I’ve been using my Android G1 a lot since I arrived in America because, conveniently, my US T-Mobile sim works perfectly with it (even though it’s a UK device). I didn’t have to do any configuration since HTC thoughtfully included the T-Mobile US web settings on the device already.

So I’ve been taking pictures.

As you do in a city as nice and as varied as San Francisco.

I’d like to send them directly to Flickr. Since there’s no ShoZu service on Android at the moment (and I haven’t re-installed Pixelpipe yet) I thought I’d have a look around the Marketplace on Android.

Unlike others, I take it upon myself to buy as many applications as possible. I did a certain amount of evaluation on ‘Flickr Upload’ when I came across it. From memory it was $0.99. Or perhaps less.

I scrolled down to the comments.

On the 28th of April, ‘Matthew’ commented:

Works wonderfully. Well integrated.

.. and he gave it five stars.

I suspect Matthew is referring to the share option. When you take a photo on Android, there’s a button that pops up called ‘Share’. Click on that and you get the choice of sharing by Email, by Google Mail or — to Flickr (enabled by this application). Smart. I was warming to the concept.

I noted that it’s had between 100-500 downloads. Ok. Not a brilliant well-trodden path. I continued with the comment review.

On the 21st of April, ‘z0mbix’ commented:

Will not authorise with flickr on t-mobile/G1. Can’t get any reply from the developers em[ail]…

Er.

I’d gone off it right away.

The final comment on the app’s frontpage was a day before z0mbix’s one from Benjamin:

Exactly what I was looking for works perfectly

Hmmm.

Z0mbix’s comment put me right off. But I reasoned there must be a reason, maybe he/she didn’t know what they were doing? Afterall if Benjamin and Matthew each had a good experience, I should be ok?

Right?

As I walked out of the Westfield Mall in downtown San Francisco I spotted an advert I wanted to write about. I decided to download Flickr Upload there and then, configure it and get moving.

I paid the money, the app downloaded and within seconds I’d got to the main prompt, asking me to authorise my Flickr account to work with it. Fair enough.

I typed in my Yahoo account username and password and hit ‘login’.

Nothing happened.

Nothing.

The screen went blank.

Er.

‘I’ve just paid a dollar for this,’ I thought, rather disappointed. I was experiencing the pain of fellow user, z0mbix.

I tried again. Maybe I typed my details wrong?

Again it failed. The app just sat on a blank screen like this:

Rubbish!

I ended up sending the photo to my email account and walked home, rather annoyed with myself.

I was annoyed because I thought I’d obviously got my Yahoo password wrong.

What self respecting developer would allow an application to go live — a chargeable application at that — which doesn’t actually work?

Then I reasoned that it must be a Yahoo screw-up and spent a good few blocks cursing them in my mind.

I got back to my desktop and immediately changed my Yahoo password to check I had it correct.

Again I tried authorising the app.

Nothing. Nada.

I’ve bought a dud.

I don’t know who is responsible. It COULD be Yahoo, entirely. But one assumes that the two other recent commenters on Android Marketplace aren’t lying and they got it to work.

I’ve tried a few times over the past few days to activate it to no avail.

So I looked up the developer online.

They’re called Macrospecs and they’re a privately-owned startup in the bay area.

Ah hah! They’ll have a GetSatisfaction page, right? Or a forum or something?

No.

Nothing!

It’s a one-page website and — ultra annoyingly — the ‘contact’ page goes straight through to their email address.

Confusingly there is absolutely no reference to the Flickr Upload application on their site.

I then had a look back on the Android Marketplace and saw that the ‘developer site’ is listed as FaceofMobile.com/Flickr. Ah hah!

No, hold your excitement.

This is the entire site:

Yup… it’s one page. It consists of three screenshots and a macrospecs logo, with no link. No contact details. No support option. Nothing.

In fairness to the developer, one wouldn’t expect that many support enquiries from an application that simply sends a photo to a Flickr account. It’s not rocket science and there’s hardly any failure points.

Except the authorisation process.

And, of course, macrospecs don’t control that, Yahoo do.

Tough luck for me and z0mbix, right? If it ain’t working, you can try contacting macrospecs but it’s rather clear they don’t want to know — and are not expecting to support any enquiries.

I hunted around and I found a support forum for macrospecs’ Face of Mobile application, a $1.99 Windows Mobile Facebook app.

I suppose I could try posting there.

