I've always found it strange that Eric S. Raymond chose the cathedral as his metaphor for closed development in free software, because the construction of our great medieval cathedrals must have been a very open process. Passing peasants were doubtless discouraged from picking up a chisel to hack at the nearest stone, but Gothic buildings … Continue reading Mobile Gothic: a flight of fancy
A couple of months ago I got myself a pocket projector to attach to my mobile phone and laptop. Partly, I wanted to know what happens to the mobile user interface when you blow it up to a metre across. Partly, it seemed like a fun thing to have, just to have it. I discovered … Continue reading Adventures with a pocket projector
In a single Noisy Decent Graphics post, Ben Terrett effortlessly segues between my two preoccupations of the moment - agonised middle-class parenting, and the superiority of mobile web over fixed. How could I resist? "City kids are not like country kids", he notes, "... the space available to play is smaller... so they learn to play smaller." … Continue reading Play Small: why mobile challenges designers to make a better web
Carlo Longino on Mobhappy and Tarek Abu-Esber at Mobile Messaging 2.0 both asked this week "When Will The Mobile Web Be Mass Market?" - a question prompted by the declaration from Nielsen Mobile that we've now reached critical mass. According to Nielsen, 12.9% of the UK population used the mobile internet in Q1 2008. Now … Continue reading The mobile web: today, asparagus; tomorrow, the world
So I'm on the train home after a day in London and my phone beeps. It's a video message of Fabian riding his bike without stabilisers. "I don't know who I'm most proud of," I tell Caroline later, "him for riding a bike or you for sending a video message." "Don't patronise me," says Caroline.
Maybe it's just me, but as we enter the latest phase of convergence with more and more big web properties moving onto mobile, I've noticed a trend for work in progress to be developed and presented mainly on PC screens. In my (possibly mythical) golden age, presentations and design reviews were stacked full of phones … Continue reading Paper – Scissors – Phone
I had the privilege to take part in last week's Telco 2.0TM Industry Brainstorm in London - an excellent and thought-provoking two days, and the programme for the next event looks just as enticing. It's all now being written up on the obligatory Telco 2.0TM Blog. I hope I wasn't one of the participants who … Continue reading Telco Too Point Oh
... just because I can, and because it's five years to the day since my first mobile clog [t9 sic] post. Equipment used: 1 Nokia 30something, running series 40, Opera Mini, 1 ladybird print beach tent (does not provide protection against rain), sand in shoes. Update 12/9/2006: We've been back for two weeks now and … Continue reading Blogging on the beach
Flickr etiquette is a tricky thing. For starters I have to pigeonhole the tangled web of people-with-whom-I-share-photos into "family", "friends" and that wonderful catch-all "contacts" (maybe we should all be using a Cold War-style dead letter box in Regent's Park?) But that's nothing to the almost daily dilemma of how to share each photo I … Continue reading The private life of a digital camera
There's a brilliantly observed article on mobile child tracking services in the States on Kelly Goto's http://www.gotomobile.com. As a parent, I can identify with the insights. I grew up in a small town in the 1970s and enjoyed far greater freedom than we seem to be able to offer our own boys living in a … Continue reading Cutting to the heart of the mobile location debate
So I know what you're going to say, text isn't the point of mobile blogging - it's all about pictures, videos, media, capturing the moment and storing it up or sharing it out. Yes, I love taking pictures with my phone and zapping them up to Flickr, and yes, Shozu is one of that rare … Continue reading What we say versus what we see
i’m typing this on my phone, top deck of a bus travelling up chapeltown road. i reckon i can enter text at about a 10th the speed i think it. that works out about 30 words a mile on the number 3a bus. less outside the rush hour. Equipment used for benchmark (should you wish … Continue reading mo-blogging text-entry benchmark
August 21, 2001. Newly armed with Nik Haldimann's Wapblogger (2001-2005) on my trusty Nokia 7110i I bash out a record seven blog posts in one day. On the bus, in the lift, in the café, In just a few short hours I live every mobile blogging use case known to marketing. That date remains my … Continue reading Mobile blogging five years on (and off)
There are places a cameraphone just cannot, umm, go. Places like the men's toilets at King's Cross Station. (Stay with me on this one.) There you'll find a sticking plaster product design solution that would be at home in a Don Norman book: a hand-dryer so sleekly built into the wall that someone's sellotaped the … Continue reading Text – gets to the parts that cameraphones just can’t reach
Matt Edgar writes here 