Mobile News For The End Of Week 34

Hmmm don't know what to do. I know I will get GOOG to tell me what to do next! http://awe.sm/59eSe Thanks Eric ;-) - this was actually a story about streaming search results, so instead of getting the suggested search terms you see as you have partially typed in a keyword search you would instead see the actual search results. I think this would be incredibly confusing but if launched would be interested to try. At the bottom of the story is Eric Schmidt’s reference to what he actually thinks people want Google to do for them. “They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next.”. Seriously I hope this is not the case! It would be a sorry day that we had to rely on a search engine to tell us what to do! What do you think Google would tell you? “You want to click on this strategically placed advertisement” ;-). Just image the amount of profiling information required to tell you what you want to do next?

Google Goggles coming to iPhone http://awe.sm/59eSk If they could port Navigation, Gesture Search and Sky Map that would be great ;-) – an announcement that Google are going to provide Google Goggles on iPhone has to be good. Not that I particularly use Google Goggles on android. For me the current state of the application is a novelty, but as image recognition advances you can see how the product could advance from a novelty to a valuable resource. It’s Android applications like this that make me like the platform. Other applications such as Navigation, Gesture Search and Sky Map are also great. The Talking RSS Reader is also very cool although I think that was developed by someone at Google as opposed to Google. If all could be ported that would be fantastic. I guess there are always going to be differentiators between software platforms that make one have the edge over the other. As is always the case though there are several edges so the pros and cons between platforms typically out-weigh each other. Thank god WAC is going to come along and standardise the development environment for mobile such that all applications have a standard runtime to be deployed in. That way all phones will have access to all applications. Cool. I am so forward looking to WAC . Well at least the one Samsung device on which it will run.

Windows Phone 7 web browser review and comparison with Android and iPhone http://awe.sm/59eUC #WP7 no Flash or HTML5 at this stage – OK theres not much in the comparison of the mobile browsers between iPhone, Android and Windows Mobile 7. OK so its not that scientific, but the review in this video hits on what most people might find of issue. Interesting that currently Windows Mobile 7 browser does not support flash or HTML 5. Apparently Windows are not commenting on when they might. This leaves Android as the only environment that does support Flash. Lets see if WM7 follows and has a differentiator against iPhone. You would have thought that they would do this from the start so they have something to crow about over the iPhone?

RT @orelien Foursquare celebrates four consecutive days of record signups http://ff.im/-pCoe1 – as I mentioned in my last blog the launch of facebook Places should be seen as an opportunity by the current check-in service players. Places allows a perfect distribution mechanism to facebook’s 500 million users. Well OK currently only there US users. Both Foursquare and Gowalla are highlighting significant usage increases since the launch of Places.

RT @androidcentral Motorola Flipout shows off itself in a demo video http://bit.ly/9cmmlR -> interesting form factor – a square phone with a flipout keyboard. That’s different. Well not really, there have been a few square mobile phones before (check out a google image search for a square mobile phone), but its not that common. I have not had a play with this phone yet but I am intrigued to have a look at it. I wonder if not having to worry about developing the OS, this phone has and Android OS, has allowed Motorola to have more time to play with the form factor. I wonder if we shall have some further intriguing design concepts coming out of the other Android OEM’s. Fingers crossed

RT @mashable The State of the GeoSocial Universe [INFOGRAPHIC] - http://mash.to/2ugc2 - numbers of users of social services from mobile – this infographic, although not actually providing numbers, highlights the usage from mobile of various internet communities and products. Fantastic to see that significant traffic now generated from mobile. Well fantastic if you currently work in the mobile industry, or want to. It’s clear that mobile internet access is not a fad. People want it. The immediacy it brings is clearly seen as a positive thing by the internet consuming community. There is a long way to go for many PC based web services to mobilise their content. This should supply those that enable mobile services plenty of chance to increase their reach into the market as well, if only they could see this.

O2 Now adding an eco rating to each of their phones e.g. The Samsung Galaxy S http://awe.sm/59gar details -www.o2.co.uk/thinkbig - OK so I wrote a blog about this here. It’s a good idea, however I think their implementation of it is slightly flawed. Interestingly Apple have refused to partake in the eco assessment. It’s svolutary so no-one can force them. You know if they got a low number though they would instantly be slammed in the press! The Guardian provides an article here about how Apple have not joined in the program. Have a look at the comments below the article. Many Apple haters there! Truly amazing the passion with which people both love and seemingly hate Apple!

