a small unprofitable niche probably.

What Nokia could try and embrace is a fully open system – turning Ovi into an iTunes equivalent which is better, easier to use and works with any device from low-end Nokia through Samsungs, Lgs, Motorolas (do they still exist) and even including iPhones. Seamless out of the box syncing, via cable or OTA. No stupid constraints. Fully integrating and working alongside popular web services, instead of replacing them. Open to all developers with a clear revenue stream and good support.

Exactly the approach they are not taking, in fact, preferring awkward me-too software replicating every function that already exists, in a closed and inferior way. I won't change my calendar system because I bought a new Nokia, but I might actually bother to sync my calendar to my phone for the first time ever if I plug in a USB cable and it just happens. Nokia don't appear to know this, and until they do they will fail.

In turbulent times such as these, I think investing in a million App Stores is completely foolhardy – so if you are considering it, don't, you're better off following the Motley Fool's advice to “buy shares in companies that sell cheap alcoholic beverages, and pubs. They always storm in with good returns when the economy goes t*ts-up!”. Really.

Oysters, Chickens, Eggs, NFC

noreply@blogger.com (raddedas) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 11:47:00 +0000

O2's trial of using NFC handsets to interface into London Tube's Oyster card payment network was apparently a resounding success, which is great news for two groups of people - those who make NFC chips (currently in almost no non-Japanese handsets), and those who hang out next to Tube stations waiting to steal phones (a large special interest group, if the Metropolitan Police's poster campaigns are to be believed).

Any sharp-eyed thief will now know exactly what handset Tube users have and which pocket they keep it in, which will certainly help them restrict pickpocketing to the higher-end , higher-value devices.

The silver cloud in this potential orgy of phone theft being, of course, that almost no handsets available in the UK have NFC, and there are almost none on the current release schedules either - a situation which has been the status quo for some time. Nokia have now released three special NFC-edition handsets over the years (each replacing the last), but these aren't generally supplied to users by UK networks - they can be bought unbranded at full retail price for anyone who wants one.

Without any NFC services, not even early adopters will pay a premium for a mid-range handset just to get an NFC chip, and without any users no services are rolled out, etc etc. Oyster could conceivably be a big enough kick-start to the market that manufacturers will start to build the chips into every handset - as analysts have predicted will happen for some time (just like mobile TV and so many other mobile services which have failed to gain users). However, given the relative market sizes of the entire GSM market and the Tube core regular users, I'm not holding my breath...

If Your Soft Keys Are Labelled 'Menu' and 'Options', What Should You Expect?

noreply@blogger.com (raddedas) — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 11:16:00 +0000

Just spotted Punchcut via some blog post or other, a 'mobile UI specialist' allegedly. Clicking on their mCommerce showcase link you are presented with a series of screenshots which show they are approaching from a graphic design point of view, with no real clue about mobile UIs:

So what's wrong here?

Why is 'Buy' written on every track name next to a button like icon? That's real estate that could be used to show, maybe, longer track names (conspicuously absent from these examples but very common in real life)? Because this doesn't look like a touch screen app, so they perform no other logical function - just clutter which would make sense on a desktop but useless and confusing here.
The soft keys are labelled Menu and Options, respectively. What's the difference? Does Options display something that isn't a menu, and if so what exactly? Which would you press if you actually wanted to buy a track?
How do you switch between the sections along the orange strip along the top - and why is the current one highlighted in such a low contrast way, which would be invisible on many screens? How do you move up and down the track listing on the second shot? Is the blue highlighted bar the track being played, or the selected track? It's all thrown together to look good in a screenshot, but it isn't clear how it would actually work in an interactive context - which is supposed to be what these guys are experts at.

Mobile is becoming a fashionable area to work in, but it takes a lot more than Photoshop skills to design a good mobile UI - in fact I'd say Photoshop is probably the last thing a mobile app designer should be allowed near, as it encourages rigid pixel-by-pixel thinking which doesn't port well.

