Tzah 2.0

When I was a high school student, my parents often heard teachers say about me “he’s got potential, this kid, but he’s not fulfilling it”.  On the way home, my parents would ask me why am I’m not exercising my “potential”. I would told them that school is boring. Truth is, I was just being lazy. Other students in my class had perhaps less “potential” but they did their homework and prepared for tests. Eventually, these do-it-right students got better grades than me.

These days, I feel the story repeats itself (no, I’m not back at school…). Replacing the “got potential” and “do it right” students are my cellular phones. I used to carry around simple (some would say primitive) Nokia 6021. This phone doesn’t have 3G, WiFi, advanced OS, GPS or even a camera. I used it for 3 main operations: alarm clock, calendar reminders and – duh! – calls. The phone excelled in all 3 operations. Really. Alarm always went off at the times it was set, reminders were easy to set and read, and, yes!, it even made and received phone calls (SMS included). All that, while not depleting the battery after mere hours. Life were good.

About three weeks ago, I replaced my mobile phone at work. I had 4 choices (all Nokia): E51, 5800  XpressMusic,  3120 and 6210. I decided to go with 6210. It has HSPA connection, GPS, Symbian 9.3 and 3.2Mp camera. Since then, I sometimes find an analogy  between my school potential and my new smart phone. Sure, Nokia 6210 got potential, but, does it show? Is it better than  my old even-not-feature phone Nokia 6021? I’m not so sure. “God is in the details” Albert Einstein once said, and boy was he right! On many basic functionalities, Nokia 6021 performs much better than 6210. Let’s take for example the alarm clock. On 6021, I would simply set the alarm and that’s it. On 6210, the alarm’s setting automatically set the alarm to be repetitive which I don’t need. Cancelling it requires few more clicks on the phone. What’s more, I want the delay period to be 5 minutes like 6021’ settings and not the 6210’s 15 minutes.

Calendar. There’s no option to set a time for a memo reminder. Only a date. I want to set my reminders at the time I want to. If I have too many reminders I could miss an important one because the calendar will not alert me. An even more important issue is that there is no option to set a call reminder. This is  an option that Nokia 6021 (the primitive one, remember?) has but 6210 Smartphone (?) don’t. How silly is that? I’m used to set call reminders quite often with 6021 but now I can’t.

My final grunt, about calls, is more about the contacts application than the call itself. Usually, we call our friends either from the call log (pressing the green button shows previous calls made) or from the contacts. On 6021, I look for my contact, find it and press the green button. On 6210 it’s not that simple. Remember, we have a Smartphone here, and we need to demonstrate its potential, right? Right. If your contact has several phone numbers (mobile and home for example), 6210 will show them to you. Why not automatically select the first number as the default like 6021 does? Pressing the green button when the contact is displayed will trigger the call to the default number.

Another issue with 6021is that if I search for a contact, select a number and call from it, the next time I want to use the contacts, it goes back to the contact I previously called. This is stupid. Why not return to the main screen of contacts (again, as 6021 does)? This is exactly where the smart-but-lazy-phone fails. Sure, its applications can run in the background and you can return to them instantly, unlike those ‘primitive’ phones.  Still, sometimes, the simple things works much better, like in 6021.

Conclusion. Nokia 6210 Navigator is indeed smart. I like installing applications on it like TwitterMobile and Waze. I would definitely suggest users upgrading their phone to consider it as an option. However, looks like Nokia made a few mistakes in the UX department. It’s difficult balancing potential with simplicity, but I would expect Nokia to do better. If you’re “old-school” and just want to use your phone to make calls, stick with Nokia 6021.

Following my previous review about Twibble mobile application, I was asked to try out TwitterMobile. The application is produced by Tricast Solutions from UK and is written in J2ME so it should work on many mobile phones in the market. However, currently it works only on Sony-Ericsson and Nokia S60 240*320 devices. Lucky for me, I have a Nokia 6210 Navigator phone which have the right screen size, so I could try the application.

Unlike Twibble, installation process is easy and user friendly. The user selects his phone type, enter his email and phone number and press the download button. Next, the user receives a special SMS message with a link to download the client. Pressing the link open-up the a mobile download page with a link to download the actual client. BTW, the mobile page seems to recognize the mobile model, but it turns out that’s due to the link. Meaning, the mobile site does NOT recognize the device’s user agent. This might cause problems for users who didn’t put the right model at the beginning of the process. It also means that Tricast could have saved 2-3 clicks till the actual download, but, it’s not a biggy.

