Extras/The Narrative

Have you ever noticed what your writing topics are?

Posted on by charlie

What’s great about having your own website is that you end up after a while with a long list of things you have written about that in the end interest you somehow. Then, when you look back upon all that, you realize what kind of focus and perspective you have in your particular writing.

Some folks are focus on design, others on weird cognitive connections (cognections), others about how people do, others on gadgets and gizmos (and pink!), and others on general industry stuff.

When I look back at my stuff, I realize I seem to write in a philosophical, culture-watcher kinda way, commenting on what is happening now, shift in behaviour and use, and trends that will transform how we live. Do you think that’s a fair assessment?

Charlie Schick: Mobile Philosopher.

What do your topics tell about you?

Announcements/Innovation/Strategy/The Narrative

New fasion magazine – online and downloadable for mobile phones

Posted on by charlie

Posing (l to r): Tuomas (photographer, extraordinaire), Toni (publisher, Brand magazine), Anina, and Reidar (marketing dude, Samsung)
Posing (l to r): Tuomas (photographer, extraordinaire), Toni (publisher, Brand magazine), Anina, and Reidar (marketing dude, Samsung)

I got an unexpected call yesterday from Anina. She was swinging through Helsinki to promote a new off-shoot of her 360 Fashion fun.

She hooked up with Toni and Tuomas, through he Finnish friend, Vesa. Toni and Tuomas are in the process of building a fashion magazine to highlight Finnish fashion professionals. It was a perfect fit with what Anina’s been doing, so they combined some of their efforts, tying Brand with 360 Fashion.

About 40 Finnish fashion professionals have already committed to the project. The photo above is of the gang of four promoting the upcoming magazine at a local fashion show (which Anina joined in, kinda funny stories there). The whole thing will be formally launched on 22 May.

Way to go.

And if that wasn’t enough, they brought in Reidar from Samsung to sponsor a mobile version of the magazine. They will be using Maxdox from Max Rumpus to make nifty mobile editions of the magazine.

Can’t wait to see it.

We spoke a bit about the next steps and it seems that distribution is key right now, for the mobile app and for the upcoming print version of the magazine. Let me know if you are interested in helping out with distribution and I can pass your info along to this illustrious gang. 🙂

The Narrative

Fabio Sergio on: The interstitial-ity, the dangerously engaging chaotic messiness of it all.

Posted on by charlie

Fabio Sergio shares with us a great photo that exemplifies context and the mobile lifestyle.

Go look and read his take on it.

Link: f r e e g o r i f e r o | weblog.

During the first encounter with students I gave an overview on "all things mobile", and I used a single photo to tell them a story about how the context of use plays a leading role when it comes to designing for mobile devices.

The Narrative

Resistance is futile. The Web will be mobile.

Posted on by charlie

Check out these stats that Russ was chewing on (links below). The quote below has a blunt summary of the analysis.

We all knew this. Now we can throw some analyst report around for those who don’t understand us.

How will this shift how we build the Web in the future?

Link: RussellBeattie.com – Juggernaut.

So you can see that it’s really not a matter of if the mobile phone will become the dominant internet platform any more, but when. And that when isn’t expressed in "somedays" either, I bet if you wanted to sit down with the numbers you could probably pick out the exact day. I’m thinking it’ll probably be around October 3rd, 2007 (at 8:34 a.m).

Shall we have a symbolic breakfast party on 3 Oct next year?

Announcements/Strategy/Tips & Tricks

New phones from Nokia

Posted on by charlie

Not that I am enamored with phone launches (you get kinda jaded after many years of changing phones every 6 months), but today Nokia launched 3 new Nseries phones.

The funny thing, which is why I am mentioning it, is that I had no idea when or which phones would be launched. Darla and others let me know. Also, I don’t think I’ve ever seen the N72 or N73, but rumors were that one of them was coming out.

I do think the N72 will be the next big seller for Nokia. The N70, which I had the good fortune to use for many months (and recommend highly to many), apparently was the best selling 3G phone last quarter.

As for the N93, I’ve been using it for a while now. The funny thing there is that up to now, I have been using a cover to hide the phone prior to launch. Because of Darla’s tip-off yesterday, I left the cover at home, expecting the N93 to be launched today.

And it was.

Now I can use it and show it off.

