Opinionated comments on mobile phone industry news
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All entries are written by Anders Borg, CEO and Consultant of Abiro, that has a long experience in strategic planning, developing embedded and Java software, usability aspects, and the mobile phone industry in general. You can also read the latest Mobile News entries on your phone via wap.abiro.com, and we provide many News Feeds from popular news services. For advertising and contribution queries, please use the feedback form. News feed (local) FeedBurner Feed
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Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Anecdote: Me, myself and the mobile web
After all this talk about the mobile web it might be interesting to know (probably mainly for myself) what I access via my mobile phone. Nothing racy going on, sorry, and if there was I wouldn't tell you about it anyway.
I nowadays primarily use a Sony Ericsson M600i, which is not a normal phone by any means, so the possibilities are a bit broader than on a mass market phone, especially in the display real estate and text input departments.
In brief I mainly use it for daily news and email.
Most Swedish newspapers have mobile sites, and I access those simplest via my own site wap.abiro.com / Mobile News. Tabloids tend to report the same news, so it's often enough to access one such service. As the information is optimized for mobile access it doesn't generate many "megabytes".
I also check my email account this way (which is not really about the mobile web, but let's ignore that). My ISP supports IMAP, so the behavior is quite similar to what I get on a PC, and erased emails stay erased also on the server. With the M600i I can easily write brief email responses.
After I had browsed through the operator's portal when I got the subscription I quickly realized I didn't have any use of it. I'm not in the ringtone and wallpaper demographic (at least not in terms of buying such), I don't want to pay for news, and games and applications are much better provided by other services.
For application downloading I mainly use GetJar (wap.getjar.com) and ClickApps (wap.clickapps.com). Especially GetJar has a lot of free applications, primarily in Java ME. I host my own applications at both sites.
When unknowns call me and I don't get time to answer I sometimes check who they are via Hitta.se (wap.hitta.se) or Eniro (wap.eniro.se). wap.hitta.se is in my opinion better, as it's more intuitive. I would have liked such a service being integrated with the phonebook, so unknown numbers were automatically looked up when someone is calling. Broadband VoIP services can do this, and it should be possible to do on at least Symbian OS and Windows Mobile phones. Some assembly required. The main problem is that these services are regional, but there might be enough users that want this in one specific country.
I of course also use my phone for testing my mobile sites and mobile applications. Every time I change my mobile sites I test them via a real phone (not just desktop Opera or a phone browser emulator) as WML is very sensitive to syntax errors. Also of course I need to test Java ME applications on real phones, as the WTK emulators can't be trusted when it comes to real phone behavior.
That's about it. I Not much to get excited about I guess, but at least I do access information services via my phone.
I nowadays primarily use a Sony Ericsson M600i, which is not a normal phone by any means, so the possibilities are a bit broader than on a mass market phone, especially in the display real estate and text input departments.
In brief I mainly use it for daily news and email.
Most Swedish newspapers have mobile sites, and I access those simplest via my own site wap.abiro.com / Mobile News. Tabloids tend to report the same news, so it's often enough to access one such service. As the information is optimized for mobile access it doesn't generate many "megabytes".
I also check my email account this way (which is not really about the mobile web, but let's ignore that). My ISP supports IMAP, so the behavior is quite similar to what I get on a PC, and erased emails stay erased also on the server. With the M600i I can easily write brief email responses.
After I had browsed through the operator's portal when I got the subscription I quickly realized I didn't have any use of it. I'm not in the ringtone and wallpaper demographic (at least not in terms of buying such), I don't want to pay for news, and games and applications are much better provided by other services.
For application downloading I mainly use GetJar (wap.getjar.com) and ClickApps (wap.clickapps.com). Especially GetJar has a lot of free applications, primarily in Java ME. I host my own applications at both sites.
When unknowns call me and I don't get time to answer I sometimes check who they are via Hitta.se (wap.hitta.se) or Eniro (wap.eniro.se). wap.hitta.se is in my opinion better, as it's more intuitive. I would have liked such a service being integrated with the phonebook, so unknown numbers were automatically looked up when someone is calling. Broadband VoIP services can do this, and it should be possible to do on at least Symbian OS and Windows Mobile phones. Some assembly required. The main problem is that these services are regional, but there might be enough users that want this in one specific country.
I of course also use my phone for testing my mobile sites and mobile applications. Every time I change my mobile sites I test them via a real phone (not just desktop Opera or a phone browser emulator) as WML is very sensitive to syntax errors. Also of course I need to test Java ME applications on real phones, as the WTK emulators can't be trusted when it comes to real phone behavior.
That's about it. I Not much to get excited about I guess, but at least I do access information services via my phone.
