Mobile Warp

Dotmobi, Verizon, and user-friendly URLs

2006-10-12T21:58:00.000-04:00

DotMobi initiative from the very beginning looked to me as not very user-friendly.

Today I have come across a couple of other arguments against it by Verizon.

After a bit more digging, it was amazing to find out an official Dot Mobi Rebuttal by W3C DIWG (dated 2004!!!) stating that the whole idea contradicts Device Independence Principles.

Moreover, while reading an official dot mobi blog:

.mobi-compliant sites, and those sites are coming online daily. Two of our favorites are businessweek.mobi and cnnmoney.mobi.

I could not help but compare the usability of typing "businessweek.mobi" ("2288777744466337777 [wait 2 seconds] 7777933 [wait 2 seconds] 5516 [wait 2 seconds] 666224444" equals 39 key taps) against something like "m.bweek.com" ("6122933 [wait 2 seconds] 33551222666 [wait 2 seconds] 6" equals 19 key taps). Granted, "businessweek" is not exactly mobile phone keypad friendly, but I think there could be better strategies to "mobilize" it. Even using ".net" instead of ".com" will save 2 taps - it would be 5 taps instead of 7 (and no wait between tapping "o" and "m").

Adding "m" as a subdomain designation of "mobility" of the site strikes me as a logical and transparent thing to do (well, it still does violate the Device Independence Principles). Rememberthemik.com guys did it ("m.rmilk.com") and I personally have no trouble remembering it as the name of the mobile side of their application. Compare this to Google's "google.com/reader" for regular and "google.com/reader/m" for mobile. Hmm..., now it does look kind of obvious, but believe it or not, I could not remember the Google Reader Mobile URL today while waiting for an appointment. Why not change it to m.greader.com?

Technorati Tags: mobile, dotmobi, w3c, phone, user, friendly

Walkman phone plus cassette adaptor makes an excellent car handsfree kit

2006-10-05T17:37:00.000-04:00

For quite some time I've been using the cassette adaptor to connect my MP3 player to the car stereo. I don't have a line in, and after listening for several years to the same 100 songs on the radio, listening to MP3 player in the car is an excellent value, especially since I've discovered several interesting podcasts.

Now, I am a happy owner of (unfortunately branded and locked) new SonyEricsson W810i walkman phone. A built-in MP3 player is not quite as good as my iAudio U3, but it is decent-sounding and (much more important) the player is very usable. If you want to use a handsfree with your mobile, (and you probably would if you want to retain your brain capacity for as long as possible) then a wire with microphone and headphones will most of the time be clipped to your lapel. Now, it's no brainer, that the best use of those headphones would be to
listen to music or podcast, and that's the value proposition of Walkman phones.

Anyway, yesterday without unclipping the wire, I just plugged in the jack from the cassette adapter. So, the phone stays in the poach, the wire remains clipped to your lapel, you just unplug the headphones and plug in the cassette adapter. Now, you are enjoying music from car speakers while driving. Nothing special.

Suddenly music disappeared and I realized that the phone was ringing. Now comes the best part. It's a no brainer, but because of it's usefulness, I think it's worthy of LifeHack status.

When an incoming call comes in, SonyEricsson Walkman phones automatically mute the music. Then all you have to do is just press the button on remote stub clipped to your lapel, and you are talking handsfree.

While I was talking, the sound was coming loud and clear from car speakers and there was no feedback. As soon as the call was over, music resumed. Nice! Then, when you arrive, all you

have to do is re-plug your headphones back and you continue listening to the same music out of the car.

I would recommend this to everyone who has a Walkman phone and any type of line-in in the car. Especially to all the people out there driving while holding a mobile with one hand and not really aware of what's going on outside their car.

Just don't forget to unplug the wire before stepping out of the car...

Technorati Tags: mobile, phone, walkman, SonyEricsson, lifehack

Musings on Mobile Instant Messaging

2006-09-29T15:51:00.000-04:00

I've just posted a reply to a question on ecademy Mobile Applications Club, and decided to repeat it here.

The question was more or less: "what does it take to implement an Instant Messaging client with Presence on a mobile phone?".

So here it goes:

So how could the phone improve and take on some of the characteristics of an IM program? I'd *really* like a Skype client on my phone, not for VoIP but for text and for the contacts list. This feels do-able to me mainly because the bandwidth requirements are pretty low. But of course it would cannibalise the *huge* business cash cow of SMS.