Download completed, it’s time to test the application. If I had to describe the application user-experience in one word, it will  have to be – Wow! The GUI is beautiful, just like Tricast say in their site. Using TWUIK reach media engine, the application flows elegantly between tweets and application options. The menu is not your conventional left-button-opens-a-doll-menu, but rather, a cool, mac-like graphic choices. Great job there Tricast!

However, this is where the complements stop and the complains begin; and there’re quite a few of them. First of all, the user is not given a choice to save his password locally. More secured? maybe, but it’s annoying to type my 10-characters password. Next, the phone’s security manager prompt the user many times for web access approval. This is because the application is not signed-in with a certificate. Oh well, I could live with that (still, the GUI make up for it).

We’re not done though. Unlike Twibble, Twitter Mobile doesn’t have the option to open a link inside a tweet. But wait, there’s more! if you want to tweet, you can but there’s no option to attach a picture! How lame is that?! I mean, the main point (at least for me) for having a mobile twitter application, is to tweet about an interesting event and add a picture to it. That in itself was enough to persuade me to stick with Twibble, but it’s not over here.  Want to check your @replies or your @direct-messages? Sorry. You have to pay 1.99£ for that. Yes, you heard me. A fee for a free service. No way,  José.

The bottom line is that the application gets an A+ on the cool factor but fails in usability. Perhaps Tricast is using the client to demonstrate its TWUIK technology, I don’t know. I do know that if they hope to make serious money from the application itself, they will have to enable picture attachment, URL linking and most importantly, free basic services in twitter.

As an avid Twitter user, I’m hooked to the service. I use it mainly to learn abut interesting news as they happen but also to learn what my friends are doing. Twitter 140-only-words strength is somewhat a limitation when you want to capture your friends’ status. That’s where services like twitpic helps a lot. A picture is worth a thousand words and with Twitter, about  7.14 tweets! So, the best way  to convey your personal experience is by adding a pic link to your tweet, and preferably, as close as possible to the time of happening.

That’s where mobile twitter applications comes into play. I recently installed Mobile Twibble application on Nokia 6210 Navigator and used it to update my status. Here’re my thoughts:

Installation is not easy to the un-experienced mobile user. The user has to go to a general installation page on http://m.twibble.de. The page provides downloads to a dedicated BlackBerry application or a general J2ME application. The page is filled with semi-professional terms like jar and MIDP2 which are confusing to the novice user. Twibble would be best to recognize the device by its user agent header and provide step by step instructions on its web site.

Another issue with the application is that there are actually two J2ME versions. Signed and unsigned. A phone without the proper certificates will fail the signed version, leaving the user confused. True, Twibble works best with signed application permissions (we’ll get to that later), but again, proper instructions with images on the web site would clarify the troubled user.

Once installed, the application is very intuitive to use. the Navigation keys switch the view from your friends tweets to replies, Direct messages and customized searches that the user can configure. Still, if you follow more than 100 users , it’s not easy keeping track with limited size screen.

Tweeting, on the other hand, is very easy. with one key short cut, the user sees the update page where he can set his status. The application also enables the user to add a picture from his saved images. However, for un-signed applications, finding the right image is difficult.

First thing the user has to do is to find the folder where the images are stored. On my phone, it’s located in the somewhat enigmatic folder name E:/Images/100_2009/. Another problem is that usually, the images  themselves have un-friendly names like 20090721_004.jpg which makes it difficult selecting the right image. The application does provide the user with the option to view all images as thumbnails, but, un-signed application requires permission from the user before opening each image. This is quite an annoyance. However, since we’re tweeting live events, most likely the image the user wish to attach will be the amongst the last images taken.

I wish Twibble would build a native Symbian plug-in that will add an option to tweet a picture directly from the native gallery application.

In summary, once passing the installation hurdle, it’s easy to tweet your on-line events and attach pictures, especially if you installed the signed version.

Mobile devices are no longer tools for calling someone. That’s a known fact. You can take pictures with it, read emails, navigate, read web content, check your calendar and more. However, in the mass user eyes, it is still not regarded as an extension to your computer. Sometimes, when I’m outside my home or office, I come across interesting stuff; movie posters, concerts, commercials or even a quick glance at a newspaper’s headline. For example, I can see a poster about  Antonio Gades’s flamenco version of “Carmen” and wish to learn when and where it shows.

