The always-useful Nokia N95 blog publishes a list of 25 of the most useful Nokia N95 apps available at the moment. Definitely worth a look, my ultimate favourite in the list is Qik.com, a live video broadcast service, which I’ve tried in the past few weeks and have found astoundingly speedy, if at the expense of some image quality.

It’s services like Qik that remind me what an exciting time it is to be working in the mobile web world right now!

For years, I pedantically said that my only New Year’s resolution was to not take any resolutions, since it was the easiest one to keep. This year, I’ve set myself a few goals which I’d like to achieve, such as learning to use my Digital SLR camera beyond its most basic features.

In the spirit of trying new things, here are 8 great ways to show your mobile phone a bit of love in 2008. It may be a ubiquitous necessity in our lives, but it’s also a really fun device that can brighten up your day in all sorts of ways!

1. Free your photos

   If you’re anything like I used to be, you take occasional photos on your mobile, but they rarely see the light of day after the event.

   The odd one might be sent by MMS to a friend, but that’s about it. Make a resolution to post your pics to a blog, moblog or a service like Flickr, which is accessible from your mobile.

   With cameras improving, not only can you take candid shots, but you can have a bit of fun with artistic photography - Entire groups are dedicated to mobile photography!

2. Backup your address book

   Close your eyes for a moment and imagine the worst - your phone’s been stolen, it’s given up the ghost or you’ve dropped it in the toilet. Whatever the scenario, what would you do if you lost all the information contained on your phone?

   Now, avoid getting that horrible sinking feeling from becoming reality by regularly backing up your address book and, if necessary, your SMS inbox, your photos, etc. Usually a quick look at the user manual or search online will tell you the best way to backup your data whatever device you own.

3. Stay organised

   You know that little calendar or organiser on your phone that you’ve barely ever looked at? Set it up to sync correctly with your computer and benefit from having access to your calendar while on the go.

4. Get back in touch

   Look through your address book. Are there some people you know you should be getting in touch with, either for professional or personal reasons? Use the beginning of the new year as an excuse to reconnect. Whether you ring them for a long catch up chat or arrange to meet over coffee by SMS, get back in touch with the important people you may have neglected recently.

5. Do a Spring cleaning

   While looking through your address book, why not clear out the numbers and names who aren’t relevant anymore? That guy you met at the pub one night out on the razz or your sister’s old mobile number from 6 years ago, just get rid of them.

   If you’re paranoid about deleting numbers that could one day come in handy, back up your address book to your computer. You’ll be able to refer to that list if that day comes.

6. Reduce, reuse, recycle

   If you’re a chronic mobile upgrader, you’ll most likely have a spare phone or two sitting in your drawer gathering dust. Consider donating it to a charity that will either give it a new lease of life or recycle it in an environmentally friendly way.

   The NCH Children’s Charity in the UK will gratefully accept mobiles, and so will a number o recycling centres in the US.

7. Try one new feature

   When we shop for a new phone, we often look for the shiniest one with all the bells and whistle. But when it comes down to it, few of us actually use any of the features beyond the basic calling, SMS and camera functionality.

   Take five minutes this week and try something new on your phone. Never sent an MMS? Surprise your kids by showing them you’re cool enough to figure out how to send one. Not familiar with the barcode scanner on your N95? See what happens when you scan that curious QR code advert you’ve been seeing every morning on your way to work.

   The rule of thumb is that you shouldn’t worry too much about breaking something by trying something new! If you’re worried you’ll lose data in the process, see #2.

8. Take time offline

   This might seem to be an odd one to add to a list like this one, but in this age of 24/7 availability and connectedness, it’s healthy to unplug sometimes.

   Take a day a week, if you can, where you leave your mobile turned off and go for a long walk in the countryside. Or go do some crowd watching in Covent Garden if greenery and fresh air isn’t your thing. Just disconnect for a while and you’ll love your mobile more when you get back to it.

   You might be surprised to see that the world doesn’t spin off its axis even if you sever the connection for 24 hours.