The idea is great, and the question might actually be music to operator's ears as it shows the value of enriched messaging.

What you are describing, is a PEP - Presence Enabled Phonebook integrated with Instant Messaging. Instant Messaging, Presence, and any number of combinations will be there in the nearest future as soon as Mobie Operators accept IMS and come up with IMS-enabled services, and mobile phone manufacturers will incorporate IMS platforms in their devices.

Meanwhile, there's a number of proprietary mobile messaging clients out there (e.g. Agile Mobile messenger), which will probably, to certain extent, fit the bill (not on feature phones though).

There are several obstacles in implementing mobile instant messaging.

Unless you want limited P2P application to talk with your buddies, and you know what phones they are using, the client has to be either J2ME application or Symbian application (do not forget the flavors), or both. Also the client could be browser based, but it would be awkward and will have higher overhead unless you do it using ajax, which only is available for Opera 8.6, which only is available to Symbian and Windows Mobile based devices.

Then, depending on the device, the client might not be able to run in the background, which limits usability.

The major attraction of sms is that as soon as the phone is up and running - you can have messages being pushed to you. If you build your own client - it has to be started manually and, depending on the device, might not be able to run in the background.

In any case, a client has to be optimized to major mobile phone platforms you will be using it on.

Ok, now to presence. Presence has to be a server-enabled solution to aggregate user profile and presence information. It can't be pure p2p unless some of the nodes (clients) act as intermediate nodes to broadcast this information to their local swarm (similar to p2p systems), but that will put additional resource (and traffic) burden on the client.
Presence puts also additional traffic overhead as the client has to publish its status to server during startup or status change, and then it would be getting notifications about the state (change) of buddies in the phonebook.

Then, you will have overhead on actual messaging traffic since it has to use some protocol and mostly those protocols were designed for internet without keeping in mind optimisations suitable for mobile side.

Still, it's pretty doable, though not very easy. If the messaging traffic with all overhead per message (how many characters?) is cheaper than cost per sms (15 cents outgoing, free incoming for local traffic in Canada) - then it will make sense. The only problem, like I said, would be how to keep a client running (to get notifications) and if not - then how to get message notifications.

One of the solutions would be for an application system (server) to send a wap push to the phone, but wap push is essentially just another sms (and it will cost to the system to send it).

Open source protocol for messaging (and to my understanding - de facto standard for internet systems) is XMPP.
As it is xml-based, there will be quite an overhead on the traffic.

It's funny: just looked up an example XMPP dialogue. To send a 37 character message (including subject), will require to have an approximately 736 characters (linefeeds are counted).
Well, actually it's not bad at all! I figure I'm paying 5 cents per kilobyte - so this traffic will cost me 3.6 cents, which beats the ... out of 15c per sms.

Technorati Tags: Mobile, Instant Messaging, IMS, SMS, XMPP

Mobile Monday - now in Canada

2006-09-28T11:14:00.000-04:00

It was good to find out that Mobile Monday event now has a base in Toronto.

The next meeting features speakers from Google and Yahoo, who wil be focusing on (take a wild guess!) ... Mobile Search.

The write up for the next October 2-nd meeting is available here.

Very nice that things are speeding up some in Canada. Too bad nothing's happening here in Sunny Montreal.

Technorati Tags: mobile, search, canada

Mobile P2P around the corner?

2006-09-27T16:13:00.000-04:00

Probably not exactly, but this would really be cool!

Swedish startup Terranet has developed mobile Peer to Peer technology.

By integrating a hardware module in the mobile phone or adding it as an add-on accessory, a direct radio communication becomes possible within approximately up to 5km range between individual mobile phones. Without base stations or any other operator infrastructure!

According to Sydsvenska Dagbladet, the price level of an extention unit (either integrated in the mobile phone or as an add-on accessory) is estimated around 500 Swedish Crowns, which translates in roughly US$69.

If I am reading the site correctly:

TerraNet integrates seamlessly with standardized wired and wireless VoIP solutions. Customers are the world's leading VoIP operators and broadband providers and developers of mobile phones and/or walkie-talkies. End users are people who would like to make free mobile phone calls locally and to the entire world.

the technology seems to be some kind of WiFi flavor.

It would be interesting to see the power consumption of the resulting unit as a mobile phone should be usable at least one day. Still, the idea is very interesting. It will allow to bypass mobile operators in some situations affecting their traffic. It definitely could hurt service like Push-to-talk over Cellular for typical use cases like a family communicating in the mall.

