Posts Tagged ‘application’

I’m going to make a conferencing app for the Ovi Store. Want to help? (Updated)

Thursday, March 19th, 2009

Please sit down and make yourself comfortable. And please keep a close eye on your heartbeat — get the crash team on speed dial.

I don’t want to surprise the hell out of you.

Because the headline is true.

I am seriously considering making an application and putting it into the Ovi store.

I know I’ve been telling the world just how bollocks Nokia has been in some aspects, in the past. But I think it’s time to put that behind us.

I think it’s time to pat Nokia on the back and say, ‘This Ovi thing… you know, the store… that ain’t half bad… let’s give it a go, eh?’

It’s time to put my money where my mouth is.

Nokia has a future. Symbian (I can’t actually write the text ‘Symbian’ without wincing, I have that bad an opinion of it) has a future. The Ovi Store has a lot of potential.

People still like Nokia devices. They are still nifty handsets. Well built, capable…

Time to make it happen.

Here’s what I want to do. I’m sick and tired of waiting for someone to develop and release a decent conferencing application for my N95 8GB.

Howler Tech / ROK Talk did it. I’m not entirely clear on where that’s gone or what precisely happened to it. All I know is that I don’t have it on my N95 and that quite simply isn’t good enough.

I want to do conference calls. Anyone working with large companies needs to do conference calls. And I can’t tell you how FLIPPING annoying it is when someone sends me their ‘conference details’.

It’s like being back at infant school. It’s like living in the 19-sodding-hundreds.

‘Here is my 0870 bollocks number’

‘Here is the PIN code you need to type in’

What am I? The brain of sodding Britain? No. I don’t want to be given your bollocks PIN number.

I don’t want to call some idiot-per-minute number.

Furthermore I’m sick and tired of the shite service offered by conference providers. To be clear, they can do the telephone bits fine. But the ’service’ around it is 100% screwed. It’s because the conference provider doesn’t give a flipping flying flip about HOW you use the service. There’s no decent online click-here-to-start. There’s no decent mobile-activated conference system. I want to click, click, click in my address book and hit GO.

And I don’t want to pay 0870 ‘national rate’ rubbish call rates for the privilege either.

I have had enough of turning up to a group conference call at 2.30pm and spending the next 15 minutes dicking about waiting for Bob, or Bill, or Jim, or Linda to actually join.

10 minutes after that — so at 2:55pm, we actually get started. One guy’s had to pull over because he was driving and thought we’d be calling him. Another can only stay for two minutes because he’s ‘got a 3 o’clock’.

It’s rubbish. It’s not good enough. I want a system that just calls everyone at the appointed time. Better still I want it to send out reminders 5 hours from the time of the conference call. AND crucially, I want the ability to be able to do a live, off-the-cuff phone call immediately.

It’s time the market was served by something a lot better.

And I’d like your help to make it.

Who’s up for it? Are you a Symbian developer? If so, we need your help.

Are you interested in owning a bit of history and helping put our money where our mouth is? I need a few grand from a few people, I reckon.

Or, frankly, I’ll just pay for it myself.

Who do I need to speak to at Ovi to get the app on their store? Does anyone know?

As ever, I’m ewan@mobileindustryreview.com. Let’s talk.

Update:

Kerry Ritz, CEO of Palringo, responded right away with this gem:

you can submit apps to ovi store directly. there is a 3 step process to having applocations accepted/screened by nokia

Ah. Interesting stuff. Nice one Kerry. OK so that part of the process looks pretty straight forward…

Are you writing an App for the Nokia Ovi App Store?

Friday, March 6th, 2009

Are you working on making an application for the Nokia Ovi App Store?

If you are, I’d like to buy you a beer.

In London.

Regular contributor, Ed Hodges, is currently navigating the Ovi App Store challenges with the app that he and his team are working on. He tweeted earlier today asking if anyone else was doing similar.

His actual Tweet reads:

Anyone out there writing apps for the Nokia Ovi store? Wanna connect and talk through the difficulties?

Talk to Ed on Twitter — @Edd_Hodges.

Post a note below if you’re up for it — or drop me an email and we’ll arrange something.

