ad++ blog

The joys of Opera Mini

I recently started using the Opera Mini browser on my Nokia 6230i mobile phone. Well, I was using the 2.0 version already for a while, but the 3.0 version really rocks with it´s support for RSS feeds. Web pages are reduced in size, RSS feeds are stored on the server - and it´s all free!

Reading blogs on the go, e.g. in the unterground train, is really lot´s of fun. Check out the simulator or install the client software on any java enabled phone.

I think more and more of those people I see on the underground are not just sending SMS messages. Just like in Japan. Now you can be online all the time or at least as much as your mobile tariff plan permits. The only thing that´s now missing is a link between the built-in email client and the browser (in both directions). Plus more memory for the phone. And a flat rate plan.

Mobility

It seems that almost as many people use their mobile phones in Austria as in Japan on trains or the underground. Only differently. Viennese people mostly talk or write SMS. Tokyo citizens surf the web or check their email. Hence, that´s probably why clam-shell type phone are way more popular there than here due to there larger screens. Also it´s not accepted and sometimes forbidden to talk on the phone while on the train. "Switch off your phone to manna-mode (manner mode)".

Well, while being in Japan this summer it seemed like there are way many more people using their phones on the trains. But, there are way more people using public transport there. Sometimes even a crowded space like Vienna´s Westbahnhof station feels like a small town station. Which it really is!

I also seem to notice that also in Vienna more and more people - like myself - are starting to use the net on their phones. Surf the web with Opera´s mini browser, check a few rss feeds, read some emails - and there´s even more stuff waiting as data charges are getting cheaper and phones have more memory and raw power. It would be much better if more sites would be optimized for mobile use and provide stylesheets for that kind of use.

Mobile news

I experimented today a bit with so called mobile productivity solutions, or rather tools that you can play around with on your phone:

First: WidSets, a spin-off or so by Nokia (Incubated by Nokia Ventures, build by some Nokia staff). The software allows you to download small widgets - similar to those used by Apple Mac OS X or Konfabulator / Yahoo! Widgets - to your mobile phone. Currently, it´s just reading RSS feeds, but maybe there will be more. It´s not a full fledged RSS reader, since you cannot follow a link to open a web page right in the RSS reader or the a browser installed on the phone, but it´s a step forward.

I remember Nokia Ventures has already funded some very interested companies in the mobile space. Like FusionOne, which was unfortunately a few years ahead of it´s time. It´s design and usability was a superior as that of WidSets, though I used it - back in 1999-2000 something - mostly for sync-ing emails between my PC and their servers. Someday I got bored using that service, and later on I noticed that it was discontinued. However, as this service was started in the boom time of the internet businesses, I alway wondered how they plan to make money (I had an unlimited-usage-account). If I remember correctly, SyncML was born around that company.

Back to Widgets: You need to have a Java compatible phone (Java MIDP 2.0) with a decent screen (128x128 or bigger) and, obviously, a internet connection. You download the application to your phone. On the WidSets website you can configure what widgets you want to use. Once you go online on your mobile phone, those widgets get automatically.

I even created a widget for this blog. Nice? Yes, nice, but in some way unnessary, since there are countless blogs and soon there will be countless widgets essentially doing the same - downloading a single RSS feed. There´s got to something better. In fact, it´s already possible to clone (duplicate) a widget, change the feed URL and use it (and heck, you may re-publish it! :-)).

A better choice - yet no RSS reader though - might be to surf the "real" web pages. Either with the mobile phone´s installed browser or the Opera Mini browser, which I downloaded later this afternoon. It´s much better than the installed browser in the Nokia 6230i because it crushes big pages onto the small screen of the phone. On the Nokia browser I often had to scroll from left to right and back again to read the text, although that depended also on the website.

I´m still loking for a suitable RSS reader. I tried deliciousmona, who even advertise with my phone - how did they know? - but the handling is a bit weird. They don´t use the whole screen - only a smaller - and present feed word by word (or groups of words).

Strange podcasts

Everyone now is talking about podcasts. Podcasts are going mainstream, well, not really though - I guess there are still many people which don´t have a clue about podcast. Anyway, it would be logical to listen to podcast on the mobile phone.

Now mobilkom austria offers podcasts through their A1 radiozone. Podcasts aren´t downloaded though, but streamed in Realmedia format. Apparently it´s not possible to add podcasts, only pre-selected podcasts are available.

