Ewan,

Can anyone out there recommend a lawyer that specialises in the mobile space? I’ve a had a UK company ask me that question and I thought that someone out there is bound to be able to help.

Thanks!

What firm/lawyer do you recommend?

Hi ewan
a quick question for you.

im trying to find a breakdown of smartphone OS market share for 2009 for europe vs US. basically comparing, symbian with apple, rim, windows mobile and android. i cant seem to find a european or us breakdown. i can find lots of global numbers but i know that US and europe are different (mainly the fact that nokia has no presence in the US). i just need something pretty simple.

do you have something you can send to me?

thanks

I wrote back saying that I don’t have any precise statistics — do you have any to hand? Or any suggestions where I can point the reader?

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…

Frustration that I think I — and we (that is, you dear, reader) — could do a better job of it.

I’ve been looking for an opportunity to do this and recently I got very near to sticking 100k into a pot and developing our own MIR handset.

But I decided not to. I decided to try and make-do with what we’ve collectively ‘got’.

I turned to my N95 8GB just last week. Dusted it off. Unlocked it. Stuck in my Vodafone SIM. And I’m thoroughly enjoying being *connected* with a telephone that sort-of does internet. And I’m really enjoying using ShoZu and Buddycloud regularly as well.

Which brings me to my cry for help.

Could you tell me what applications you LOVE and use almost every day on your Nokia?

I’d like to download’em.

And further, I’ll go this far to say that if you suggest an application, instead of just smiling at you, I’ll go and download it. Or buy it and download it. And tell you what I think.

I’d be much obliged.

Enter Martin Bryant, a regular mobile reader and talented musical genius from Manchester. He sent me a direct message about the post and I asked him if he’d be interested in noting down his thoughts on Twitter and how he uses the service.

Here it is.

- – - – -

As a regular MIR reader I’m a fan of Ewan’s occasional rants and until this week I could say I agreed with every single one. When he posted his criticisms of Twitter though I found myself disagreeing entirely. Although it was initially designed as a simple status update service, Twitter has grown into so much more. You just have to dig a little to find the value, as I’ve found out over the past 13 months.

I’m the kind of person who likes to try new things, especially online things that are free. So when I heard about a new web service called Twitter taking Silicon Valley by storm I had to try it. The problem was I just couldn’t think of any use for it. None of my friends used it and all you could do was post status updates. Why would I want to share what I was doing with a load of strangers?

As a musician, though, Twitter was useful for me. I wanted a website with dynamic content that was different every time someone came back to it. So in November 2007 I signed up. I didn’t always have a new release or gig to announce but having a Twitter feed on my site allowed me to post micro-updates.”Recording vocals for a new track”, perhaps, or “Just come off stage – I broke the mic stand… again”; I saw Twitter as nothing more than a little ‘added value’ for visitors to my site.

Over time, though, I began to see how much more Twitter could offer me. Through starting to ‘Follow’ people local to me in Manchester I discovered a lively community of people using the service to share interesting links, discuss current affairs and talk about the projects they were working on. I found myself using Twitter more as I interacted with this community and I found more people around the world who were interesting to follow. It became less about promoting my music and more about connecting with a constantly growing, changing and evolving community.

Now, 13 months from my first ‘tweet’, Twitter is the second thing I check every day after my email. I now follow about 250 people so I can’t read every single tweet that each one posts but I regularly scan through what people are saying. Tapping into that continuous information flow has helped me in lots of ways.

- I wrote what may be the first ever song commissioned over Twitter when one user suggested she would like someone to write a bleepy song about robot pigs in flying cars(!) – I was happy to oblige.

- The conversation flow gives me lots of ideas for my technology blog, 14sandwiches. I can see what web services and gadgets people are talking about and that’s far more of a direct tap into the tech-hive-mind than subscribing to Engadget and TechCrunch.

- Through participating in Twitter I make people aware of what I can offer, leading to all sorts of opportunities. Recently a Direct Message from a fellow Manchester blogger led to me interviewing Vodafone’s Live Guy about his Social Media campaign to promote their Dell Inspiron Mini netbooks. Just yesterday I got a DM from some guy called Ewan asking me to write a piece for some site called Mobile Industry Review.