But I’m not feeling very welcome — or smart for buying the app. Indeed I’ve paid a dollar for the privilege.

It’s perfectly fine for it to happen to me, I have a good understanding of the trials and tribulations of mobile development — but if this is the experience of your average consumer who’s just picked up a G1 or G2 and is expecting 100% friction-free total quality-assured service from the Android Marketplace, they’re not going to be at all impressed.

Like the ringtone marketplace a few years ago — you’ll pay once and if the experience sucks, you definitely won’t ever pay again.

What’s the right response?

Is this a FAIL on the part of the team at macrospecs? Is it a Yahoo FAIL?

Or is it an Android FAIL?

Would this have happened on an iPhone?

Here’s the video:

Andrew Grill writes:

I was one of those responsible for the 45% increase in traffic – Shozu (should that be snozu?) for uploads to Flickr via E71 and Shozu

And if you’d like to view more of Andrew’s London Snow pictures, get’em here.

I confidently asserted over the weekend that ‘this Snow alert rubbish will be over in a day’.

Rare is it for the South East of the UK to be trapped under snow for more than a day.

And surprise, surprise, the snow is melting this morning and, apart from some annoying bits of ice, that’s it. Show’s over folks. On with the rest of our lives.

But I did take this picture whilst driving through Billericay on Sunday evening. You could be forgiven for thinking that the photo was take somewhere in Russia. Or Prague. But no, it was Billericay, Essex.

Thus I also contributed quite significantly to the 45% uplift in traffic that ShoZu saw yesterday.

Snapped with my trusty Nokia N95 8GB.

I was expecting perhaps 10% increase, maybe 20% — but a 45% increase in uploads? Heh. Brilliant!

If you took any photos of the snow and zapped them up to Twitpic or Flickr yesterday, can you send me a link? I’m ewan@mobileindustryreview.com.

And if you haven’t downloaded ShoZu recently, check it out at www.shozu.com.

The MIR Show team is heading to Rome to produce January’s show and you can find more details about that here.

Over the weekend we’re going to be showing off the best of ShoZu. That is, we’ll be saying ‘screw it’ to our roaming data bills (I *must* dig out my 3UK sim card… where is it?) and doing ShoZu uploads big time.

My handset of choice happens to be the most popular handset with ShoZu installed: iPhone.

I reckon that the iPhone camera will be fine in bright sunny Rome. I further reckon that we’ll also use the MIR Posterous system to send some commentary and imagery directly to the site over the weekend.

If you’d updates and oh-shit-where-is-my-passport-style real time live updates, follow us on Twitter:

The site feed: @MIReview

Ewan: @ew4n
Dan: @danlane
Ben: @bensmithuk

Our very own MIR Show star, Ben Smith, attended the Nokia E71 launch back in June 2008. The ability to be able to snap a picture and then transmit it back to the internet — or to ‘the office’ here at Mobile Industry Review quickly and without arsing about — is fantastic.

Nice image Ben!

If you’ve got a ShoZu Photo Of The Day entry, shoot it over to me and we’ll get it up.

Good morning from Malaga. I’ve hijacked the ShoZu Photo Of The Day feature to bring you some much needed sun!

I took this photo just a few moments ago on the iPhone and uploaded via ShoZu. It’s the view of the Mediterranean from the Melia Hotel. Even today at the end of January, there’s a good bit of sun about. I doubt the temperature is sizzling outside (maybe 14 degrees celcius) but is it really nice to actually get a bit of brightness into the soul. Locked away in London at the moment, it’s thoroughly and super-literally dull.

Posting from the iPhone also gives me the opportunity to tell you just how technically incompetent I am. I like to think of myself as a shit-hot jack-of-all-mobile-trades genius. But now and again something happens to remind me that this isn’t entirely the case all the time. Example: I’m staring at my sodding iPhone 3G wondering why it’s roaming on ‘Moviestar’ (“Movistar”) and NOT doing any data at all. I’m actually having the same trouble with my Blackberry. Whilst I give the iPhone a mental kick, I quickly remember that there’s a data-roaming option in the Settings menu. Duh. I switch that on.

Whilst I’m there I realise that I’ve had my iPhone on ’2G mode’ for months. I switched it over to 3G and wayhay. Not only are we roaming, we’re knocking around on 3G speeds. My ShoZu photos are zipping up to the internet nicely.

And the battery is draining before my eyes.

Goooood morning!