Nokia UI Best Practices - riiight

noreply@blogger.com (raddedas) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 08:44:00 +0000

Nokia became #1 in handsets for a few reasons, but one was the fact that the early breakthrough phones were very easy to use. I remember my old 3210 was a revelation compared to the NEC brick which preceded it. People still say today they purchase Nokias off the back of that reputation for ease of use - I'd love to know whether they continue to do so after an upgrade to S60, but the latest S40 edition justifies that faith still (though it went a bit wobbly for a while, I'd say).

However, I would still say that most people in Nokia do not get the importance of a good UI - including (presumably) all of the S60 design committee. I came across another stunning example of UI design with the new S40 edition 5 emulator, which attempts to show a scale picture of a real phone around the QVGA emualtor screen - but it does it in a window which is fixed at a height that can only show half the emulator:

Even if your monitor is taller than the 767px the window is fixed at (and these days, almost all are), you still have to jump to the scroll bar and scroll down to be able to press any button (even the up/down roller on my mouse mapped to up/down key presses in the emulator, causing lots of unplanned key events and frustration). Furthermore if you press a key, like say '1' on your PC's keyboard, it doesn't pass in the same key code as clicking the '1' on the emulator keypad (which is the ASCII for the digit 1, like a real phone) - instead you get some ridiculous key code which crashes the MIDP getGameAction method.

The whole mess is utterly ridiculous and infuriating. There's no need for the whole phone image, or the lovely whitespace around it - just show a QVGA screen and some semblance of a keypad, all visible at the same time - and map the keypad properly. Showing the phone gives a false sense of confidence that the emulator may behave like the phone itself, which it doesn't (fully).

Which brings us to the Nokia 'Mobile Design Showcases' doc they just released. As you may have expected from the intro here, I don't agree with all of it - though some of the showcase 'best practice' apps are excellent.

I saw the PDF shortly after trying out Fring, one of the showcase apps, on a Nokia E61 - possibly the perfect phone for this type of app. Under the hood, they have done an excellent job integrating with Skype etc - great job. The UI, however... not so good. Huge wasted opportunity in fact. It functions, but really it could be loads better - it's all LCDUI forms and custom items.

So another UI win for Nokia. Will the S60 UI get better now they fold in the UIQ (initially easy to use, but rapidly worsening by v3) and MOAP (shocking, just shocking) design teams? Given that more than half of the team at UIQ have now been "open sourced", probably not...

Stats Abuse: Mobile TV

noreply@blogger.com (raddedas) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 11:19:00 +0000

Just read an interesting excerpt Helen Keegan pulled from a report on Mobile TV. I don't 100% disagree with her conclusion, that mobile TV will end up being one of those functions that is 'just there' on your phone (though I doubt actual usage will match on-phone cameras, her other example).

I do, however, strongly disagree with some of the summary text of the report itself which states "The demand for consumers to watch mobile TV is there, with 65 per cent of respondents stating that they are willing to spend time watching an advert if it meant that the mobile TV or video content they consume is free or discounted".

Er, sorry? Without seeing the exact script for the interview it is impossible to say for sure which way that is wrong, but it most certainly is misleading the way it is presented here. The only interview question that can come close to a definitive answer about whether there is demand for mobile TV is "Would you watch TV on your mobile phone if it was available, easy to use and low enough cost that you didn't need to think about it?" - and even then, there would be the usual discrepancy between what people say ("Hmm, yeah I'd give it a go") and what they actually do (eg. watch once then never bother again).

Asking a question like "Would you watch a mobile TV advert if it made the mobile TV service free or cheaper?" is an entirely different kettle of fish. The interviewee will automatically assume they are in a hypothetical situation where they are already watching mobile TV, and will try to find an answer for the nice lady accordingly - given that situation, more than half would be willing to watch an advert. That is the only conclusion the question can lead to - not whether there is demand for the service, just that if someone was using it they probably wouldn't mind an advert if they saw a net cost reduction.

You have to hope the people conducting the survey knew this, else they shouldn't be conducting surveys - in which case, the only question you can ask when reading this rubbish is were they paid to 'prove' the case for mobile TV, or did some PR droid mangle the findings for a nice soundbite in the summary?