I’m ewan@mobileindustryreview.com.

Skyfire 0.9 is really smokin’

Thursday, February 12th, 2009

Take a look at these screenshots:

These are from the new version of Skyfire — version 0.9. They’ve really been innovating since I last took a look. The brilliance with Skyfire is that it gives you a ‘proper’ desktop browsing experience on your handset.

There’s many a time when you’re out on the road that you JUST NEED to have a proper web connection. Whether it’s because the site you’re trying to view has been built by neanderthals who wouldn’t know a mobile browser if it bit them on the arse — or if you simply need full fidelity flash/video without scrolling all over the place, Skyfire is most probably what you need.

It’s the sort of thing you definitely should try out.

This next version is nigh on completely new for the N and E Series Nokia handsets too. Look out for a much nicer installation and a lighter weight install.

Want to check it out? http://get.skyfire.com.

The MIR iPhone App is released!

Thursday, January 15th, 2009

Woo. Nice one Pavel.

I got a note in from Pavel, our iPhone app developer, telling me that the Mobile Industry Review app has finally gone live on the iTunes Application Store.

I did a quick search — as I have been doing now and again — and today found this in the results:

Get IN!

I’m going to download it in a minute. Here’s what it looks like:

Now don’t expect an all-singing-all-dancing experience. I wanted the first version just to be a basic newsfeed. And then I wanted to garner ideas and suggestions and then launch the next version. It would, for example, be rather cool if you could submit comments, or vote or … see how many MIR readers are in your area. Heh.

When time permits, download it and have a play. You can get to the MIR App page here.

Mobile Social Networks: What’s their future?

Wednesday, December 24th, 2008

I’ll admit it; I’m one of those weird people who click that box that enables websites to send out lots of pointless newsletters. I live in the hope one day they’ll serve a purpose or value – like the Woolworths ones did (once upon a time) – and of course updates on other websites and products is always handy information to have at hand!

But a couple of months ago I signed up to a website to do with “students”, homework help, offers, competitions all that rather exciting rubbish really. And you know for some part it has been of some good use; then I got an update about a “Mobile Social Network”.

Originally, I though “ahh, I could review this, and see how incredibly wonderful it may or may not be!” then I clicked through, browsed at the website and spoke aloud to myself…

“Samantha, what are you doing? This whole idea is completely pointless, and certainly not “free” to you!”

It then suddenly hit me, like a brick that purely mobile social networks (Socials) are completely pointless, and useless.

The way I see it, with Facebook, Myspace and to some extent even the dreaded Bebo out there (plus many others), small little Mobile Networks such as “QEEP” which I was so close to reviewing, have not got a hope in hell to be of any use.

I’ll explain further; I was one of the first people out of my collection of friends to “migrate” to Facebook from Myspace; now encouraging my friends to move from their beloved Myspace accounts to something which in comparison offered no personalisation or customisation and looked rather bland was something of a headache. It was an even tougher job getting the Bebo users to realise what a pile of crap Bebo truly has become and convert them to Facebook also. Over a year down the line, if I want to see a certain friends’ latest photo’s I’ll still have to sign into Myspace of Bebo and have a browse.

Now as far as Mobile Socials go, I can’t see the point in it. A mobile phone for “most” people is merely a day-to-day tool; and I have to say there are still relatively few people I know who use their mobiles for any web-browsing need or desire. It’s simply not on the agenda.

Therefore it only appears apparent that for some young people Mobile Socials have absolutely no place in their lives.

Now for me, even though I do go on Facebook on my mobile (I think its part addiction), I go online because I know I have a few hundred friends, and that since the last time I looked at something it would have updated or changed. Similarly, I know that there is quite a large possibility I’ll have a status comment to respond to, or any other kind of notification.

But before any of that can even happen, you have to persuade your friends to migrate to this particular site or service. And that is by no means an easy task or feat; and then I realise, what is the point in having a Social just purely for the mobile?

As Facebook Mobile demonstrates, a platform you can enjoy on your Laptop, PC, Mac, PDA, and Mobile is quite possibly the best. Anyone can have access to it, and it’s relevant to you no matter what you’re doing. If I’m on Facebook at home, why would I update my under-populated profile on my Mobile Social?

