Mobile – Page 2 – ɔimoɈɒ

Find my Friends isn’t quite there yet. Unlikely to be.

While Apple can do no wrong in software and hardware (other than be TOO POPULAR), they often fail in one area and that’s social. Find my friends is the third social attempt by Apple. They’ve failed to set the industry on fire with Ping (their music sharing social network) and Game Center (their game matching … Continue reading “Find my Friends isn’t quite there yet. Unlikely to be.”

While Apple can do no wrong in software and hardware (other than be TOO POPULAR), they often fail in one area and that’s social. Find my friends is the third social attempt by Apple. They’ve failed to set the industry on fire with Ping (their music sharing social network) and Game Center (their game matching service) and now we have real world location with Find my friends.

Find My Friends is “better” for some values of “better” than the other attempts but it still highlights a lack of vision, a lack of “what could this do, where could this go”.

For instance: I’ve added a couple of people on Find My Friends.

Setting Status
Finding friends is one part of the equation but being found is another. Where is the option to set a status update so that people can see this. Even something as simple as “Busy” or “Available” will let people know if they should message you. This is even more important than selecting the “temporary” setting to be found.

Geofencing
Where is the alert that tells me my friends have entered within a mile of my location? Having a travelling GeoFence is an obvious feature for Find My Friends enabled smartphone users. And yes, it could be great for the untrustworthy or unfaithful but giving people an iota of credit, if there’s a ‘situation’ where location becomes an issue, the stupid will get caught.

Finding Friends Again. And again.
I have connections established by Ping and Game Center but Find My Friends wants to rifle through my address book to find people I can connect to? Really? In 2011, this is a solution? Why not give me a list of my Ping and Game Center connections and just ask me if I want to add them to my FMF list?

Time Alerts
Why can’t I set my non-existent status alert by the time of day or by the entries in my calendar? This stuff is all interconnected. Why doesn’t it just work? For that matter, why does my phone still ring when I’m plainly in a meeting! I don’t think Siri will help with that!

Group Messaging
Where’s the option to message all of my friends? Where’s the option to ping them with a “Anyone free for lunch” or to set a status change “Free for lunch”. Where does this actually work for friends? In the video, they say it’s good for when the family (obviously all toting iPhones) are at Disneyworld but seriously do we have to message each one individually?

The daft thing is that group messaging is excellently supported in Messages (via iMessage) but not in Find My Friends. Dumb.

So, in my opinion, Find My Friends, just like Ping and Game Center, is a pretty half-assed solution. Apple can still tie this all together and make it just work and maybe they will – maybe this is all part of the plan. Maybe the NEXT MAJOR RELEASE will tie all of these loose ends together? But I doubt it.

Cultural Tourism – new apps competition!

A new Cultural Tourism app competition for Northern Irish mobile companies. The DCAL initiative aims to harness the innovation and entrepreneurial potential of culture, arts and leisure by encouraging local digital companies to use these sectors as a source of inspiration and content for mobile Apps. Digital technologies are transforming how people access information and … Continue reading “Cultural Tourism – new apps competition!”

A new Cultural Tourism app competition for Northern Irish mobile companies.

The DCAL initiative aims to harness the innovation and entrepreneurial potential of culture, arts and leisure by encouraging local digital companies to use these sectors as a source of inspiration and content for mobile Apps. Digital technologies are transforming how people access information and how business sectors, such as tourism, communicate with consumers. Billions of Apps are downloaded globally each year and this competition offers opportunities to grow the creative industries and tourism sector in the north of Ireland.

The competition is being managed by Momentum / Digital Circle, which promotes the ICT and digital content sector in the north of Ireland. Local digital companies are invited to put forward creative and innovative ideas for two apps showcasing Irish and Ulster-Scots culture respectively. The winning applications will be funded to develop the apps in time for the 2012 tourism season.

The tender documents are located:

GeoFencing vs Check-In

I was pitched yesterday by a local location-based-services start-up. I’ll not mention the company unless I get the nod from the founder. At one point I asked a question about location processing and while it was a slightly technical question, it caused a pause. Most location services use either geofencing or check-ins. Check-ins are where … Continue reading “GeoFencing vs Check-In”

Most location services use either geofencing or check-ins.

Check-ins are where you hope that the user is so addicted to your services that they will remember to check in by launching your app. Tapping the “Check In” button then sends a message to the company server and your check-in is saved in the cloud. In my opinion, if your service relies on check-ins, then you’re an idiot.

