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Should Smartphones Come With Data Plans?

// May 15th, 2009 // 20 Comments » // Mobile

A recent rumor at Boy Genius Report claims that T-Mobile is going to require most of its smartphones to be sold with a data plan. The concept is nothing new – most BlackBerries are sold with an add-on that includes unlimited data connections, and the iPhone is sold with a data package bundled from AT&T. Personally, I think it’s a fantastic idea, and something the carriers should have done a long time ago.

The difference in using any mobile phone, much less today’s smartphone, with or without a data package, is nearly night and day. The extra connection isn’t only valuable for mobile browsing and email, it’s also the window to a whole new level of opportunity, both for the carrier and for consumers.

With bundled data packages, carriers win by getting that higher ARPU. They also win because an unlimited data package opens the door to a host of other services, such as streaming media (audio or video), as well as social networking and other data-oriented services on your mobile. Basically anything you can do on your computer, you can do on your phone through the internet. It’s a whole new opportunity for service upsells. Plus, with unlimited data, you’ve eliminated one barrier that often prevents customers from experimenting with these data-intensive services.

Consumers win because they can do so much more with their phones. Mobile internet is the future of how people will interact with each other, regardless of how you look at it. It enables communication on levels never seen before, and since it’s mobile, there are no geographical limitations. It cuts the cord and allows people to use internet-related products and services without having to be sat in a single place, which means it can more easily enrich and enable their real lives.

Another benefit that we’ve seen with the iPhone is that if the manufacturer knows a user will have unlimited data, they can more easily enable or create different applications. I love my S60-powered smartphones, but they’re held back slightly, specifically with 3rd party apps, because they have to ask permission to connect to the internet. They don’t have the luxury of knowing you have unlimited internet, which means they’ll probably always have that awkward interaction with the user of ‘are you sure I can do this?’

What do you think? Do you use a smartphone without a data package? Do you think it limits you?

DotMobi’s Got A New WordPress Mobile Plugin

// April 30th, 2009 // No Comments » // Mobile

One of my favorite sites for keeping up with things on the mobile web is WapReview.com, written by Dennis Bournique. This guy has a knack for finding cool mobile-friendly websites and services, and is always in the know. Today, Dennis brought news of a new WordPress plugin from DotMobi. I’m currently using Alex King’s WP-Mobile plugin here on RickyCadden.com for you guys, and am using WPhone for mobile access to the backend of things. WPhone sucks, though, since the developers decided to ignore all phones other than the iPhone and cease development, which is uber-lame.

In any case, this new plugin from DotMobi does the same thing that WP-Mobile does, though it seems to add a few more options here and there. The main features that attract me are the built-in ability to redirect mobile browsers to an mdot URL, as well as the widget support and QR Code generator.

I don’t particularly care for DotMobi, normally, as I think that while the idea of .mobi websites is good, convincing the world that they need to purchase yet another domain for a mobile version of their site is ridiculous. As I stated previously, consumers shouldn’t need to care whether they type in m.rickycadden.com, rickycadden.mobi, or even rickycadden.com/iwanttoseethisonmyphone – they should automatically get your content, formatted in the best way for their specific device, without having to do anything.

That being said, I’ll be testing out this new WordPress Mobile Pack from DotMobi over the weekend, and will let you know when you can give it a test drive.

Also, it seems as though this plugin offers some mobilization for the WordPress backend, a feature that is sorely missing. WPhone still works, but it’s incredibly crude, and doesn’t work 100% of the time. I’d like to see either WordPress, Alex King, or I suppose DotMobi stepping up in this arena. It shouldn’t be too hard, really. If it’s Alex or DotMobi, hopefully they’ll mobilize the administration side of vBulletin, too, while they’re at it.

Yahoo Believes In App Fatigue, Do You?

// April 15th, 2009 // 18 Comments » // Mobile

I caught this piece on MoCoNews.com (great site, btw) earlier today, with Yahoo claiming that they see the beginnings of App Fatigue setting in, specifically in the mobile arena, and are building their mobile offerings around that observation. I definitely want to start by saying that I don’t really think Yahoo has ever been 100% clued in when it comes to mobile. Their Yahoo Go! service is confusing to try to figure out which phones can use what, and they completely missed the boat on mobile email, for sure.

