When you were frantically unpacking your iPhone 3G were you also having problems figuring out how to put the SIM card in? In my packaging was a loose O2 SIM which obviously needs to plug into the iPhone… somehow!

Sure, the small hole in the top looks like a familiar place to engage the mechanism, but do you really want to go ramming a bent paper-clip in your shiny new priced-possession willy-nilly? I used to think I was pretty clued-up on product design - I have a 1st-class degree in it for god sake - but sometimes you start to question yourself. Surely I must be missing something??

Flicking through the user-manual didn’t help either. It’s pretty frustrating to have to:

1. Give in and resort to flicking through the manual for help* and
2. To not find the solution in there anyway.

After 5 more minutes of hitting things, it turned out that the SIM Ejector Tool was fully integrated INTO the packaging itself - you have to open up one of packaging compartments to reveal it. There was absolutely no indication that it would be hiding in there.

This is a great example of Cleverness vs Clarity. Apple decided to (mistakenly) go for the former on this one. I expect a clear distinction between a product’s packaging and the product itself. Apple: do you want your users to feel dumb?

[Ed.: He's a man, what do you expect?! ]

In this age of gadgets and technology, it’s easy to waste hours in front of a computer looking at the endless pit of email, news and entertainment stuff that’s provided to us. The best way to get away from it used to be to go away on holiday where the little beach resort (fingers crossed) wouldn’t have web access, forcing us to live without email for some time. But no-thanks to phones getting smarter every year, that much deserved holiday sees email, SMS and the web sneak into our luggage.

We all treat holidays differently; Before departing on his summer break, Dr Jakob Nielsen, an IT usability expert, said: “I will be completely out of contact for two full weeks while I am in Africa. There is no internet on the Serengeti. There may be mobile phone access around the lodges, but probably not on the plains themselves.” Mr Nielsen says he has sworn off e-mail for a fortnight and thinks his staff can handle things without him. “In fact, any executive who thinks otherwise has really failed one of his or her most important duties.” (Financial Times)

I’m a mobile addict, there’s no denying it. I’ve been given the evil eye by my husband more than once for taking a peek at an incoming SMS or my Twitter feed when I should have been spending precious time with friends and family.

But here’s my secret: I absolutely love the forced break from it I get when we go on holiday away where you have to hang out the window of the highest bedroom to make a phone call. It takes a few days to slip into the right frame of mind where I realise it’s good and healthy to take a break, and that the world won’t stop spinning while I’m gone. That’s when bliss begins. No calls, no worries, just my feet in the sand and a cocktail in hand!

To each their own, however; other people prefer to stay in constant contact in order to have less to worry about when they return from holiday, reading email on their phone, finding a watering hole with wifi, or checking in to the office every couple of days.

What’s your take? Throw the phone in the back of the wardrobe until your return or stay on top of the office gossip daily?

In September, Matt Davies, from our User Experience team, will be presenting at MobileHCI08, a conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services in Amsterdam.

MobileHCI08 is an annual conference, held on 2-5 September, that brings together industry and academic specialists in mobile user experience from all over the world. Matt’s talk will be called ‘Designing a new mobile search service - a user-centred approach’. The talk will focus on how we design for our users. Matt will look at personas, prototyping and how we do usability tests of our service and designs with target users.

The next event we’ll be attending is on Sep 8 2008 - Mobile Web Megatrends in Berkeley, California. Speakers include Nokia, Opera Mobile 9.5, ESPN mobile, Oracle atomdb, Admob, alongside the likes of Ajit Jaokar, Michael Mace , Barbara Ballard , and Mike Rowehl.

If you plan to be in Amsterdam or Berkeley in September, let us know!

Well, I’ve certainly seen enough. They’re all the same. Fan boy gets excited, unboxes new gadget in a poorly lit video, with oooh’s and aaah’s at every layer of paper peeled off. Give them half a chance and they’ll get excited over the owner manual!

However, in this case, I’m sure there’s something different about this Samsung Omnia unboxing, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.

Read the rest of this entry »

One of the features we like the most from the latest additions to Taptu is the “related search” section. It’s unbelievably useful and interesting, provides tons of great content to look at. Stuck on a delayed train the other day, I got to my destination having read up on the Wildebeest, the Alice in Wonderland syndrome and the career of American kids tv star Miley Cyrus. Taptu, helping you discover something new everyday, unh?

And sometimes. Just sometimes. It goes a little bit wrong. When it does, it’s usually accompanied by uncontrollable laughter coming from the testers’ corner of the office.

Our favourite example this week has to be the related searches for “panda” - one would expect to get some more animals, possibly some terms relating to China or bamboo. But in this case, we found the top related search term to be… ahem, “panda porn”. (click on the image for a larger version of the screenshot)

Hey, who needs Google when you’ve got Panda Porn?

If you’re in London and you like the mobile world, there’s only one place to be this evening: Mobile Geeks of London (and here’s a non-Facebook link!) It’s an informal evening gathering of people who work in mobile or simply enjoy geeking about with phones. Good company, good beer and hopefully good weather.

It all begins at 6:45pm at the New Oxford Street All-Bar-One, and even though over a hundred people have RSVP’ed as attending, I’m putting money on it that there’ll be at least twice as many phones and mobile devices than people. Yes, we’re geeks. And we love it.

