Everything and the Mobile Software Universe…

GSM Association Press Release 2006 – GSMA announces shortlist for the first Asia Mobile Innovation Awards We are really proud to be part of this shortlist!

As usual a great read from Mobile Opportunity: Mobile Opportunity: Facing reality in the mobile industry. It describes how difficult is it to build a new application/services for the Mobile Phone market, taking a great example : SKYPE. It’s a mix of hardware issues, and software compatibilities.
Tarek talks about the old CDMA/GSM battle and the Ultra Low Cost Market:
It’s A GSM Kinda Developing World. Imagine, we have not even set and agreed on the radio technology, the processor is converging to ARM (7 for some, 9 or event 11 for others), so don’t talks about the software/services plateform!…but is it a bad thing after all? Ok interoperability is a big great thing … but to have no limits in the creativity is perhaps even more important at the end, to choose the right Hardware/software combination to reach target prices.

Vision Mobile has a good post on Diversity :
User interfaces and soft walled gardens of tomorrow Brands have a real strength, this is not a dull windows/Mac/KDE/Gnome world. Nokia means something, Sony Ericsson also…. they have great UI specifications, and strong brand awareness.

MEX – the strategy forum for mobile user experience – Zi makes progress with Qix

I’ve missed this one … even if we are working with Zi as an IP provider for predicitve text input, I’ve never heard about Qix (see the Zi Qix Web Sit).
It really looks like the Palm Treo Initiate launcher : use any bit of information to quickly access the data … errrr everything is about data those days (see my 3 to 4 previous posts). In the case of Qix it is only text, but for initiate it is also voice,… google search on the phone anyone? coupled with applications to display and use the found data…: THIS is interesting, and a good alternate way to the menustrees.
I am a convinced defensor to the all-flat-search-by-content organization oposed to the classical folder trees (perhaps because I’m NOT organized , see my post about desktop search engines ). It should be pushed a little more to also launch actions, etc. Definitively something to keep in mind for user interactions!

they also bought Decuma it seems, a very powerfull text recognition engine for stylus input (found an the defunct Sony Clié PalmOS devices).

Interesting read :
Agile Chronicles: Can Gantt Charts be Agile?

We try to put in place Agile methods here, but even if as software developpers we strongly believe in the iteration process and so one : we have traditional clients that need to know Date/Schedule/What is in a release/Is the project going late? by how?. And for me, and for now, even if Task/user story are “agile” in our process, I need a Gantt Chart to give DATES/DEADLINES/SCHEDULE to my hierarchy, taking into account my team holidays, the impact of bug fixes vs features coming from different clients.
I’m incomfortable in respect to Agile methods because of this deadline thing:

• Either client/management has to adapt and forget the deadline stuff, accepting many incremental changes and releases….hum forget the incremental release stuff in the embedded space, with those awfull build systems.
• Agile has to be adapted to present a Schedule and Deadline frontend … because it is what PEOPLE understand, forget team velocity, % completion, etc, the only things clients/hierarchy want to know is by how much days you will be late

What do you think? what solutions did you put in place to make Agile compatible with businesscases?

Suddenly everything’s coming up widgets – September 1, 2006 Is an interesting introduction to the widgets and why this concept is successful:

…In the early days of the Internet, most companies would create a destination website, wait for users to show up, and then make money from the advertisements. Now they use widgets to reel users in.

A Gmail widget on someone’s desktop that shows “10 unread messages” will make that user click and go back to the Gmail website, where the ad-based cash register goes ka-ching! Microsoft (Charts), AOL (Charts), Yahoo (Charts), and even Nokia (Charts) are also offering widgets. …

And …:

…Of course, the main reason widgets are hot is that users love them. That’s because they help to make the Web user-programmable…

So it has something to do with advertising for now : display snipets of information …. to attract user more often to advertized content.

As for RSS feeds the “data” coming from the content provider is highly minimized and standardized, and IS PUSHED to the content consumer; then a local “application” or service is displaying it nicely according to the system on which it is running: the winning equation seems to be again a strong separation between the content and its representation (as everything around XML, PUSH mode instead of passive publication plus a good standardization and description around the content itself : it reminds me of the microformats concept (see this great microformat blog for more information) and the concept behind Ruby on Rail …

Looking for links for this post, I’ve found this interesting MVC introduction, worth a read if you don’t know it!