Another thing that I don’t agree with *at all* from Yahoo is Adam Taggart’s statement that ‘our identity has been confused, but we want the portal to be the starting point for the internet’. Yeah, I remember portals with the desktop web – AOL, etc. The only people who use them are the ‘disconnected’ among us who use Internet Explorer because it’s labeled as ‘Internet’ on their computer, and use MSN as their homepage because that’s what it was already set to. Hardly the type of folks that Yahoo should be trying to reach, specifically with mobile in mind.

That being said, I do feel like I agree with Yahoo! in the area of App Fatigue, as described here:

Taggart said aggregation will be vital as people are constantly managing more information and more accounts. The problem is somewhat compounded on mobile because users may have several applications. Taggart: “We believe there is ‘app fatigue.’ You may download 10 to 30 applications, but then only use two.”

While immediately I think of the latest iPhone App Store stats that I’ve heard, I can also think of a number of applications in the S60 community that are installed and used heavily, but then forgotten. In my mind, I’m seeing App Fatigue as what would happen if all of my internet bookmarks were displayed as icons on my desktop. No thanks.

I wonder what type of research they did into this ‘App Fatigue’ phenomenon? Are they just going off the latest iPhone App Store stats, the ones that said most people only use like, 1 in 5 applications that they download, or did they actually do some market research with non-iPhone users?

Another thought in this conversation is, while portals ultimately failed on the desktop, I think we can all agree that the mobile internet is a whole different beast. I even use a portal, keytoss.com (check it out, it’s awesome) as the starting page for most of my mobile devices. The ability to pull up a single webpage and get to wherever else I might want to go is certainly convenient on my phone, where I have limited bandwidth and restricted input mechanisms. Could Yahoo! be on to something with this idea of a mobile portal? Furthermore, as most ‘normob’ (normal mobile) users likely have a carrier-branded handset, aren’t they already being served a portal to begin with, from their carrier?

What do you think?

Consumers Don’t Want To Browse Desktop Websites On Their Phones

// April 2nd, 2009 // 17 Comments » // Mobile

Consumer’s don’t *want* to browse the desktop web on their phones. It’s a brave statement to make, but I firmly believe it. The sad fact is, they need it, which is evidenced by the success of the iPhone’s web browser, as well as applications such as Opera Mini and Skyfire. Let me explain:

The ‘mobile web’ first hit consumers as ‘WAP’ web pages. WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) was basically the same thing the internet was when it started – a collection of text-only websites. At the time, most cellphones had monochrome displays and slower-than-dialup connections, so there wasn’t much point in images and that sort of thing. As phones got color displays, faster data connections, and faster processors, the ‘mobile internet’ slowly got better, upgrading to colored text and images. Unfortunately, though, the fact was that most websites who had ‘mobile’ sites were only offering a subset of the content found on their full ‘desktop’ websites.

With web developers unwilling to truly mobilize their content, instead only offering piss-poor websites that offered little to no actual content, consumers quickly wrote off the mobile internet as lame, and rightfully so. Another barrier was the prolific use of various ‘mobile’ URLs, rather than intelligent auto-detecting of a mobile device. The result of this is that the mobile version of a given site could be found in any number of places. Some fell for the .mobi trick, which requires a content owner to purchase an additional domain, simply to host a mobile-friendly version of their site. Others used mobile.domain.com, m.domain.com, wap.domain.com, or worse yet, www.domain.com/mobile. There was no standardization, which caused confusion, as consumers were never sure where to go to get the mobile-friendly version of their favorite websites.

The situation worsened with the arrival of several ‘mobilization’ tools, such as Google’s, which simply took a full HTML website and broke it up into countless ‘bite-sized’ webpages, again, text only in most cases. This hosed any chance of a decent user experience by reducing mobile browsing back down to text-only, and adding the frustration of and endless array of clicking.

The handset manufacturers and software developers quickly saw an opportunity, and thus we ended up seeing new browsers that enabled these small, pocketable phones to get all the content they wanted, by simply displaying the ‘desktop’ website.

