On the bus yesterday, how could i resist? Three right in a row: Blackberry, i-pod, cell phone… all busily mobiling. (With me across from them, mobiling myself :))

First of all, I want to thank Russ for the nice words he said about me. (They really did leave me speechless last night.) And everyone else who liked, commented, and linked to my last post. It’s really encouraging to hear other’s feedback and thoughts, as well as to know if you like or dislike things I am thinking. With that said, I will try to post more, because I am learning a lot from this too.

Last night I went to Mobile Monday. It was the first night that there were presenters and topics. I liked the format and think that it went well for everyone to get on one page to begin discussions.

The presentation about Enterprise applications got me thinking a bit. I’ve never really thought about these before, but I’ve only thought about consumer applications. However, these will be important as well and how we will make them make sense will be crucial. We can’t just port the sites to the phone… So, how will we make meaning full interactions for say Accounts receivable? And well, does that even make sense? I then read Threadwatch’s post complaining about what will happen to web devs?

It’s one of the biggest misconceptions that you can just take the functionality of the web apps to the phone. And last night, there was talk of just taking the enterprise solutions and making them run through the phone browser. However, this wont work, nor does it make sense. So what’s the solution? Maybe it’s a different presentation layer… something like what Mfoundry has done. Something that combines Java and web technologies. So that the content creators can still use their backend web structures, but the presentation layer will be more applicable to the phone. But, more likely it’s also probably that somethings may not make sense to be on the mobile.

If I were a web dev, I wouldn’t worry too much about being out of work. In the next few years there is going to be so much going on to make all the different platforms talk, sync, and share data… (and who knows how that will happen)… that your skills will probably be in higher demand than ever. This revolution is not going to do away with web technologies. It’s just going to change how they work. It’s going to change what they are used for, and who is using them… meaning more work for you to do.

Revolution and change doesn’t mean destruction of something old. It usually just means reshifting it, refurbishing, rebuilding… and making it more appropriate.

Anita

Recently I have been chatting with some folks about what it really means to design for mobile devices. Many people simply think that you can port any application to the mobile phone. In the beginning it seems that this is a rather reasonable approach. However, as you begin to learn more about the actual functionality, interaction, timing, multi-tasking, little attention nature of these devices it becomes very clear that not everything should be mobile. The challenge, as I saw it, then becomes how do make a reasonable compliment to the desktop?… Something that extends the interaction and makes the user engaged during all parts of their day.

However, as I learn more, get deeper into the interaction of the phones, and understand more about how these devices are changing our everyday habits, I am beginning to see that it’s not even about making a compliment. It’s about making a “mobile system”, a “mobile interaction”, a “mobile application”. It’s not about extending the desktop. It’s not about interacting with the desktop. It’s about making the mobile device a central unit and it’s about placing a focus on the whole system… the phone and the desktop (maybe even the TV and radio). It’s about figuring out when to push, when to pull, when to alert, notify, sync, and require confirmation. It’s mostly about throwing out many of the interaction principles we’ve learned about and creating ones that make sense for that time and space. It’s about giving the user the easiest way to access what they are looking for at any time and making it feel like they are in the application… not on one specific device!

With that said, mobile phones will soon be the primary computing devices for individuals around the world… meaning that more people will have mobile phones than PCs. Therefore, if there is any place, at all, where we should place a central emphasis in this ecosystem of distributed pervasive computing, then it should be on the mobile phone. It’s going to do everything eventually anyways, it goes everywhere you go, it’s going to be your central hub… why not start thinking about it and designing for it as well? Making it your key access point into all other devices gives the user direction, portability, data access, and control over how they want to extend their experience.

Point being: Thinking about interaction and design from the phone’s point of view… makes everything else become increasing more interesting and useful!

(If you like these ideas… you might want to read what Russ had to say about some similar kinds of thoughts too.)

Happy Mobile Monday!
Anita

Ok, so it’s been a bit longer than I expected since I have written anything (I think Im going to stop saying that now). I got back a few days ago from my terrific holiday break!!! Really, I don’t think it could have been better! Friends, Family, Fun… what more could I ask for (especially when stuck in the cold midwest)?

So over break and a few weeks prior as well, I was working on some things with Mary Hodder, Wired proclaimed “Digital Queen”, and Lisa Rein, MobileGirl proclaimed “Video Queen”. Hmmmmm… Social communities, video, and mobile stuff … what a great idea! Anyways, I just wanted to give a shout out to them as being really GREAT to work with!

As well, I was also looking more closely at some of the photo sites. I hadn’t played with BuzzNet in a little while and I was really impressed! They have done some really great stuff recently and opened up their whole API. While Flickr still has a lot more functionality and power, Buzznet is pretty and simple. They have done a nice job on the interface and made things extremely easy to use! Which means they are drawing a nice well rounded audience. With the addition of Buzzword (community tagging) im excited to see what else comes from it. (I had the brief pleasure of meeting the founders Marc Brown and Anthony Batt at a Blogging conference over the summer… so “Well done guys!”)