UPDATE: I’ve crossed this post just after this one: Open Gardens: The implications of ‘Data is the intelligence’ on mobile software development the data IS the value. (found from the excellent “Carnival of the Mobilists” of this week)

:: mobiface :: next gen mobile interface thoughts  : Wow great idea! The background image is going more cloudy when the network strength is going down…neat!

found here : bLaugh » Archive » Cell Phone Overkill

Really this is happening…our customer (phone manufacturers) are asking for features that even us, as geeky as we are, don’t know how to use! (found again via the Kathy Sierra: http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/ )

This shows also that voice is and continue to be the “killer app”…of a phone (how bizarre how bizarre). The industry is truggling to find a new one (camera is a good idea, I like the concept of “personal data gatherer”).

My guess is that a “one fit all user device” (as in the PC land) is really simply irrelevant : see the latest SonyEricsson offering, see how many segments you have for cell phones, opposed to the PC market:

  Read the rest of this entry »

Look at that video amazing! how could they do that??? look at the movements, coordination,etc … stunning.

Here is another video of the same robot…but be sure to check the first one also.

Ok, it’s time for me to face reality : I have a team, I have too much work, I have to get serious about my productivity.
So let’s go web shopping for Productivity secrets ! … and let’s face a second reality : I love to dig for information, try software, in a word, loose my time playing with new toys, not sure it is good for my current issue .
Being a proud arrogant froggy, I feel really uncomfortable with the zillion of anglo-saxon self-management craps we can found everywhere, promoting the same mantra every time :”If you really want it, you can do it”.
Then I found a great community around a great Guru with an interesting approach : David Allen and it’s GTD, “Getting Things Done”. For me all the great “teaching” books has to be easy to read, all the depicted ideas have to appear as simple and good sense ones, and above all make me feel that, with an hour of thinking, I could have come up easily with a fair amount of those “brilliant” ideas . The Allen’s Book is one of those. It’s not one of those change-your-lifestyle-with-mine approach, but a more personal one, Allen seems to say : “Ok, you are good at what you are doing, I’m good at productivity, let me give you some tricks I’ve learn, and see if it fits”. Ok, I like that.
I’ve spent a lot of time trying tools, tuning my setup, reading web blogs, etc…

1. I’ve lost A LOT of time studying
2. I’ve lost A LOT of time tweaking a system that may fit my needs, even learnt VBA to tweak Outlook and adds macros…
3. I’ve lost A LOT of time … because I began tweaking my system before discovering my needs
4. I have a A LOT of FUN doing that

Now it’s time to use it …. ahum, do I really need that? Is that all? Only few categories in Outlook? those four added buttons?… Yes I think it is, the real step, as always, is in my mind, not on my laptop: what I’ve learnt, tools stay tools, a mean, not a finality, and many time, especially in computer science, we tend to forget that!
My day to day practice is changing (albeit slowly), following those common sense principles:

• Even if it may sounds obvious, GTD made me really think about what has to be DONE, how to translate “stuffs”, ideas, meeting outputs into actionable items : giving time to extract tasks from this information magma, on a systematical basis, is, for me the greatest contribution from Allen.
• Power of delegation without loosing control.
• If something takes less than 2 minutes, DO IT NOW.
• Track, write and forget : once actionable items are extracted, store them in your system (delegate or deferre them) … and be confident in your system, forget: it gives you the freedom to think about new ideas, longer term goals … precisely what I was missing, as I was overhelmed by short-terms goals and views.

Those four points may sound like GTD propaganda, blablabla … but, to be honest I’m myself surprised to follow them naturally, with few efforts. David Allen gave principles, few details, and I think, like Kathy Sierra in her great post Making happy Users, that fewer details equals better identification and appropriation of the ideas. Check also Metagrrrl Post about a similar GTD point of view.
Does it really helps my productivity? Not sure at this time. So does it help me ? definitively, cause I have less and less of those “little-things-to-change-to-improve-to-say-to-write” in mind, leaving room for more important thinking.

I’ll certainly add some other posts about my setup, my outlook/evernote customization, desktop search etc.

As a side effect of all this self-teaching I’ve discovered many great blogs and posts, particularly those GTD few ones:

• Working Smart
• Office Zealot and The Latest Getting Things Done Blogs
• GTD Wanabe
• The famous 43Folders

And a special mention to the excellent Creating Passionate Users, that has nothing to do with productivity, but is one of my preferred read, waiting eagerly each new post with a mixed feeling od admiration …and yes jealousy for the Kathy Sierra’s style sharp mind and clever comments, thanks Kathy for sharing your talent! Do not miss her posts about the Devil’s advocate or Making happy Users.

For english readers … sorry for my style but, hey, I’m french

Thomas