So, I think what the Twitter critics have missed is that it works best when you run your account as your own personal web community, built to maximise what you get out of it. What you want to get out of it will vary from user to user depending on their needs. You might want to use it just to keep up with friends, maybe you just want to follow people in your line of work so you can keep up on gossip and network with like-minded folk, maybe you want to snoop on Twittering celebrities like Stephen Fry; you can do all these things with Twitter.

One of Ewan’s criticisms was that he doesn’t care what most people are doing most of the time. Well yes, most people post unimportant twaddle on Twitter at times. Why do I care that BBC Technology Correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones has just walked his dog? Of course I don’t, but as I’ve said above, Twitter as a constantly moving stream of information. Not every single message will be relevant to you but manage the list of people you follow well and most of what you read will give you some sort of value.

Another of his criticisms was that he sees conversations between people that he doesn’t need to see; people arranging a pub meet-up or the like. True, many of these should be done by DM rather than public reply but you’ll only see replies between people that you’re following and so many of them will have some relevance or interest to you.

So, what tools should a serious Twitter user have to hand? A good Twitter client is a must. I use Tweetdeck on my laptop as it separates normal tweets, public replies and DMs into separate columns. You can also set up columns to search Twitter for keywords and there’s a ‘Twitscoop’ column to see the current hot topics being talked about. When I’m on my iPhone I use Tweetie, which costs £1.59 from the iTunes App Store but is well worth the modest expense as despite being made y a 3rd party it works in exactly the way you’d expect a Twitter app built by Apple themselves would. On my Nokia N82 I use Dabr.co.uk, far and away the best web-based Twitter front end for most mobile phones.

If you’re new to Twitter there a number of tools for finding good people to follow. Once you used Twitter’s own email address book lookup for finding people you’re already in contact with, TwitterLocal is useful for finding people close by and search.twitter.com is can help you find people talking about things you’re interested in. Once you’re following a few people, Mr Tweet can suggest other people you may like.

Oh and feel free to follow me too: I’m MartinSFP.

- – - – -

Martin, thank you very much for taking the time to write and send that. Very illuminating and enlightening. You’ve modified my perspective Martin!

“It’s all about the network effect,” I said.

It’s, “all about who’s following you.”

It’s, “Errr, status updates,” I said, beginning to fail in my task at moving them into the Mobile 2.0 arena.

I even pointed to some Guy Kawasaki Twitter How-To posts (“How to use Twitter as a Twool“).

They weren’t buying it.

And neither do I.

Twitter works if you are somebody.

Whether you believe you are somebody or whether you actually ‘are’ somebody (depending on definitions here), Twitter works.

It works if you’re all about your own importance. There’s nothing wrong with that at all. But there’s a finite amount of time.

If your job involves you reaching out to folk every minute of the day, good. If your job enables you to sit and ‘stream’ in a state of continuous partial attention — without doing anything, great.

But if you actually have to do something, then the challenge with managing your Twitter interactions is rather large.

I like the concept.

The reality simply doesn’t work for me.

I don’t want to know what you’ve had for breakfast.

I don’t want to know where you are. Do NOT broadcast your location to me. That doesn’t work. When I want to know your location, I will ask for it. Or I will find myself in the ‘Waterloo area’ and hopefully my mobile service is smart enough to connect the fact you’re available for a pint at the same time I am. But don’t tell me on Twitter.

If I subscribe to you on Twitter, what exactly does that mean nowadays?

I was given to understand that it would help me connect to folk. People I already know and people I don’t know. I was hoping it would help give me an insight into folk. Discover what they’re up to. That sort of thing.

The model works for a few people. Follow more than, I dunno, 20 active Twitterers and you’re screwed.

I was particularly pleased to read a selection of Tweets whilst Chris Anderson was on stage at Le Web.

I’m assuming he was because a load of folk on my Twitter talked about the fact that he said — words to this effect — Continuous Partial Attention Doesn’t Work so shut up and listen. (To his speech, I imagine).

I found it highly amusing that he says this, only to have it Twittered to the world by folk who, amusingly, aren’t paying full attention to him. Because they’re typing stuff out on Twitter.

It’s entertaining, Twittering. You can see it when you read the consciousness.

I’m wondering, however, whether it isn’t rather rude of everybody. Twitter isn’t chat. It’s one-time messages. Not live chat. At least, that’s how I view it.

And this is probably my issue.

In a live instant message chat — one to one or one to many — continuous (chatty) messages are fine.