Today, the Mobile Internet for Dummies book landed on my desk wih a thump. A book like this is a great sign for us, a confirmation that the mobile internet is heading squarely for the mainstream, which hopefully means an increasingly easier user experience and lower data charges from the networks.

It’s got a mention of Taptu, which is very flattering, and, of course, being a “… for dummies” book, it’s got the unavoidable The 5th Wave cartoons - with my favourite being before Part V of the book. You’ll have to get a copy to find out which one it is.

Here’s the link to the book on Amazon US

Here’s the link to the book on Amazon UK

And yes, I realise my top matches the book… I’m that dedicated to my job.

Last week, we released some fresh updates to the Taptu service. Since some of them are sneaky changes under the hood, I wanted to highlight a few of the more interesting ones.

More Filters

We’ve added some more filter information to help you find what you want easily before you even get to the summary page.

Better SMS Sharing

We’ve brought SMS sharing to a wider range of mobile phones than before, and since you don’t need to register (on most networks) it’s a breeze to send an image, a video or a song snippet to your friends.

Six Taps of Separation

Related searches adds a whole new dimension to your searches; Make your first search, then scroll down for some suggestions to narrow down your search, or look at similar topics.

One of our developers apparently lost an hour going through related searches, starting with some current charts band and ending his quest on “Women wrestling” (hmm interesting!) so this feature comes with a warning label the size of Jupiter: “The mobile web is full of fascinating quirky stuff, so don’t blame us if hours disappear when you next look away from your screen!”

I’m Bored

On a similar note, we’ve created a page dedicated to all of us public transport commuters, back-of-the-classroom dreamers and recreational surfers. It’s called “I’m Bored” and on that page, you’ll find top searches, most shared content and some topical pages picked out by our editors. You can bookmark the page for new, fun stuff to look at every day.

You’ll discover all sorts of interesting stuff, from videos and music you’ve never heard before, to blogs, news items and sites full of great content to read on your mobile phone. It goes to show that there’s so much more to mobile search than finding your local pizza place; There’s endless entertaining content in that tiny gadget we carry in our pocket.

As for the other new features, you’ll discover them as you browse, won’t you? We can’t tell you everything, we’d be spoiling the fun.

I watched the launch of the second generation of the iPhone with great interest on Friday, not because I planned on replacing my first generation one, but because I wanted to see how the world would welcome it. While not everyone here is an Apple fiend as I am, we couldn’t help but be curious about it since we’ve just launched a new iPhone version of Taptu*.

The product

In December, after a month of iPhone ownership, I reviewed it. I loved it then and I still do now. It’s clearly not everyone’s cup of tea, as certain Symbian-owning friends regularly remind me, but definitely still the best device for my needs.

The new version of the firmware gives all iPhones, new and old, a fresh lease of life with a wide range of downloadable applications available to make better use of the phone. Applications range from really useful to downright silly (see the iPint one for possibly the wackiest one around), but I can’t get over the fact that they can’t run in the background. I appreciate that the battery would run down faster than our office manager Celia can neck a glass of wine, but it still renders applications like streaming radio and instant messaging pretty much pointless.

The 3G hardware theoretically brings GPS functionality and faster browsing speeds, but I’ve yet to witness these first hand. I’m sure it’ll make a marginal difference, but still isn’t enough to convince me to upgrade.

The 3G iPhone is Apple’s tough second album, and not bad going, but not an awe-inspiring result.

The launch

Oooh, now here’s my bone to pick with Apple and the operators. How could launch day go so horribly wrong?

With expected sales of over 1 million handsets on day 1, plus millions of first generation iPhone and iPod Touch owners across the world, why did O2, the UK’s operator to win the iPhone contract, grind to a halt within moments of opening its doors at 8:02am? The iTunes Activation Center then followed suit shortly.

Sure, that’s a bunch of frustrated new users. But it’s also a whole lot of stranded existing users: My phone began its update and restore around lunchtime, yet I only managed to reactivate via the iTunes store around 8pm, leaving me unreachable for most of the day.

So Apple and the operators owe their users an apology for a poor first experience, I think!

The future

While execution wasn’t perfect over the launch, it’s still undeniable that the iPhone’s impact on the mobile world is increasing with every phone sold. A large and bright glossy screen, a user-friendly interface with single-click app download and no learning curve, this is inspirational for mobile developers.

The gloss is marred by the strong DRM and lock-down the iPhone suffers, one of the main criticism heard from those who opt for the Symbian-based alternatives. I’ll be curious to see how many users of the 2.0 firmware still choose to jailbreak their device, defying Apple and the operators. In fact, how long before jailbreaking becomes pointless?

[* Best viewed on an iPhone, but can be accessed in your browser]

Did you hear it this morning? The sound of 200,000 UK iPhone hopefuls getting an SMS simultaneously. It caused tremors around the Internet, and has certainly has thrown the operator’s website to the ground.

Everyone and their grandma’s dog have reported the issue O2, one of the UK’s main mobile operators, has suffered by now, but I’m amazed (yet oddly unsurprised) that an operator can be so unprepared for a traffic rush.

Based on this activity, it’s already obvious that the second coming of the iPhone will be more popular than the first. If the majority of these are new users adding themselves to the O2 network this Friday, we can only hope that O2’s mobile infrastructure is more resilient than its website!