Everything and the Mobile Software Universe…

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).

iF Design iF details view: The Black Box Concept:





What I especially like is the “no button” design (like an ipod , or a LG chocolate) : The whole User interaction is software , yummy

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?

Great read from TomSoft about Mobile Ajax:
TomSoft » Myths of mobile Web2.0 (and mobile Ajax).

Really in line with what Thomas said, especially this point :

…Ajax applications will run the same on mobiles than on PC, and this will save us some porting costs. Wrong! Seems that the Write Once Run Anywhere myth is back!! It was actually already not achievable through technology designed for this, so I did not see how Ajax app…

Same for me … the more I work in this industry with european, chineese,Korean partners the more I see:

• How skilled they are
• NO UNIFORMITY : for each client, and even for each phone for each clients, many things are different and can’t be abstracted generalizing a concept.
• Requirements are from Operators (Carriers), Graphic Designers etc… and no one has the same approach for UI and data representation…

A good technology should help this diversity and free the creativity of those actors… wrong idea to lock them in one scheme, one way to do … how will they differentiate?
Customization is key, and is not at all limited to theme, colors and image, but of the whole software …this is our vision here at open-plug

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)

Thanks moPocket for the video!

Ok it Seems a little bit SciFi for now, but after all look at the VK 2020 or the latest korean “card size” phone are not so distant (ok appart the flexibility ).
But what is even more surprising is the software depicted in the video : it is adapting to the user and any context … so far from our little applications and their static icones, a BIG step further compared to the previous post about live UI.

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

Today, in the cellphone space (as it was for the PC years ago), two main applications/services launching UI paradigms are fighting for dominance:

• Icones that launch applications : All architectures needs a kind of “glue” or shell, called explorer on Windows. This is the path choosen by high level OS : great for dynamic downloads, new applications. Look at you windows/linux Desktop, your PalmOS explorer , your s60 or pocketPC one…same concepts of text/icon point and click : very poor for services interactions, UI consistency.
• Ad hoc UI : the “Menu” Application in many proprietary OS  : great for integration, with user interaction fine tuning, ad hoc customization by operator, wrong for code maintenance and dynamique expandability.

Read the rest of this entry »

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 »