Dec

16

GMail on your phone

December 16, 2005 | Leave a Comment

http://www.google.com/glm/gmail – found on Digg this morning. Google
can add Nokia 6680 to their list of supported devices. Works great!

Google did a really nice job on this. They’re using XHTML-Mobile as
the markup. So http://m.gmail.com should work on any phone with a
browser capable of XHTML-Mobile. If you would like to get a fairly
accurate view of what this will look like on a phone, Firefox will
render XHTML-Mobile pages.

I also notice that Google is using Accesskey attributes for certain
links. I am a big fan of this for phone applications. It allows you
to navigate links with number keys on the phone’s keypad. For
example, on any page in mobile Gmail, you can press 8 to compose a
new message. Very nice. Thanks Google. I try and do this in all of my
Flash Lite and Web based applications.

Is Web 3.0 going to be about mobile apps?

Dec

13

Google’s SMS search service got me thinking the other day, will
people rush to register addresses (i.e. numbers) on carrier networks
to protect their brand, similar to domain name registration?

Here’s kind of how I think it works today. Google has partnered with,
I believe Mobile 365, to register an account with all the major
carriers. That account is nothing more than an address on the
networks that customers can send SMS messages to, or the owner can
send messages from (can you say SPAM?). Google, for example, is 46645
(GOOGL). Anyone on any US carrier can send a message to that address
and Google’s SMS search service will be the recipient. Google’s
service is amazing, it takes things like a search term (i.e. pizza)
and a zip code, and will return a listing of the pizza places in that
zip code. Search is a whole different topic.

What I am wondering is, are companies going to rush to purchase
similar addresses to protect their brand? For example, is Apple
(27753) going to do the same thing as Google, so if someone wants to
quickly find the nearest retail store they can ping the address? Or
are they in no hurry to, until someone like Think Secret registers it
and can use it as another means of spilling the inside secrets of
Apple before the official announcements?

Someone could probably get fairly malicious and start capitalizing on
another person’s brand easily. I wonder if there are any laws that
cover that sort of thing, similar to today’s domain name squatting?

Either way, companies like Mobile 365 are in the right place to benefit.

Dec

8

Ever rediscover something from childhood and think, how did I go without? This happened to me last night. I had to run to the grocery real quick to pick up a few things. One being milk for my son. Right next to the milk was Lactaidâ??lactose free milk. Kind of lame, but I am lactose intolerant. Which realizing meant, no cereal. Painful, I know. So for a while now I have been meaning to try this Lactaid stuff and see if it really was like milk and if would make me ill. Needless to say, I grabbed some last night, along with some Fruit Loops and gave it a try. Surprisingly, I couldn’t even tell the difference. It’s exactly what I remember milk and cereal tasting like! Granted it has been over a decade since I have had a bowl of cereal. This is awesome, and my stomach didn’t tie into knots.

I have rediscovered one of the great things I missed from early childhood. Actually I think I may need to go have a bowl now.

This post fueled by Fruit Loops.

Dec

2

If you have a connected Tivo box and are expecting to get the new online services, announced yesterday, know that you have to go sign-up. It’s not an automatic update. I checked my Series 2 last night and expected to see the new services from Yahoo, Fandango, and Live365. Unfortunately it seems that Tivo is seeding the update to a priority list first and will eventually cover everyone.

So if you have a Tivo Series 2 and would like to get on the priority list to receive the new online services. Go here: http://research.tivo.com/onlineservices/

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