Until recently, my mobile options to get this information were limited. I’d have to  open my browser, go to Google and type something like “gades carmen tel aviv”. Then I’d have to go over the results and look for the information I want. That’s very tedious even if you have iPhone.

Next comes Nokia. Nokia has recently launched a beta application called Nokia Point & Find. The application, currently available in USA and UK only and for Nokia N95 models, utilizes the compound of phone’s camera, Internet connection and GPS to recognize a real life object and get information relevant to the context and location. For example, users of the service could get information about movie like reviews, local show times, trailers and could even buy tickets on-line. What I like most about the service is the management portal Nokia provides for publishers. Nokia wouldn’t want to have a dedicated professional service team to configure campaigns. Instead, Nokia’s management portal enables the publishers to do it themselves. What I don’t like is that the application is relevant only to N95 models in the USA and UK. Plus, the user will have to download and install the application. 

Finally there’s  Kooaba. Koomba is a spin-off company from the ETH Zurich, an outstanding science and technology university in Switzerland. Their technology was already used in several campaigns and looks very mature. Mobile users can send images in various ways: email, MMS, iPhone and J2ME applications, although video calls are not available yet. Publishers can use  a web-based campaign manager to set up their account. The company also offers API for partners and developers.  

Overall, this is very exciting! The products above demonstrate how to use the distinctive benefits that mobile device has to offer to provide new experiences for mobile users and business opportunities for publishers.

Have you heard the latest news about Google Mobile latest cool feature? Well, I’m not talking about Google Latitude, an application that can show you friends near your position. Though cool and have much revenue potential, it will take several iterations for the application to know which of my friends I’m interested to share with my location and equally important – when! Perhaps some integration with the phone’s call log can help show people the user’s interested in keeping in touch with.

Still, I think an even more important, and immediate, feature is coming from Google Mobile. Android voice search is a way for you to search from Android by voice. Finally! Let’s face it. You can have the latest, coolest, feature-packed , girls will fall at its sight, man will envy you smart-phone (BTW, it’s time to come up with a better name). However, it will be pretty useless if you can’t easily activate it. And what easier way do you have to activate your phone than your own voice? I know, I know. Gestures, stylus, customized buttons and QWERTY keyboard are nice and help using the applications. However, in many cases that’s still not comfortable. With voice search you can literally tell the search widget your query.

How great is that? The trouble with many mobile apps is that they’re trying to mimic desktop application by squeezing user interface to ~3 inches (and that’s usually with smart phone). Using voice should be the first choice for any mobile application. Now, let’s consider the possibilities. Hopefully, as voice-recognition technology becomes better and available for non-English languages, we could see more voice-activated applications on mobile phones.

This post is aimed to windows mobile developers looking for a profiler for their mobile application. I came across EQATEC profile. This tool is great! You can run it on all .NET apps including .NET CF 2.0 and 3.5.  The usage is quite simple:

1. Compile your application as usual. If you wish, you can later add profiler-attribute later for fine tuning the profiler.
2. Use the profiler to build a profiled version of your application. The profiled assemblies are typically 30% larger than the original and runs 30% slower. I believe that for most apps that is acceptable.
      
3. Deploy the profiled version and run it on your device. Your device doesn’t have to be connected via the ActiveSync for this step. After the application finished, find the report file. Usually, it will be be on ‘Temp’ folder or on SD card if you have one.
4. Drag the report file to your desktop, and from there, to the profiler viewer.
5. After a few minutes, people around you would probably find you mumbling “OMG, what the…?, I didn’t believe it takes so much time! And why the hell this method is called so many times”.

I found the viewer useful for the following points:

1. Find out your bottle-necks methods. This could be methods that takes long time to execute, or relativity fast methods that are called numerous times.
2. Find out what happens inside your code. You might realize that you overlooked some calls to method that consumes most of the application time.
3. Prioritize your work. The 80-20 rule will work here. You’ll find out that most of the delays are trackable and easy to resolve.

For more information and understanding on how to use the profiler, go to the guide.

BTW, EQATEC also have a tracer tool. However, it is an on-line tool that drastically reduces the performance of your application. For example, the bubbles example application rate was reduced from 54 frames/seconds to 3!