Geo-fencing is a “virtual perimeter” service. The software maps real-world locations onto a virtual map and the software takes action when you move around in the real world because you may cross a virtual fence on the virtual map. This is the sort of technology used in criminal tags, for security of physically located services or for the protection of children or vulnerable adults. For this to work, location-based services have to be running constantly on the device. And when a match is found, EITHER a message is displayed on device or a message is sent to the GeoFence server.

The question is: is location processed on phone or in the cloud?

When the device moves and crosses a fence, does the software on the phone calculate this on its own from a locally stored database or is the location of the device sent constantly to a server in the cloud and compared to a database on the server.

Nearly every GeoFencing solution I’ve seen so far processes location in the cloud. This has some personal data security implications obviously (for those people who don’t like being tracked) but I’m more concerned about the data traffic and the drain on the battery.

A better solution, in my opinion, is to download the database of geofences to the device. A geofence, in its simplest form, is a point location and a radius. In theory, the entire database for a business could be downloaded quickly over a 3G connection. The location service checks location against the internal database and if it finds a match, posts a notification to the device screen or sends a message to the GeoFence server.

There’s a hundred uses of GeoFencing though I’ve seldom seen it used for anything really interesting. That’s a real shame because once you remove the security implications, it’s amazing technology. These implications are mostly in the minds of paranoid net-geeks and journalists desperate for a headline.

Anyone fancy going to the Southampton Boat Show in September?

The show is on from the 16-25 September in Southampton, no less. Advance tickets are very reasonable. See here. Just interested in seeing if other travellers would like to attend as I’d love to make the trip down maybe for one of the weekend days. Bringing this back into the realm of the day job: … Continue reading “Anyone fancy going to the Southampton Boat Show in September?”

The show is on from the 16-25 September in Southampton, no less. Advance tickets are very reasonable. See here.

Just interested in seeing if other travellers would like to attend as I’d love to make the trip down maybe for one of the weekend days.

Bringing this back into the realm of the day job: I went to the London Boat Show earlier this year and I was struck by one thing: how few of the traders and chandleries in the exhibition stands were prepared for taking payments other than cash. I’d see this sort of market ripe for companies like AirPOS to provide mobile points of sale turning netbooks, tablets and even phones into a point of sale for small businesses.

The first business show that I exhibited at really drilled home the concept:

Don’t give me your business card, give me your credit card.

For smaller items, you just want to buy, for larger items you want it to be shipping to your house just after you get home (or waiting in your office). Having a connected Point of Sale with an online store can make all of the difference. It pains me that so few companies take this on board.

Wonder if iCloud will bring this…

As we know, an iPhone or iPad can only be synced (usually) to one iTunes Library. And we know that Apple can contact every iOS device using Push Notifications, FaceTime, Find My iPhone and other neat network tooks. iCloud will apparently bring the ability to send any downloads to all associated devices on an Apple … Continue reading “Wonder if iCloud will bring this…”

So, why can the Devices section not be permanent – why is it only visible when a device is physically connected?

Why can’t I choose to drag and drop media to a device in my list no matter where it is. That’s essentially the promise of iCloud but it seems counter to the “Apple Way” to just have everything download.

Who was surprised by NOK-MSFT?

Kirsty Dorsey on NOKIA for Scotland on Sunday: Elop, the first non-Finn to run the company in its 140-year history, joined Nokia less than nine months ago from Microsoft, where he was head of the division responsible for the Microsoft Office line of products. He subsequently drove through a tie-up with Microsoft to develop Nokia … Continue reading “Who was surprised by NOK-MSFT?”

Kirsty Dorsey on NOKIA for Scotland on Sunday:

Elop, the first non-Finn to run the company in its 140-year history, joined Nokia less than nine months ago from Microsoft, where he was head of the division responsible for the Microsoft Office line of products. He subsequently drove through a tie-up with Microsoft to develop Nokia smartphones on the Windows Phone 7 platform, a deal that took the industry by surprise when it was announced in February.

Except of course if you were involved in the industry. For anyone who was remotely connected this wasn’t a surprise. During the summer of 2010, Nokia was pushing Symbian when we all wanted to hear about Meego. Symbian was already a dead platform that you’d have to pay developers handsomely to even consider developing for it.

When they changed their tune before Xmas 2010 and decided to talk to us about Meego, we already knew they were going Windows Phone 7. Any discussion of Symbian was pointless and even Meego with the lack of shipping hardware was a non-starter.

February and the subsequent changes since then have just proved us right all along. Symbian is now in sustaining with an external company, Meego is some sort of red-headed stepchild and the future is all WinPho7. And when the industry is rumbling that the Nokia phone business might be up for acquisition by Microsoft, I think others would be stupid to ignore it.

Why?

Two reasons.

Sony Ericsson, Motorola going Android
Apple growing in strength.

