casey glass: archive

This is my archive of posts, samples and other favourites.

[mobrule]

Video: Nokia W9 Sea Ray Leaked

[caseyg]

Originally posted on mobrule:

Nokia wasn’t supposed to be releasing hardware running Windows Phone 7 until well into 2012. This latest video shows the upcoming Sea Ray running a production ready version of Mango, the next version of WP7. If the hardware looks familiar, its very similar to the first (and probably last) Meego handset, the Nokia N9.

[caseyg]

Opinion: Why Facebook will never create a "Dislike" button or Google a "-1" button.

I've been using the new Google + social network this week, and it didn't take long for me to see calls for a "-1" button, in much the same vein as calls for a "Dislike" button on Facebook. 

My take on all this: it will never happen.

Spend one day working on the other side of one of these kinds of systems and you will soon figure out why nobody, on any kind of social network system with an advertising revenue business funding it has implemented a negative scoring system for commentary on content.

 One of the arguments I had in response to this point was "that'd be purely commercial, rather than user based functionality." True, it is commercial, but isn't that the reason these pieces of online real estate are built? Google's (and any other successful online media company) main goal is to create advertising revenue opportunities based on the content and traffic. Thats how employees and investors get paid.

One of the foundation rules in my experience is to make sure the advertising opportunities work for the advertiser and there are no ways for the users of the system to taint the advertisers through the built in behaviours of the system. Coke wouldn't spend millions and millions of dollars on Facebook ads, apps and content to build a Facebook community of over 31 million people if users could "Dislike" their posts and content. Sure, people can post negative comments, but those can be moderated, and they also take effort to write. They also have to "Like" the page to start with and for the less committed trolls that is enough to keep them out. A one click micro-commitment (Like or +1) however is something that is so incredibly easy to do and is an amazingly powerful way to distribute a brand message through the network. If they were able to be negative (Dislike, or -1) these networks would turn into an epic trollfest and would eventually implode. The costs to manage these online communities is hard enough work as it is. Businesses wouldn't touch them with a ten foot pole.

I have always seen the Like button as a vote for content and the creation of the +1 button by Google reinforces that way of thinking about the Like button. If people want to "Dislike" or "-1" something so badly, then I would suggest that they create a piece of content that supports their point of view and get people to "Like" or "+1" that instead. I'm pretty certain once they did that they would soon appreciate why there isn't a "Dislike" or "-1" button.

[mobrule]

Domino's Mobile Website Generates $1 Million In One Week

[caseyg]

Originally posted on mobrule:

Mobile online retail is the future and Domino’s Australia have released some impressive statistics on just how valuable it has been to their business so far. In it’s first week the Domino's Mobile Website brought in over $1 million dollars in revenue!

Impressive performance, and it is not beginners luck.

Domino’s iPhone app, released in November 2009 has been downloaded over 600,000 times and brought in more than $2 million in revenue. With the introduction of the new mobile website, Domino’s have opened up their revenue opportunities to include any mobile device with a web browser, not just the iPhone.

This speaks volumes for the power of using an open platform strategy. The mobile website brought in over the period of a week, half the revenue that their iPhone app did during 19 months of operation.

Domino’s are projecting that online ordering (desktop web, iPhone app, mobile web) will produce 50% of their revenue in the next 3 years, and that orders from all mobile devices will make 25% of the companies total revenue.

Links:

Domino's Mobile Ordering Promo Site

[mobrule]

Microsoft Supports Windows Phone 7 Jailbreak Developers

[caseyg]

Originally posted on mobrule:

Rather than emulate the cat and mouse game that Apple is constantly engaged with Jailbreak developers iPhone Dev Team et al, Microsoft have taken the road less traveled and entered into a landmark deal with ChevronWP7 which will allow ChevronWP7Labs to offer an unlocking service for homebrew developers.

An official jailbreak for Windows Phone 7 will help enthusiast developers to dabble in WP7 development without the costs of subscribing to App Hub.