I’m not happy with it on Twitter though. Because of relevance.

In many of the Twitter streams I’ve looked at recently, a whopping 95% of output is bollocks. Bollocks that I don’t understand.

Example:

@someuser Yeah me too! x

What the flock is that about?

How is that enriching my experience?

That should be a direct reply. Right?

Why the fook am I being exposed to this drivel?

And why doesn’t the originator think about this.

Or have I totally missed the point of Twitter?

And if I have, then Twitter is a pile of shite and destined to go nowhere.

Can you IMAGINE 60 milion British Tweeters doing this? It’d be unusable and highly, highly irrelevant.

Here’s another flucking gem:

@someuser and @anotheruser alright chaps? See you there!

Yup. Bollocks.

What’s interesting to me is that the originator here has decided to ACTUALLY reference two friends in his message. Presumably those two friends then use something like TweetDeck or any number of other application/services to track their ‘public replies’.

And I’m sure they’re delighted to be mentioned, to get the message and to then react as they see fit.

But what about me?

This is, surely, the email equivalent of addressing a note to SomeUser and AnotherUser and BCCing your entire address book?

If I’ve subscribed to you, that means I’m interested in hearing from you.

Just ‘generally’.

I ‘generally’ want your updates.

Unless you’ve setup a username for a specific feed or the like, I am subscribing to read general stuff about you. I’m specifically expecting you to have some degree of self-awareness though.

My time and attention comes at a massive premium to me. Everyone’s time and attention is. Every moment spent flicking over to read drivel is another moment I don’t get to sit and relax. Or write a blog post. Or reply to an email.

So I’m in a bit a quandary. It ain’t working for me, this Twitter thing.

I think I’m pretty good at delivering Tweets. That is, you get automatic updates from @MIReview whenever we post and, now and again, when I judge it relevant, I’ll knock up a real time entry. Like if I’m sat in front of some chaps from INQ. Or the like.

Recently I’ve been experimenting with a bit of how I’m ‘feeling’ and some stuff semi irrelevant to mobile. And I’ve been making sure that any message I write is generally consumable in stand-alone form. You shouldn’t have to read back for hundreds of messages to get the context from my text.

So whilst a lot of other people are enjoying Twitter, I take heart that I’m not along. There’s another 3.something billion who aren’t bothering and aren’t really that impressed.

I’d really be missing something if Twitter was growing at the rate of Facebook.

But it’s not.

And that’s because it’s all ego based. And that’s finite.

I could only just keep up with the text messages being sent to me on the panel at Future of Mobile. Forget tracking the Twitter back channel. Too much irrelevance. Too many bollocks. Shite UI. Doesn’t matter what application or service you’re using, you can only properly track a back channel if you’re sat in the audience (or at home/work) doing fluck-all.

The other week I thought I’d check out the back channel ‘chat’ whilst sat on the Chinwag panel about the Future of the Digital Industry. I managed two glances at my handset before I really had to pay attention.

Similarly when I’m sat in the audience at these sorts of things, I find myself arsing about with my email and hitting F5 a lot in the hope that somebody-has-said-something-else. I often feel like a stupid rabbit or a hungry dog, sat there, pavlovian-style, waiting for input. And I miss half the presentation as a result.

Back to ego. I want to know what Stephen Fry is up to. I find his updates interesting because it gives an insight into his life and what he’s up to. Because normally you only get to interact with The Fry via a limited ‘public’ sanitised fashion via a 3 minute TV interview or the like.

The fact that he’s getting on a plane to film a new show in the States or the like is interesting to me. I didn’t wake up in the morning HOPING to get a Tweet to find out about Stephen’s travel plans. But learning of them via Twitter is pleasing. And I don’t get 50 updates a day from him either.

But sadly the vast majority of Twitter is not Stephen Fry.

Which leads me to my what-to-do-moment.

Switch it off.

I noticed that if people really want to talk to me, they phone me. Or they email.

What are your thoughts?

I *don’t* think I’m missing anything.

I’m sure that having 2,000 folk subscribing to your Twitter updates is useful in many ways.

But then again I’ve got about 300,000 folk popping in now and again here at Mobile Industry Review. Do I need to develop a Twitter ‘following’ as a separate project? Interestingly, the 300k folk who pop by do so at their leisure. And they rarely get fed utter bullshit about my breakfast. Or if they do, it’ll be in the context of me getting Phonejacked or the like.