The technology will not always be useful, but has the potential to harm operator traffic if a peer user density is high enough, e.g. in large urban areas.

Is dotMobi a marketing exercise?

2006-09-27T14:13:00.000-04:00

A friend called me today with a question whether he should rush to register a '.mobi' domain or not.

This prompted me to check what’s going on with the dotMobi thingy and turned out that they’ve just announced a general availability of '.mobi' domain names.

Now, I would not engage in a question of whether or not it is a scam, but what interests me is: what’s the point?

There are 3 points that dotMobi initiative is making:

1) They kinda herd the “mobile adapted” content into a separate domain
2) They develop guidelines on how this content should be developed to be optimally presented on mobile devices
3) Combination of the first two: they enforce that '.mobi' sites adhere to the guidelines

Let’s look at these points:

Point (1) – theoretically there’s nothing wrong with designating a dedicated domain for specifically designed content, except:

1) It kind of implies that all other domains will not be adapted to mobile device presentation.

While it is absolutely true that other domains do not guarantee that the content will be viewable on your mobile phone, still it could be pretty well adapted. I personally do not like this implied limitation. As everybody knows, Opera mobile browser does a pretty good job in adapting content to mobile screen. Also, there are and will be people who adapt their existing sites or applications to mobile presentation, and they probably also will not like the '.mobi' implied exclusivity.

2) There is no guarantee that sites in '.mobi' domain will come up with content compatible with all mobile devices, though the chances will be much higher. Anyone who participated in OMA test fests can attest to that. Will dotMobi verify and approve (i.e. enforce) that the sites stick to the guidelines? They mandate it, but enforcement is another matter entirely.

Point (2) – There is also nothing wrong with developing guidelines and best practices for mobile domain. My problem is that their guidelines are mostly copied from W3C Mobile Web Initiative.

Now, we already have W3C Mobile Web Initiative, W3C Device Independence, and OMA (Open Mobile Alliance) Browsing standard, which overtook the now obsolete Wap Forum. Why do we need another set of guidelines, which is basically copied from existing ones?

I would say any serious developer will probably first check the target mobile phones browsing guidelines (one for each phone manufacturer), then come up with a set of standards to adhere to (which would most likely be xHTML Mobile Profile anyway with a possible look at OMA Browsing), then look up W3C Mobile guidelines to do usability sanity check.

And now the most curious thing of all: '.mobi' does not really adhere to their own (or should I say W3C) guidelines. Specifically, in section "4.2.5 User Input" of the "dotMobi SwitchOn Guide" we read the following :

"[W3C MINIMIZE_KEYSTROKES] Keep the number of keystrokes to a minimum."

Ok, try to input ‘mobi’ into the browser using your mobile keyboard.

‘m’ = 6 (good), ‘o’ = 666 (not good at all), ‘b’ = 22 (also not very good), ‘i' = 444 (well …). So folks, it’s gonna be 9 strokes in all. Factor in that on majority of mobile phones, after hitting ‘m’ you will have to wait couple of seconds for the input to sink in before hitting the same key (6) again three times for ‘o’. Otherwise your initial ‘m’ will change to ‘n’ and you will have to start over.

Now, just to type in ‘.net’ will require only five strokes (66338) and ‘.tw’ only two (89).

Point (3): Also good point in itself. While the use of the guideline is mandated:

"Compliance with mandatory rules is one of the terms and conditions of using a .mobi domain"

it is not clear how this rule will be enforced and how exactly a candidate site will be verified.

So, while there are some valid points behind the dotMobi theory, it pretty much looks as a marketing excercise to me.

I personally will not be registering any .mobi domains any time soon. What about you?

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Expandable post hack from Julie Meloni (NoFancyName)

2006-08-20T12:59:00.000-04:00

Man, having been kind of locked in a relatively closed world of telecom, did I miss some things happening out there.

Blogging and web development is one of them. I have not really been oblivious to it, but was not actively participating either. The cool thing is (as I tell my teenager son) that you don't have to actually work as a web developer to enjoy the abundance of opportunities to express yourself and do some fun hacking.

Today I decided to play a little bit with this blog and add an expandable post hack from Julie (NoFancyName).
Now, if the hack worked, you will be able to see this text after clicking the button.

Neat, it's working!

And I really do like Julie's blog too. Go check it out.
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Dude! It's only a tool!