There’s a time and place for Mobile Socialising, and I don’t know about anyone else, but for me it’s during times when I’m away from my computer, and when I have a bit of spare time on my hands. The hassle that I sense with even partially migrating to a new platform is pointless. There is nothing I can benefit out of a service which only serves a purpose at those very rare moments; I would much rather update my Facebook, or reply to a comment on my main form of internet socialising.

So does the purely mobile social network have any stability? Personally, I don’t think so; and just as the stories that have appeared on MIR over the past week about Twitter (and using it at home, work or play) just go to prove this. Any form of social network I believe, has to be usable and accessible no matter where you are, and what you’re doing. More than anything though, if you decide to migrate to a new platform you have to be able to ensure that your friends are going to want to follow you there; otherwise, what is the point?

I want to know what you think though. Am I completely wrong? Do you use a completely mobile, mobile social?  Feel free to send any e-mails into Samantha@mobileindustryreview.com

Also, before I forget; I hope everyone has a very good Christmas too!

MIR iPhone Application update

Monday, December 15th, 2008

The MIR iPhone application is cominatcha shortly. Our developer, Pavel, has submitted it to the App Store and we’re waiting to hear when it will go live.

I’ll keep you updated…

Buddycloud’s new Symbian application is out! Get it!

Friday, December 12th, 2008

I had a note in from Simon Tennant, one of the top chaps at mobile social services, Buddycloud. They’ve been innovating at a tremendous pace and Simon emailed with this update:

- - - - -

Ewan,

We don’t really do press releases but I wanted to ping you about what have been beavering away on here in Buddycloud Towers. We’re terrible at blowing our own trumpet but I figured that if we are going to talk about ourselves, then we’d rather tell you first.

This morning Ross received a newly signed build back from Symbian that rolls up all our development build goodness. Things like pushing status message to Twitter and Facebook and place syncing. eg: “Ross Savage met with Helge Timenes at Buddycloud Towers.” The chat and find-people-nearby stuff is also now looking good.

Helge has also been hard at work on our location engine, tweaking it to get even better, more accurate place bookmarks using just Cell Towers for location. And now, when a user is not at one of their place bookmarks, we share your general location with your friends (eg Ewan is on-the-road in Shorditch or Ewan is near to MIR Towers).

Helge has also been fixing some strange problems with using cellid for positioning (we discovered that all Starbucks use the same ethernet address!) The Wifi lets you be hyper-accurate but for the most part Cell Towers is “good enough”.

And I’m currently working with a university team in Munich and one in Vienna that are using our backend and handset code to develop a
carpooling and mobile dating service respectively. I’m also working with some of the standard boards to find a nice way to share location and find people nearby. Eventually we want Buddycloud, Brightkite, Fireeagle, Nokia Friendfinder etc all working together.

Some progress: A protocol we put together is now in the experimental phase
(http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0255.html)

A couple of weeks back we asked them to help us translate the Buddycloud application to more than just English. Within 5 days we were supporting 11 languages. (Thanks gang.)

I also updated our product description page if MIR readers would like to know more about us:
http://www.buddycloud.com/cms/node/56

(trumpt blowing over) If you would like something a bit more press-releasey ping me back and I could jot something down for you.

- - - - -

STEP AWAY FROM THE PRESS RELEASE, Simon. I much prefer an email update from the chaps who’re doing it. I’m pretty sure the rest of the readers here on Mobile Industry Review prefer that too.

I’m off to go and put Buddycloud on my handset…

Here’s the link you need to download.

MIR iPhone application is almost ready!

Friday, November 21st, 2008

The MIR iPhone application is almost ready. Our developer, Pashik, has been working away.

It quite simply gives you an RSS news feed of our site in an easy to consume form. Nothing too shocking for our first app version.

The big challenge we’ve got though is designing a decent icon for it. Any ideas?

Pashik reckons that a red square with the letters “MIR” in white isn’t that stunning. He’s knocked up some others samples here:

I suppose we could probably use a small MOBILE INDUSTRY REVIEW … but it’ll be quite small on the device. Does anyone have any ideas?


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