Posts Tagged ‘phone’
Written on August 31st, 2009 by ADMINno shouts
Samsung Electronics will unveil its very own application store on Sept. 14.
For now, the U.K., France and Italy will gain access to more than 300 native apps at the virtual storefront’s debut.
Those providing content for the initial offering include Electronic Arts, Gameloft, Handmark, and Capcom, to name a few.
From an initial batch of three hundred, Samsung hopes to push its inventory up to more than 2,000 apps by the end of this year – mostly spanning in nature from ebooks to social networking.
In July, Samsung revealed the Application Seller Site portal, where developers and content providers can access, promote, and sell their Symbian and Windows Mobile applications in the app store that will launch in two weeks. (Developers can become members of the site for $1).
According to the official word from Samsung, Application Store availability will initially be restricted to Omnia and I8910 HD devices. Source: Mobile Marketing Watch
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Written on August 29th, 2009 by ADMINno shouts
Smartphones are double-edged swords for carriers. They attract big-spending customers, but tax networks designed for simpler times, explains Fortune.
Independent telecom analyst Chetan Sharma estimates that the typical wireless subscriber consumes 120 megabytes each month; typical iPhone owners use four times that.
And it’s just getting worse. By 2010, global mobile data traffic is expected to exceed 200 terabytes per month, six times last year’s levels, according to Cisco Systems.
“3G networks were not designed effectively for this kind of usage,” says John Donovan, AT&T’s chief technology officer, referring to the current generation of broadband wireless. “We fight the day-to-day guerrilla warfare as the customers move around.”
Many of AT&T’s 60,000 cell towers need to be upgraded, with new 850 MHz gear and backhaul. That could cost billions of dollars, and AT&T has kept a lid on capital spending during the recession. AT&T will delay their LTE upgrade, upgrading its HSPA 3G network from 3.6 Mbps to 7.2 Mbps, instead.
Verizon plans to have 30 US LTE Markets by 2010. Verizon will use their nation-wide 700 MHz band. The carrier hopes to have a data-only LTE trial service available in Seattle and Boston later this year.
It can’t come soon enough. The tsunami is about to hit. Android phones from Samsung, LG, and Motorola are due in stores by early 2010. Motorola will launch their Android portfolio on September 10th. The data-oriented Palm Pre, which operates on Palm’s WebOS platform, is already on Sprint and should be in Verizon stores early next year.
A Cisco Mobile Forecast for 2008-2013 noted that a single high-end data phone today generates more data traffic than 30 basic-feature cell phones, while a single laptop air card generates more data traffic than 450 basic-feature cell phones. Cisco projects that mobile data traffic will increase a thousand-fold over the seven years from 2005 through 2012, with video being a significant component.
AT&T offers free Starbucks WiFi (with a paid data subscription) while Verizon is partnering with Boingo to deliver free WiFi access at hotels, airports, restaurants and coffee shops (with a data plan). PCCW, the Hong Kong operator, has started using Wi-Fi hot spots to ease the load from smartphones and its digital TV service.
AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson has said that the most active 5% or so of data users are causing problems for the other 95%. AT&T is working on a revamped data plan whereby light data users would pay less, and heavy users would pay a premium rate — or leave.
Source: Dailywireless
Filed under Communication Apps
Tags:3G, 4g, Android, AT&T, LTE, mobile marketing, Motorola, phone, Samsung, Verizon, WIFI destinations
Written on August 29th, 2009 by ADMINno shouts
Information on the go has a new friend in Wikipedia.
The non-profit Wikimedia Foundation has rolled out the long awaited iPhone and iPod Touch application for Wikipedia.
As expected, the free app culls information from the massive (and still growing) user-generated online encyclopedia known as Wikipedia, which is already composed of approximately three million English-language entries.
The Wikipedia app was created using Rhomobile’s Rhodes mobile application development framework.
For now, users can read and review content on mobile phone formatted pages of Wikipedia but editing and adding content via the app is not yet possible at this time.
So there’s room for growth. And it seems growth is on the horizon for this particular app.