2006-08-16T22:06:00.000-04:00

How many of us were going to "just check e-mail" or "look up the news" for a couple of minutes, and ended up sitting at computer for a couple of hours instead? Did you notice the time go by? Did you remember what that was all about and what you've read? ... Thought so...

Turns out, it is so easy to lose yourself "in a stream" of everyday small stuff, events, and whatnots. And media is not helping. Did you notice that TV induces some kind of trance? Even during commercial brakes, when you try to talk to family or friends, your eyes are drawn up to that flickering screen. And the soundtrack: "Buy NOOOWWWWW!".

I am sure, many people will experience positive effects of giving up TV. I know I have. It was so nice to go camping, when I was a kid, to a remote lake without any TV or radio. After several days I was feeling completely recharged.

So how to free yourself from the shackles of technology? Or, should I say, background brainwashing?

First of all: get out more! Have a life!

Same as with "getting out of the stream": live in the moment. And to live in the moment, you have to be alert.

Be alert and remind yourself: It is just a tool.

If you find yourself spacing out in front of computer or TV - stand up, go for a walk, and try to remember what it was you were going to do in the first place. I've been doing it for quite a while now, and it helps to accomplish more, free up time, and generally be more relaxed while doing it.

Ok, fine, but what about mobile technology? Mobile TV is all the rage. As a matter of fact, I've just read an updated Juniper's whitepaper on Mobile TV, and, while not quite showing a hockey stick, they do forecast quite a growth. Meaning in the near future we'll have a chance to space out staring at small screens of our mobile phones?

Honestly, I don't think so. As a matter of fact, I think mobile TV even could let us ease up on regular TV. It is generally a good idea to improve your mental state by avoiding watching regular news. News today are extremely heavy with negative content. On another hand, video blogs similar to those of RocketBoom are short, content-rich, and fun to watch.
Yeah, and Joan is nice too ;)!

It would be nice to be able to watch targeted, compressed, and positive videoclips on the phone when you have a period of "lost time" e.g. standing in line or just when you feel like it. And nothing should prevent us from watching the same thing on computer or TV.

All that is needed is just the right mix of technology.

230% Growth in GSM/EDGE Devices

2006-02-02T09:42:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, the GSA - Global mobile Suppliers Association - posted a survey, confirming:

The number of GSM/EDGE devices, which covers all market segments and includes phones and PC datacards, has reached 212 models, an increase of 148 in 12 months i.e. 231% growth. The number of suppliers in the market has expanded in the same period from 13 to 33 today.

This is clearly an indication of severe increase in competition in the mobile device space. Indirect indications in North America are that more and more handsets become available unlocked and operator-independent.

As the mobile devices shift more and more into the consumer goods category - the more new products and suppliers will be seen from the Asian side of the globe.

Interesting Discussion on Mobile Advertising

2006-02-01T19:42:00.000-05:00

Came across an interesting discussion about the value and model of mobile advertisement on MobileCrunch.

I actually agree with both parties to a certain extent. The question is more of a value/cost balance for the end user.

First of all, I completely agree with Omar and Mike Rowell (thisismobility.com) that if we are talking about mobile advertisement at all - then the unobtrusive text-based ads are the way to go. That way they are doing the minimum damage to the user experience.

On the other hand, there is definitely the cost involved in displaying the ads. The main question would be: how high is the cost? The monetary aspect of the cost would be zero in case of a flat-rate plan (which I personally don't have) and pay-per-page-view plan. In case of pay-per kilobyte - still the cost is relatively small unless the user decides to follow the ad link. In terms of user download wait time I would say 60 bytes (if they keep it this way) will not add significant overhead. Especially if we compare this load to logos some content providers place on their mobile sites. This also applies to screen real estate. Based on the phone's User-Agent, the ad could be tweaked in such a way as to be just beyond the initial screen, i.e. you would only see it if you scroll.

Then again, everything depends on the value of the ad, and on the mobile website design practices. If a content provider abuses the page real estate - then people will be unlikely to return to it. Moreover, the value of the site defines whether it will be chosen to be bookmarked by the user. Even on unlimited plan, unless a user is on EDGE, it is still painful to browse on the mobile. In this case the common pattern would probably be finding mobile sites of value (e.g. using the wired web), and bookmarking them on the phone. Therefore, the mobile web usage will be highly situational: on an as-needed basis. If the ad is implemented correctly (e.g. on a second scroll page) or is highly relevant to the user situation (e.g. I'm checking the showtimes and the ad offers to buy a ticket) and the advertised site - the one that would open - would be efficient and valuable, then value/cost ratio will be high. If not - people would be abandoning the site's usage.