Though, re: last post, to be fair on Apple fans there is some good news

noreply@blogger.com (raddedas) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 09:41:00 +0000

Apple fans are an optimistic bunch who can see manna in the dullest of things so hopefully they feel ok, but if they need a cheer they can rest assured that their Mac's are vastly more secure than the enemy's Windows PCs. News has just come out of an enormous flaw which can trash incautious users of Windows installations, from that browser that is a scourge of security experts and leaks like a sieve etc - er, Apple Safari. That same browser which Apple fairly aggressively started to push out to users who never asked for it alongside updates of iTunes, Quicktime etc. Yay.

Sorry, in a bad mood today. To redress the negative vibe: they do sometimes still make nice easy to use software and their stuff normally looks nice.

Finally, the phone the world has been waiting for

noreply@blogger.com (raddedas) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 09:26:00 +0000

The Nokia 7510 fashion phone, of course! And by 'fashion', they mean like those shops selling cheap and nasty stuff with the word "Fashion" in the shop name somewhere, or a big flourescent orange star in the window with 'fashion' written on it in black marker. It's not as ugly as the Levis phone, but really it just looks like a cheap bit of badly designed plastic - maybe it's just a preproduction mockup but it'd need to change a lot to get exciting...

Allegedly someone else also launched a new phone, but as it is basically the same as the old one but meeting the barest minimum of rumours, I'll leave any commentary on it to better analysts. For me the only entertaining thing reading the coverage was how many things Apple have back tracked on. Local apps bad, webapps the only way forward? That must be why eBay have a new local app then. 3G a waste of time? Yup, got that now and suddenly it's the fastest thing ever and a revolution blah blah. Blackberries bad because of all the layers of servers? Well, er, new Apple enterprise sync stuff is basically same thing, but hey, now they are Apple's layers. etc. Oh, ok, I lie. The other entertaining thing came from the coverage of sites claiming this was now a Blackberry killer because it had better Exchange support. Really, please. People use Blackberries because they can type fast on the keyboard and the UI is optimised for the sorts of things they want to do - push email alone isn't enough. Amazing how obvious that one is but maybe people get paid by the word or something, and have to gush out whatever rubbish comes into their heads.

One thing I have noted using my iPod Touch though - which has all the good bits of the iPhone without the bad, IMHO - if the iPhone (damn, I said it) accelerometer is anywhere near as bad as the Touch's, I think it'll prove to be a trully terrible gaming platform - apart from puzzles like MahJongg maybe, and possibly Sim City or something. You can't do most games with a fairly accurate touchscreen and some flaky motion detection.

Moto JPG Vulnerability: No Need To Panic

noreply@blogger.com (raddedas) — Wed, 28 May 2008 16:37:00 +0000

A vulnerability affecting Moto RAZR handset's JPEG decoding was kept quiet until this week, whenone of the remaining Motorola staff confirmed that there were no known active users of Motorola handsets any more and so it was safe to tell the public as it could not be used as an exploit against real people.

VC Watch: Better ROI Available on Bank Account

noreply@blogger.com (raddedas) — Wed, 28 May 2008 14:50:00 +0000

The good thing about bank accounts is that, whilst they don't offer much interest, you're unlikely to lose anything either (even these days). Not so the latest $13m investment in Skyfire, a company which makes a Windows Mobile browser.

With Opera doing pretty well with their Mini Java browser, and the open source WebKit gaining traction with Nokia and Apple, where is the potential money in another brand new browser? The Windows Mobile market, whilst allegedly growing nicely particularly in the US (otherwise known as: not selling much outside the US), is pretty tiny and already relatively difficult to gain traction in, with the (poor) IE Mobile bundled and many devices also shipping with the mature Opera Mobile. It would be interesting to know how many downloads that first round of $4.8m bought.

The company now plans to expand into other platforms with its browser, that supports "Java, Flash and Ajax". That means the browser is top-end only, so they can only be planning to port to top-end smartphones - maybe S60 (which already comes bundled with a confusing pair of browsers), and possibly Android (current shipments: 0). It has become increasingly less fashionable to predict that smartphones will become the mainstream, in fact many commentators are saying the opposite these days, so again it's interesting to see where the users will come from.