I’m bullish on WinPho7 anyway. I like the fact they haven’t just cloned the icons of the iPhone. It shows some of the brains that have been working at Microsoft over the years – innovation that rarely sees the light in a finished product due to the complex relationships within such a leviathan of a company.

The mistake Nokia made with WinPho7 was announcing the partnership in February and leaving it for at least 6 months before any hardware would be available. That’s just suicide.

Nokia as a company will come to depend utterly on Microsoft as a partner. I would be interested to see how they compete with the other WinPho7 partners. And at that point they may be an independent company or they may be part of the Microsoft machine. We are left to wonder who will care.

So, name a game on iOS most like Myth II: Soulblighter

Somewhat resigned to never seeing Myth II on an iPad any time soon* so I’m wondering what game out there most accurately captures the feel of the game? Not looking for a full RTS. An RTS is a mix of resource collection (Farmville), tower defence (PvZ) and real-time tactics (Myth). On the other hand if … Continue reading “So, name a game on iOS most like Myth II: Soulblighter”

Somewhat resigned to never seeing Myth II on an iPad any time soon* so I’m wondering what game out there most accurately captures the feel of the game?

Not looking for a full RTS. An RTS is a mix of resource collection (Farmville), tower defence (PvZ) and real-time tactics (Myth).

On the other hand if there are any people who’d like to throw in some time to create a new game, then I’ll show you my notes, design, writing etc. And we can go find some money.

*John Siracusa and Wil Shipley talked about porting Myth (the code was released to some and lives on in community sourced updates) and previous to that I had spoken to Take2 about who owned the rights. Both dead ends – the rights for this game are so heavily tied up that it would take a contortionist to unravel them.

iPad 2

I’ve been using the iPad 2 a lot this week – especially because the evening after I synced with my Mac, the Mac decided to develop a disk corruption issue. So Saturday morning was spent backing up my data so that I could do a quick re-install on Monday night (because, stupidly, I left my install disks in the office.) and it took all of Tuesday to restore my data because USB is rubbish protocol to transfer a lot of data. My Mac spent all of the downtime shut down and in a drawer until I could apply the remedies.

So iPad was my main machine from Friday evening until Tuesday evening. Not too long, you might say, but then I’m a heavy computer user.

And pretty much replace my laptop it did. With the HDMI adapter it mirrored flawlessly and allowed me to present at multiple meetings from within Keynote but also from within Pages and other apps. I was able to live demo games like Hungry Monsters to people on a massive projector screen. And it worked easier and quicker than any laptop I have ever used. There’s something to be said for simplicity.

I found myself more focused when writing up a report (with a three hour deadline). I found Keynote on iPad to be an absolute pleasure – even when I had to cut and paste multiple graphics between two different presentations. And it lasted the full day allowing me to wander around town with only the smallest of satchels containing only the iPad and a VGA adapter.

So when I read articles that say the iPad is the Holy Grail of Computing, I find it difficult to disagree. My family have a lot of 1st generation iPads and it is those family members who have the least IT problems. They don’t complain about browser crashes or slow internet. They don’t seem to have email problems and they’re really happy with the number and diversity of apps they have installed. For myself as the tech support guy who supports a family of non-techies, the iPad truly is the holy grail – even more than Mac OS X, which was a revolution in itself. iPad is just light years ahead of “general purpose” computers in terms of ease of use.

iPad is many things but I am becoming convinced it is not an eBook reader. I just don’t really enjoy reading plain ebooks on the iPad. I’ve not really tried Arlene’s Kindle with long form text but I don’t enjoy reading on the iPad – other than the copious amounts of text I consume on t’Internet. But where iPad shines is in the “modern” replacement for the book. Whether it’s the great apps by TouchPress or the amazing Alice for iPad (Youtube link), then there’s a change in what “books” are. And it’s bigger than the difference between hand-scribed books and the introduction of the Gutenberg press.

It’s not all roses of course. The lack of a “file bucket” to save things to can be a pain and it means extra steps to be a bit clever about sharing files. Thankfully, Dropbox provides an extremely compelling solution (and if you sign up using this link, I get extra space…wheee!) which syncs files between my Mac, my Windows installation, my iPad and my iPhone. In truth, I could keep everything in the Dropbox cloud and be extremely happy. But that’s my only criticism of the iPad and even that has a very nice workaround. – and if you use GoodReader (which has download-and-send-to-Dropbox support), then the workaround is complete. If only Apple supported iDisk this well. They could do a lot worse than to dump iDisk and use some of their $50B war chest to just buy Dropbox. Seriously – it’s that good.