How is it like?

Yes, there are some unexpected changes, but for the most part, it’s a damn good device. I think most people will do more than fine using it. And, for those who know the Series 60 UI well, like me :-), there are a ton of really useful changes that were pleasant surprises.

Yes, the device is larger than your average RAZR, but it seems the same size, if not slightly smaller, than my niece’s camcorder. So, I think this is the one that is giving camcorders a run for their money.* And I think that’s the intent.

Another plus is the WiFi. Oh, it’s so nice to be home and surfing, downloading, or uploading stuff over WiFi. You then realize how slow GPRS or even 3G really is. Can’t wait for the Skype client to come out.

A few other things:**
– I haven’t tried the integration with Window Media Player – I use iTunes.
– I have played a bit with the flickr uploader. Pretty nifty, especially if you know how to point it to other services, like TypePad.
– For you geek browser types, the OSS browser is really nice, though I am not sure if it identifies itself properly to sites as a mobile browser (yo, Dave, now we can work out the user agents!).
– The 3-D Snakes game is really cool.
– And, of course, Lifeblog 2.0 rocks.

*Heck, digital cameras are so 2005, so no need to say anything more there.
** Of course, this is not a real review. Others will have more in-depth reviews, so go read them. This is just a ‘hey, check this out’ kinda review. 😀

The Narrative

MoJo’s Media Slaves – Life in Permanent Beta.

Posted on by charlie

MoJo just can’t sit still. She’s plunking herself down right where media and mobile mix.

Now she announces here the Media Slaves podcast. Go listen!

Link: Media Slaves – Life in Permanent Beta. | 4/20/2006 | mobile jones.

We are very excited to announce that the Media Slaves Podcast series is up and running! What is the topic for the first podcast?

Glad you asked! User Generated Content is a label that has been the subject of many blog posts…some of them even our own.

The Narrative

Russell Beattie bids adieu — for now.

Posted on by charlie

Russ has been a strong contributor to the conversations around gaming, blogs, and, most particularly, mobile. Now, he’s decided to take a breather from his four-year long brain dump.

Thanks, Russ, for the many years of great thoughts and attitude.

Keep up the stuff you’ve been doing as much as you can, I hope the reset doesn’t set you back too much. 🙂

See ya later, I am sure.

Link*: RussellBeattie.com.

Yep, after four years and almost 3,000 posts I’ve decided to close up the Notebook. There’s lots of reasons, but generally this is a continuation of the full-reset I started back in January. At first I was actually thinking about just transitioning to a more of a weekly blog where I write less frequently and was sort of cleaning everything up with that in mind. But then I just decided that I really needed a break, and that I’d really much rather start from scratch at another URL some other time when I’m ready to write again. Lot less pressure that way to do something new later on, and a lot easier to get out of the habit of posting daily now.

*Since Darla comes before Russ in my feed reader, she gets the credit here for letting me know about this news. Kinda fitting. I think Darla could be a good writer to pick up the slack left by Russ’ departure. 🙂 Kinda better in other ways, too – ‘pink’ and ‘diva’ are not two words I would associate with Russ. Ha ha.

Strategy/The Narrative

When you give a telco a server…

Posted on by charlie

I just attended a nice talk by Henry Sinnreich, CTO from Pulver.com, on P2P SIP. He was promoting P2P SIP since it solved many overhead issues, such as central servers. He also made some comments why we should be pushing server-less solutions to telcos.

His comment reminded me of something I said earlier that any new product should not require a new box for the telco, but it also made me think of a book my kids have at home, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.

Here’s what I came up with (heavily based on Henry’s comments, so the credit is his):

If you give a telco a server…

Then they are going to want more than one server to take care of geographical traffic and to ensure that at least one is running all the time for redundancy.

If they have a server, and more than one, then they will want a technician – a few technicians. They will want a few technicians per server to run in 3 shifts, 24/7 all year long.

If they have a technician, and more than one, then they will want a manager to keep track of all those folks, maybe a few managers.

If they have a manager, and more than one, then they will want an assistant, maybe for each manager.

If they have so many managers, with so many technicians and assistants, then they will want a VP to take care of it all.

Oy. Hence Henry’s push for P2P comms solutions that don’t really need central servers.*

*And don’t get me going about IMS!