Hubba-bubba
Originally uploaded by schickr.
Sat 10.09.2005 16.00 Image 030
Where am I?
Where am I?
Originally uploaded by schickr.
Sat 10.09.2005 16.19 Image 032
Mobility vs. laptops, once again – Janne’s blog
Janne has been drinking the thinking juice.
Here’s a good one. Emphasis, mine.
Link: ButtUgly: Main_blogentry_090905_1.
There are nearly two billion cell phone users out there. And a huge number of people in Japan (well, maybe not Japan), China, Korea, India, Brazil, Indonesia and Africa are growing with cell phones. Once they get their bearings together, they will be viewing the internet as a nail to bang with the mobile hammer. They’ll be wanting things on their computers that work like their mobile phones...
If you’re now thinking about your cell phone as an inferior laptop – try looking it another way: maybe your laptop is an inferior, bulky version of your cell phone. It might be interesting for a while, especially if you’re planning to develop for the fabled Web 2.0 😉
Now that’s the mobile tail wagging the Web dog!
More on mobility and Web 2.0 from Janne
This and more from Janne. Janne has been even more insightful than usual, lately.
Link: ButtUgly: Main_blogentry_070905_2.
So… How to design mobile applications for Web 2.0? Design for participation. Make sure everyone can contribute. Trust your users. Let them contribute, because they do have something to say. You might not like it, but it is important to them. And try to understand what mobility, the background quality, the connectedness, and the fact that you don’t have to consciously use a service for it to be useful, might mean. Make services that make the mobile phone users first-class citizens, and not just guys with crummy browsers and bad connectivity.
Some sayings I’ve picked up over the years
Aut inveniam viam aut faciam.
Either I will find a way, or I will make one.
(courtesy, Gary Silverman, when I left his lab)
Mr Rogers is ‘happiest when helping others.’
(something to live by)
Temet Nosce – Gnothi Seuton – Know Thyself
(a mystical classic)
Be an underdog with a bite, not a dog with an underbite.
(don’t know where I got the first part, but I added the second part)
Think straight, talk straight, walk straight through the barriers that confine you.
(one of my own)
Mobile Feed Reading
Great list from MoMo Mike on RSS aggregators for mobile (also follow the link to Barb’s post).
The catch with reading RSS on a mobile is that photos come across as full sized, which suck if you are reading Flickr. To send feeds to phones, there should be a resizing, otherwise the user is paying to view a huge image on a small screen. Also, some feeds, such as Typepad, are not mobile friendly and are huge chunks of data. one more example of how folks just don’t think about mobile, but of free broadband connections.
Futurice has addressed this somewhat by coming up with a atom-friendly photo feed format and accompanying app. Also, I heard that Litefeeds also optimizes feeds for mobile devices. But, the Litefeeds app doesn’t work on my phone, an N70, so I can’t verify that.
I just want a feed reader that works with a basic phone browser. Bloglines works with a browser, but does not optimize the images. Argh! WINKsite works with a normal browser, but I think it goes too far in optimizing for the phone. Can we find a middle ground? The mobile app is great to give a wonderful experience, but the service should be able to degrade gracefully to a mobile browser.
Link: Mobile Feed Reading.
Barb has a post on the Social Software weblog asking about mobile feed reading. First let me chime in and say that normally I use Bloglines on both my Nokia and Palm devices, and Bloglines is my primary reader on my desktop too. But I was very happy to see that she mentioned something that I haven’t tried out yet: Litefeeds. Cool! So I got to thinking, what free RSS aggies for mobile phones are there? I know of these ones right off the top of my head:
Marko Ahtisaari: Seven Challenges to our Shared Mobile Future
A masterful essay from a great thinker I admire.
Marko shares his thoughts on various aspects of the mobile lifestyle and where some of the big questions lie. If these are the things that Nokia Design is thinking of, then great things are coming that will make the past 10 years look foolish.
Link (via Janne): Seven Challenges to our Shared Mobile Future.
What made this growth possible? Where did this massive scale come from? What was the structure of the mobile industry that made reaching this two billion mark possible?
Christian Lindholm is off to Yahoo!
Christian and I had a fun time with Lifeblog. If I had to pick his greatest gift to me it would be his enthusiastic goading of me to exceed expectations. He has constantly told me to go for more, ask for more, do more. Thanks and Wasabi!
If I had to pick the greatest thought he has imparted to me it would be ‘the experience’. He has taught me that it’s not about technology, not about UI and usability, but it’s all about the experience and that the experience be wonderful.
I am fully confident that he will bring Wasabi and the wonderful experience to Yahoo and Yahoo’s customers.
Great catch for Yahoo.
Link: ChristianLindholm.com: I have seen my Future. It’s at Yahoo!.
After 10 fantastic years at Nokia I have decided to quit. As of September 12th I will join Yahoo! as VP of Global Mobile Product first based in London and then moving to California late in 2006.