Photos in iOS is possibly the most mind-numbing app. You can’t rotate photos. I mean – what? Considering the iPad has trouble orienting screenshots to the correct “gravity”, it seems like a curious and frankly frustrating omission.

Calendar on iOS is also weird in that you can’t swipe sideways between months but have to use a tiny arrow at the bottom. It’s like the developers forgot that they were developing for a touchscreen.

And notifications on iOS still suck as well. It’s the #1 thing I hope to see changed in iOS 5 (which we’ll likely see previewed at WWDC in June). There’s no way iOS should be saddled with modal alerts like we have now. The way they are implemented means that not only do I turn off the Alerts but when they come in, I’m tempted to write them down on paper as I dismiss them to help me remember what they were. That’s a nonsense. Maybe in iOS 5, a two-finder swipe down in Springboard will bring us to a Notifications manager? It could be that simple.

But none of these irritations change the fact that the iPad 2 is the best computer I’ve ever used. It’s ultra-mega-portable and when I combined it with a Bluetooth keyboard, a VGA adapter and a 19″ monitor, it turned into a usable workstation as well. Now that was a revelation.

I Want A Facetime Availability Tool

I really like FaceTime but it has two major issues (not including the “Works only over WiFi” thing. Closed protocol. I’m not really an Open Source advocate – I’m an Open Standards and Formats advocate. The fact that Skype has been permitted to gain such a stranglehold pains me because of their lacklustre support for … Continue reading “I Want A Facetime Availability Tool”

I really like FaceTime but it has two major issues (not including the “Works only over WiFi” thing.

Closed protocol. I’m not really an Open Source advocate – I’m an Open Standards and Formats advocate. The fact that Skype has been permitted to gain such a stranglehold pains me because of their lacklustre support for platforms and their poor UI. Look at Skype 5 as a perfect example.
FaceTime is based on numerous technologies:
- H.264 and AAC – video and audio codecs respectively
- SIP – IETF signaling protocol for VoIP
- STUN, TURN and ICE – IETF technologies for traversing firewalls and NAT
- RTP and SRTP – IETF standards for delivering real-time and encrypted media streams for VoIP
While FaceTime is based on open standards, Apple’s FaceTime service requires a client-side certificate. I.e. while the protocol might be open, access to Apple’s FaceTime service is controlled by Apple.
I don’t mind access being restricted (helps prevent spammers, prank calls) but it should be open as we’re 9 months now since it was released.
Lack of Availability Notifications. As FaceTime only works on WiFI, it would be nice to have some sort of notification of availability. Maybe a third party could work with Google Latitude to detect where a client was and the app could have some locations set as “Available, With WiFi”. I know we’ve coped in the past with phone calls but this is a little different. Add a little flag for “Please don’t call now” and you’ve got the makings of a great little service. Of course, that would only work if FaceTime has some sort of URL schema which brings me back to the first point.

What would improve the service for you?

Where are the apps we’ve been waiting for?

It has been nearly a year since I first came in close contact with the original iPad. It blew my mind, and since then, it has become a daily accompaniment. I create content on my MacBook Air, but I spend a lot of time consuming content and media on the device. In fact, if I … Continue reading “Where are the apps we’ve been waiting for?”

It has been nearly a year since I first came in close contact with the original iPad. It blew my mind, and since then, it has become a daily accompaniment. I create content on my MacBook Air, but I spend a lot of time consuming content and media on the device. In fact, if I had to guess, I use my iPad as much as I use my notebook computer.
…
However, if iPad, the device, is more magical, the applications (apps) for the device are anything but. For nearly a year, I’ve been waiting (and waiting) for experiences befitting the device and its hardware capabilities. – OM Malik, GigaOm

I concur. I’m still waiting for the amazing experiences that we think we deserve when we tote around such amazing hardware. And if that goes for iPad, then it goes double (or maybe tenfold) for Android, WebOS and anything else out there.

We do have time, however. The mouse went from humble beginnings in academic and commercial research in the 60s to initial release with the Macintosh in 1984 and it’s still probably the major input metaphor for computers in existence. We have been poking at our computer screens with a single fingertip, the mouse cursor, for over two decades. While we all like the look of the future with multi-touch (and from the Kinect, zero-touch) interfaces, we still await the apps which will fulfil this promise to us. New touch-based methods to consume old style media ain’t a big deal.

We want mobile-optimised hyper-local-aware software, designed for touch and equipped with contextual understanding and social-network awareness so we can get the most personalised experience.

And this is the low bar.

If we can think of apps that can fill this criteria in minutes, imagine what we could do if we were in that business, if our job was to not only talk about the next big thing but be part of the team creating it.

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