In the past two decades, our lives have become increasingly digital and portable with office work, kids’ homework, entertainment and shopping coming into the household in bits and bytes. We’re faced with more information than ever before, and more ways than ever to access it.

In most aspects, we’re happy with the digitisation of our lives, but have kept a few bastions of the analog world unmodified for centuries, one of which is the book. Unquestionably, the production process is easier than it was in Gutenberg’s days, but we still print with ink onto paper and bind it together with a thick cover.

In the past twenty years, a lot of written word’s moved to the computer screen, but leisure reading is one of those things that’s remained firmly printed on paper. There have been many attempts to create electronic readers that “feel like reading print”, but they’ve all fallen by the wayside without ever getting to critical mass.

Yet, on Monday, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos announced the launch of the Kindle Reader, a new twist on the ebook reader that failed time and time again. Brave move or naive pipedream?

I won’t go into the detailed technical specs since the Machinist does it so well but want to understand how and where this could be useful in today’s world.

Pros:

• Lightweight way to carry a lot of information, this could be a lifesaver on the train, tube, in crowded spaces and on long journeys.
• Easy way - in theory - to acquire new books without having to physically visit a bookshop or wait for an order to arrive. Less sure of it in practice if you’re outside of urban America, since wireless is provided by Sprint’s EVDO network.
• As a fellow blogger says, “I have on my bookshelf The Great war For Civilization: the Conquest of the Middle East […] written pre-Gulf War 2. Wouldn’t it be absolutely marvelous if the book updated itself for a modest fee on publication of a second edition? Or if my Wrox ASP.Net 2.0 magically jumped versions to 3.0 0r 3.5? that would be great.”
• A mother and non-geek says “Finally, a tech toy that isn’t meant for techies!!! I couldn’t be happier to read about the Kindle. I was wondering what to get my daughter for Christmas and now I know. She’s a third year law student and lugs A MOUNTAIN of heavy books to school, which is a 90 minute commute. With all those textbooks, it’s really hard for her to take casual reading material with her, too. This will be perfect! I think all you geeks are wrong on this one.”

Cons:

• DRM around all Kindle books: Forget lending a book to a friend, moving it to another device, buying it as a present for someone else
• Device not particularly open to other formats: The lack of PDF support kills it for me, since I’d expect to, at the very least, be able to read whitepapers and reports on it without having to bend over backwards.
• Reading on screen still not the same as on paper, the feel, the smell and the ability to scribble or annotate.
• The web browser and RSS reader seem unnecessary: The browser is limited at best, as Russell reports, and RSS feeds are paid for. Paid for?! Seriously, what were they smoking when they decided that people would be willing to pay a monthly fee to read RSS feeds which one can read for free on a desktop, laptop, mobile phone, iPod touch. I doubt a Kindle buyer wouldn’t already have one of these devices already…

I’m a total bookworm, especially on holiday yet, somehow, I can’t picture myself laying on a deck chair on my next holiday and pulling out my Kindle to read a few lines of The Devil Wears Prada, really.

Now, a device open to other formats, with no wireless, on which content can purely be transferred via USB, without audio or web browser, sold for far less, I would probably consider. It would save me printing so many work documents, and I’d definitely be up for technical books where an update is available when technologies evolve. Imagine how many trees we could save!

I’ll reserve final judgement for the day I get my hands on one of them - If a kind soul wants to lend me one, I’m willing! - but until then, I think it’s an interesting addition to the world of handhelds but not one I’d currently be likely to buy, even as a hopeless gadget addict.

For more reading on the Kindle:

• Dive Into Mark’s “The Future of Reading (A Play in Six Acts)” draws some interesting parallels between Amazon’s own words from the past, some classic 1984 quotes and the current Kindle announcement.
• Mike’s review shows he’s not totally sold on the idea either…
• Diego’s second review
• Of course, Scoble’s also got an opinion on this…

[tags]Amazon, Kindle, eBooks, wireless, Taptu, mobile, technology[/tags]

One hundred Carnivals. One hundred weeks of insightful posts and sharp reviews.