“It is a platform we are going to build on. The sky is the limit–we can do whatever we want,” says Wikimedia spokesperson Jay Walsh. Source: Mobile Marketing Watch
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Written on August 4th, 2009 by ADMINno shouts
Cue the theme from Jaws!The shark-centric programming that inhabits the Discovery Channel is coming to your mobile phone.
To celebrate the 22nd year of “Shark Week,” Discovery is working with FLO TV Incorporated to infest mobile marketing waters with sharks galore. In other words, Shark Week is coming to FLO TV’s live mobile TV service.The Shark Week channel will air on the FLO TV service through August 14.
“We are thrilled to add Discovery Channel’s Shark Week to FLO TV’s stellar content lineup. Shark fans will be able to watch exciting footage of this television event directly from their mobile device and in stunning clarity,” said Jonathan Barzilay, senior VP of programming, FLO TV.”
“By collaborating with FLO TV, we can extend this annual rite of summer to a whole new audience and bring fans another way to enjoy Shark Week with the high-quality mobile viewing experience that FLO TV offers,” added Rebecca Glashow of Discovery Communications.
Although Discovery fans are asking “what took so long,” it’s better late than never for Shark Week on our mobile phones. Source: http://www.MobileMarketingWatch/~3/nAQZuWmD0ag/
Written on August 3rd, 2009 by ADMINno shouts
A bumper addition. This is probably the most new devices (42) to hit our provisioning platform in a 7 day period since we launched in Summer 2007. The Palm Pre makes a welcome appearance and once again Samsung devices make up over 20% of the total. I’m constantly amazed at how many devices Samsung produce each with their own hardware and software configuration. Their production processes must be incredibly efficient and agile to support that much differentiation. They clearly deserve their 2nd place position behind Nokia. Source: http://www.paxmodept.com/telesto/blogitem.htm?id=788
Written on August 3rd, 2009 by ADMINno shouts
Welcome to Mercer house, Mr. Kelso. — Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski, in the FCC’s first major inquiry since Genachowski took over the agency on June 29, has launched an inquiry into AT&T and Apple over the rejection of Google’s voice application for the Apple iPhone.
On Friday, the FCC sent letters to executives at Apple, Google and AT&T, saying it was “interested in a more complete understanding of this situation.”
“AT&T does not manage or approve applications for the App Store,” the company said in a statement. “We have received the letter and will, of course, respond to it.”
The FCC wants to know the process behind the company’s rejection of Google Voice apps.
It also wants to know whether Apple acted alone or consulted with AT&T. Network neutrality appears to be a priority in the new FCC.
Google wants the mobile Web to be as open as the Internet, to enable them to use their apps and services on most any platform. Apple is not about being open. Every app on the iPhone (all 50,000 of them) must be approved. The first proceeding on open access dates back to 2007 when Skype requested that cell phone carriers open up their networks to all applications (see Skype’s petition here). Like Google Voice, Skype helps consumers bypass the carriers.
Apple approved the Major League Baseball streaming application which provides 15 three-hour baseball games live every single day of the week, and AT&T is apparently okay with that, too. But the carrier has restricted Sling’s SlingPlayer Mobile application to Wi-Fi only.
Mobile carriers don’t want to become “dumb” pipes. But public sentiment is moving towards an “open” platform that doesn’t close off competing applications or services.
The future of the wireless Web may be at stake, says Business Week. It’s Carterphone all over again. Meanwhile, Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt has resigned from Apple’s board.
Last week, Representatives Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) introduced the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009 (pdf).
This legislation would protect Net Neutrality under the Communications Act, says Savetheinternet.com, and safeguard the future of the open Internet, and protect Internet users from discrimination by network owners that increasingly seek to control the free-flowing Web. Timothy Karr of Free Press lists seven reasons why net neutrality is needed. Source: http://www.dailywireless.org/2009/08/03/fcc-its-midnight-in-the-apps-store-garden/
Written on August 1st, 2009 by ADMINno shouts
“Human beings need to touch, feel, show, share, and new technologies tend to cut them from such fundamental needs. It finally made an impact, and this is probably one of the main reasons behind the tiredness and rejection of technology you start to get from early adopters.” – Laurent Haug, The Early Adopters Crisis
The phone’s promise as a mini portable computer is being realized and we are increasingly using phones to virtually connect, often choosing text instead of voice; Facebook or Twitter over email. But, as our virtual interactions increase, a greater value is concurrently being placed on our real, physical connections. The most compelling applications will be those which infuse the virtual realm into our physical environment, creating synergies for tangible experiences and exchanges.