So what am I missing about Twitter? Love the technology and the platform. Can’t stand the way most folk use it…

By the way, those Twitter messages I picked out — totally random. I made them up as examples. I’m not picking on anyone in particular.

Dear Ewan,

I am going away to Dubai over Xmas and after getting stung for an enormous mobile bill whilst in the states, I want to get a sim that will not cost the earth for calls to and from the UK.

When away in the summer I got hit for a bill of around £250 which was daft considering everything and I don’t want the same to happen again whilst away over Xmas.

Any ideas or solutions would be welcome, even if it means testing something for you to try and curb the costs!

Regards

David

Now then David. First off, you’ve got Truphone. Super if you’re going to have WiFi access. And they’ve got a Blackberry client that you might like to try out. But it’s not going to be much use to you when you’re roaming in Dubai as it’s more useful when you’re in the UK, calling internationally.

SIM4Travel, also owned by Truphone, will offer you free incoming calls whilst you’re in Dubai (er, or the United Arab Emirates, Dubai isn’t listed in their rate checker) and charge you £0.45 per minute to call the UK.

Does anyone have some suggestions for David?

Cue the London Telegraph:

Martin Stone, 62, got lost after climbing a 3,615 ft peak alone during a holiday on the island of Majorca.

He sent an SOS text message to his wife back home in the Midlands, who called British emergency services.

Spanish rescue workers launched a massive search operation but Mr Stone was spotted the following morning only thanks to his bright red scarf.

I bet that 50p international text was worth it.

I’m experiencing a major problem with dropped calls at home.  Yesterday calls throughout the day dropped within a few minutes.  I suspect it may be a Three issue (the odd ‘network busy’ message), but it’s coincided with me starting to use new handset and I’ve been swapping phones and networks a lot over the last few months so don’t have a reliable benchmark point.

The techie in me feels I should be able to gather some firm evidence as to whether it’s the network or the phone beyond just testing alternatives to both for a while.  Is there any data I could get from my handset (or anywhere else for that matter) to give me a steer?

Do any of the MIR readers have any research about the cost to operators of top up vouchers – or can they point me in the direction of relevant research?

Any ideas?

I’ve been sitting here looking at mine, a Sony W810i, and it just looks so boring, and big, compared to everything else.  The thing is, I haven’t even had it that long, and I normally don’t just go off my mobile phones this quickly. Now however, I feel a sort of resent towards it.

However, I’m stuck with a horrible choice…
What mobile do I buy?

I’m extremely picky, and horribly indecisive, which makes buying anything almost near impossible. I also have a list of requirements, a FM radio, at least a 2 megapizel camera, a torch, and a good set of buttons. Ideally, I would love a QWERTY keyboard, or something along the lines of a Sidekick, but that isn’t going to happen.

I have a budget which I’m limiting up to £110 (there is absolutely no point in spending loads of money, to only be made quickly outdated by new technology). Also, I want something I can personalise. So that means either by a proper means, or in Sony ways – use some software, and reconfigure it a little.

Comment any ideas you have, because I’ve looked around on some websites, and nothing seems to be remotely inspiring. All the mobiles seem to be copying each other; they all look too “samey” if you get my drift? I’m not expecting massive innovation here, just something has a personality.

Or if you wish, feel free to drop me an e-mail at samantha@smstextnews.com – all ideas are welcome!

My girlfriend is on Orange and whenever she calls landlines, the sound is distorted and she can hear herself talking, calling mobiles – its perfect.. shes had 5 different phones – still the same fault. Any thoughts?

Very strange. My Orange connection is fine with landlines. It must be something to do with her SIM or her line, surely?

Unfortunately he couldn’t really get much signal, until he climbed up a hill, with his injuries.

Link: B.C. plane crash survivor had to climb hill to get text messages out

It was Pomponio who was text messaging a friend about where the plane went down. The friend relayed the information to rescue crews, but it took several hours for them to find the site of the crash.

Pomponio told Young he had to climb a hillside to get a signal.

And, Young said, Pomponio wasn’t too thrilled with Telus for sending him two advertising text messages while he was trying to get help.

Oh dear. Ohhhh dear. Yet somehow they got through eh?

And the stickler, if it has been a bit later in the month, he would have gotten charged for the incoming messages!