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Real-time web provides real-time feedback on The Guardian's iPhone application
Real-time web gives real-time feedback on Guardian iPhone appTwitter is transforming the way that digital products are launched.
Nokia's near-real-time adverts on the Northern Line
Yesterday Kings Cross seemed to be the epicentre of a London Transport #fail that thwarted my every move, but it did mean that I got an enjoyable bit of serendipity. As I was forced to unexpectedly re-route my journey via the Northern Line platforms at Euston, I spotted this advert. And then the delays meant I had time to film it. In the last few days I've been in a debate about how news organisations have totally failed to sell...
Newspapers on the go - Metro and The Sun
Yesterday I was casting a (very) quick eye over the mobile offerings of The Telegraph and The Times. Today I'm looking at the sites that The Sun and Metro offer to users on-the-go. The Sun Of the sites I looked at, The Sun's was by far the most nakedly commercial. Sometimes literally so. Their homepage had a strong focus not just on the news, but on calls to actions to download ringtones, wallpapers and games, which are provided by a...
Newspapers on the go - The Times and The Telegraph
Back in March The Guardian launched a specifically formatted mobile version of the site at m.guardian.co.uk. At the time I thought it might be worth having a quick poke around to see what other newspapers in the UK were doing with their sites in the mobile space. Since then it seems that I've been at so many different digital media and journalism events or gigs that I never got round to blogging about what I saw. Here are some of...
The mobile web's penalty shoot-out - Nokia N95 vs iPhone
Last Wednesday Arsenal's Champions League tie against Roma went to penalties - but the real shoot-out for me was in the Crown & Sceptre pub on Foley Street, between @solle's iPhone and my Nokia N95. It was 'London IA in the Pub' night, but Matthew and I were a little distracted by the game. Once it went to extra-time we nearly ducked out to a nearby pub that had Sky, but instead we ended up watching the penalty shoot-out in...
Reactions to The Guardian's new mobile site
Last week The Guardian launched a new bespoke mobile version of our website at m.guardian.co.uk. During the same week It was interesting to see that there was still some life left in the should-you-or-shouldn't-you have a specific mobile facing presence. Jakob Nielsen still very much thinks you should. "Mobile phone users struggle mightily to use websites, even on high-end devices. To solve the problems, websites should provide special mobile versions." Bruce Lawson over at ZDnet disagreed: "He's wrong. Making two...
Disposable mobile handsets from environmentally challenged Orange
I don't suppose I should allow myself to be surprised anymore, but I'm still astonished at how badly wrong some major brands can get contact with their customers. Take my mobile phone provider for example. I woke up the other day reasonably well disposed to Orange. I've had some issues with their website in the past, and don't think I would score them highly in a net promoter test, but I was pretty happy with my phone and my tariff....
"Beyond the browser: Usability in mobile interaction design" UX Corner meet-up
Last week I went to a London UX Corner meet-up entitled "Beyond the browser: Usability in mobile interaction design". The event was held in one of Sun Microsystem's London offices, and featured 3 speakers. As hosts, Sun got to give a brief plug for their UK start-ups network, which is free to join for companies less than 6 years old with fewer than 150 employees on the books, and promises beer and pizza as well as tech help. "Intricacies of...
'Xmas futures, crystal balls?' - Festive Chinwag Live
I had a hectic day on Tuesday, as after speaking at the FreePint stand at Online Information I then headed into central London for the last Chinwag Live event of the year. Entitled 'Xmas futures, crystal balls?' it asked a panel of experts, chaired by the BBC's Richard Titus, to gaze 5 years into the future and imagine the mobile and new media landscape in 2013. Certainly the person on the panel with the most intriguing sounding job was Jonathan...
Postcard from Macau #6: The land of SMS spam
I recently spent three weeks visiting Macau, the former Portuguese territory on the south coast of China. As a former colony like Hong Kong, it is now a 'Special Administrative Region'. This post is one of a series looking at aspects of information design, user experience, internet use and journalism that interested me when I was there. Macau's telecomms industry seems to have a great deal of competition in the mobile network sector. With leaks from mainland China, at...
Orange could do with a usability upgrade
I used the Orange online service last week to upgrade my phone - and I have to say I was left distinctly unimpressed with some of the usability. I still retain a UK mobile phone for when I'm in the country. It means that I've been able to keep the same number that I've been giving out since the year dot on business cards and email signatures. However, if you've tried to call me on my UK phone over the...