Quotes of the day:
(from the Feature)

“many operators are now finding that servicing the adult market can be difficult, as they try to strike a balance between making porn available to their users while not being viewed as pornographers.”

No way, I didn’t know that was the struggle… UH, DAH!!!

(from a different article on the feature)

“Throw some money at some young, creative developers to come up with some ideas and create some services that are a little more interesting than the tired “take a picture and MMS it to us, and we’ll send it out to somebody as a postcard” idea that’s still making the rounds. Find some smart, creative kids that have used MMS, and know why it’s boring and no good, then get them to come up with better ideas. “

…

Anita

This is a test from BuzzNet

A couple weeks ago when Charlie Schick , “Mr. LifeBlog”, was here visiting from Finland. Besides having a big burger and fries USA style with him, he also gave me a copy of lifeblog 1.5 to use with some 7610s I have for the alpha test our game. Yeah!!!!

Anyways, Im just saying this here, so that I make sure to review it online in the next few days… So stay tuned.

Anita

Erick and I were talking the other day about the essence of what this “mobile connectedness” is all about… and our ideas about allowing people to stay “connected” more easily. It seems that the interaction is somewhere in between something that is real-time and something that is asynchronous. But, yet, really it’s about neither. It’s about allowing someone to touch what you are doing right now. It’s about allowing someone a little peek into your daily life. It’s about presence. It’s about knowing what someone else is up to. It’s why teenagers text each other 50+ times a day.

But, it seems there is not word for it. So I’ve been struggling to capture what this semi-realtime/ presence awareness experience is all about. After meeting John Poisson at Elizabeth Goodman’s going away party, we sat and discussed this a bit more. To my surprise, he got what I was talking about and ironically had thought about it as well. Seems as though, John and I have been thinking about a lot of similar things :)… In Japan, apparently, they use a term which is something like “mind-touching”. I like that better, but somehow I don’t think it entirely still captures the essence of what it’s all about.

So, if you get what Im talking about, and have any ideas of a better language we can use to talk about this idea… please let me know.

presence touching?

Until then, I am going to keep bugging Erick by using Semi-Realtime around him and Presence Peaking in my own mind.

Anita

First off, sorry, not so many posts lately. I was away and then quite busy with some good stuff going on with our company!

I have a lot to catch up on. Ill start here and hopefully will get to more today.

I was in Tahoe over the weekend taking a little R & R and snowboarding happily throughout the blissful landscape and sunshine (ahhhh California skiing). While there, my friend and I accidentally ran a little experiment by accident. Neither of us took our phones with us for the whole day. While I have to admit it was a most peaceful experience, it also cause a series of mishaps which inevitably caused someone to leave early. Yup. One of our friends, who had driven up from LA, went to a different mountain and tried feverishly to try to contact us throughout the day to make plans, etc. But because he couldn’t get a hold of us all day, he assumed something was strange and when we returned back to the cabin he was gone… back to LA!!! Had we just returned one of his calls or text messages he would have been there to enjoy the warm fire afterwards.

Hence, the next day we took our phones… and all communication was blissful, all plans were good, and all friends happy.

While this was a bit extreme it just follows up to my last post, in that no one knows what to do anymore when the phones aren’t working or not around. This was the most extreme example that has probably ever happened to me. I mean, a 9 hour drive because of no phone!!! While, both of us with out phones, knew that we would just meet him at the cabin afterwards, something in side the him said “this is odd” and thought something otherwise. Crazy? Perhaps. A sign of the times? Definitely.

Mobile is more than just technology. It’s a lifestyle. But it’s even more than that… I’ve been trying to put my finger on some terminology that will describes the pattern of communication that mobile phones offer… it offers real-time communication, and semi-real-time, and asynchronous, but it offers it all… more on that later.

-Anita

Whenever I hear the song “No Phone” by Cake I can’t help but think about how much mobile devices have changed our lives. It’s embedded in our lives so fully now, that people are starting to sing songs about having it around all the time. The arts have already come to accept the societal change that is taking place and either embrace it or reject it. That is so powerful!!! And it makes my head tingle!!

A few months ago when I was in Finland there was a cameraphone based art exhibit at a local museum. I couldn’t help but think, again, the powerful influence this revolution is having on our daily lives – our art and culture. It’s in our museums, it’s in our music, it’s in our daily commutes, it’s in our business lives, it shapes our plans, it motivates us to move about spaces.

So here today when I found these bits, I again thought, “Wow! look at all these different things people are doing with these devices that are so much more about culture and so much less about there intended uses.” Here are a couple of pop-culture mobile fun for you that exemplify exactly how much the device is shaping our behavior:

Tate Britain’s Bluetooth Xmas Tree (I love this and it’s a bit of holiday fun!!!)

