Rants And Ramblings About Mobile Technology

I was interviewed by British TelecomTV a week ago. A very small part of that interview is shown in this collage of interviews about Sweden as an IT and telecom nation. The actual interview covered Mobile Labs Sweden AB, Abiro, Twitizer and mobile trends.

TelecomTV: NewsDesk: Is Sweden the New Silicon Valley?

Posted by Anders Borg 10:39 | Permalink | 0 comments | Links to this post

An interesting turn of events:

Nokia Booklet 3G: Is it a netbook? Is it a phone?

It’s obviously a netbook, but with good communication skills.

Posted by Anders Borg 22:11 | Permalink | 0 comments | Links to this post

Regarding my previous note Abiro - Mobile News- Where are the real iPhone killers?, here’s a chart that explains Apple’s success in the mobile phone market better: Holy Eff, That's a Lot of iPhone Profit

Again, profit is what counts, and remember, Apple also gets profit from iTunes, and owns the customers in a way that no phone manufacturer does (rather it’s of course normally the operators that own the customer, yet are unable to make effective use of that). You, not so profitable, and soon to be extinct phone manufacturers (at least some of you): Look out!

It’s not about going for all markets imaginable. It’s neither about providing the highest resolution camera or other bleeding edge technology (seen from that perspective, the iPhone(s) are pretty bland). It’s about going back to the drawing board and focus on the markets and products that are profitable as well as design products from the ground up based on user needs (shedding the ingrained way of looking at phones as fixed handset replacements) and at the same time optimize organization, production and logistics costs.

What I would recommend a phone buyer at this time is to either buy an iPhone (if your wallet can step up to the challenge) or go for one of those “$40 without sub” phones that will cover all your needs anyway. At least if you mainly do voice calls and optionally send SMSs.

Posted by Anders Borg 22:23 | Permalink | 0 comments | Links to this post

A spoof of course, but also a not too well hidden criticism of Twitter:

The Daily Week - New Twitter messages to be 1 character long

"After you've got used to communicating in one character or less, those old-school Twitter messages are so boring. I start reading one, get 30 characters in, and I'm already falling asleep. Who has time for that?"

Thoughts:

• Even though Twitter messages are brief, many are following so many threads that the information volume anyway becomes much bigger than before using Twitter. Maybe the future is in intelligent Twitter filters.
• Twitizer and similar services turn Twitter into a media for long and complex information exchange, “fixing” (for better or for worse) the inherent brevity of Twitter.

Posted by Anders Borg 20:26 | Permalink | 0 comments | Links to this post

Here are a few things I’ve noticed while working with Twitizer, and that’s got me thinking:

Twitter is an amazingly simple service, yet almost everything the service stores and handles can in practice be accessed via the Twitter API. This makes it extremely powerful for developers that want to access that data, yet at the same time a potential hacker target, that could easily be exploited.

The Twitter brand can and will be quickly diluted, as Twitter doesn’t seem to care about or act on other companies using original artwork etc. I’ve seen quite popular Twitter-related services use Twitter’s original bird icons. I’ve been careful about that, but still the Twitizer logo is not that different from the Twitter logo, and TwitPic, TwitVid etc also use very similar logos.

Twitter refuses to evolve its service. Maybe this is a stroke of genius, but at the same time the company is letting all the good stuff be exploited by other companies.

Frankly I personally don’t find much use for Twitter alone, especially as Facebook exists and does much much more, yet I realize that it’s become a hub for information transfers in general, but again, all the creative stuff happens outside of Twitter. That’s peculiar.

Posted by Anders Borg 23:52 | Permalink | 0 comments | Links to this post

I said I wouldn’t cover Twitizer here anymore, but considering how much has been done the last days (and nights) it might still be interesting to know about the changes. You can follow the enhancements in more detail on the Twitizer Blog.

The main goal for these later enhancements has been to make the content and the users more visible, not the least as teasers for potential users, but also to make the content more useful. If you saw the text-only Messages page and the pretty static home page, you probably get my drift. It’s also now possible to rate messages/content, and a bunch of other things.

I still haven’t added support for OAuth. I’m aware I need to do this to make authentication more safe for users.

The service also requires a better web host in the long term (and even the near term), as the current one has locked PHP memory to 10 Mbyte, which is not enough to scale and rotate pictures more than 3 Mpixels. Therefore the current limitation.

There are still tons of things that could and should be done, but the key thing is really to generate enough user volume to make it possible to add commercial services on top of the free ones. I’m very far from that volume yet.

