Nov

8

It turns out the bug in Android I wrote about yesterday was worse than we thought. When the phone booted it started up a command shell as root and sent every keystroke you ever typed on the keyboard from then on to that shell. Thus every word you typed, in addition to going to the foreground application would be silently and invisibly interpreted as a command and executed with superuser privileges. Wow

In the bug report issue 1207 jdhorvat writes:

Funny story behind finding this:

I was in the middle of a text conversation with my girl when she asked why I hadn’t responded. I had just rebooted my phone and the first thing I typed was a response to her text which simply stated “Reboot” – which, to my surprise, rebooted my phone.

When I first read this I didn’t believe it. Then I read it again, and again, and finally tried it for myself. It’s true. Don’t believe me? Save anything you’re working on this will reboot your phone, open the keyboard tray on your G1, ignore anything you see on the screen, and type these 8 keystrokes: -r-e-b-o-o-t-. Poof, your phone will reboot. This only works on a real phone, not in the emulator, and only with firmware version 1.0 TC4-RC29 and earlier.


Worst. Bug. Ever. | Ed Burnette’s Dev Connection
| ZDNet.com
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Apr

14

I think people are missing some of the head nods in Russell’s post about him stopping his experiment called Mowser. ZDNet cracks me up. They jump on the story making it sound like it is an epiphany that some well respected and industry leading startup has thrown in the towel. When in all reality Mowser was an experiment Russell was doing out of his apartment. It had no money behind it. I wouldn’t define this as a legitimate startup. No offense to Russell at all. What he accomplished was really cool and helpful to the mobile technorati.

So let’s talk about the head nods.

First is that Russell is pretty good at PR. He’s decided to get a full-time gig again. So he quickly gains attention by declaring the very thing that he heralded before is dead. Excellent work Russell! That seems a little insulting, but it is really not meant to be. I’m very serious when I say that Russell is good at PR and marketing.

But I think the biggest point people missed is that Russell is referring to mobile-only sites as being dead. The numbers just aren’t there. But wait, Google released numbers at the start of the year saying that mobile traffic was up. These two things don’t gel.

Russell is talking about mobile only sites. Sites built in technologies specifically designed for mobile screens. These include WAP and XHTML-MP.

“In other words, I think anyone currently developing sites using XHTML-MP markup, no Javascript, geared towards cellular connections and two inch screens are simply wasting their time, and I’m tired of wasting my time.”

Part of the reason can be summed up by the introduction of smarter phones and more advanced mobile browsers that can render typical Web pages. The iPhone, the new Nokia’s, Windows Mobile’s IE. The other major reason is that mobile only sites have a hard time creating brand. The alternative being sites that are part of our lives on the desktop seem to be successful on mobile devices.

It has been my belief for a number of years that companion apps are the sweet spot for mobile devices. Case in point is Google Reader. Many people have come to rely on it for news reading on the desktop. It’s a borderline addiction. This makes it a perfect candidate for mobile devices. Google recognizes this and makes it one of the best apps for the Nokia series and the iPhone. I use it very often. One doesn’t have to look far to find great mobile companions for Gmail and utilities like Twitter.

Rather than people jumping on the mobile web is dead bandwagon, ahem ZDNet, people should instead look at the key details. Russell has some very insightful thoughts regarding the thinking that the mobile web was an isolated thing to begin with. The mobile web is just a companion to the real web, it’s not this unique, different thing. I don’t think we need to go throwing our arms up and declaring genocide. Geesh.

Dec

26

iphone sound problems

December 26, 2007 | 3 Comments

I’m hoping the next version of the iphone goes back to a standard ear phone jack and eliminates the problem many people are having with the phone sound (ear speaker) not working after using the earbuds. The issue and solution can be found here: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1167507&tstart=120. I had the problem recently. It makes me not want to use the earbuds at all, which pretty much eliminates using it as an ipod. Apple, please use a standard earphone jack and another mechanism for detecting the earbuds.

Oct

24

Today at CTIA, Facebook announced support for mobile versions of Facebook applications. Well at least kind of. I’m not entirely sure of the details yet, but it looks like app developers can tie into mobile components, like SMS messaging. Facebook uses SMS to alert me when I have received a new inbox message. This is convenient and handy. Apps can now use this, which is cool, because individual developers would have to rely on email->sms gateways or pay for a messaging service to work with all carriers. Now it seems they can piggyback on Facebook, who have the message infrastructure in place.