Rafael Rivera (pictured) along with Chris Walsh, Long Zheng make up ChevronWP7. Photo Source

[mobrule]

Rapid Prototype Development with Mockups2Android

[caseyg]

Originally posted on mobrule:

One of the best ways to cut down on development costs and increase your chances of delivering a successful product is to be constantly testing your designs throughout your development processes.

If you’e developing a mobile product for Android and use Balsamiq Mockups, Mockups2Android by Reality Mechanic is a great tool for getting your wireframes onto an Android device and into the hands of users to see if you’re interaction designs and user interface is up to scratch before you start coding.

The app brings your wireframes to life; users can enter text into fields, scroll through lists, interact with maps and more. And when all that is happening on an actual device rather than on a laptop screen or printed on paper, your user testing is going to be so much more effective.

At about £40 the app is pretty pricey, but there is a free demo you can try out before you put your hard earned cash down.

Links:

Mockups2Android on Market Demo

Mockups2Android on Market Full Version

Reality Mechanic

[mobrule]

Opinion: Honeycomb Is One Hot Sticky Mess

[caseyg]

Originally posted on mobrule:

I would like nothing more than to see the tablet market get a bit more variety in it. A monoculture isn’t a healthy situation, but if Google doesn’t get their shit together and start making a tablet interface that you can pick up and start using without having to refer to a manual to use then a monoculture is what the tablet market will become.

I’m a fan of Android, I am currently using Cyogenmod 7 on an HTC Desire. So you could say I am pretty well versed in the interface conventions of Android. I find it fast and intuitive. Google did a really good job on Gingerbread, and Cyanogen did a good job in keeping the UI as stock as possible whilst adding a few tweaks to improve the OS that little bit more.

Honeycomb is such a massive departure from Gingerbread in its interface conventions and interaction design that not even I could figure it out in 5 minutes in a Telstra shop on a Saturday morning - which is how most people will ultimately determine their purchasing decision.

The UI is often referred to as being “holographic”  - it sure does look cool. But is it usable?

Take a look at the video review above of the Motorola Xoom from PhoneArena and skip to about 5m00s in when the OS review starts, by 7m30s things just start to become one big hot mess of panels flying around, changing backgrounds, popups and icons. It feels like a mashup of scenes from The Minority Report and TRON.

Maybe Honeycomb really is a better way to use tablets - but I wouldn’t know. I gave up trying to figure out the mess of screens and panels and walked out of the store. Maybe Google will figure out a way to make their futuristic UI somewhat usable to the casual user of the present, until then the iPad will continue to dominate the tablet market.

Screenshot of Android Honeycomb: WTF is going on here?

[mobrule]

Building A Better Mobile Keyboard Experience

[caseyg]

Originally posted on mobrule:

Ever noticed how the main offender for bad autocorrect appears to be the iPhone?

I’m not saying that other platforms don’t have the same problem, but since Apple doesn’t allow developers to replace existing functionality such as keyboards on iOS devices, it a problem that only Apple can fix.

Not so on Android, there are many keyboards available on the Market, some are good, some are just redesigned keyboard layouts that offer little improvement over the default keyboard.

SwiftKey X is more than a redesigned keyboard layout. What sets it apart is it’s autocorrect function that learns the words your own distinct vocabulary from the messages you write when texting, emailing, Facebooking, Twittering and builds its autocorrect functions around the way you communicate.

[mobrule]

Mobile Browser Redirect Script

[caseyg]

Originally posted on mobrule:

Image source: http://xkcd.com/869/

Looking to implement a mobile browser detection and redirection script on a site?

The open source Detect Mobile Browser script does what it says on the can.

With scripts for..

Apache 

ASP 

ASP.NET 

ColdFusion 

C# 

IIS 

JSP 

JavaScript 

jQuery 

nginx 

node.js 

PHP 

Perl 

Python 

Rails

…it should pretty much cover most production environments.

PS. I haven’t tried this one out, but if you have let me know how it went in the comments!