In the UK, postcard sales have risen by 30%. In 2007 Billboard reported a similar growth in vinyl record sales citing listeners desired a “warmer, richer” sound. Ranging from conference presentations at TED to a national Dentyne marketing campaign to Make Face Time, more and more people are “yearning for tangibility” according to the New York Times. Throughout history we are prone to backlash against our current realities. The grass is always greener somewhere else and nostalgia causes us to long for a seemingly happier, and in this case, more physically connected past. The answer is not to move away from technology, but rather to accept the current social challenge and design experiences which, as Renny Gleeson states, “make us more human, not less.”
How do we design meaningful tangible experiences? While I champion much of the philosophy behind MIT Media Lab and other related schools of thought, the results are really to meet our current social physical needs on a large scale. The answer isn’t to embed ordinary objects with technology, but rather to design our devices to encourage us to engage with our physical environments and each other. Contrary to many tangible media projects, the mobile phone is clearly identifiable as a technical device and it’s potential as a shared object has yet to be fully realized. Simple examples like pointing the phone outward to show someone a photo immediately creates a shared context resulting in a gratifying physical exchange. How can we push our existing personal devices to reach a whole new social level?
Let’s start with 5 principles we can follow. Like Adam Greenfield said in Everyware, “these principles are necessary but not sufficient: they constitute not an end, but a beginning.”
1 . Engagement creates a new shared experience
Social context and proximity of the device to other devices and people should drive the interaction. Culture is formed through “shared narratives”, not through individual exchanges. Punchcut’s Heckl Engine takes an individual’s mobile texts and tweets and projects it onto a public display. What was once a personal interchange is now a group dialogue, allowing everyone in the physical space to enjoy the resulting commentary.
2 . Helps people physically connect
There is no substitute for actually being there. According to John Thakara’s In the Bubble, being physically present allows your senses to take in 11 million bits/second of information. In contrast remote interactions only process 16 bits/second. Design technical experiences which help people get together. While the application Loopt (see http://www.loopt.com/) has its challenges, the fundamental aim to create social interactions is becoming more and more socially relevant.
3 . Physical reality remains unchanged
The virtual aspect of our mobile lifestyle should add a new dimension to our physical reality. The work of Mac Funamizu, specifically the Future of Mobile Search series and Train Ceiling as Info Screen layers digital content onto our tangible and virtual surfaces without changing the underlying structures.
4 . Doesn’t compete for attention
Keep people grounded in the here and now. The internet has changed the way we consume information. We’re slowly losing the ability to process larger chunks of information due to too many competing information inputs. Help people stay present in their social contexts. One way to achieve this is by ensuring your technical solutions don’t add to the clutter by including non-intrusive, ambient displays.
5. Emotional, not efficient
Design for HHI: Human Human Interaction. The Motorola research deparment has found that people are given more social points from friends for exchanges which require thought and effort, not those which are efficient. People are emotional beings. Designing group solutions which trigger an emotional response such as University of Leeds’ Dancing in the Streets or the pervasive Xbox 360’s Rock Band, will provide greater human and social value. As designers, we have the unique ability and responsibility to meet this growing desire for tangibility and to design applications which will compel users to engage with their physical surroundings. Source: Shilpa at https://xd.adobe.com/#/guestblogger/article/236 Shilpa is an Associate Interaction Design Director at www.punchcut.com. Source: http://idlemode.com/2009/06/20/designing-meaningful-real-world-experiences/
Written on August 1st, 2009 by ADMINno shouts
Recently at Punchcut the visual design team filled a white board with things related to interface design that drive us nuts. By no means is this an exhaustive list (and yes, I did filter the list before and after posting it).
DVD Menus – Stop it with the low budget animation and let me watch the movie. Also, would it kill them to include the whole song before the thing repeats?