The balance is delicate, but the same applies to the wired web. How many of you guys visit certain blinking, flashing, and popup-spawning sites :)))?

Overall, it's an interesting platform giving certain incentive to mobile content / application developers.

It will allow to bypass carriers given users go beyond carrier portal/homepage. It will stimulate content development for the mobile web if, not abused.

Tiny portable word processing with AbiWord on USB stick

2005-05-12T17:35:00.000-04:00

AbiWord is widely known among Linux folks and open source aficionados. It is a free small and feature-rich word processor. Moreover, it is cross-platform and available for Linux, Windows, and MAC. A short, but interesting comparison to MS Word is available here.

I have given AbiWord a try (windows version) a couple of years earlier, but it did not work out for me at the time. The program was uninstalled in favor of OpenOffice.

Recently, though, I decided to assemble a bundle of lightweight applications that would be autonomous when launched from USB keydrive. I still have USB1.1 250Mb stick, therefore launch speed and small footprint are of major importance. I wanted the applications to be fast and stable (don't we all :)) and preferably not to leave any tracks on the guest system.

In my search I came across an interesting tutorial about USB-ing and after reading a nice related blog post here - decided to give AbiWord another try.

What a pleasant surprise that was! Fully functional word processor reading and writing both MS Word *.doc and OpenWriter *.sxw files, installed in just under 12 Mb on USB stick and launching within seconds!

Here is the deal: download the installer (current stable version 2.2.7), run it, select USB drive as installation target, chose "tiny" installation from the list, and uncheck "create desktop shortcuts" option. This gives you a bare bones installation, which is not exactly tiny, but still pretty good with 8.8Mb footprint. The editor supports quite a few text formats: native *.abw and compressed *.zabw, *.doc, *.rtf, *.txt, *.html, and *.mht. The *.doc support might be arguably sketchy, but for my purposes of fast portable app-ing it was just fine - I could perfectly read all the *.docs as well as write baseline documents in the *.doc format.
Note of caution though: in my experience it would not be a good idea to open large and complex MS Word documents with this AbiWord installation. In my case it took several minutes and a lot of system memory to open a 300+ page document. Embedded graphics probably will not show or will be distorted in some way, but that is pretty legit for a baseline installation. On another hand, AbiWord did not crash and did not corrupt the file.

For portability it is convenient to add a launch batch file in the root directory of your USB drive. MS windows shortcuts do not allow to use relative paths. Therefore as soon as you change machines, the USB drive could be assigned a different drive letter and the shortcut will not work (sometimes it does though, when a target machine rescans the drive and finds correct target directory, but it will cost you time). Just create the file e.g. abw.bat and add the following line there (given AbiWord is installed in the e.g. E:\abw\ directory, where E: is the USB drive):

abw\AbiWord\bin\AbiWord.exe

If this is all you need - you are done. Congratulations! It is still almost 9 megs installation, but it certainly beats 90.5Mb of John Haller's () excellent Portable OpenOffice, let alone trying to install MS office on USB drive :). Moreover, the startup time in my case was around 1m20secs for Portable OpenOffice and just a couple of seconds for the AbiWord. Do not forget - this is for USB1.1, therefore the loading speed is really important for my purpose.

In my case I wanted to read OpenOffice writer (*.sxw) files as well. Here things got complicated. There is a special installer for import / export plugins that requires some dependency libraries. If you install a specific plugin that requires the library without choosing the "download-a-library" option - then later your will get a "xyz.dll is not found" error message. An obvious overkill would be to download all the libraries from AbiWord web site (url) and extract all of them into the AbiWord working directory. I, however, wanted a minimal streamlined configuration. Actually in my case, the installer could not download any libraries at all since I was behind the firewall.

The solution was to let the installer (abiword-plugins-impexp-2.2.7.exe) run its course, but select only the needed plugin - OpenWriter *.sxw. Then after the installation you only need to copy required dlls into the abw\AbiWord\bin\ directory. You can download the required libraries individually:

Now you are done.

The plugin adds some overhead, but - hey - you are still at 11.8 Megs and now you have got yourself a VERY functional word processor, which is fast even on USB1.1 stick, AND reads and writes both *.doc and *.sxw files. Enjoy.