A bluetooth Christmas tree where people can leave Bluetooth presents… images, sounds, videos.

On Christmas Day, the presents will be ‘unwrapped’ at www.untitledfolder.org/christmastree…you may also send presents to christmastree@untitledfolder.org

I can’t wait to see what people leave. A global Christmas party! How cool?!

Phones as Lighters

People are also beginning to hold up cell phones at concerts instead of lighters! Yeah!!! Does that mean maybe they don’t have lighters and less people are smoking? Really though, think about this, it means the people now also have a sort of “safety light” in their pockets at all times. Ever lost keys, can’t find a ring, etc.

So next time you think about how much you’d love to leave your phone at home, run away and turn it off… think again, because it’s too late. We’ve eaten the red pill and there is no turning back. You’ll hear about it on the radio, see it in your office building, celebrate it at the holidays, be swarmed by it at a concert, or who knows maybe one day your phone will eventually have a tracking device and find you, then beep twice at you for leaving it behind!

Anita

Tonight I am planning on attending Mobile Monday. Anyone interested in Mobile Stuff should go too. It’s a great group of folks with many spectacular ideas.

So, I just got finished reading The features article on MMS: “Still, Nobody’s Using MMS”. I love this topic and this article. However, the author remains fixated on quality being and size being the primary reason why MMS isn’t being used. Ummmm…. Ok, true, but I think there is actually much more going on…

As image quality gets better more people will see lasting quality effects of the photo. I did a number of interviews with Camera Phone users both in school and at Yahoo!. It’s interesting to learn and think about how the meaning of a photograph is changing. The low quality images present a more ephemeral transitory representation of meaning… they convey a message. Users typically delete them and throw them away. In contrast, ever seen how many people have the typical photo storage “Box”? You know that box where you throw all your double prints, extra prints, maybe it’s all your hard physical photos. Anyways, the point here is that the technology is changing the meaning of the artifact. In this article they are saying that with time the image will regain it’s properties of a typical photo. But I’m not so sure. While I agree that better quality will improve users satisfaction level, I still think there is something more interesting going on with the “semi-realtime” sharing of images. And I think there is something more powerful that can help to leverage MMS technology. Think about ways to involve community more and presence of those communities available to users at all times. That’s the power of the device – a socially networked community of people who can share photos. (i.e., Communicate Visually).

He then goes on to say that the size of the viewing screen matters. Does size really matter? Well, I think so, too, but there is more than just size. There is timing, pacing, and interaction. I’ve been trying to preach the size bit to people about mobile photo apps for a little while now: Mobile phone ARE NOT great places to view images! They are great places to blink or quickly glance at images, but I don’t want to have to find them, retrieve them, load them, etc. I worked for a while on Y!’s photo app. But, I still don’t really get it. Why do people want to spend time downloading their images to their phone, when the networks are slow, image size is big, and phone memory is small? Snapfish, Kodak Mobile (Ofoto), Y! Photo… they all have them. But Why? Ok, so I understand that users do want to show their photos to friends and family and the phone offers a way for users to do that anywhere, but the amount of work involved is insane. Then, after you finally get the image, you can hardly make out details of it. (Although, I will say here, that if you interested in any of them… Snapfish’s BREW version is the best in my opinion.)

The feature article says that ideas like Nokias picture frame are great, but Moblogs are not so great. Ummm… huh? The size of the picture frame is great but you get an even larger viewing area on the computer and many people already have them (making the cost issue that they pointed out null and void). Additionally, and more importantly, I think whatever the killer app for photos on phones is going to be is going to involve community more. Picture Frames are a great idea, but too far ahead for now, and too isolated. The web and social community sites, by contrast create a very interesting place to have your image appear on larger screen and be readily viewable by many people (your whole group of friends and family). All the technology is there (not to mention inexpensive), it’s just a matter of figuring out a creative way to use it more. Make users feel more connected always. And reduce the work of taking, sending, sharing, and receiving the image. (I’ve got a couple good ideas for ya… but more on those another time.)

So, the bottom line with what Im saying here is that while on the surface it may seem that quality and size are the key determinants to MMS. I think about it a bit differently and challenge you too as well. Think more about community (presence) and interaction (the full life cycle of taking, sending, receiving, viewing, talking about the image). Think about ways to make people feel connected and leverage presence to make things easier. Think about interaction not only as good feedback (MMS feedback is also a big issue) but as the whole sha-bang: initiation, response, acceptance and the pacing and timing of all of these. If we think about these things more and the other two naturally evolve, maybe we’ll actually get a hit and use for MMS and the opportunities the affordances of cameraphones present to photo sharing and photo management.

Anita