Die A1 RADIO ZONE kann auf bestimmten streaming-fähigen Handys und Smartphones, wie u.a. dem Nokia 6630, dem Nokia 6680 oder Nokia 9300 bzw. Nokia 9500 sowie dem Samsung Z500V, empfangen werden.Es ist keine zusätzliche Soft- oder Hardware notwendig. Radio und Podcasts werden auf das Handy direkt vom Anbieter gestreamt - was mühsame Downloads bzw. zusätzliche Hardware wie Speicherkarten spart.

I think that it would be more interesting to download files or to sync them from the PC (-> no income for mobile operators in that case; same problem as with the iTunes phone). Downloads would allow pausing, stopping and continuing and repeating podcasts.

 

No competition please

Wired has a good story on the struggle taken by Apple & Motorola during the design of the not-so-very-good ROKR iTunes phone, describing the mobile phone operators:

For companies that live off their monopoly on spectrum, it's hard to view competition as good.

Nokia e70

Great! Nokia finally introduces announces the phone I´ve been waiting for and which could become the successor for my old Nokia 6800: the E70 messaging phone. Although it might be too expensive - I don´t need the support for the Nokia Business Center and Blackberry but I like the great keyboard and mobile  email support of the Nokia 6800. Then again, with a  2.0 megapixel camera - is that still a business phone? :-) Well, there´s plenty of time to consider - availablity will be 1st quarter of 2006 (tech specs).

Finally the eMail client includes attachment support and periodic polling functionality. Some HTML browsing is possible - there´s a zoom mode too. No mentioning of a RSS client nor of Podcast support - maybe that can be added as a Series 60 application.

Note: compare the availablity and announcing schedules of companies: Apple t´day announced the new video-enhanced iPod, and it will be available next week - world-wide (at least through the Apple store! Now compare that to Nokia!

Premium SMS

... not just for porn and ringtones: The European Commission e-money directive may help opening m-commerce to physical goods, reports Justin Pearse of the TheFeature. PremiumSMS might become that killer micro-payment engine everybody has been waiting for. Still, the revenue share issue with mobile operators isn´t solved yet, so the outlook isn´t that bright.

Mobile blogging

Austria´s leading mobile operator Mobilkom Austria will launch a blogging products at the end of this week, was announced at yesterdays iCircle event.

Free SMS??

Another allegedly free SMS service (probably overhelmed already): add "smsgateway" in Skype, await authorization (up to 24 hours, didn´t receive one yet), send a chat message with the number in international format plus text. (source)

Musical DNA

The New Yorker explains - tries to, at least - why people listen to ringtones, and spent lots of money to buy them from companies like Jamster (sounds familiar, isn´t it?).

A $9.3 billion market by 2009 ($ 4.8 billion ringtones & realtones, full track downloads (currently at a mere $20 million) $ 1.8 billion, ring-back tones $ 2.7 billion) worldwide, while prices are expect to fall by over 46% in Europe and less elsewhere (due to the maturity of the european market vs. the US-market). 60 million ring-tone subscribers worldwide in 2005, > 300 in 2009 (a Juniper study).

Walkman phone

Sony Ericsson´s new Walkman phone W800i looks really great, plus it plays MP3 and AAC music files. (What, no ATRAC files?)

AAC files means, of course, non-DRM-crippled AAC files, so those songs legally purchased in the iTMS store won´t play unfortunately. Shhh, it´s like buying tyres that only fit on a Mercedes.

But back to mobile phones: the iTunes phone from Apple/Motorola should be out this month too. I hope it really has some great futures, ´cause this SONY is quite nice. And I like the color!

Actually I still not so much convinced about listening to music on the phone. Ok, it should be a great plus not to have to carry an iPod and a seperate phone around. But as far as the phone goes, I didn´t listen to any radio on my Nokia 6800 as well. Which then doesn´t really explain why I should/would like to buy an iPod too.

Personally, I find the K750i much more appealing (read this review). As shown in this Cebit2005 presentation (Flash), the - oops, wrong again: both phones have a 2 megapixel camera. 2 megapixel! That 50% of what my digital camera can deliver.  OK, so let´s re-phrase it again: personally I thought the K750i is better, but heck - isn´t the only difference that the camera is protected (covered)? The Wsomething looks much better - I like orange - unless you´re out for a traditional business phone.

Too bad Apple and SONY don´t work together in the mobile sphere (yet?).

Update: Nokia´s new 6230i (PDF, press release) has also support for AAC/M4A and MP3. M4A are non-DRM restricted files, while files purchase from the iTunes Music store have the extension m4p. Sorry, folks! :-(

UMA

UMA is an interesting new development in the mobile world. UMA stands for "Unlicensed Mobile Access", i.e. VoIP over WiFi. Well, not really - read on.