Having got on a handset, where's the revenue? Web sites already deliver ads and frown on people upstream wrapping their own advertising around the content (Opera have got away with it, but other more intrusive players haven't). The whole point in the web becoming the platform is that the browser, if it works nicely, becomes invisible - and free. Mobiles don't have enough screen real estate to show many sidebar ads, and Google referral fees will only pay so much.

So I'd have to say, without knowing any detail about the company's business plan, that this is yet another utter waste of cash by a VC who doesn't know anything. Though I'd love them to tell me why my assessment is wrong.

Beattie Offloads Mowser

noreply@blogger.com (raddedas) — Fri, 09 May 2008 12:53:00 +0000

Russel Batty*, the man the mobile web doesn't believe in, has just cleared his debts selling his Mowser project on to .mobi, surely the spiritual home of badly thought out mobile web ideas (try typing .mobi on a phone's numeric keypad, and compare it even to .com. 'Nuff said).

Congratulations are certainly in order - we would never wish a struggling entrepreneur into debt, it's a nasty place to be - but it doesn't make the Mowser idea very good. The future of mobile services will be things you actually need on the move, delivered in the most pain free way possible, and that doesn't necessarily mean big web content mangled through a transcoder, whatever Sprint et al might wish.

Now Russell is back on his feet we'd suggest he concentrates more on doing some useful work and less on blogging during work hours, his voluminous outpourings whilst at Yahoo! being the thing which first drew him to our attention and even helped inspire this blog. For that, we owe thanks - cheers Russ ;)

* juvenile I know, but I still can't help but be amused by the rather strenuous complaints Russ had against (in particular) British people mispronouncing his name, insisting it be pronounced pretty much like (as any British person would know) the favourite insult of that American-ganster-wannabe from Staines, Ali G. I think the more you travel, the less you get worried about the mangling different countries do to each other's languages and names...

Sarin Parties Like It's 1984

noreply@blogger.com (raddedas) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 14:55:00 +0000

"My view is that if we can bake a bigger cake together, and that cake has smaller pieces of it, but net-net we still have more cake, that's O.K. with me."

A lovely piece of doublethink there from Vodafone's top man, directly contradicting the actual reality on the ground for any Vodafone "partner" trying to scrape out a living.

Steve Was Right All Along!

noreply@blogger.com (raddedas) — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 18:22:00 +0000

He said no-one needed 3G, it was just a waste of battery and EDGE was fast enough for everyone. We laughed. But figures from Apple's favourite UK network, O2, show he was right all along - EDGE is actually faster than 3.5G HSDPA, let alone 3G!

Steve, we're sorry. You were right. People should stop being nerdy, and just suck in whatever the slick PR machine of O2 and Apple gives us.

How The Mighty Have Fallen

noreply@blogger.com (raddedas) — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 08:09:00 +0000

This could in theory be about the ongoing Moto fiasco, but I think I've said enough about that.

However I just spotted the latest Sharp GSM effort - the GX18. It's a lot like 2004's GX15 except bigger and uglier - in fact very close in specs to 2002's GX10 apart from the camera res (QCIF vs VGA is not a fight worth watching - they're both useless). Looking at it you'd never know that the handset market has become increasingly fashion concious and specs have moved on from 128x160 screens and VGA cameras.

Why does this matter? Well it doesn't any more, really, because Japanese manufacturers have all spectacularly failed to do anything outside Japan and are all finishing their retreats from their GSM beachheads right now (except Sony of course, who had to merge with a leading European vendor to hang in the top 5).

This wasn't always the case. Sharp started to make serious inroads into Europe when they struck up a deal to make Vodafone branded handsets - the GX10 was reasonably good at the time but the GX20 brought us our first mainstream QVGA screens - I remember being blown away seeing them the first time - and they were constantly pushing the envelope on camera quality to bury the waste-of-space VGA variety.

So it's a shame to see that their European swansong appears to be a return to the spec of their first success here. However, survival of the fittest is helping curb the fragmentation of mobile platforms somewhat so it's not all bad - lets hope LG goes next.