[mobrule]

Video: Vodafail The Musical (Lady Gaga - Telephone)

[caseyg]

Originally posted on mobrule:

The epic failure of the Vodafone Network earlier this year “Vodafail” caused many consumer responses online but none as amusing as this one from Melbourne comedy duo TV Live on Stage.

[mobrule]

.NET and C# Developers Get Mono For Android Toolset

[caseyg]

Originally posted on mobrule:

Novell has just released Mono for Android, a product that enables .NET and C# developers to run their applications using native Android APIs on the Linux-based OS without needing to learn Java. Novell released a similar product for iOS MonoTouch in 2009.

Novell has provided tutorials and sample projects on GitHub for developers to see what can be done with the new tool: https://github.com/mono/monodroid-samples

However its not all sunshine and lollipops, GNU Project founder Richard Stallman has warned developers against using Mono for their applications saying that they could be leaving themselves vulnerable to future patent litigation from Microsoft.

The danger is that Microsoft is probably planning to force all free C# implementations underground someday using software patents. This is a serious danger, and only fools would ignore it until the day it actually happens. We need to take precautions now to protect ourselves from this future danger.

For more a more upbeat theme on using Mono for your applications, follow project founder Miguel de Icaza on Twitter: @migueldeicaza

[mobrule]

Windows Phone 7 Reaches 10,000 Apps Faster Than iOS or Android

[caseyg]

Originally posted on mobrule:

Windows Phone 7 is a quiet achiever, and quite the achiever.

After only a year, the Windows Phone Marketplace has clocked up some impressive stats:

11500 apps in the Marketplace. This figure is not including wallpapers or free trial versions of apps, or apps submitted in multiple languages. It’s also more apps than either iOS or Android achieved in their first 12 months.

7500 paid Apps are listed in the Marketplace, 44% of these have a free trial version available.

1100 apps are supported by Microsoft Advertising Ad Control

36000 developers have paid to become members of the App Hub community

14400 registered Windows Phone developers have published an app or game 

1.5 million copies of the Windows Phone Developer Tools have been downloaded

12 is the number of apps the average user downloads to their Windows Phone handset

1.8 days is the average time it takes for an app to be approved

Considering that Windows Phone 7 was a late starter and its handsets don’t get a lot of coverage, these are pretty impressive stats. It will be interesting to see how the recent Nokia alliance impacts these figures in the next 12 months.

Windows Team Blog

[mobrule]

What's Missing From iOS Is Already In Android

[caseyg]

Originally posted on mobrule:

When reading recent Greg Kumparak’s piece on Mobile Crunch “10 Things That Simply Need To Be In iOS 5” it sound like the feature list of Android 2.2 (FroYo) which has been out for over 6 months.

Unobtrusive notifications

Tun-by-turn navigation

Custom text notification sound

Native GMail client

Side-loading apps

Wireless Media Syncing

Better file system

A usable lockscreen

NFC

Background data syncing for apps

Ok, so NFC isn’t supported in 2.2, but it is in 2.3 on the Google Nexus S running Gingerbread.

[mobrule]

How Android is #winning

[caseyg]

Originally posted on mobrule:

According to the latest data from comScore, Google’s Android platform is now the number one smartphone platform in the US:

69.5 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the three months ending in February 2011, up 13 percent from the preceding three-month period. Google Android grew 7.0 percentage points since November, strengthening its #1 position with 33.0 percent market share. RIM ranked second with 28.9 percent market share, followed by Apple with 25.2 percent. Microsoft (7.7 percent) and Palm (2.8 percent) rounded out the top five.

Source

That second table showing OEM figures is particularly interesting. Apple gets so much attention that you would think they sell phones to more people than any other manufacturer. But the numbers say differently. They are far from that point, and they are losing the smartphone platform market to many of the same manufacturers they are lagging in the handset market.

The 3.5 Inch Punch

Apple took smartphones from the business world and put them firmly into the hands of every day folks. Since then its been a tough battle for handset manufacturers to stay in without drastically changing their strategy. Remember when this was the coolest phone you could buy?