Actually, already some companies are working on seamless data roaming between cellular (GPRS, EDGE and UMTS) and WiFi (or Bluetooth) networks. The obvious next step is to extend that to voice using VoIP over WIFI. WiFi is of course much cheaper, allowing cost savings for corporate users; possibly also savings for telcos (data is less expensive than voice), but at the same time reduced revenue due to a reduced amount of traditional cellular voice calls.

In a way UMA isn´t VoIP, it rather just tunnels the entire GSM or CDMA session over WiFi and the internet. So it´s not seamless roaming between SIP or H.323 and cellular networks, but seamless - roaming and handover - and GSM voice and data service between the Unlicensed Mobile Access Network (UMAN) and the cellular radio access network (RAN). More about this at phonescoop, UMA Technology and Kineto Wireless (PDF).

Essentially I think UMA enables mobile carriers to further run around the telcos (in the private consumers space) and offer one-stop solutions for the corporate customer (see also this article about VoIP wireless).

3G and more

Worth watching: Nokia's webcast from 3GSM.

Voice has already gone mobile, we believe life will follow (Simon Beresford-Wylie - Executive Vice President & General Manager - Networks, Nokia).

Strangely though, I cannot listen to this webcast in Firefox, only in MS Internet Explorer. Can´t find an Realplayer plug-in.

Klingelton mit Spreeblick

Die FAZ berichtet über das nervige Küken von Jamba, und das Geschäfte mit Handy Downloads. Unter all den Sätzen, die die Büroräumlichkeiten beschreiben, fällt (mir) ein Wort auf:

Repräsentativ ist hier nur der grandiose Spreeblick.

Spreeblick. Natürlich. Zufall?

On the edge of UMTS

Quote from Wikipedia:

As of 2004, EDGE is more actively supported by GSM operators in North America than anywhere else in the world because GSM/GPRS has a strong competitor: CDMA2000. Most other GSM operators view UMTS as the ultimate upgrade path and plan to skip EDGE altogether. However, the high cost and slow uptake of UMTS (as demonstrated by the upstart network 3) have made some western European GSM operators reevaluate EDGE as an interim upgrade.

News of today:

mobilkom austria nation's first provider to make full-coverage third generation service available throughout Austria - Intelligent combination of EDGE and UMTS provides technological basis: UMTS PLUS® - Available throughout Austria by mid-2005 (more in English or in German)

EDGE meets ITU´s requirements for 3G services - with data speeds up to 384 kbit/s in packet mode - while it´s technically (just) an enhancement to 2G/2.5G (GPRS) networks.

Samsung unveils speech-to-text mobile

Samsung Electronics has presented the first phone with speech-to-text capability (via ABC News):

This speech-to-text capability will allow users to speak into the phone and have the phone convert those words directly into text.

Yes, but will it allow to convert spoken words (by the other caller)? Let´s say, I call you, and ask you "What´s Helen´s phone number?" and you answer "five six seven eight zero eight five". Now I could press <capture> and convert the (previous) spoken words into text and then into a contact, that would be really cool.

3G surprise factor

Now what a surprise!

Users of third-generation (3G) mobile devices are already browsing widely and downloading more content than users of traditional 2.5 handsets, according to new data from mobile content provider Bango . (Press release, PDF)

If they have the bandwidth, why not use it?

BTW, it´s really strange how Netimperative mixes languages - German and English, probably only with a german-language browser - on their pages, including esp. this registration page.

Dear cell phone user

This document about cell phone annoyances is really - great. And fun. And correct. Remember "Honey, I´ll be home in 5 minutes"? (PDF) via vowe

UMTS price models

This UMTS price plan by AT&T wireless seems really great at first look, far better what you´ll get at european operators, but with a little twist:

mMode Unlimited data plan (in addition to voice rate plans) US$ 24,99/Month, including unlimited data usage on the phone for web browsing, email, internet and intranet access. So you can surf the web on phones such as the Motorola A845 or the Nokia 6651, but

• Connection to another device or computer via cable, Bluetooth, or infrared will be charged $0.001/KB.
• You also will be charged $0.001 per KB if you remove the SIM card from your phone and use it to get wireless data service from another device or computer.

In contrast, european offers focus mainly on using mobile internet with a PC (and even a seperate SIM card). Certainly with more and more smart phones, this is a clever path!

Numbers

Apple shipped 4 million iPods in the past quarter, Palm shipped 1.5 million Treos and Dell shipped 8 million PCs and 185k Axims. Very nice, but Nokia shipped over 50 million handsets in the same timeframe.

via Russell Beattie (PC business converging with mobile business)