Posts Tagged ‘How to’

How to identify the MIR team at Mobile World Congress

Wednesday, January 21st, 2009

This is the beta version of the Mobile Industry Review jacket that we’ll all be wearing at Mobile World Congress.

Front:

Nice understated branding.

And now for the back:

We were going to go for BRIGHT RED for the whole jacket but that has two problems. One, it’s a little bit TOO bright. And our technical contributor, Dan Lane, is contracted to only ever wear black.

So given that we’d like to come across as ‘uniform’, we’re all going ‘Dan Lane’ and wearing Black.

So if you’re speaking or if you have a booth there — and you spot us — relax, safe in the knowledge that we’re a) approachable, b) generally interested in telling the planet what you’re up to and c) the wearer is a harbinger of the best mobile commentary and opinion on Earfff, bar none.

You don’t want all that Q3 EBITDA bollocks, do you? Leave that to the Financial Times.

So what do you think?

How to Fix the Nokia N-Series

Tuesday, December 16th, 2008

Nokia Daily News posted this series of suggestions on how to fix the Nokia N-Series.

I will avoid giving Nokia a kicking, since it’s a Tuesday.

I’m trying to keep my stress levels below 90% and allowing myself to think about Nokia for more than 2 minutes will blow my objectives.

I’m just pleased that it’s not just me that thinks Nokia have, generally, being doing a PISS POOR job. It’s not just the N-Series chaps.

Leave it to Nokia Daily News to suggest this shocking, shocking, SHOCKING point:

Pressing Exit/back/back/exit/back eight times to get to the home screen feels very primitive. Get rid of the “symbian” key, because you can’t explain it to someone while providing tech support. Everyone can find a Home key with a picture of a house on it. Do this for all Nokias.

How DARE you.

HOW double-triple DARE you.

Don’t you know that the Nokia UI AND that stupid Symbian key represents the Finnish equivalent of a near-orgasmic level pleasure?

Next point from Nokia Daily News. Software.

I have to say, this is getting a little bit too revolutionary for my comfort.

Have a read.

Make software really easy to install.

Let me stop you there.

How simply DARE you?

Make it easy? What, next you’ll be suggesting you want Nokia to get rid of all those stupid ‘DO YOU WANT TO INSTALL THIS?’ messages.

HERESY! HERETIC!

Sometimes when I’m installing a .sis file, it has other requirements rolled into it, and it keeps asking way-too-many-questions. If I click “install” on my desktop computer, it’s because I want to install the software to my phone. Why does it keep asking all these questions?

Now don’t you dare mention the A word.

Apple doesn’t ask that many questions.

DOH!

Or the other ‘A’ word.

Android installs nicely in the background without asking any other questions, and it doesn’t hog up the foreground with an app while it’s installing.

Gahh.

;-)

Excellent points from Nokia Daily News. Head over here if you’d like to read the full list of suggestions all of which I trust will be promptly ignored by the N-Series chaps before being implemented in a huge, huge panic in the third quarter of 2015 when no one’s bothered to buy the new N98 that looks substantially the same as the N97 with a nice new pattern on the back of the battery cover.

Right. My Nokia stress levels already approaching 90%. Over and out.

How to build an SMS notification app in 20 minutes

Thursday, September 18th, 2008

I came across this absolutely fantastic overview from Webmonkey that shows you how to create an SMS notification application in no time. I reckon it would take me about 20 minutes, using their code samples, to knock it together.

If you’ve got a working knowledge of PHP, I challenge you to take 20 minutes and knock this together. You don’t need to be a programming demigod. If you setup your own Wordpress account on some webspace, you can probably do this, no hassle.

The How-To uses mobile services company, TextMarks — one of my favourite American services. They take care of all the texting stuff.

All you need to do is a bit of code hacking. (i.e. cut, paste, publish, test).

I think this is brilliant, brilliant stuff. You too can create a Twitter clone, basically. The How-To (it’s actually a wiki page, so it’s editable if you’d like to improve it) takes you through creating a service that lets you query the sunrise and sunset times based on you texting a keyword and providing a city, state or zip.

This is exactly what UK companies Esendex and AQL should be doing. Wiki-how-tos that really let folk innovate without forcing too much thinking.


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