Technology is fast-pacing. It’s all around us. 3G networks are deployed world-wide (although at small percentage of overall networks) and the battle is already on for 4G between LTE and WiMax. The new annunciation of electrical cars is here as an answer for the fuel crisis. Digital photos and web-sharing has only recently (I’m talking years-scale) become common and now we witness amazing ways to combine the two and watch photos. Mobile and VoIP. Need I say more? These two technologies are always revolutionized. VoIP is becoming widespread  in more and more businesses, homes and various vertical markets. Mobile is constantly surprising us. iPhone, Modu, GPS-integrated phones.

But still, we’re not there. Not from an innovation point of view.  It seems that in our vanity and ambition to become leaders in this technology race, we forget something. That something is stability and reliability. Technologies  are evolving but can the family next door use it?

High availability of day-to-day infrastructures and commodities like water, Gas, PSTN lines, electricity and TV is perceived as self evident. We open the TV and “Lost” is on, we click a switch and let there be light.  Why can’t we have the same availability and reliability on more advanced technologies?

Yesterday, was not a good day for me. I woke up late because the alarm in my cellular didn’t work. My other cellular, top of the line HTC TyTN 2 decided to quit charging for some reason. I picked up my laptop bag and found out it’s hot. why? my laptop  didn’t go to sleep mode when I shut it down so it continued to exhaust  the battery while in close bag. I quickly went down to my car, and… Yes, the battery is gone. And on top of things, the chess application  on facebook was going through upgrade.

High-level technology is just not there. Take for example a recent report that demonstrated that only 3 of top 20 most popular web sites achieved the mythical 5 9’s of reliability. At the beginning of the year 4 undersea communication cables were cut crippling international communication in countries like India, Qatar and United Arab Emirates.  These examples are annoying but not harmful (unless you just have to update the entire world on what you ate for breakfast). A much more alarming example of why reliability is important came just at the beginning of this month were a Canadian toddler died after VoIP 911 dispatched an ambulance to  the family’s former home, more than 2500 miles away.

I hope that top-level technology companies will quickly realize that amazing gadgets and cool features are nice, but reliability is more important. Until than, we can only backup our wedding pictures and go outside to real friends the next time that our favorite social network is done.

Hi there! My name is Tzahi Efrati and I’m manager of mobile & tools development here at JAJAH. The mobile market has changed dramatically over the last years and continues to present new functionality every so often.

Over the last 6 month, two major events happened concerning the mobile industry. The first is of course the release of Apple’s iPhone. What I like most about this phone, besides its functionality is the one-touch-screen-fits-all approach. The user is not constrained to physical keypad and buttons. The phone enable the application to present the user interaction of their choice. I’d imagine that somewhere in the near future, iPhone 2.0 will enable the user itself to choose the UI he/she wishes to use. For example, left-handed people could choose the layout of game controls according to their needs.

The second major event is Google’s announcement of of the Android, the open software stack for mobile devices. The announcement, although not backed-up by actual phone models had already caused fundamental change of hearts with major operators like Verizon and AT&T. These two giants has declared their intention to open up their cell phone network.

Although it still remains to be seen the concrete implications of these announcements, one thing is clear. Mobile phones are becoming more and more a “one size fits all” machines. It already started with the introduction of camera and music players to the phones. The iPhone and android present a notion of having a device that can do almost everything. Want to hear your favorite song? Go to the iPod on your device and finger-scroll your way. Interested in checking how much your stock did lat night? open up the stock widget. Care to change the layout of the phone software? use your mobile browser to find and download the latest calling application.

Still, a couple of questions rise from this “all-you-can-swallow” wonder machines. “Can we handle it?” and “do we really care?”. Talk to your parents and your friends and I’m sure most of them will tell you that all they want is a simple device to make calls and send SMS. Anything else just complicates. Let’s face it, even technophiles, who take their cereals with a GigaOm.com on the side don’t master the entire functionality of their gadgets or the latest cool addition to their Firefox browser (so 2006).

I’m not sure that even teenagers who has more virtual friends on facebook than actual homosapien could master so much technology in one device or even care to use it. What do you think? is it just the beginning? should we expect mobile devices in the near future to be even more featured-pack? Or perhaps, this will cause the exact opposite. People will become so antagonized that they’ll stick to their old mint-condition 2G phones?