Russell Buckley and Carlo Longino of MobHappy who started it all back in Oct 2005. Along with Rudy De Waele they were original the visionaries. Finally Judy Breck and Troy Norcross for keeping the carnival going, week after week.

This milestone Carnival is hosted by Abhishek Tiwari in Santa Cruz, and covers topics from Google Android’s implications for the mobile world to the evolution of 3.5G HSDPA, amongst others.

Here’s a cheer to 100 more Carnivals!

Several people asked me about the implications of Google’s launch of Android this week. Here’s my take on it.

• Google is finding it hard to replicate its successful desktop search model in the mobile world.
• One of the big barriers, as Google see it, is the continued presence of walled gardens erected by the mobile operators which interfere with Google’s ability to reach out to consumers directly with an optimised search experience.
• Another key barrier Google sees is a lack of understanding by handset manufacturers of what it takes to truly turn the handset into a useful mobile internet device.
• Google see a more capable mobile browser across the widest possible range of handsets as a key enabler for better mobile search. Not just on high end devices like the iPhone and N95, but right across the handset market.
• Android is an initiative that if successful would break down a number of these barriers in one fell swoop.

Will Android be successful? I wouldn’t completely rule it out, but I remain cautious…

Not very much has been said about exactly what Android contains and what it doesn’t contain. Does it have a complete user interface layer? Does it integrate a full set of phone applications (SMS, MMS, IM etc)? Does it include a 3G protocol stack? The lack of a complete solution would make it very expensive to bring an Android handset to market compared to Symbian and Microsoft.

From a technical perspective Google’s platform reminds me of Savaje (US-based mobile OS startup, now defunct) and the operator-led Open Mobile Terminal Platform Alliance (Java-based OS, initially implemented on HTC devices).

With the OMTP Alliance, the operators wanted to weaken the grip of Nokia and Microsoft on the phone OS, and get control over the user experience. Google’s Open Handset Alliance is an attempt to build similar industry support, but has notably fewer operators participating.

Getting a new OS into significant volume i.e. 10s of millions of new handsets is a massive engineering undertaking. Are Google resourced to deliver this? They have plenty of software engineers, but not too many mobile software engineers.

Android is an initiative without a business model. In my experience, these kinds of strategic initiatives don’t get sustained unless the business model is clearly defined.

This morning, Bob and I met at Waterloo Eurostar station in London on our way to tonight’s Paris Mobile Monday get together. Over coffee, we looked at the building, which is now two days from being shut down for good, since the Eurostar will be leaving from St-Pancras International from this Wednesday.

I’ve lived in the UK for over 5 years now, but only vaguely remembered the Channel Tunnel being opened at some point in the 90’s. Jokingly, I suggested to Bob that we should check on Taptu what year the tunnel actually opened. He picked up his mobile and typed taptu.mobi in. Full 3G signal, but latency meant the site wasn’t even loading. I grabbed my N95 - on the same T-Mobile network as Bob’s phone - and tried to access the site. Ok, fair enough, busy mobile cell on a Monday morning doesn’t get such great 3G connection.

Being cheeky, I pulled my brand new shiny iPhone out of my handbag. Sure it’s on O2 (No, I’m not hacking it, thanks). Sure it’s on EDGE. But it gave us an answer instantly. And I didn’t even cheat and use The Cloud’s WiFi either. Turns out the Channel Tunnel was open on 6th May 1994.

So please accept this as a pied de nez* to those who say that a phone without 3G is hopeless. It all depends on the conditions, the network load and the phase of the moon, clearly!

Tomorrow, I’ll be returning to Waterloo International from Paris and bidding farewell to the big clunky metal and glass structure. Next trip will begin from St-Pancras in a - hopefully - shiny new station.

As an aside, if you’ve attended Mobile Monday Paris this evening, thank you for being such a welcoming audience! More on this tomorrow, but Bob and I can’t say thanks enough for inviting us to join the event.