The problem with this is that browsing a full desktop webpage on a phone is like looking at a mural through an peephole. Sure, you can see bits and pieces, but it’s alot of work to get the full thing, and you have to glance around a bit before you can actually find what you’re looking for. With a correctly mobilized website, readers/viewers can get every bit of content that’s available on the full desktop view, only formatted properly to fit comfortably on their phone’s screen, whether that’s 2.4-inches or 4.4-inches. Even better is that correctly mobilized websites are now able to automatically detect whether the reader is using a mobile device, and can automatically format the content, eliminating the .mobi/m./mobile. confusion, and allowing consumers to simply go to the same domain, whether mobile or on desktop.

For instance, pull up RickyCadden.com on your desktop computer. Now, cup your hand around your eye so you can only see a 5th of the display, and try reading a post. It’s frustrating. Now, go to RickyCadden.com on your mobile. It’s intelligently reformatted, specifically for your phone’s display. You can now easily find the content, read it in its entirety, and even leave a comment. Everything you can do on your desktop browser, you can easily do – without squinting or scrolling all over the place – on your phone. That’s how browsing on your phone *should* be.

The important thing here is that consumers want access to the CONTENT, not the LAYOUT. The reason consumers now believe that they need the desktop web on their phones is because they’re used to the mobile web not offering the same content. Thus, they’re willing to tolerate the layout, including scrolling all over the place, in order to get to the content they were looking for. It’s not that consumers want the desktop web on their phones. It’s that they want the desktop content on their phones, and web designers haven’t stepped up to the challenge of adjusting the layout to give them that.

Unfortunately, it seems as if this ship has sailed. Consumers have been marketed to that they want/desire/need/require/etc the ‘desktop web’ on their phones, and have been conditioned to be impressed with better ways to interact with it. Which is why there’s a ‘exit the mobile version’ link on RickyCadden.com. If you still want the desktop version, you can have it. It’s also why I have both Opera Mini and SkyFire installed on most of my phones – there are still some websites that simply don’t get it.

Throughout tech history, the superior technology has not always won out, often losing to the inferior technology, simply due to marketing, convenience, or whatever else.

Checking in from SXSW

// March 14th, 2009 // 12 Comments » // blogging, Mobile, Social Networks

Checking in from SXSW 09, it’s halfway through my first full day and thus far, I’ve met a TON of cool people, looking forward to meeting more. This has already been quite a discovery trip for me, as I’m experiencing new ways to use tools like SMS, web, and especially my phone. It’s fascinating to me how much of this event is planned via sms, Twitter, and similar services. It really is all about who is included in your network.

Another thing that I’m finding is that there are tons of people just like me – people who, at one point, had ‘real jobs’ and are now working in this thing we call the web, specifically in mobilizing and social networking/marketing. On some points, that’s a good thing. I’m encouraged to see more people struggling with the same things that I do, and excited about the same things that I am. It’s always good to feel like you’re a part of a larger community, and I’ve joined the ‘connected geeks’ quite well, I believe.

On the other hand, this discovery is really depressing. While I’m working in various directions to build and prove that I add unique value, the truth is that there are hundreds upon thousands of people who are also well-equipped and looking to accomplish the same goal. The realization that what I’m working towards is not ‘new’, as I’d like to think that it is.

More thoughts from SXSW soon.

MSN Music UK Is Ignorance Defined

// January 21st, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Mobile, stupid

Today, in the ‘stupid’ category, I present MSN Music UK, which just started offering mobile music downloads. Sounds cool, right? Who wouldn’t want instant access to over 1 million tracks, 25,000 ‘realtone’ ringtones, and even 10,000 music videos? Well, for starters, me. I don’t, not at these prices, and with these restrictions.

Let me spell this pricing out for you – first off, it’s all DRM’d. DRM stands for Digital Rights Restriction Management, and basically makes sure that you only play back your media on specific devices. Imagine if you bought a CD, but it would only play in the car you were driving when you bought it. To play it in your friend’s car, or in your home stereo, you would need to purchase a new copy. Completely silly. With MSN Music’s new tracks, they’re DRM’d to only play on the DEVICE you bought it on – yeah, that’s right, you can’t even back it up on your computer to play back there, or move it to a new phone without paying.

