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Friday, April 9th, 2010

Nokia N97 and iPhone 3GS

I’m going on about this like a stuck record, but it’s something I feel strongly about.

I was in a meeting at work the other day. The subject of the meeting was streaming formats, bitrates and accessibility to these streams. The usual boring work related subjects.  Along came the topic of mobile listening.  Asked by someone in the meeting “Do you own an IPhone David?” the answer was “no, no I don’t.”  And just like that, almost instantly, I was dismissed as having any sort of knowledgeable viewpoint or understanding of mobiles, streaming and their future.

Trying to bring to the meeting the idea that media organisations shouldn’t just concentrate on iPhone development, but multi platform support, bringing in devices such as Android and Blackberry was almost frowned upon, because it wasn’t the latest ‘in craze’, the iPhone.

Thinking about it afterwards, I should have said yes to the question posed to me. While I don’t own an actual iPhone,  it would seem that the term ‘ iPhone’ has become an umbrella term for anything smart phone like, and I do own an smart phone, a much smarter phone than an iPhone in my opinion. In pretty much in the same way that I own a Hoover, well I don’t, I own a Dyson, and the Tannoy system in our school was actually made by Panasonic, therefore it wasn’t Tannoy at all because Tannoy is a brand name of Sony.

I know a lot of people who love technology, love media, and quite often show me the ‘latest amazing thing’ that their iPhone can do. If I try and do the same with my Android phone I’m ignored because it’s not an iPhone.

With Apple releasing details of their latest iPhone OS4.0, news outlets like the BBC, Guardian, Telegraph and loads more are all over the story. I like these newspapers, but sometimes their over biased coverage of Apple products amaze me. And this is why your bog standard punter doesn’t know or like anything other than the iPhone, because Apple get so much coverage and the mainstream media are not at all interested in anything else.

This isn’t a dig at anyone I work with. It’s not a dig on iPhone users. It’s a dig on the general ignorance and perception of iPhone’s as a whole. Don’t get me wrong, there’s some things Apple and the iPhone do far superior than my Google Android phone. Brilliant marketing, seamless integration with your computer, well timed regular software updates and the games and graphics on an iPhone is far superior to any other phone I’ve seen .  But we shouldn’t put all our development eggs in one iPhone shaped basket. Once the iPhone app is ready we shouldn’t just sit back and rub our hands with glee because we have an fancy pants  iPhone app, because if we do that, we are alienating A LOT of people.

The future of mobiles isn’t the iPhone. It will play a large part of the future, but so will Android, Symbian, Blackberry, WebOS, Meemo and who knows what else as time goes by.

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Posted in Technology, blog | 2 Comments »

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

There’s no denying. Apple IPhones are very popular. Every 2nd person seems to have one. So quite rightly when a company, an organisation, an individual, whoever, decide that they want a mobile application (or app as they have now been abbreviated to) they quite rightly decide to make their app for the IPhone.

While it’s unlikely that one make or model of phone is going to overtake Apple’s domination of the market any time soon, I can see it being highly likely that in a year or so from now Google’s Android operating system will have taken the lead on the number of devices it’s installed on.

Google announced this week that Android is now available on 27 models of phone, and this number is only going to grow.

Anyone who has used the Android OS can tell you that it’s as good as the IPhone, and with it’s ability to multi task and less restrictive over what can be installed, it has many advantages over Apples system. What’s stopping it at the moment is the lack of apps compared to the IPhone.

So if you are a developer of mobile apps at the moment, while you may be tempted to develop solely for the IPhone, I’d also seriously consider making an app for Android as well. Because in a years time I personally believe that Apple are going to have a serious competitor on their hands.

I’ve started learning Java with the aim of trying to get my head around making Android appications. Maybe within a year, when I believe my Android prediction to come true, I will be ready to release an app.

Of course I say all this being an Android fanboy. I’m biased. I want to see it do well. If you’re developing a mobile application and you want it to get the highest possible user base then really you should still be developing for Symbian (found on most Nokia phones) who accounted for 50% of the OS’s installed on mobile phones sold in Q2 of 2009, compared to only 12% for the IPhone OS and only 2.8% for Android.

[Update: 17/02/10] Some interesting statistics on this article here.  Apparently 60,000 phones  a day ship with the Android OS. That’s 21.9 million a year.  Apple shipped 8.7 million IPhones in the last quarter, or 34.8 million a year.  The gap is closing.