[* To make a pied de nez, put hand upwards, fingers apart, with thumb resting against nose. Point towards the person you are mocking and wiggle fingers. Preferably avoid making this gesture to your evening hostess when she’s about to offer you a glass of champagne or you may remain without a drink a whole lot longer.]

[tags]Taptu, Mobile Monday, Paris, MoMoParis, iPhone, Apple, Nokia, N95, phone, mobile, technology, gadgets, mobile search, Channel Tunnel, La Manche, Waterloo, Eurostar, Ha ha 3G lost to the measly 2G[/tags]

We’re just going through our next major design revision for Taptu, and it reminds me of just how important to us the whole topic of ‘click-distance’ is.

What is ‘click distance’? It is the sum of the number of clicks and the number of scroll actions that a mobile user must make when navigating to a specific item of content. It’s the critical measure of usability for mobile search.

Back in 2002, Professor Barry Smyth of University College Dublin carried out an experiment on the O2 mobile portal. For a sample of 150,000 users accessing the portal via the mobile browser, he measured their navigation behaviour. Specifically he measured the number of clicks and the number of scrolls that they would make on their phone keypads as they navigated the menu structure of the portal in their search for content. From this experiment came a very simple but incredibly important insight: the motivation of most users to continue navigating for content falls off a cliff when the click-distance exceeds 12.

Back at the end of 2005 we carried out our own research study into click-distance performance of mobile search engines. We asked a panel of users which 100 typical searches they would most like to do on a mobile phone, and which search words they would start with. We then selected the most popular mobile search engine, ran the 100 searches and measured the average click-distance. Shockingly, the average result was 36 clicks. It’s not hard to see why mobile search has yet to go mass market when you see a ‘usability gap’ of this magnitude.

When we design a mobile user interface for a device, or for a device family, the desire to minimise click-distance is always at the front of our minds. It’s become the central proposition of Taptu: how to deliver relevant mobile search results in 10 clicks or less. Needless to say, setting the objective of 10 clicks or less is the easy part. For a universal mobile search service, it is a very tough target.

We’ve just set up an internal research project to update our 2005 findings. This time around we have a lot more data on what mobile users actually search for, so our test database can be much more realistic. In the last couple of years, we’ve seen some improvement in the performance of the existing mobile search engines. We’ve also seen new kinds of devices like the iPhone which can do full Web search on a mobile using the desktop versions of popular search engines.

What effect will this have on click-distance performance for mobile search? Keep you posted.

All About Symbian points out this morning that the Nokia Music Store is now live for UK users. Or some UK users anyways. Those with an N95 8GB, N81 or Internet Explorer only. Not me*.

When I visited Nokia in September, I asked the PR person whether purchasing music would be widely available to existing devices, as well as Mac users - since the demo clearly worked fine on Windows in Internet Explorer. She skirted around the existing devices question, but seemed perfectly confident that the store would work happily on a Mac. Not so just yet.

I appreciate that Internet Explorer represents a fair chunk of the population, but Firefox, Safari and other non-IE users probably make up most of the gadget-using crowd they’re targetting - ie. those who use their phones for more than just banal calls. It’s also early days and things will evolve, but universality and ease of use regardless of what device you’re using is something we treat as essential here at Taptu, and I’m surprised it wasn’t a priority for Nokia.

That issue aside, the store looks reasonably good, but is only differentiated from other online stores by the application which comes pre-installed on the new N95 8GB and the N81, as the transfer to mobile needs to be done from a computer on any other Nokia device.

Music on mobile is clearly an area where we’ll see a lot of activity in the next few months, and I’m thrilled to be here to watch it all happen!

[* Yes, I could launch Parallels but that’s not the point… ]

From the archives, this is an impromptu video of the Nokia Music Store beta, taken back in September at the Nokia offices in Finland.

There’s no one more critical about a plumber’s work than a fellow plumber. The same applies to marketing people; no one is more entertained than I am by watching others’ marketing initiatives.