Posted by Anders Borg 22:03 | Permalink | 0 comments | Links to this post

Finally I replaced this expensive and supposedly ergonomical but in practice impractical and flawed keyboard/mouse combo…

…with this much cheaper and smaller, and more “normal” combo…

I didn’t want a wireless combo, but the shops didn’t have any wired ones. Whether that was because people don’t want them anymore or that manufacturers and shops get more margin on the wireless ones (which is a fact) is anyone’s guess, but probably both are true more or less. Try also to buy scanners. Also that seems to be on the way out, as people buy MFPs instead, and there’s obviously not much need for scanning photographs anymore.

The new keyboard is more like the ones found on laptops, and even though there are fewer keys than on the previous keyboard, it actually covers everything I need via a Function key. There’s even a power off switch, which the MS keyboard doesn’t have. Due to the different designs each key has on the MS keyboard, they are also different in their tactile response, which is not good when writing fast. It ‘s more like wrestling than touch-typing.

The mouse is much lighter and easier to hold, but primarily, on the old one I often pressed on the secondary button when moving the mouse, and vice versa, moving the mouse when pressing a button, due to the slanted design and its weight. That’s fatal when doing quick operations in development tools or in games. All the “bells-n-whistles” buttons I never used, so they were just in the way. The new mouse also has much better tracking on any surface.

Overall, the MS combo is most likely less straining on the hands, but it’s without question harder to use, especially when moving between a laptop and this, and due to the overall flaws.

Microsoft now has a low cost keyboard that is flat like normal ones, but still curved. That’s probably a better solution, as all keys are then equally balanced and sized, making quick typing easier.

So what did I want to symbolize with all this meandering? I’m not sure yet. Maybe that you should buy stuff based on your actual needs and not on hype, price (as in “more expensive must be better, right?”) or marketing speak.

Posted by Anders Borg 18:12 | Permalink | 0 comments | Links to this post

It’s not just Sony that has announced new readers lately:

• Astak's $199 EZ Reader Pocket PRO wants to give Kindle 'a run for its money'

• iRex readying wireless e-reader while Plastic Logic's own snags $299 price point

Promising for the consumer. Hopefully all these readers can display text, HTML, PDF etc without any DRM.

Posted by Anders Borg 14:53 | Permalink | 0 comments | Links to this post

Regarding: Can Microsoft woo iPhone developers to Windows Mobile?

In my opinion, not en masse:

• Windows Mobile is outdated and generally on the way out.
• Developers have more interesting platforms to focus on, like Mac OS X and Android.
• Microsoft doesn’t understand mobile, and never has; the answer is not “the Windows experience in the mobile phone” which seems to be Microsoft’s mantra.
• A more thorough approval process than Apple’s will hinder rather than help establishing a critical mass of applications.
• Windows Mobile will attract enterprise application developers, but most such applications are distributed as part of an enterprise solution. Maybe they can use Marketplace as a download site for such applications, but most likely that doesn’t generate revenue to Microsoft.

I’d gladly be proven wrong.

Posted by Anders Borg 14:36 | Permalink | 0 comments | Links to this post

I’m addicted to reading books digitally, if you haven’t noticed already, and this is good news:

HotHardware: Sony Takes Aim At Amazon's Kindle

Finally Sony seems to have figured out how to design ebook readers.

There’s a Pocket and a Touch Edition. For reading literature the Pocket Edition is enough. For reading PDFs and similar, the Touch Edition is a better choice.

Best case they work for both righties and lefties.

More about these readers:

• Sony Reader Pocket Edition and Reader Touch Edition get official
• Sony Reader Pocket Edition and Reader Touch Edition
• Sony Reader Pocket Edition (PRS-300) And Reader Touch Edition (PRS-600)
• And much more (Google)…

Posted by Anders Borg 20:09 | Permalink | 0 comments | Links to this post

Media has been quick to call any new information-centric phone an iPhone killer, still none of the major phone manufacturers have been able to come up with anything even close to the iPhone in overall sleekness and commercial success.

Of course, partly the media’s love for the iPhone might hide other features that are better on certain phones, e,g. better camera etc, but it’s also important to note that being able to use the camera and the resulting photos and videos is more relevant than the highest possible resolution.

And as I’ve mentioned before, the overall business mesh around the iPhone makes Apple pull in money long after the over-the-counter sale of the phone, which most phone manufacturers don’t do.

It’s a sign of an industry in crisis, when the major mobile phone manufacturers can’t come up with something as good as or better than a phone from a PC / DMP provider long after initial release.

