Debi and I have occasionally exchanged comments on how few women there are in the mobile industry (I counted barely a handful at the last Bay Area MoMo). There are a few Women Mobilists I know and admire, such as Darla and Anina. I don’t know Emily, but her site is an amazing resource for those trying to keep up with nifty mobile services.
Spurred on from Rudy’s (m-mobile) series on Women in Mobile, Darla is setting out to gather and highlight all Women Mobilists from around the world.
Go, Darla!
Link: Darla Mack: Calling All Women Mobilists!!!.
For the past week or so I’ve had the pleasure of chatting with Debi from MobileJones. Other than Emily and Anina she has been the only female person that I can hold a discussion with regarding mobiles and stuff like that… until we both get silly and start talking about flying and stuff. But she really knows her stuff.
In the next few weeks (hopefully) we are gonna try and get something together in regards to a list of "Women in Mobile". Inspired by Rudy De Waele’s series of "Women in Mobile" interviews, getting the recognition of the females out there is important to our women readers. Yeah we can be badass women to the guys, but what about the other percentage of our readers?
So, if there are blogs that you know of, please contact either Debi or myself so that we can get this list together.
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Link: Smart Mobs: Thanksgiving Carnival of the Mobilists.
Welcome to this week’s Thanksgiving edition of Carnival of the Mobilists.
If you’re new to the Carnival, the idea is to collect the best writing about mobile in one place at a different website every week. This week, it’s Smart Mobs’ turn and I’m doing the editing – so I’m the guy to complain about if you don’t like what I’ve written!
You can find out more information about the Carnival here. If you’re a blogger, you might want to enter in the future – or even offer to host it one week soon.
So let’s get on with it.
I’ve probably mentioned ad nauseum that Google is run like a big research lab? I myself am a product of academic research labs (MIT, UMass Amherst, Harvard Medical School) and I have brought that way of working and thinking with me everywhere. Sippey’s latest (see link below) is a great take on how we can transform the workplace.
Link: this is sippey.typepad.com: schoolwork.
I’ll share with you the results of a little between-classroom brainstorming about how office life could learn a little bit from grade school life.
Geez, I wonder what this says about Sippey’s group at Six Apart… 
Who knew? Well, now we all do. But, from the list, I, of course, did not see a person focusing on mobility. I’m not surprised. Mobile might not need a special focus, but it sure should be part of the discussion.
Link: TechCrunch � Web 2.0 WorkGroup Now Has 20 Blogs.
Richard MacManus, Fred Oliveira and I formed the Web 2.0 WorkGroup about a month and a half ago. We’ve now grown to twenty blogs:
Jeff has a summary of the panel at the TechCrunch party last week. It highlights some things others have said and why I wrote up my earlier post about finding cool companies outside of Silicon Valley.
Link: Software Only: HBS Tech Panel: Valley of Destiny or Valley of Doom ?
Dave asked whether Silicon Valley deserves to be at the center of the technology world, as it has been for the past 30/40 years. After living here for 22 years, Dave left because he felt that the Valley had lost its technology focus to get into marketing or retail opportunities, and lost its focus on creating great technology and rewarding the engineers responsible for these innovations.
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However the Valley is so expensive that it has priced itself out as many people can no longer afford living here. He ventures that company will only afford to have their headquarter here and will have engineering and operations in other parts of the country/world.
The panel then debated whether the point that whilst the Valley is the center of the technology world, it is not the center of intellectual life – Dan pointing out that there is no art institute of international renown.
When I was marketing Series 60 (now called s60), I had always wanted to write a general book on how to get the most out of an s60 smartphone. Well, two books were written (not by me), and I was fortunate to be given some copies for myself (thanks Brian, Michael, and Ari). Here’s my brief overview of the two books.
 The first book, ‘101 Cool Smartphone Techniques’, by Dean Andrews, came out earlier this year. It focuses on s60 phones, providing tips for all the phones that were available at the beginning of this year. It is simple in layout, has many screenshots, and seems like an exhaustive tour of all the features of s60 phones. There are some pointers to resources for more info and some troubleshooting tips, too. The material covers topics such as phone basics, tips on how to use the phone more efficiently, customization options, and accessories.
The quality of the tips is really good. The topics are well organized and the tips are easy to follow. I hope that readers are encouraged to explore their phones on their own after being inspired by so many tips. For example, one tip reveals how to select multiple items in a list – a simple, but very useful tip. The author also peppers advice throughout the book, suggesting ways to keep the phone running smoothly, such as managing the memory and security options.
Recommendation: This book is excellent for the beginner, or the person who wants to know what else is available on their phone. I must say, I didn’t discover anything new. But, then again, I’ve explored every nook and cranny in the phone, so I am not representative of the general user. But, if you know someone who has an s60 phone and needs a little guidance, they will certainly learn a lot from this book.