This week, as a first in the blogging world, I won’t pit the usual contenders against each other: Apple, provider of iShinyThings(TM) vs the biggest mobile player in Europe, Nokia. Rather, in this game, Nokia and Apple will be tagteaming against Motorola and Sony Ericsson.

The game is one of survival: How to create buzz around your products so that bloggers write about your new gadget, consumers talk about it amongst themselves and, ultimately, they buy your stuff. Who’s doing it well, who’s doing it wrong and who’s not doing it at all?

In the right corner, Apple and Nokia, kings of buzz

There’s no debating what the most talked-about mobile device was this year. Yes, of course, I’m talking about the iPhone. Ubiquitous in the press? Yes. Overhyped? Quite possibly. But everyone knows what it looks like and has at least heard about it. I don’t even think people who live in a cave would manage to get away from the buzz.

Similarly, in Europe at least, the rumour mill has been working overtime churning out buzz about the Nokia smartphones. Prototype pictures circulating, guesses at future specs, wondering what will come next in the N-Series line. How can we resist the bait when we’re told that these are prototypes and “not to take pictures too close up”, but then handed the phones to play without supervision?

While Apple barely needs to move a finger for the fan base to get the rumour train going full steam ahead, Nokia has been actively seeding the market with humourous viral campaigns, such as the Jealous Computers, the N81 viral site and, lest we forget, the cheeky ads Nokia posted on Google for disgruntled iPhone users.

In both cases, staff present at events and conferences seem genuinely excited and personally invested in the business, rather than hired booth-monkeys who are counting the hours til they can go home.

And now, the opposition: Sony Ericsson and Motorola

In the other corner, we find Sony Ericsson and Motorola, two other major contenders for the phone market. To say the least, these two have selected an unorthodox strategy. The best way to describe is, hrmm, as the “go away!” tactic.

Last week, Steve Litchfield at All About Symbian described the brick wall he faced when visiting the Sony Ericsson store in London. No matter who Steve spoke to, he was told that taking pictures inside the store simply wasn’t allowed, journalist or not. The fact that Steve broadcasts reviews of mobile devices to hundreds of thousands of phone addicts seemed to completely escape the Sony Ericsson clan.

Motorola behaved in a similar way at the Smartphone Show, shuffling new devices out of sight when cameras were brought out, since “they’re prototypes and the finished hardware will be different.” Poor Steve found himself taking photos of basketball players.

His experience seemed to ring true with a number of readers, both as consumers and journalists, they’ve struggled to get anything blogworthy when attending SE or Motorola events.

Is Buzz the answer to everything?

Of course not. Buzz does not a great phone make, but it sure helps a good product carve a space in our limited mental bandwidth, ensuring we consider it as a possible option next time our phone upgrade comes around.

In practice, Sony Ericsson and Motorola still own a reasonable share, albeit far smaller than Nokia’s, of the mobile phone market, but few people talk or write about them with the same fervent passions that Apple and Nokia stir up. How much of it is owed to buzz and the bubbling community surrounding the products?

[Rock’em, Sock’em Robots picture from JTony on Flickr]

[tags]taptu, taptology, apple, iphone, nokia, symbian, motorola, sony ericsson, phones, mobile phones, technology, gadgets, marketing, buzz, community[/tags]

Today at the Symbian Smartphone Show, Nokia presented S60 running with a touch interface.

To get more details, I listened to the Voice of S60 podcast, hosted by Phil Schwarzmann who interviewed Minna Karvonen, Product Marketing Manager for S60 UI and UI Customisation.

Minna explained that the touch interface would support finger and stylus input, mulitilingual applications and is backwards compatible with the existing S60 3rd Edition platform.

While this is great news and will most likely change the landscape of mobile browsing, the cynic in me struggles to see how S60 will make this in any way as smooth and usable as the iPhone. (What, did you really think I wasn’t going to make this comparison immediately?) Regardless, it’ll be a very interesting space to watch once it is released in 2008.

And finally, here’s a video of the Nokia presentation, taken by Rafe of All About Symbian: