Nov

30

Interesting statistic on what consumers want in a mobile phone. Analysts find that more people want internet access on their handset than PDA functionality. I’m not sure what to think of this. I am assuming the stat is a result of not everyone having a desktop (with PIM apps) . If you don’t have a PC to sync to, I guess people would be less inclined to use the PIM apps on the tiny screen with tiny keyboard. Microsoft Windows mobile has a pretty cool feature that lets you record voice memos and attach them to calendar entries. You have to tap in a title for the entry though. I believe the Series 60 calendar app can do this as well.

Another angle might be that consumers are getting smarter and rather than sync’ing their PIM info, they are using Web based services so their data is available anywhere (on any device). Makes sense. Does iCal or Yahoo! calendars have a mobile version? I am guessing Yahoo! might.

Last week users were pretty excited about POP3 and RSS data in GMail. There were numerous blog posts about using GMail on mobile phones. More people are relying on Web based services like PIM functions. Seems to fit well with mobiles, as long as the interface is compatible with the mobile browsers/interfaces. Yahoo! seems to be leading the industry in this regard.

The stat doesn’t say if the users wanting internet access over PDA functionality were just Americans or more of a global user. The other stats distinctively say American. Hmm….

Nov

30

OK, I finally got a working solution last night. If you are reading this on an aggregator, like fullasagoog [thanks Geoff], then my ATOM to RSS solution is producing a valid RSS file on my server. A lot of people wrote me and told me to use Feedburner, but I want to be able to host the RSS file on my server, because I was already doing so before moving to Blogger and didn’t want to have aggregators update their paths to my syndication feed.

Miguel wrote me last night and pointed me at his solution written in ASP.NET. He and I had actually run into the same problem – the date and timestamps. He used native functions in ASP.NET which extend the XPath abilities of XSL. Is XSL ever going to evolve and collide with ECMA maybe? Real logic inside XSL could make it pretty useful. Simple ECMA methods and properties would make it much more useful. I guess that might be where XPath is headed.

Anyway, I decided to work with what is available in XSL so my stylesheet could be used in PHP, Java, ATG, etc… whatever server-side technology that could do XSLT transformations. My solutions is not Trump tight yet, but its mostly there.

Here are the current working files. I started out using Givoanni’s files. But they weren’t producing valid RSS2.0 for me, and I also wanted to write the RSS file to a file on my server, so any old aggregators still referencing the file would be updated automatically. So I altered the XSL to produce valid RSS and added the PHP code to write the valid RSS string to a file on my server. Writing the file requires setting permissions on the file, so the PHP user can write to it. The XSL will more than likely be updated, but for now it works and the files together offer a solution for having both an ATOM and RSS feed hosted on your server. I tried to comment heavily in the files so anybody wanting to do the same could easily follow along.

If anyone finds errors let me know.

Nov

29

I have discovered a couple of different ATOM to RSS solutions, but none have produced a validated RSS file for me. So I am tweaking the ones I currently have. I have the formatting right now, just need to figure out the best way of converting the non-RFC-822 timestamp that Blogger inserts into the ATOM feed into a RFC timestamp required by the RSS spec.

I have considered some really bizarre PHP/XSL params solution but that is not very flexible or distributable. So I am experimenting with XPath. That may do the trick through some substring functions. It’s going to be a pain but I’ll get it and then post the files so everyone else that is using Blogger can have an easy way of hosting a RSS equivalent of their ATOM feed. Stay tuned…

Nov

24

My RSS feed is now RSS again. In early Octoober I switched to using Blogger. To my dismay I found out that Blogger used ATOM as the syndication schema. Blah! So I finally got around to using a PHP script (with some modifications and an XSL file) to transform my ATOM feed to RSS and write it to my old RSS feed file path. So no paths have changed, everyone syndicating can resume syndication. I noticed some syndicators weren’t able to use the ATOM feed, so I had to switch back to RSS. If all the posts since Ocotber come rushing back into your aggregator I apologize, ATOM just wasn’t working for a lot of people. I wonder why Blogger decided to use it?

Nov

23

So I was wrong. I thought Amazon had put mobile on the back burder. Their WAP site hasn’t been updated in a long while. It was great to see that they at least had a WAP site. But still, I was wrong. They haven’t given up. They in fact are showing signs that they “get it.” M-Commerce hasn’t been a buzzword as of late, but I think it might just come back. Only this time it won’t be the same thing it used to mean. It won’t just mean a WAP (no/very little images and just text), instead it will be an extension of your retail shopping experience.