So, now that we understand the ‘freedom’ in the music, surely it’s cheap, right? Wrong. You’re looking at 1.50 GBP for each full music track, 3 GBP for each Realtone ringtone, and 2 GBP for each music video. Wait, what?! Yes, you would pay twice as much for the ~30 sec. ringtone than you would for the whole stinkin song. Amazing.

Now that we’re apalled at the pricing by itself, let’s compare to some other online music stores. First up, the requisite iTunes: .79 GBP per track, with DRM that allows for multiple devices and computers. Nearly half the price of MSN Music. Amazon.co.uk is as cheap as .59 GBP, and those are actually straight up DRM-Free MP3s, you can play them on nearly whatever you want.

Anyone noticing a trend, here? It sure looks to me like DRM’d music is MORE expensive, increasing with the level of restriction. Amazing. MSN Music U.K., you’ve failed. Miserably. And you Brits out there, if any of you purchase anything from MSN Music, you’ve failed, too. Congratulations.

Tools Of A Connected Traveler

// October 20th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // cool, Mobile

The Mrs. and I are headed out to California this week for some R&R, though obviously I’ll be connected most of the time, albeit less so than normal. This is the first personal trip that I’ve taken in a while, and it was booked, planned, mapped out, etc, all online this time around. While you would think that planning and booking a trip online would be a piece of cake in this day and age, the sad reality is that it’s really not. Sure, you can easily use a single site to do it all, but none are very comprehensive guides – there’s always something missing.

So then, what did I use for this trip? Mostly, a combination of three tools, all of which have thus far, proved to be a great solution. TravelMuse, Tripit, and SociaLight.

TravelMuse is something I found out about through Jonathan Greene, and it’s basically an online planning tool that allows you to pull content from anywhere on the net and organize it on your trip. What’s even better is that it’s collaborative – meaning I could invite the Mrs. to setup an account, and from there she was able to look at the trip thus far, add her thoughts, and we could do it online, at different times. Brilliant. There’s even a handy bookmarklet that allowed me to add things from other services – such as SociaLight.

Speaking of, SociaLight is one of a few LBS services that has MASSIVE potential – if only they could release a real mobile client for something other than the iPhone. Basically, with SociaLight, when you’re out and about, you can attach a geo-tagged ‘sticky’ note to a specific location, such as a bar or nightclub. Others can then browse these when they’re in the area.

I’ve gotten ahold of the private beta JAVA app, and it works great – for a java app. Unfortunately, it’s not publicly available, and even if it was, it hasn’t been updated since earlier this year, so it still has all kinds of alpha bugs. In any case, SociaLight allowed me to browse through the existing tags in San Francisco and other areas to find a few restaurants to check out, and even helped us pick a hotel.

Once we got everything booked, I ended up with 4 confirmation emails – one for the flights, two for the hotels, and one for the car rental place. What a mess these are, trying to figure out which is which in my inbox, and then trying to get the correct information out of the email, with all the various reservation numbers and dates and whatnot.

This is where Tripit helped out tremendously. After registering my email address, I simply forwarded those confirmation emails to the Tripit email address. The service pulls out all of the appropritate details – times, dates, reservation numbers, addresses, phone numbers, etc – and puts them in a nice easy timeline, available from any web browser. The best part, in my opinion, is that any web browser includes that of my Nokia S60-powered smartphones. I simply added ‘Tripit’ as a personal link on my Keytoss homepage and wa-la – instant access to my reservations in a nice, easy-to-read format with no muss, no fuss. You can even pull that into your Outlook, if you really wanted to.

Tripit also allows you to quickly get links to appropriate side-services. When viewing my airline confirmation in Tripit, I can easily click to check where our seats are, and if they’re bad (which they were) I can easily click through to American Airlines to change our seat reservations. Brilliant.

That’s just leading up to the trip – we actually depart on Wednesday, so I’ll be able to test out exactly how well these various services – specifically SociaLight and Tripit work when totally mobile.