It also sounds like apps can have mobile versions that will work with the mobile version of the site. Note that there are two. One wap (or maybe xhtml-mp), the other for iPhone. The iPhone app is the best app out there. Although the applications aren’t supported, basic Facebook functionality works fabulously. I’ll have to take a look at the developer API a little more now and see what else can be exploited for mobile apps. The SMS gateway is enough already for the little guy.

Thanks Facebook, I’m actually becoming a fan.

Oct

2

Flash Lite 3 released

October 2, 2007 | 1 Comment

The marketing guys are saying that this is the biggest release Adobe has ever done for mobile. Not sure, I agree. BUT, this release could have a major impact. The number one reason is mobile video. Flash Lite 3 supports Flash Video. Nokia is paying attention. That is great. I will have to update the MediaPlayback example I created that shipped with Flash 8 as a Flash Lite 2.0 example. Congrats Adobe!

Aug

14

I still really enjoy my iPhone. Have not had any majors problems, other than the network speed.

Lately, I’ve looked into developing for the iPhone using the SDK. Obviously, all development is done for the browser. I understand the issue of sandboxing and have no problem with it. Before the phone even came out I posted about how the phone is not closed, it has a browser and open network access, therefore it can be developed for. And I was right, mostly. I am not taking back my statements, but need to amend them. I was missing a key point.

The browser can do many of the things app developers want to exploit on this new communication device. However, there is an issue with this paradigm. That is the network reliance. Edge is slow, and even if it wasn’t, network access isn’t always available. Wifi is great, but again, network access isn’t always available. I imagine Apple has thought of this already, but if not, I’m throwing this idea out there. Safari on the phone needs to support Google Gears, or some kind of offline mode.

Case in point: one of the best apps out there that I have run across is the Scriptures app (http://tall.mountainmighty.com/#_volumes). It is quick to use when there is a good network connection, but if there is not a connection because you are inside a church where there is no wifi and Edge is not penetrating, the app is useless. This is true of many apps. You are mobile and away from your computer and you want to access something, but there is no network connection.

You find where mp3 music download on perssonal computer, You find where download mp3 music for ipod mp3 player

The Scriptures app is a great example. There is no reason it couldn’t be “cached” on the phone in some kind of offline mode. Of course, sometimes connected apps are hard to make accountable for every situation, but in this particular case, I think Apple needs to give it a try.

Again, I understand and am OK with the sandboxing of having to use the browser, but the browser needs an offline mode in order to be used 100% of the time I use my phone. I am sure Apple has thought of this, they obviously have some very smart people working on the software for this device. I am hoping a software update includes Gears support.

Jul

13

I’ve been waiting for this day. Google has released information on AdSense for mobile devices. The FAQ is here: https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic=8500. I’ve been stewing over creating a mobile ad network similar to AdMob or Third Screen. Reason being, I am creating a mobile service and it is going to be advertising revenue based. I waited to see how soon Google or Yahoo! would jump into the pool. Guess it is happening. This makes it really hard for the other guys, namely AdMob, etc… Google benefits from the content indexing algorithm. But there is still some room from innovation. I think the guys at AdMob can do some things with their network that Google won’t. At least not at first. Mobile is a new paradigm, simply clicking/tapping on an ad won’t convert very highly. The ad can’t simply link to a Web page, because more than likely that page won’t be mobile formatted. I am sure Google has ideas on this, but I imagine there will be some creativity coming from the smaller guys. This will be fun, I want in on it somehow.
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Jul

11

Pownce had me really excited reading through the features. I like the fact that it has a dedicated AIR client. That is fun to play with. I liked Twitter for their IM bot. I don’t like the Web interfaces as much because it is not an instant communication like IM is. Otherwise it just becomes lite weight email to me.

The biggest feature I was looking forward to with Pownce was the “group” feature where I could group sets of contacts together and notify them all with one message. I really want a way to do this with SMS, but that is another story. So I am trying the group thing and it works. But Pownce is missing a couple of things that would really make it useful. Like IM integration and SMS integration. I am sure they are working on both. This enables me to alert my team to things immediately. Like that I am rebooting the development server, or leaving for lunch. Right now, my team members would need to be staring at their AIR client, or the Web site, or email to see my notification immediately. I can’t count on that, and actually hope that is not what everyone is doing all the time. So, as a quick solution, I would suggest Pownce add some sound notifications for new messages, or exploit AIR a little more and do something onscreen that attracts attention. AIR can play with the operating system nicely, so tie into some of that functionality to make it a little more like IM clients. I know this is supposed to be different than IM, but I see it the same and I imagine others do as well. But they are certainly onto something with this “group” functionality. It would be awesome to use this in the ways I described above.