Read also about how Apple, by only selling high-priced phones, generates the most profit of ALL mobile phone manufacturers: iPhone grabs 32% of global handset profits

“Apple lead the world in actually making money however, with just over $2 billion in operating profits.”

That’s what counts.

Posted by Anders Borg 19:53 | Permalink | 0 comments | Links to this post

Interesting findings (but note it’s for UK).:

• “a third of young people regularly accessing Facebook and Twitter while on the move.”
• “Forget music downloads and video – social networking is what people want.”
• “Men are also championing mobile web use, with more than twice as many of them accessing the net on the “move compared with their female counterparts.”

Facebook and Twitter aid mobile web momentum

I don’t doubt it. How much searching do you need/want to do on a mobile? Would you “idle-browse” on, or buy stuff via, a mobile phone. Maybe iPhone-like phones, but not voice-centric ones.

I though believe ticketing is a major opportunity (bus, train, event, cinema etc), for any kind of phone.

Social networking, including submitting photos, tweets, blog entries etc you could do every day, and maybe several times a day. Yet, also news should be rather high on the usage scale.

Posted by Anders Borg 15:37 | Permalink | 0 comments | Links to this post

Update 20090806: One down, maybe: Hiroshima calls for nuke-free world

I watched through the video at The Story of Stuff and came up with a few tips for what to do to lower the amount of trash generated by each individual (read: you).

Clearly we are not much in control of the governments’ goals (whether it’s good things or for instance artificially increasing consumption rate, or creating domestic fear to motivate wars) or the industries’ goals (that is making the most amount of money possible), so here’s some advise for common people:

• Don’t own/use a car. It’s very expensive and material intensive to produce, and costs a lot of money during its life time, and it’s still a big polluter too. People that live and work in the same town should not need a car. I’m very much not in line with this advise.
• Don’t buy consumer electronics. I know, in a blog about mobile technology that sounds like blasphemy, but the continuous buying of new stuff all the time, and especially replacing fully working equipment with more modern such, is a big contributor to the waste generation. I haven’t replaced my TV that broke down two months ago. Sure, I’m a moron, but I also realized I don’t need a TV.
• Don’t eat meat and processed foods. Very expensive to produce and it pollutes (think farting cows), and as people talk about saving trees, we could also save some animals from getting killed this way. Also, processed foods (including fast food) are simply not healthy. I try to stay away from fast food and “TV dinners”, and cook most myself when at home, but I still go for fast food, way more than I should.
• Don’t eat foodstuffs from foreign countries. Reason being not the environment so much (even though the transports are polluting), but labor rights, and global corporations’ exploitation of poor countries. I can’t say I follow this rule very well.
• Don’t buy/use paper media, like magazines or books. This is kind of conflicting with the statement about consumer electronics (as you could read both magazines and books digitally instead). I haven’t seen any figures about what is worst, as paper is rather effectively recycled, so the jury is out on this. I always read magazines and books digitally. More for practical reasons than environmental ones. Still, I print paper for proof-reading documents and code. More than is really needed.
• Recycle. Sure, there have been stories about people sorting garbage and then all of it has been mixed together again at the land fill, but hopefully this has improved over time. I have something like 30 meters to a recycling station, and they have containers for all kinds of stuff, so I recycle persistently.

I’m aware I don’t follow these guidelines very well myself, nor do I mean that I know all the facts, but there are my 10 cents.

There are some things governments could do. It’s very naive, but here we go:

• Illegalize all forms of weapons production and distribution. Weapons kill and molest, and also create wars where otherwise it might have been a smaller skirmish. I guess you knew that already. The UN should have the right to overthrow a government that use weapons. “Freedom wars” is no exception. Also illegalize all kinds of weapons for private use, except possibly for hunting ducks and other wildlife. I said it was naive…
• Don’t suck up to big corporations. I’m aware that in the US, funding from corporations is needed to at all become candidate for a higher government post, but nevertheless, this connection is clearly destructive. In Sweden it’s more like the government is being lobbied by corporations to get money, freebies and rights, with the argument that otherwise many people lose their jobs. It would be as bad if governments were controlled by religions/cults. That doesn’t happen anywhere in the world, right? Oh s**t, it does.
• Control and follow through on what companies are allowed to do.  Don’t own companies (I’m certainly not for that), but have a thumb in the eye of the companies all the time in terms of real measurable regulations, and don’t let companies buy themselves out of such regulations, which happens way too often, EU included.

Posted by Anders Borg 16:17 | Permalink | 0 comments | Links to this post