Telephone UIs – the non-mobile kind
TV Remotes – Seriously, how many buttons do you need? A computer keyboard doesn’t have as many buttons as some of these things
Projector UIs
TV Menus
User testing politics – Not the testing, just the politics
Grey – Sometimes we’re sick of it. Sometimes we use it for everything.
Syncing – Every time you push the button you think, ‘which version did I just destroy?’
Using Illustrator for bitmaps
Photoshop’s layers panel – Great for editing photo layers, terrible for drawing UIs. Do I really have to name every single element I place on the screen just to be able to select it?
Acrobat - Why does it take 10 minutes to open a document?
Papyrus – The font, but also the paper if used in an interface context
Designing the same thing over and over
Too many panels – Screens looking boring? Draw a box around each UI element!
Zara’s Facebook friends
Inconsistency
Complexity – Yep, that’s right, we like things simple. Shocking.
Soft keys – on anything
5-way keys
Feature bloat
Wallpapers
Outlined type – See wallpapers
Trying to do too much with icons – Sometimes a word is worth a thousand pictures
Non-heuristic approach – I’m not sure what we meant here, but I’m sure it made us hopping mad
CAPTCHA
DRM
HDCP – Seriously, my TV doesn’t work 30% of the time when I power it up, even after I upgraded the firmware with a USB key. Unacceptable! It’s a TV! But it works just fine with torrents, hypothetically.
Acrylic buttons
Blue – Everyone L-O-V-E-S it in testing, though
Color coding – If you have more than two categories, you end up rainbow brite every time, and who can really keep it to two categories
Annunciator Bars – 46 pixels tall on a 220 pixel screen? Come on.
Analog clocks on digital UIs
Rounded corners – Except on things that could injure you: glassware, for example
Poorly rasterized text – Good type + lousy rasterizer = bad type
Source: http://idlemode.com
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Written on August 1st, 2009 by ADMINno shouts
The iPhone 3.0 software introduces a new app, Voice Memos, into the Apple canon. It’s function is simple enough: Tap one button to record, tap another to stop, tap one more to share via email. This is where the fun can begin.
To create your own ringtone from the audio of your choice, simply use Voice Notes to capture your soundbyte. The sky’s the limit, but you’ll need to keep the duration to 40 seconds or less. Use the share function to email yourself the file. You’ll notice the file will be saved as an .m4a, a format Apple has popularized as a flavor of Mpeg-4. But I digress.
Converting an .m4a into a ringtone that iPhone recognizes is dead simple. Simply change the filename extension to .m4r and drag it into iTunes. Next time you connect your iPhone, clicking the Ringtones tab in iTunes will give you the ability to sync your new ringtones to the phone. Have fun! Source: www.idlemode.com
Written on August 1st, 2009 by ADMINno shouts
A new study sponsored by SMobile Systems, a provider of mobile security solutions, has found that Symbian-based smartphones have a high risk of being infected with spyware and malware- in fact, one out of every 63 smartphones are already infected.
The study of 1,958 smartphones revealed infections by Spyware, Viruses Worms and Trojans, as well as hundreds of unlicensed software programs installed on the handsets reviewed. A comparison of these statistics to the worldwide smartphone population places the number of infected devices globally into the millions. Because the vast majority of these infections are designed to be stealthy and the fact that few smartphones posses Anti-Malware applications, most infected users are completely unaware their devices have been compromised.
Similar to the problem computer users have faced for decades, mobile spyware and malware creates an even bigger problem given the fact that mobile devices often times carry much more sensitive and personal information than computers do. In addition, the variety of ways mobile devices send and receive information leaves many doors wide open, so to speak, for hackers to spread their malware. The attacks have taken the form of worms and Trojans that are transmitted via Bluetooth, SMS, MMS, or email, as well as Spyware that is unwantedly being downloaded from various online application and shareware websites.
This raises concerns for the mobile marketing community as it will make consumers much more weary about opening SMS messages, email, Bluetooth connections and other forms of communication from advertisers, even though most will be legitimate. If the problem persists, and especially if other mobile operating systems are compromised, consumers will become very hesitant to interact with anyone other than people they know, making things even more difficult for brands and advertisers looking for personal and targeted ways to interact with consumers. Source: www.marketingwatch.com
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