- Taken at 8:24 AM on January 28, 2009 – iPhone upload by ShoZu –> sent via Flickr’s To Blog service directly to Mobile Industry Review

Today’s ShoZu Photo Of The Day is from Jonathan. And his Nokia E51. When I read that in the email I thought, ‘uh oh — a picture from an E51..’

And whilst Jonathan says that the quality ‘isn’t fantastic’, I beg to differ. It does the job! And the device is a brilliantly conceived small S60 handset.

This is the view from Jonathan’s Home Office:

That’s the North Downs (a ridge of chalk hills in south east England that stretch for 120 miles (190 km) from Farnham in Surrey to the White Cliffs of Dover in Kent – thanks Wikipedia).

And that, Mr Jensen, is a brilliant piece of scenery to look at whilst you’re working.

- – - – -

To be featured on the ShoZu Photo Of The Day segment, send me a photo that you’ve uploaded with the service and a sentence or so of explanation. I’m ewan@mobileindustryreview.com.

And was astonished to find this Mobile Industry Review (“MIR”) trademark infringement

He promptly snapped a shot on his mobile. Good man!

Here’s Samantha’s reasoning:

I’ve chosen this is because I was walking to school on a frozen Febuary morning last year; and I had my D600 (then my mobile) out, and I saw how the light and tree had created a scene where my feeble attempts at mobile photography could try and capture. I don’t know what it is, but there is something humbling, and somewhat “holy” about it, and it reminds me of why sometimes the winter isn’t that bad!

We need a lot of reminding, especially on shitty January mornings. Nice one Samantha!

Here’s her picture:

MIR’s James Whatley has it via Twitter from ShoZu that their Nokia app will be live and downloadable in a few weeks time. They’re just tweaking the UI as a result of the 5800′s touchscreen.

Good news!

Here’s what Ricky has to say about it:

This my Shozu photo of the day. It was back in August when the chaps at WOM world sent me the N82, Shozu and QIK were the first applications I put on it. I then when down to the beach in Morecambe and snapped some photos and the best thing was by the time I had got home, I had already had 12 views. It went to my twitter stream, fantastic.

The Image is of Morecambe Sea Front and I simply love the quality of the image!

The high-res shows the mad brits in more detail — the one’s who have gone to the beach and actually discarded items of clothing. LOOK at the clouds! It must be flucking freezing!

Ok, so Ricky took it in August I’m sure the clouds I can see are ‘warm clouds’ as apposed to rain clouds, right?

It arrived in Ben’s office and within seconds the world was having a look:

I asked Ben to characterise why he selected this image and what ShoZu means to him in this context:

I love this because it allowed MIR to post our first E63 images (the 2nd official shots on the web AFAIK) and blog them really easily.

I’ve got some more good ones from the rest of the team to post over the coming days. If you’d like to feature in the ShoZu Photo Of The Day series, simply pick a photo (or video) you’ve uploaded to the ‘net by ShoZu and send me it — or a link to it — with a brief explanation. Think: Unusual, mobile-related or your first ever upload with ShoZu.

I’m ewan@mobileindustryreview.com.

Well, today’s ShoZu Photo Of The Day is an excellent demonstration of the expression of a bit of joy and excitement using one’s mobile. That’s, incidentally what ShoZu’s current messaging is based on (“saving the world from lost moments”).

No lost moments in this case though. Here’s David’s brand new Vodafone Dell Mini Inspiron — cunningly pictured showing the all new MIR page. Nice one David:

David’s cat, Cocoamoo, is equally impressed:

Finally, David points out that the Mini Inspiron is rather smaller than is 17″ Dell:

Heh. Have fun with it, David!

Today’s ShoZu Photo Of The Day is a screenshot. My screenshot. I’ve included this in our ShoZu daily line up because I was particularly keen to document a ‘feature’ of the service I use a lot.

I use Anthony Pranata’s brilliant ‘Screenshot’ for Symbian to capture screenshots on my Nokia N95 8GB. When I take a screenshot, ShoZu pops-right-up and asks if I’d like to send the photo directly to the MIR Flickr Gallery. I typically press ‘yes’. Unless that is, I want to author a blog post right there on ShoZu and including this image. (In which case I actually send the photo, headline and text to Posterous — just brilliant — which wraps the directly on to Mobile Industry Review).

As for the actual content of today’s Photo — or screenshot — what can I say?

I never registered for Krustmut.co.uk. I suspect they picked up number up off the internet since I’ve published it regularly here on Mobile Industry Review.