This is a great AIR client. It’s obviously alpha. So many really cool things could be done with it since it is Flash. The alerts could be cool. You could add video chat, and audio chat. It could be everything I wish Jabber was, but just hasn’t hit the mark on. Congrats Pownce team, I think you are onto something.

Jul

2

my iPhone review

July 2, 2007 | 5 Comments

Yes, I went out on Friday afternoon and waited in line to buy an iPhone. We don’t have an Apple store here, but we have two AT&T stores (within a mile of each other). So we picked the one outside the mall. We honestly figured there was not going to be a line, that my wife and I would be the only two people there. Luckily, we were wrong. We were 12th and 13th in line. We got there about 4:30. Just 2 minutes after getting there and finding a nice hard piece of the sidewalk to sit on, a rep from the AT&T store came out and explained the process. He handed out numbers so no one could cut in line. I don’t think he was expecting any more people to show. He informed us we could only buy 1 unit per person. Kind of lame, Apple said we could buy 2 and we planned on it.

Around 4:45 the local media stations arrived. One setup their cameras right in front of us. The lady next to me was nervous. She was supposed to be at her nephew’s birthday party! I was elected to do the interviews. One for the 5:30 show on one station, and one for the 6:00 show on another station. The reporter (Corinne Rose) was awesome. She hung out with us in line the whole time, very cool.

The iPhone in Fort Wayne from mkrisher and Vimeo.

So, 6 came and we were quickly in the store. My wife went in and got hers and then I went in next. While my wife was in, she heard a guy in the back room say something about half way through, which would work out to them having about 25 units. I was first surprised by the line, and second surprised that a store in weeee little Fort Wayne received more than 2 units. So, we got there, waiting in line about an hour and half, got interviewed by two news stations, and both went home with cool little boxes. We had a great time.

So, onto getting home and activating. I wasn’t up to date on OS X10.4.10, argh! Software Update died three times trying to grab it. Luckily, Apple posted a DMG. Got it, iTunes 7.3 and quickly ran through the process of activation. Pretty smooth for both my wife and I. I had been on T-Mobile for almost 7 years now, and the number port went smooth. My wife will get hit with an early termination fee since she was still on contract with Verizon. But we both really thought the activation was well done through iTunes. We finished up the iTunes part of activation about 15 minutes before the West Coast folks started their activations. Once activated and sync’d we headed for dinner.

While at dinner we received our confirmation emails and SMS letting us know our accounts were active, our numbers were ported, and we could start making and receiving calls. Only took about twenty to thirty minutes. The whole thing was really easy for us.

Next, the first impressions. The screen is amazing. The UI is living up to the hype. We have not seen a mobile device, specifically a smart phone, with this well done of a UI. And I don’t just mean pretty graphics. The multi-touch is really cool. The keyboard does take some getting used to. My wife has a hard time using it because of her nails. Women with nails will have extra work to do with the onscreen keyboard and multi-touch for sure.

The email client is nice. Not as advanced as others, but for a first version, it is nice. The inline view of attachments is something I’ve become used to with Mail.app on my PowerBook. I would like small things like being able to turn off ‘quoting of original message’ when replying. A lot of times, quoting the message you are responding to is not needed and just eats up bandwidth. But overall, email on the iPhone is acceptable.

The version of Safari, I haven’t really played with yet. I loaded a couple of pages including a LinkedIn invite, I received, and was able to login and accept the invite. If that is a test, the iPhone passed. And I don’t think EDGE is as bad as we people were saying. My T-Mobile data connection was no faster. Some people with Verizon EVDO might be spoiled, but overall EDGE works.

The iPod features are cool. I like being able to use speakerphone with the iPod songs. The scrolling Cover Flow is awesome. Flipping through your album covers with your finger is engaging. It “feels” really good. I haven’t tried purchased video yet. The YouTube video works well. I’ve never been into YouTube, but quickly finding videos through the YouTube app is kind of cool. The video quality isn’t the best, but that’s a YouTube user thing more than a YouTube thing or even an iPhone thing.

Photos is cool as well. Kind of like flipping through albums in the iPod, flipping through photos is equally cool.

The biggest selling point for this phone, is going to be the user’s showing it to other people. Flipping through photos and album art is impressive to the average “I use my phone to make calls” cellphone user.

