This week is Android week. I could blog in depth about it, but then that’s what everyone else is doing. I’d rather sit back and see where it goes. Google’s most compelling product and technology is search. I don’t see a ‘mobile search’ paradigm shift with Android - not yet anyway. One is surely coming, [...]

[Read more →]

To Mobilize or not to Mobilize?
You’re a Micro-ISV and already have a product or service out there on the desktop or web. Now you’re thinking to take it mobile, but you’re new to the world of mobile apps. What should you be thinking about? In part 1 of this article, I’ll be looking at the [...]

[Read more →]

I was wondering again about Alpha families and related mobile services. Thus far, I don’t think I’ve really found a convincing ‘Alpha family’ package. Let me first re-name and re-define this micro-trend.
In homage to the great ‘i’ prefix, I prefer iFamily. It seems apt, seeing as how the iFamily invariably comes fully laiden with iPods [...]

[Read more →]

I was part of a roundtable discussion at Mobile Web Summit during which we discussed the mobile device fragmentation problem. For mobile application developers, fragmentation is a huge pain in the backside. Simply put, there are too many variants of device to program for. This means that programming for a large number of users across [...]

[Read more →]

Previously I suggested using a digital picture frame to display messages from a PC, such as calendar reminders (see idea #87). The general idea is to grab the user’s attention via the “bump into effect”. An alternative approach is to play announcements through a radio, a bit like traffic alerts that break into the program. [...]

[Read more →]

I’ve already raved on this blog about the photo widget in the Google desktop sidebar. Every 5 seconds it displays a thumbnail image of one of the digital pictures on my PC. I find that at least every 1/2 hour I will click on one and enjoy it full-screen. My wife asked why can’t we [...]

[Read more →]

The last couple of posts talked about exploiting the “bump into effect” (BIF) to encourage phone users to make calls to people not called recently, such as the “tickle list” of contacts. The BIF can be very powerful in its own right - on average I view (by which I mean click to enlarge) a [...]

[Read more →]

In my previous post I mentioned how I like the Google sidebar widget that cycles through my pics. This is a “bump-into-effect” app. I mentioned doing this on the phone, but to remind me to call old friends - just pop up their picture on the phone with a note “it’s a while since you [...]

[Read more →]

The sidebar for Google’s desktop tool has a nice panel called “photos” which continually cycles through thumbnail images of the “My Pictures” folder and sub-folders. If you see one you like, it can be opened in a jiffy. As these are my photos and not ghastly banner-ads, I tend not to blot them out of [...]

[Read more →]

I often imagine a phone interface that is simply a search-box, as bare and stripped down as the Google front page.
Most of the time I would be entering search strings based on names. However, unlike a search engine, there would be no need to hit “search” or “return”. I imagine that the search “results” would [...]

[Read more →]

I only recently discovered Google alerts, which are great. Search results are run periodically, or as things happen, and then sent via email to the user. I run searches against Google News.
I have found that getting the results on my Blackberry is actually very useful. Firstly, there’s the interrupt-effect. This is otherwise known as [...]

[Read more →]