 The second book is ‘Nokia Smartphone Hacks, Tips & Tools for Your Smallest Computer’, by Michael Juntao Yuan, and it came out this summer. The author stretches the traditional meaning of smartphone to include Nokia’s Series 40 (s40?) phones, but that’s OK by me. The book is not so much a cookbook with recipe-style instructions like the ‘101 Techniques’ book, but focuses more on explaining in prose format many interesting things one can do with one of these Nokia ‘smartphones’.
There are 75 cross-indexed hacks, covering topics such as phone basics, connectivity options, data exchange, email and messaging, and web browsing. While the hacks in general are not what I expected them to be, most of the hacks do focus on the technical aspects of using these phones. For example, there are a bunch of tips on configuring and sniffing things out with Bluetooth on different operating systems.
The hacks also, as the title suggests, dip into some more interesting fun for the technically proficient (that counts me out). For example, there is a hack that shows how to install a mobile gateway on your server that will make it easy to read Gmail with a mobile browser. Or, how about whole hacks on converting DVDs to play on the phone, or how to code cool features in WML.
Recommendation: This book goes deeper into the technology and coding for smartphones than ‘101 Techniques’ does and covers Nokia’s s60 and Series 40 phones. The book is clearly written for someone who wants to do more than just understand how to use the phone. Sounds like the O’Reilly crowd to me.
Summary: Here are two books that cover a wide range of knowledge and tricks about Nokia’s s60 and Series 40 phones. The ‘101 Techniques’ is more of a recipe book for those setting forth for the first time to explore the features on their s60 phone. Users more familiar to s60 might not get enough out of it to justify purchasing it (you likely can Google the more advanced info). The ‘Smartphone Hacks’ book also covers some basics, but is really focused on giving the coding cowboy some ideas and pointers on how to do some nifty things with their phones. Yee-ha!
For more detailed reviews of these books, go over to All About Symbian:
- 101 Cool Smartphone Techniques review by Rafe
- Nokia Smartphone Hacks review by Ewan
Girlie loot
Originally uploaded by schickr.
From a recent party Not mine, of course. My daughter’s.
I was recently in Silicon Valley and was once again reminded of the self-reflective nature of the place – they fund folks in the Valley to run services in the Valley for people in the Valley to flourish or crumble in the Valley – with little regard for those outside the Valley.
Oh, yes, there are a ton of great companies there doing great things for everyone. But, my particular interest is in cool companies outside of Silicon Valley. Indeed, I have seen some interesting mobile companies (or great services that should be mobilized) in Vancouver, Seattle, New York, Boston, and Chicago (I’m not counting the great ones who have or soon will succumb to the call of California).
I would love to hear about young non-California (let’s stick to the US for now) companies that are doing cool stuff with mobile, or who have cool services that need to be mobilized.
I am personally most interested in Boston-area companies, but would love to hear about all other areas too.
Care to help out?
UPDATE 24nov05: I’m getting wink-wink, nudge-nudge from folks who know me (and my restless nature at the moment), but this really is a genuine question that is important for all those companies outside of Silicon Valley who have to work harder to get respect in the tech and mobile field. This question arose after finding that all roads I found were leading to Silicon Valley. I am just curious to know of other roads.
The Boston focus is, yes, partly a personal thing. But Boston was really big in the telecom networks and big iron days of the 70s and 80s and I expected mobile to also be big there, what with MIT, Worcester Polytech, the big VC firms, and the big analyst firms. Boston is the Hub for Biomedicine (been there, done that). Could it be the Hub for mobile communications, too?
Chris lodged into my head the thought introducing the Internet to the developing world via the mobile phone. I’ve been preaching simple SMS- and browser-based services for the mass market, but then Chris pointed out emerging markets, where the next billion phone users are coming from*.
After that, when I was in San Francisco, talking to some great companies about mobile, I realized that everyone was thinking about how to extend their services via mobile to their existing customers. Heck, what about extending their services to new customers that they would never have since they will never own a computer.
Thanks, Chris, for sticking that thought so deep into my head that I can’t get it out.
Link: MobHappy: The Mobile is the PC of the Developing World.
As we sit with our broadband connected computers, surfing the web, rattling off email and IMs, Skyping Intercontinentally and publishing our ideas and opinions all over the world with blogging software, it’s easy to forget that much of the world just isn’t like that. Broadband connections (or even dear old dial up connections) are a rarity in much of the developing world, including (but not limited) to the massive populations of China, India and Africa.
*An interesting tid-bit: Nokia’s billionth phone was sold in Nigeria. The phone was the lowest-end phone Nokia had, the Nokia 1100. Telling, isn’t it?
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