Beyond | IT : mobile

Jon Box on Windows Phones and Windows Mobile 6.5 – and my quick take on the HTC Pure

john.mullinax — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 02:32:49 GMT

Check out what my teammate, Jon Box, had to say about the new Windows Mobile 6.5 release yesterday. I was just gearing up to write my own post, but Jon’s is an excellent round-up on the announcements and why they matter.

See Jon’s Windows Phone (i.e., Windows Mobile 6.5) post here.

The only thing I’ll add is that I went down to my local AT&T Wireless store this morning and tried out a new HTC Pure (a black one, not a purple one – this pic notwithstanding). It feels good, and looks good. The new IE browser is a massive improvement over the old Windows Mobile IE. I like the Marketplace, although it will take a little time for people to ramp up the volume of apps. (HINT: there’s a strong first-mover opportunity here, as it will be harder to get attention for your app later on.)

All in all, I probably would’ve bought it but for one thing: typing was a major challenge for me. I’ve never had a smart phone without a physical keyboard, and I don’t think I’m ready to start. I’ll wait to upgrade until the Tilt 2, a new version of the Samsung Jack, and/or other Windows Mobile 6.5 keyboarded phones are available. My friendly local AT&T rep says they should have all their new phones within the first 2 weeks of November.

Finally, here’s a more thorough review on the Windows Mobile 6.5 HTC Pure.

Technorati Tags: Windows Phone,Windows Mobile 6.5

Use technology to make life better

john.mullinax — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 02:20:00 GMT

Use technology to make life better – for your family, friends, neighbors, customers, suppliers, partners, and yourself.

Sounds obvious, and yet sometimes it’s not. Take the so called “mobile web”, which excels primarily in sucking. So often people try to do the wrong things with mobile devices. Perhaps it’s human nature to take what we know from the web and try to move it directly to the latest new screen. In any case, it doesn’t do much to make life better, IMHO.

Here’s some advice on how to re-think the so-called mobile web (and thanks to Steve Clayton for the pointer).

An Internet Watered Down

View more presentations from John Pettengill.

Some really excellent advice in there! Also: the basic concepts are not limited to mobile devices. Whatever you’re designing, think about how you can apply technology with broad context of what users are trying to accomplish in their lives. I sometimes talk about this as understanding the consumer value stream (which this great cartoon helps illustrate).

To re-use an example from my post here: when my wife asks me to pick up milk on my way home, I’m not really shopping – I’m commuting. Any shopping experience I have exists within that larger context of my commute. My local Kroger store recognized this and now puts milk at the front of the store – which means it’s more likely I’ll choose Kroger the next time my wife calls and says we’re out of milk.

Creating a positive impact in people’s lives with technology often means spanning boundaries between compartments that exist in their lives -- showing those boundaries to be artificial -- and doing it in a way that helps them achieve things they value. This might require experience designers to expand the way they think about the business they are in.

A few good examples..

The car didn’t always have a radio – bringing entertainment to driving a car was huge!
iTunes figured out syncing, organizing, and acquiring new music are best done together.
Live Search on Windows Mobile brings together searching for a business, and then finding it’s location (and me) on a map. Plus, it lets me speak the search, and read the results. (And yes, this was copied on the iPhone, too, but original credit goes to TellMe and the Live Search folks).
Ford Sync lets me control my media experience in the car with steering wheel controls or voice controls, and yet also take my media with me on Zune (or ipod, or Sensa) when I leave the car.

And a few examples where things could be better:

My car tells me when it needs service, and my phone (with calendar) is connected… why doesn’t my car propose actual service appointment times that matchup when I’m free and when the service shop has appointments available?
On the grocery store front, here’s a sampling of opportunities… (and see here for a lot more thoughts on improving the shopping experience)…

Why do some grocery sites have up to 3 different online shopping lists – none of them connected to each other?
And even though the grocery store knows everything I’ve previously purchased, why is that information not available for me to create a shopping list?
And why is there not a task-oriented version of that list automatically on my phone so I can check things off as I buy them?
And when I get an idea for something to cook off of Food Network, why can’t I just click a button to send the ingredients to my shopping list?
And if my regular store is out of stock on an item, why doesn’t the grocery chain tell me about another store in the area that has what I need (or suggest an alternative ingredient)?

Why can’t I check rates/availability for hotels from within my Outlook calendar -- where I do my trip planning and store travel itineraries?

I’m not saying any of these examples would be easy to implement (but neither are any of them technically that hard, I suspect). And I’m sure other folks have better ideas and better examples than what I’ve listed here (and I’d like to hear them).

All of this is just my 2 cents, of course. My sincere hope is that the slides above, and this little post, will help at least a few folks think about how to enable and empower users in ways that make their lives better. :)

Technorati Tags: innovation,mobile,consumer value stream

Amazing Day 1 Keynote at MIX!

john.mullinax — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 23:28:29 GMT

Wow -- so much at MIX I can't possibly do it justice right now, but check out the summary here. Really, really amazing stuff and some super announcements. Just a teaser:

Silverlight for Mobile devices -- and not just windows mobile but Nokia Symbian, too. Use common skills for rich media apps everywhere.
IE8 -- and true standards compliant browsing. Especially check out Activities and Web Slices in the keynote
Preview of the NBC Olympics site, based on Silverlight -- the most ambitious web media project ever.
Silverlight AOL email client -- showing off personalization and huge performance benefits of Silverlight over AJAX (conservatively, 2-3x in this case)
Announcement of new WPF physics engine and controls coming soon
A fantastic automotive B2C web site for Aston Martin -- with tie-ins to a UMPC WPF smart client guided selling in the dealership

See the video stream here.

Technorati Tags: MIX,wpf,silverlight,silverlight mobile

Ordering by RFID at McDonalds... Do I have to?

john.mullinax — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 22:38:36 GMT

Interesting stuff that McDonalds is doing in Seoul, Korea, to let customers order food with their cell phones. See here , and if your Korean is rusty, see here . The approach uses a flavor of RFID, which is sounds ok at first -- but it requires a software...(read more)

2-D Barcodes: Siren Song or Beach Party?

john.mullinax — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 03:44:44 GMT

Jon Box posted some about 2D barcodes a couple weeks back. In that post he threw down the gauntlet, challenging me to identify a set of business scenarios -- beyond the great examples he already listed -- that could leverage this technology to create...(read more)