The phone has some great features, like quickly adding a third party to a call. The interface works. Dialing from contacts is easy, and if you have a lot of contacts put your most used contacts into your favorites list for speed dialing. The voice quality seems to be right on par with my Nokias. I actually find dialing numbers and making calls easier to do on the iPhone than I do a phone with a tactile qwerty keyboard like my E60 just because of where the number buttons are placed in the grand scheme of the keyboard.

Back to the UI a little. I thought the one and only “home” button was a little funky when I saw the keynote, but it actually makes sense. It is very easy to use, kind of like Google’s homepage only having the one search box. You can never be confused and more than one click away from getting back to all our apps.

The onscreen keyboard isn’t so bad. I am starting to get used to it. I thought it would take a long time after my first attempt. It doesn’t really “learn” your words though. That is kind of frustrating. Predictive text should be installed some point in the future through a software upgrade I am guessing.

Now a couple of things my wife and I have found that we don’t really like. The volume. Voice volume seems ok but could be louder, rings aren’t very loud either. I figure this can be solved with a software update as well. Next, it would be nice to turn on a recursive alert letting me know that I missed a call. The iPhone sticks an indicator graphic on the Phone button letting you know you missed a call, but it would be nice to turn on an audible alarm as well in case I don’t turn on my phone, slide to unlock, and then look at the “home” screen. Also, the camera is a bit lame. 2MP isn’t too bad, but the sensor is very sensitive to light. I tried taking a photo of my son in a dark room and you couldn’t see anything. My Nokia 6680 from two years ago is a better cameraphone. Sorry Apple. We also want a little more detail out of the User’s Guide. Some things are very obvious to Mac users, but to an everyday user some things might seem hidden, or just not obvious.

And what is with crippling Bluetooth to only work with headsets???????????????

The automatic WiFi switching is very nice. My phone knows the networks in my house, my in-laws house, at the sandwich shop down the street, etc… When I am in any of those places, it grabs my email over WiFi rather than the cellular network. This is very cool. It makes data on the device fast and easy to use. The calendar syncing and contact syncing is finally a nice thing to have on a mac. Sure third party hacks and iSync were available for other phones, but after experiencing ActiveSync on a Windows Mobile device, I’ve really wanted to have the same experience on an Apple device with my PowerBook. I always tell people that if I were using Windows(which thank god I am not) I would use a Win Mobile device because ActiveSync is really really amazing.

Simple things on the iPhone make me think ‘duh’ why hasn’t the mobile industry thought of this before. Like putting a hardware switch for turning a ringer on or off? That is just simple and beautiful all together. Visual voicemail is another of those ‘duh’ things. It makes sense to receive messages with visual indicators in a similar fashion to email. Apple nailed that one.

I am anxious to see what apps fill up the fourth ‘obvious’ row on the “home” screen. I am anxious to get my app working with the iPhone and it’s screen real estate. I am anxious to show more people how fun this phone is and to get everything dialed in like calendaring, etc…

I still need to test things like popping the SIM out and seeing if the data plan is available to my other phones or not. I won’t use it often, but it would be nice since I can’t couple my iPhone to my PowerBook and use it as a modem. Or the fact that the phone is locked to the network. I would like to use one of my other world phones while still here in the US during the first part of my trip to China later this year so when I am in China I can just use a prepaid SIM.

I really hope they open this up. I can think of some great apps that are missing, like a Jaiku client, a native Google Reader client, and terminal client for things like SSH. I’m not looking to hack the phone, I just want to create some more things that I would use on a daily basis on this wonderful new data device that has me always connected to the Web.

I haven’t been this excited about a handset since my early Nokia days. This device is a winner and will force the hand of the cellphone industry to evolve. The UI and screen alone is worthy of note, but throw in the bundled data plan, the marketing of data services, the ease of use, and the pairing with a computer via iTunes and I think Apple has a real winner.

I’ll be posting more iPhone experiences over the coming days with more specific details comparing the phone software to Nokia and others. For now, that is good. I haven’t written an uber-post like this for some time. Cheers!

Apr

4

Ars Technica has a great article breaking down the current cost of mobile data through the major carriers in the US, and why the prices, along with pairing of certain devices, seems to be a major barrier to entry for mobile data usage in the US.

With the buzz of the iPhone and it’s Safari Web Browser, many are wondering what the cost is going to be. Or might not even know that using the internet on the iPhone is going to require data usage fees.

If you are interested in using your mobile for things like Calendar syncing, reading GMail, etc… check out the Ars article for good current numbers.

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