Honestly, who in their right mind is going to request two ‘Fun Facts’ sent to their phone for £5 per week? £20 a month? No thanks.

It often makes for interesting viewing.

Mac Morrison — aka mostlythis — responded and sent me a link to his first ever ShoZu upload to Flickr:

Mac does point out that, er, yeah, this isn’t an entirely entertaining picture. But back in August 20, 2006, when he actually posted it, uploading pictures from your handset easily was nigh-on rocket science. Being able to easily upload ANYTHING was a total joy. So I certainly understand exactly what Mac was thinking snapping a pic of the ShoZu website. Back then you just didn’t know if anything was going to work.

Mac also comments:

Oddly there is no meta data on the phone type. but I suspect it was an Nokia N70.

An N70? Vodafone perhaps?

I remember those N70s. Revolutionary in their day.

Thanks for sending this one in, Mac.

If you can find your first-ever ShoZu upload (or a particularly memorable one, whack it in and we’ll feature it here). Mail it to ewan@mobileindustryreview.com.

Phil was in Beijing, China, last week.

He used ShoZu’s GPS-tagging feature to tag the photo to his Flickr Map. Looking closer, it seems he was near the Forbidden City when he took the photo.

Any westerner familiar with the phrase more-or-less featured in the photo will understand immediately why Phil had to snap the photo and send it into us. It reminds me of those emails you get telling you about huge branding errors made in translation by multinational car manufacturers.

Here’s Phil’s photo:

Nice one Phil.

Alas you didn’t say what handset you used to snap it. N95? Some kind of Nokia?

- – - – -

If you’d like to feature in the ShoZu Photo Of The Day section, just send me a link to an interesting or memorable photo that you uploaded to the internet with ShoZU (or perhaps even your first ShoZu upload). I’m on ewan@mobileindustryreview.com.

In the post I speculated that it must be the Nokia N95 on top of the list, followed by maybe a few other Nokias. I very much agreed with reader Mack005′s comment — he reckoned it would be the N95 and then the N82.

Well I talked to ShoZu and the list is quite surprising.

Here are the top phones that ShoZu tracks using their service:

1: iPhone
2: Nokia N95 and N95 8GB
3: Nokia N73
4: Nokia N70
5: Nokia N82
6: Nokia 7610
7: SE P1i
8: Nokia 3250
9: Nokia 6120
10: Nokia E51

Goodness me!

iPhone is right there at the top.

I wouldn’t have predicted that — at all. I reckon that’s got to be down to the stunning success of the iTunes App Store. It’s so EASY to setup an account on the iPhone — download the app. Run it. You’re live and ready to configure destinations. There’s no ‘Are you sure’, ‘Are you REALLY sure’ Nokia-nonsense prompts to worry about.

It’s no surprise to see Nokia handsets dominating the list. I reckoned the N95/8GB would be right up there. The N73 at number 3 makes sense since it’s one of the most populous handsets. But the N70??

And the Nokia E51?? Interesting.

But what about the Sony Ericsson P1i? That surprised the hell out of me…

‘If you’re a fan of sundaes,’ Fai writes, ‘Check this out’.

I am a fan. Anything with vanilla in it tends to get my attention. So, then, let’s begin with another ShoZu Photo Of The Day!

Mobile Industry Review reader Fai Yip (who describes himself as more of a lurker than a commenter — Fai, there’s about 249,000 other lurkers man, don’t worry) has recently installed ShoZu on his piece of joy, the Sony Ericsson C905.

Whilst I have the odd issue with Sony Ericsson’s lack of expandability and customisation in terms of adding applications and services to their current range of handsets, I am most certainly a huge huge fan of the C905 — the [sort of] son of the K800i, one of the best cameraphones on the market.

The C905 sports a beautiful camera.

And Fai has taken a rather mouthwatering picture which he uploaded to his Facebook profile directly. Good man.

TWO flakes, Fai? Nice.

Fai also has a comment about mobile data:

My take on uploading pictures through your mobile plan? No one in their right mind is going to send data without a suitable dataplan, unless you fancy a nice unexpected end-of-month surprise. The best Orange (which I am on) can do is the Evening-weekend £5/month add on – still not as good as the T-Mobile / three plans though.

Agreed Fai. It’s been a long time since Orange customers have been able to stand up proudly and be counted. Got a post about that coming in a minute. At least you’ve got some sort of unlimited data to use with your C905, eh?