Amazon’s new app is not something that should be shocking to technology people. Bar code readers, including an existing phone app – Semacode, have been available for a while now. The cool thing with Amazon’s app is that this puts the power of pricing into the consumer in a very real-time sort of way. Amazon knows that in order for people to use their phones to purchase, its not so much that the ability is there, but rather the user has to have an instant gratification when in the process. Instant gratifcation usually results in walking up to something and needing to impulse buy it right then and there. Amazon can’t provide this experience. So this app fills the gap. People can walk up, need to impulse buy, check the price on Amazon and buy it [from their phone] before even leaving the store. Sure they aren’t walking out with the item but the instant gratifcation is still mostly the same.

Of course retailers can cripple this real easy. Just don’t provide bar codes on display models. Might be a good case for RFID even. Not sure.

This is great, this is a case where technology is empowering the consumer. There are so many ways that mobile’s can empower the consumer(i.e. eWallet, price comparison, product details*, location based services, directory lookup, etc…). Hopefully Amazon will build off of this app and update/bring up to date their mobile devices site so when the purchasing actually happens it will be a much more friendly user experience.

*Mental note: check to see if Consumer Reports has done anything with their content to make it available to people on the go.

Nov

22

So this is unfortunate for Macromedia. Apparently Juha is leaving Macromedia to do his own thing. That was the rumor when he was leaving Microsoft too before he went to Macromedia. Oddly he co-founded Symbian, went to Microsoft and really helped form Windows Mobile (especially Smartphone), now he has been at Macromedia for maybe a year and helped launch Flash Lite and Flash Cast. Weird. Guess he has some knowledge about the mobile industry. Can’t wait to see what he does next. Quite a resume, but bummer for Macromedia, not cool to only be there a year. Maybe that was the plan all along, who knows.

Nov

19

PaidCotent.org rocks the house again with another nice audio clip from an industry insider. This time it is Robert Tercek, the CSO of MFORMA. MFORMA is larger mobile focused company, mostly known for the games it produces. It has other mobile services as well, like a yellow pages/directory type app.

Robert talks about the current devices, and how they are going to get much better in the coming months/year. He has a couple of comments about the entertainment industry not getting the mobile platform yet. He mentions VGA screens, etc… He promotes some of MFORMA’s games and services, then at the end talks about Macromedia’s Flash Lite. He gets it. He is realistic, maybe just a little understating of what the player can actually do, but unless you are developing for it you really wouldn’t know. He talks about the great interfaces and rapid application development that Flash can provide to mobile apps and games. I completely agree. I’ll have some Flash Lite apps on display here coming soon. I am working on the way to demo them on a desktop environment, since they do rely on device specific things like soft keys and button taps. Best way of educating people is to show some real world examples.

Overall, thanks again to PaidContent.org, great audio interview.

Nov

18

My alma mater, Purude University, is rolling out a really cool wireless network and application for its football stadium. Cisco has provided hardware to blanket the stadium with WiFi, and donated a couple of PDAs. I am guessing Pocket PCs, don’t really know. Cool thing here isn’t that the stadium will have WiFi, that is nothing new. The cool thing is the applications they are building. They have plans and have already rolled out apps, like being able to email the coach during the game, or see the traffic information for getting out of the stadium, seating charts, video replay maybe, buy more tickets, see the weather info, etc….

Funny thing is the article talks about Mark Cuban, “The technology being piloted this fall at Purdue is what Dallas Mavericks owner and Broadcast.com founder Mark Cuban has talked about for years, but no one has managed to launch, industry sources said.” However, if I remember right, there was an article that came out not to long ago about the network installed in the Dallas stadium and Mark making the comment that it is not going to be opened up to the public/fans, because they should be watching the game/live action, not surfing the Web. Irony.

Guess, I’ll have to go to a football game back at the old university sometime and experience this thing.

Nov

18

More on Tivo adding ads.

November 18, 2004 | 1 Comment

So here is the thing that I didn’t think of yesterday. These new ads will be personalized. Tivo can mine the personal information from the box (shows the user watches, genres, etc…) and deliver targetted ads. OK, this makes sense and probably sounds pretty compelling to advertisers. BUT, bottom line, will anyone notice them in the 10 seconds it take to fast forward through the normal commercials? I asked my wife about it, and she said she’ll probably not even notice them. Or maybe she’ll notice, but she’ll never “click” on one. I am sticking to my original thought that this is a bad move and Tivo users are going to be upset. Personally, I think the skip commercial hack should be allowed and legal.

Nov

17

It’s just one of those days. Before it was Tivo fast forwarding and ads, now the MPAA are entering the scene again in Congress, trying to get a bill past that would outlaw software and hardware that allows you to fast forward past the previews/ads at the start of a DVD. Argh! Are you kidding me? Engadget said it best “something which is freaking ridiculous since itâ??s your DVD playing on your DVD player in your home. How about making it illegal to not pay attention, too?”

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