T-Mobile MMS addicted to Internet Explorer on the web
A friend sent me a picture message from the UK the other day. It originated from the T-Mobile network, and made its way across Europe to arrive on my non-MMS enabled Vodafone network phone in Greece. It appeared as a text message with a link and a password. I was very impressed with the whole cross-platform, cross-network, cross-national boundary operation. Until I got to the web bit of it course. The first thing that greeted me when I tried to...
Slacker equivalent already on the market in Europe - meet Sony and Vodafone's Radio DJ
There has been a bit of a buzz around the announcement of a service called Slacker in the USA, which will be a device which plays personalised radio stations to the user on the go. Matt Marshall at VentureBeat even touted it as a potential "iPod killer". As I read through the promised feature-set, I started to get a little nagging voice in my head, saying "Hang on, isn't....this....what...I..do?" Because for the last few months I've been working on...
Thanks for the score BBC Sport - but who actually won?
I'm sure, like the media coverage of A-Level results, I moan about this every year, but it is that time of the year - F.A. Cup replays - where I get to gripe again about the way replay results are presented on the BBC's mobile phone service. Last night provided a classic example. The tie between Middlesbrough and Bristol City turned out to be an epic of the genre, with first one team being ahead, then the other, and in...
The anonymous CD sleeves in 3's music download advertising campaign
I was on the top deck of a London bus last week, and noticed that all of the advertising space had been given over to promoting mobile network operator 3's music download store. They are advertising that the service has half a million tracks, and is, of course, open anywhere you can get a mobile signal, including the top deck of the bus itself. A couple of things struck me about the advert, which featured shelves and shelves of CD...
Coverage of the Apple and Cisco iPhone trademark battle
Yesterday I wrote about the accessibility issue with Apple's newly announced "iPhone" product - and my concern that should many devices end up adopting their approach of a mobile phone without a tactile interface, usability for the large section of the population with some visual or motor impairment might be a problem. I also looked at the very vocal response of a section of the Apple fan community to the very suggestion that this might even be a question worth...
iPhone and the blindness of the Apple fans
Well, it seemed churlish not to join in with virtually every other blog I read and not post something about the mobile phone / multimedia device you may have seen launched by Apple last week. I have to start by saying that I am intrigued by the user interface, and I'll be fascinated to hear about how people get on with it out in the wild. Rather than talk about the much-vaunted product itself, I wanted to look at a...
Poor mobile UEFA Cup service from the BBC
Everybody knows that the UEFA Cup is the poor man's "Euro Vase" to the "Big Cup" of the Champions League, but I'm not sure why the BBC's coverage of the competition has to be so poor on their WAP mobile service. Last night I wanted to find out what time the Blackburn vs Red Bull Salzburg tie kicked off. So the obvious thing to do on my phone was to go to the BBC's Football menu, the European menu, then...
BBC.co.uk gets animated over Doctor Who
The homepage got all animated today in anticipation of the forthcoming series of Doctor Who - promoting the teaser trailer that is now available online. It was a visual approach the team first took to promote last years webcast - Scream Of The Shalka - which featured Richard E Grant as the Doctor. At the time I was so excited I downloaded and resized the animated TARDIS image to use as the screensaver on my T610...
Java powered interactive tube map for Orange phones
My copy of London Underground's Tube magazine dropped through my door this weekend. As usual it has some interesting articles about the tube itself - one on individual station designs at platform level, and one on Caribbean tube workers in the 1950s and 60s - but mostly comes across as a rather dull corporate brochure aching to be an in-flight magazine.However it did have one really neat promotional item - advertising that you can download a free java powered interactive...
Converting BBC Sport RSS feeds to WML
The future of the BBC is mobile, according to 'the kids'
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I'll be appearing on a panel with Sarah Hartley and Iain Hepburn at the Edinburgh International Science Festival on Sunday April 11th. More details...
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Day of the Triffids
If everyone suddenly went blind, how long would the Internet survive, and could you still publish news on it?
With professionals of this quality, who needs 'citizen journalist' enemies?
It is hard to argue that ethics and quality set the 'professional journalist' apart from the amateur blogger, if the 'professional' keeps publishing articles so wrong that they have to be deleted.
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