Motorola sold millions of those Razr phones - until the iPhone came out.

With the iPhone, Apple raised the bar beyond anything previously seen on a mobile phone. The whole industry just got pwned.

Motorola wasn’t alone, Sony Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung, HTC, LG and everyone else needed to lift their game if they were going to get out of this alive.

Then along came Google and their open source Android saviour.

Death By A Thousand Cuts

Android was leaps and bounds ahead of where any of them were going to get on their own - and it came with an App Marketplace. With the operating system being provided for free, the handset manufacturers could spend more of their development budgets on designing better hardware and then customise the Android UI on their handsets so they could differentiate their handsets from the others using the same platform. This has been the best strategy for many handset makers to compete against the iPhone.

Do one thing and do it well

Apple has proven that they are great at concentrating their efforts on one thing and doing that really, really well. This has provided them great benefits in marketing, device compatibility and getting developers to build applications for the App Store. This strategy does have one weakness; there is only one current model of iPhone on the market at any one time. 

Apple follows a very structured product release calendar. You can just about set your watch to it. They also have a very methodical product management system.

Just look at iPad 2. What is really different about it from the first iPad?

Front camera

Rear Camera

Thinner

Faster CPU

As far as hardware goes, thats pretty much it.

Look at the differences between the iPhone 3GS to the iPhone 4:

Front camera

Flash for rear camera

Higher resolution screen

Faster CPU

Keep going back through all their product releases and you will start to see a pattern of releasing one or two new features which keeps the hardware at parity at a “good enough” level rest of the market until the release of the next model (which is always at least 12 months away to keep carriers happy as they churn subscribers from one iPhone to the next every 12-24 months). It has been rumoured that the iPhone 5 is being delayed to maximise revenue from the Verizon CDMA iPhone 4.

With each Apple hardware releases comes a new iOS release. Apple doesn’t like to iterate the OS out of sync with their hardware. When you buy Apple, you buy the hardware and software as a combined package. And whilst you might be able to run the new iOS version on an older device, it would be a tough sell to get you to buy the new iPhone if it had all the same software features of the old iPhone.

Iterate fast, and iterate often

Google don’t sell hardware, so they dont have this problem. Through their rapid software iterations and the constant iterations of multiple hardware partners Google has been able to move quickly through the gaps that Apple has left behind in the marketplace. The Android operating system isn’t bound to specific hardware releases so it has been able to innovate and develop very quickly. When the operating system is ready for production it is released to handset manufacturers who start using it in their product lines. There are well over 100 smartphones designed around Android. Apple has released just 4 phones that use iOS.

What if you need a physical keyboard? What if you need a bigger screen? What if you need a smaller handset? What if you need it to be waterproof? What if you dont want to spend more than $500 on a phone? 

Using Android, the other handset manufacturers have been able to target these weaknesses in the Apple iPhone by building different devices for different users needs. With Android they have been able to offer what people love about the iPhone, but also all the things that many find are missing from it.

By iterating the operating system without being bound to any specific hardware iteration cycle Google has been able to gain an astounding amount of market share with Android in a very short amount of time.

[mobrule]

Facebook Goes Hard for Mobile Web

[caseyg]

Originally posted on mobrule:

Facebook has had phenomenal success with their iPhone app, and mediocre success with their Android app until they brought it’s development in-house (having the company contracted to develop the Android Facebook app being acquired by Google didn’t help). Both these apps have been developed by relatively small teams (starting with teams of one in both cases). These apps have pretty much reached feature parity now, but what if you’re one of the millions of people who use Facebook through a phone that doesn’t have apps?

Up until today Facebook has had three separate mobile sites:

0.facebook.com built purposely for low bandwidth networks (access being offered without any data charges on many carriers networks)

m.facebook.com for feature phones and devices with limited web browsers

touch.facebook.com for touchscreen devices and smartphones.

From this week Facebook will be using a single platform to serve the mobile web version of their social network via m.facebook.com. The new site is fast. Really fast. it’s faster than app fast which really surprised me when I first tried it out, and the benefits aren’t just for the users.