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Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

I’ve always been a fan of Google. You probably know that by now. I use their search engine. I use their browser. I use their phone. I use their email. I even have my work in Google thanks to some clever Microsoft Exchange filters. Anyone who sends me a text message appears in my Google Mail. I use their maps. I’ve blogged about it all in the past. So it would only be right to blog about their latest invention.

Out of the blue, out of nowhere, last night came Google Buzz. It’s billed as some sort of cross between Facebook, Twitter and Google Mail. Think email meets social networking. You’re confused aren’t you? I am. I like it’s idea… I think. I’m just not entirely sure what it’s for. And I think a lot of people are thinking the same.

Buzz is a new tab in my Google inbox. And I have my Google inbox open all day every day. Whenever I’m at a computer, my Google inbox is there. And so is Buzz now. All of my contacts in Google are now also there. That includes friends, colleagues and acquaintances. My Google Buzz is closely linked to my Twitter, Flickr and this blog. I make a post on one, and appears in my Buzz. I can also make individual buzzes separate from any other service. And then any of my Google contacts can then make a comment on that buzz, whatever it may be.

What Buzz seems to good at is geo-tagged buzzes (is buzzes the collective term we’re going with by the way?) Google actively encourage you to include your location on your buzzes, so people around you know what’s going on near you. Location aware social network is going to take off massively this year. Twitter is already allowing you to geo tag tweets. Mobile phones with internet access and GPS devices are pretty common, it makes sense to combine the two to give a better localised experience for all.

Will I use it more than I use Twitter? Probably not. But then my Twitter account lay almost dormant, updated once a month at best for its first 12 months. Same with my Facebook. There’s a chance the same could happen with Google Buzz.

What I’d like is a service that all my social network posts, whether it be Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Last.FM, Buzz, Picasa, YouTube, WordPress are all linked in as one. Some websites already offer services like that, but I’d quite like it to be handily in my Google inbox, and while Buzz gets very close to that, it just doesn’t quite seem to do it… yet.

But it’s still early days. I will be watching and participating with interest.

Tweet was the social media buzz word of 2009, will Buzz be the same for 2010?

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Monday, December 21st, 2009

Santa came for a visit to Original 106 today, to speak to kids across the North East on the wireless.

It was a perfect opportunity to do something interesting with the website. Tracking Santa was an idea that came up in the office during last week. Something similar to the NORAD Santa website that is run every Christmas Eve.

As he started his journey from Lapland this morning, we tracked him as he made his way to Aberdeen.

Track Santa

A few people asked me during the day on Twitter what was the technology behind it?  Simple answer, Google Maps and a tracking device on Santas sleigh. Simple eh?

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Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

mobilephone
You know those telly ads you’re seeing a lot of at the moment, the ads that say you can send in your old phones for recycling and get them turned into cash? You probably thought, like me at the time, surely that’s a bit of a con, surely that won’t work?

Well think again.

With an impending tax bill due on January 31st, and my saving not going as well as I’d have hoped, I decided to see if I could indeed convert my old mobiles to cash.

I had two phones for exchange. A Nokia N95 8GB. In its day it was the king of mobile phones. But 2 years later this workhorse of a mobile is battered, scratched and ever so slightly unresponsive after a beer spilling incident back in June. The recycling company Mobile Phone XChange gave me the best quote for this phone. Up to £114 they said. I knew I probably wouldn’t get anywhere near that, but thought it would be worth a go none the less.

I also added a Sony Ericsson K800i in the envelope I sent back. Older, not as high spec, but certainly not as battered as the Nokia N95. Mobile Phone XChange said I’d get up to £25 for it.

3 days after sending a received an email from Mobile Phone XChange. £25 for the Sony Ericsson, and £60 for the Nokia. The reason they wouldn’t give me any more for the Nokia because, and I quote, “there was a PIN lock on it, so they couldn’t check how well it worked.” I was rather chuffed, £60 for the Nokia is more than I would have charged for it if I had been selling it on Ebay. Infact I probably wouldn’t have sold it on Ebay because it was nearly at the end of its working life. But I thought, “hmm, I wonder what would happened if I emailed them the PIN number?”

A day after emailing the PIN number they said “in that case you can have the full £114″. 3 days later the money was in my bank account.

So in total I got £139 for two phones that I still think to this day are worthless.

I can’t entirely work out how these companies are able to afford paying for all these phones, or even what they do with them. I believe that in some cases they recycle the phones and in some cases they send them to Africa.

There is one downside to all this. I’m now having sleepless nights thinking that some poor sole in Africa is using my beer soaked phone and cursing at it in the same way I did when it wouldn’t respond.

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Posted in Technology | 2 Comments »
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