emconsteroids

I’m sure, all of you have heard of the new “find my iPhone” functionality which ships on the 17th of June with the new iPhone OS 3.0.

As a developer, you can download and install the final iPhone OS 3.0 already. If you do that and have a .mac (.me) account, you can go to “Settings”, select “Mail, Contacts, Calendars”, select your mac account and scroll to the bottom of the next screen. There you can switch on “Find My iPhone”.

Once you’ve done that, log in to your .me account and find a new setting at the right hand side of the “settings” section saying “find my iPhone”.

And now it’s all there: Find your phone, ping it, send it messages (you even get an e-mail if the message gets read) or if worse comes to worse, just remotely erase it. Good, if your phone gets stolen! Let’s just hope, the thugs don’t get to know this feature too soon, they may be up for a few surprise visits…

In the last couple of days, rumors have appeared claiming Apple wanted to buy Twitter. At the first glance, this doesn’t make much sense.

It just occurred to me, that there is actually a perfect reason for Apple to buy Twitter. In fact, it could turn Twitter into a massive money making machinery. Let me explain:

Three key elements lead to this perfect deal:

You probably already guessed what I’m going to write next: Twitter will replace SMS on the iPhone! Or in other words: If you have an iPhone, you can send free push notification messages (i.e. Tweets) to other iPhone users AND across the Twitter community. For free! Because of the large user base, there is no chasm to cross or no Metcalfe’s law to deal with.

Who wins? Apple! They have established a new USP for the iPhone with 25m users who can see immediate benefit: free peer-to-peer push messaging!

This is all just a hypothesis. One thing’s for sure though: The operators wouldn’t like that idea.

We have started a new blog about all the silly things you can find in the mobile industry and all its facets. Since the mobile industry is such a young industry, there are a lot of silly decisions being made. But because it’s so fast paced and the big players are holding their power and trying to stick to hold to their power, a lot of irrational things happen as well.

This blog is the attempt to capture the one or the other finding and preserve it in time. Hopefully, we will be able to read these posts with a sufficient smile on our faces thinking: “Gee, this was stupid.”

A few examples of silly or simply stupid things which happened in the mobile industry could be:

1.) The .mobi top level domain: I already blogged about this. The details about my opinion can be read from my blog or the .mobi’s post. Funnily some senior members of the .mobi top level domain people have engaged with me in a lively conversation. The success of the .mobi domain, if you want so, could have proven them right, although I am still convinced the idea is fundamentally faulty. “A lot of flies fly on shit – shit must be a good thing.” goes the saying. In my personal opinion, it reflects what happened to the .mobi domain.

2.) The Vodafone rendering engine: Often quoted as one of the most disastrous projects in the mobile history. The idea was simple, particularly for the marketers: “If you are on Vodafone, you have the Internet on your phone.”. The way it worked was, whenever you request a website via mobile phone gateway, this gateway will take the source code of the website, apply some clever logic to it and turn it into a mobile page. The images will also be resized accordingly. Sometimes, the site would even change the whole navigation. It simply does not make sense to create an engine which tries to transform the normal internet sites out there into mobile sites. It’s simply not possible. Deal with it. You’ll simply end up with unmatched expectations. For example as soon as there is some interactivity such as a login, the system breaks. To make things worse, it tried to do the same thing to already mobile-optimized sites. When doing so, the Vodafone gateway would override the original user agent (which was necessary to detect the device) the whole mobile site functionality was compromised.

The blog may also touch on topics such as the mobile strategy of device manufacturers, operators or web site and mobile service providers in general and how they would go about changing the space or being changed within the space.

Happy reading!

Not many people know that Nokia is actually also a tire manufacturer:

In fact, they started with boots.

finding a new way of how to input text is certainly what will change mobile in a big way. I have come across this very interesting but yet experimental way of doing exactly that.

Dasher allows you to literally float through language with a single finger. It requires a bit of practice but you get the hang pretty quickly. This text has been write entirely in dasher, fasten your seatbelt and have a look!

Nowadays, everybody has understood the power of the Internet. Most people also under stand the convenience and the power of mobile. So needless to say that it is clear that the internet on a mobile device is even more powerful.

However currently there are a few things which have to be sorted out until the Mobile Internet will unleash its full potential.

1. Battery life of the devices has to be better
2. The speed of the download has to improve
3. The screens have to become bigger
4. The input devices need to be more effective
5. Manufacturers and software suppliers need to agree on and stick to standards

In the meantime, there are three different approaches which are being taken in order to get the internet on the mobile devices.:

1.) UK Mobile Operator Vodafone has launched the much discussed Internet on your Mobile campaign in 2007. The idea was that any HTML based website will be re-rendered for mobile devices via a Vodafone Proxy Server. Google took a similar approach: Any site which you search in the Google Mobile search will be re-rendered via a Google Proxy. The advantage of this system is all existing internet content will be available on mobile device immediately. In theory. We’re not discussing how it looks and how well it works. There is no control over design, functionality and anything related to the aesthetics of the page.

2.) Nokia, Apple and some other device manufacturers have taken the approach of getting browsers as we know them on mobile devices. The idea is that you can then use the mobile device to access any internet site as if it was on a computer. This also works only in a very limited way. The screen size for example is a major issue as well as the input devices (no mouse, no QWERTY keyboard). Also are most internet sites completely unaware of context such as location, the handset’s capabilities or connection speed.

3.) The third approach is the approach mobile specific agencies and technology providers are taking. In the long term, this solution is the only sustainable way of marrying up mobile devices and Internet. Mobile internet pages should be created and designed specifically for the devices which are being used to access them. This starts with the detection of the device, the rendering and access to the device’s features such as telephone calling, messaging via click, location, billing, small screen optimized user interface or even making use of Bluetooth or the built in camera. There is no question that the Web as we know it an the Mobile Internet will converge. One day, the stationery computer in the office will just be one of many devices with which you can access a (web-)site. If you want to deliver top quality Mobile Internet at the moment, you need a device database of around 1800 devices and you have to render the page according to those devices. The stationery computer could just be the 1801st device. But until that time comes, we have to keep making mobile sites better and better. Until the borders between them and the web as we know it are completely blurred out. The iPhone with its Web Apps has certainly led in this direction and continued with native Apps even though the latter will never be working cross device in the same way a (web-mobile-converged) Internet page would.

This is the most expensive iPhone app I’ve found so far. And check what happened! It’s crazy

The Economist’s “The World in 2008” gives some interesting insight into what may or may not happen in 2008:

• To watch: Texting for cash. Mobile banking is taking off in places such as Kenya and the Philippines. This allows low-income workers to use their mobile phones to make and receive small payments at neighbourhood kiosks, eliminating the need to visit a bank.
• To watch: Bragging blogs. More than 90% of marketing departments will launch a “social media” campaign, such as a blog, in 2008, according to Lewis PR, a United States-based global agency. By 2009 two-thirds of marketers will set aside up to 25% of their budgets for online social media.
• NOT to watch: IPTV. The success of internet protocol television—watching your favourite shows over broadband connections—is not likely to take off for some years, mainly because of competition from cable and satellite operators.

Source: http://www.economist.com/theworldin/forecasts/industry.cfm?d=2008

Also interesting: The Economist’s take on “Technology in 2008“

Who would have thought this? The Sun promotes QR Codes on it’s yesterday issue. On page three to boot:

This is a QR code, a new kind of barcode, and it will revolutionalise the way you use your mobile – and the way you read your Sun.