An inch of snow really does cripple the UK. I kid ye not. Schools were closed. Honestly. Ridiculous I know.

Which brings me to Jared’s video. Despite TWO FEET of snow falling near Springfield, Western Massachusetts, traffic was, in Jared’s words, ‘bumbling along at a good 40mph’.

They’re hardy folk in Western Massachusetts. Jared shot the video in the middle of the day and was on his way back home. Another few more feet of snow due later that day.

Thankfully he had his handset on him — he doesn’t specify the make or model but I predict it was one of the top of the range Nokias. An N95 or the like.

So if you think the driver I captured in my video on Monday was having a bad day, spare a thought for the chap who’s lorry jackknifed in 2ft of snow…

I didn’t quite understand Eurostar’s timetable and, as a result, I embarked via Ashford International (leaving the car in their car park) and, most annoyingly, found that the return train only stops at Ebsfleet International or Kings Cross. Neither were that convenient for picking up the car again. Arse.

So I got off at Ebsfleet and took a £90 taxi (JOY!) back to Ashford International’s car park. Total arse.

But! There’s a plus. I was able to follow my entire journey from the back of the car with Google Maps on my Nokia N95 8GB, with GPS active. It was almost as good as having a TomTom sat in front of me:

Got a few minutes? Send me your ShoZu Of The Day and I’ll get it up — ewan@mobileindustryreview.com.

Today’s ShoZu is one of mine. From an hour or so ago:

Yes! I awoke in glorious Billericay to find the place literally covered in snow.

Well, not quite.

We’ve got an inch, perhaps less.

So for all the Americans and Canadians reading — or anyone who lives in an actually SNOWY part of the world, let me deliver you a bit of morning entertainment.

You see, despite there being less than an inch of shitty powdery snow, most of the area is closed. Shut down. Schools will close, offices will shut temporarily, trains will be delayed. We simply can’t handle snow in the United Kingdom, especially not in the suburbs around London where 0.5 inches of snow is comparable to getting a 4ft drop in -10c (without wind chill) conditions in the middle of Tahoe.

We just can’t handle it. Folk are putting on their Wellington Boots as I speak and ‘braving’ the terrible conditions. So terrible that it’s actually reading 1.5c on the thermometer. That’s right, the snow will be gone in a few hours but you can count on the total disruption of the entire region.

Only a few moments ago a van was valiantly battling against the snow to drive up my road. You see those tracks? Those were made by that very van. Such a brave effort. He was slipping and sliding all over the shop in 2nd gear.

We don’t bother with 5th-gear snow-driving nonsense here. Heh. We just point the vehicles in the right direction in 1st gear (WHY ISN’T THE WHEEL GRIPPIN’????) and curse the ‘treacherous’ conditions.

If you’ve got any pictures uploaded to ShoZu of some DECENT snowy conditions outside, please email them in.

3 x 1 for clothes
2.5 for decent chocolates 7 for easily ebayable (phone)
15 for rechargeable toothbrush
25 for sony ericsson quantum of solace c902 bond phone Can anyone beat that?

Rob

Orange brought along their own mast for the event, which was a nice touch we thought. Seeing as most people there should have been with Orange anyway, this worked out nicely for them. As for all intents and purposes everyone on that network connected virtually through their Bristol tower. As the link was setup by them for this purpose alone; all a rather funky idea we believe.

For one, this saves on roaming charges and for another it just adds to the whole worth of the event in terms of continuity and practicality.

Some might have seen this as a gimmick, we just thought this was a nice idea and great for all those that attended this far, far away event.

We spoke to Pierre Combelles, VP of technical alignment and third parties, and also Steve Glagow, VP of marketing operations at Orange about their APIs. One of the more interesting elements of their partnerships that came out in the conversation interested us, for more reasons than one.

They have an involvement with a new friend of ours, ShoZu, curiously enough.

They used Orange’s APIs and within minutes, managed to integrate them into their platform for the online photo sharing site Pikeo.com.

All with the greatest of ease, those bright people at ShoZu were able to collaborate with Orange to enable an app on their mobiles.

Where images are transferred to a user Pikeo space, from the ShoZu platform with pure simplicity itself in mind – and very intuitively indeed.

It just goes to show how the bolts and bits of Orange’s API’s can be used to their fullest.

Also it came to light at the event, that the network ’3′ in the UK uses Orange’s towers and masts for their 2G network – something that not everyone knows but should do we believe.

We’ll bring you more of these later on.