Facebook previously had to recode every feature for each mobile web platform: 0, mobile, touch. Then there are all the apps; Android, iPhone, Blackberry etc. All this takes time and in some cases features just weren’t being delivered to some platforms.

Lee Byron, Interactive Information Designer at Facebook says that is all about to change:

Every device uses the same framework. This way we can move even faster and build new features just once for every mobile device. It also means that everyone can access the same features, whether writing messages or checking into Places. There will no longer be a difference between m.facebook.com and touch.facebook.com, we’ll automatically serve you the best version of the site for your device.

Given that Facebook is achieving such great economies (and performance) through this development initiative, I wonder if it is part of their roadmap to eventually migrate app users to the mobile web, and if it is, how would they do it?

[mobrule]

Videos: How to Market a Mobile Phone

[caseyg]

Originally posted on mobrule:

I was browsing YouTube the other day and started to see some quite distinct differences in how the different mobile operating system and handset manufacturers market themselves to consumers.

Microsoft Windows Phone 7: Windows is all about getting out of your phone and back to your life. 

HTC Desire/Android: Android on HTC is all about making your phone more about you.

Apple iPhone 4: Apple is all about your enriching your life through their phone.

RIM Blackberry: Blackberry helps you do the things you love doing better.

Some interesting points I noticed in all these ads; the only ones that make both the OS and the hardware are RIM and Apple and they both pitch their product as something that makes your life better. Counter this with HTC’s Android pitch which is about you enriching the phone. They’re completely opposing points of view but based around the same concept of your phone being an integrated part of your life.

Microsoft sets itself apart from the pack by pitching themselves as the company that will help you get back to your life outside of your phone. With our phones becoming such an integrated part of our lives its a breath of fresh air. But is it a message relevant to the way we live our lives? How much can we get done outside of our phones these days?

[mobrule]

Android Marketplace In App Billing

[caseyg]

Originally posted on mobrule:

Google released their long awaited “In App Billing” feature to the Android Marketplace this week.

Apple released their “In App Purchasing” back in 2009, and well.. Microsoft haven’t got that far with the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace yet.

Any which way you name it, it means one thing: increased revenue opportunities for developers and App Stores. Interestingly, the nomenclature used for these features differs in an interesting way; “In App Billing” is business focused and “In App Purchasing” is a decidedly customer focused term. I’ll leave a further investigation of the differences between the two experiences for a later post.

Traditionally developers selling apps in Android Marketplace have found it harder to get users to pay for apps, instead relying on in-app advertising to support their work. The most common complaint of In App Purchasing on the iTunes App Store is that all those “free” apps, turn out to not be so free after all once you have download them. 

It will be interesting to see how this new feature impacts app buying behaviour on the Android Marketplace in the coming months. 

Links: 

Apple iOS In App Purchasing Documentation

Google Android In App Billing Documentation

[mobrule]

Infographic: State of Mobile Marketing 2011

[caseyg]

Originally posted on mobrule:

The Microsoft Tag Team has released this awesome infographic showing the state of mobile marketing in the USA in 2011. These stats from the states are great for those of us working in markets that tend to follow the US trends. It’s a great insight to where you should be focusing your efforts in developing mobile applications.

Those working on developing desktop web applications should be looking at investing resources in making their website mobile device friendly now so that they can work out the kinks now whilst mobile isn just a nice to have, rather than an essential part of their business. 

  Knowing your audience is half the battle is marketing your application. Given that so many headlines make a big deal about teens socialising on their phones, the fact that women aged 35-54 are the most active socialisers on mobile platforms might be something of a surprise to many, for others it will the realisation of a massive opportunity.  

Miso are making the most of the fact 86% of mobile internet users are watching TV whilst they are doing it with their TV and movie check-in app.

And I’ll leave you with one, the biggest and most competitive opportunities for e-commerce: 50% of all local searches are performed on mobile devices.

Check out the full infographic over at the Microsoft Tag Team site.