Everything your Android phone can replace: 45 gadgets with a total weight of 110 Pounds http://awe.sm/59gcA (via @mob4hire )- I liked this article. Convergence is truly upon us with the smart phone. This article lists 45 gadgets that you no longer need to carry as you have access to their functionality from your Android phone. Interestingly they did not include a PC. I so rarely use my PC now at home. Well not for surfing anyway. I do work, and write these blogs on it (some might say this PC should be removed from my possession immediately based on this. Ho hum. I did not force you to read this did I? I think I would have used far more persuasive means to make you read this if I really wanted to ;-) ) but for surfing and instant access to web content I very rarely use my home PC. So we could possibly add that to the list. My home PC weighs a tonne as well!

RT @IntoMobile Pinball Magic Turns your iPhone into a Working Pinball Machine! http://bit.ly/93ZvqF - most important mobile news in ages – very cool little application! Well I am unable to download the pinball game as it appears that at the moment you can only purchase this in the US . I love the financial model for the game though. Have the game for free, but if you want the whole playing experience you have to buy the pinball cabinet separately. Being a pinball fan I love the application concept as well ;-) If, or when, this is available in the UK I will be purchasing ;-)

Want People And Industry To Change? Hit The Hip Pocket! http://goo.gl/b/bgEe - new blog entry influenced by the @O2 eco rating – remember if you have a different idea, but don’t implement it then you are a failure. Umm yeah right. Thanks for that. As discussed above O2 introduced an eco rating to their handsets today. This had me thinking about an idea I had for taxing carbon on everyday products a few years ago. Nothing ever came of it but it was an interesting thought at the time. I feel like a failure for not having completed the implementation. Actually in all honesty I don’t really. ;-)

Microsoft To Pay More Than Half A Billion Dollars To Jump-Start Windows Phone 7 http://awe.sm/59lbS - wow that's a serious amount of wonga! Estimates of 400 million alone on advertising. Oh man there are going to be a lot of windows mobile ads this Christmas! :-(. MS did the same when they launched the Xbox to try and crack the market. They have been successful in gaming but will they be successful again in mobile? The Xbox tie in might drive some sales. So will good handsets hopefully! That is if there are any! ;-). I have yet to be able to have a play with windows 7, but look forward to giving it a try.

That's about it for this week. Well that's it for the bits and pieces that caught my eye anyway.

Have fun! Bank Holiday Weekend! Yessss!

Cheers

m

Want People And Industry To Change? Hit The Hip Pocket!

The Announcement today that O2 were adding an eco rating to each of their handsets had me thinking back to an idea I had 5 years ago. Firstly though, about the eco rating that O2 have introduced to each of their handsets. In O2's words they use a tool to:

"assess our suppliers and their products against a range of sustainability criteria. Energy consumption; substances used; packaging and the way the company operates in its local community are all taken into account."

This results in an eco score out of 5 for each handset. This only works for supplies that participate within the scheme and as an example the Samsung Galaxy S gets an impressive eco rating of 3.6 out of 5..... well is this impressive or not? I have no idea and here in lies the problem. I really like the concept of the eco rating against a product that I am going to buy as it means that I can make an informed decision about what I am going to buy and how it potentially impacts the world around me. However a number gives me no visibility as to how this was awarded and as a result I cannot really make an educated judgement. Also it's just a number. What does 3.6 out of 5 actually mean. Does this actually mean that The Samsung Galaxy S is only 72% kosher with 28% nastiness? There is no visibility as to how the score is calculated therefore it is relatively meaningless. If I buy it are 28% of the buttons on the key pad dangerous to use? Will they dial a 5 when I hit the 6?

That being said, interesting move by O2 to add an eco rating but please:

• provide visibility on how the score is actually assessed and what criteria each device has achieved
• provide a mechanism such that I can compare devices eco ratings easily without having to navigate to each device individually. This might be available but I sure as heck could not find it.

This would at least allow the consumer to make an informed decision, and would not make the concept sound like marketing gumpf. Again I would like to add that I applaud the concept, I just wish that the process was a little more transparent.

Anyway enough of 02. As I said, about 5 years ago I had a similar idea, however it was on a far greater scale. I wanted every single product to have a carbon rating, i.e. a value that allowed a consumer to see how much carbon was produced to get a product to a place of purchase. OK so my rating was purely carbon based and didn't have a measure of Corporate Social Responsibility, but maybe that could have been added later ;-).

So that is all well and good. Consumers would be able to see the carbon footprint of each of their products. I seriously wanted this on everything. So instead of seeing the price per unit, or the price per 100 grams of a product, instead you would see the carbon produced figure for the same measure. This would be for TV's, your packet of crisps, your fruit and veg, your pot of honey etc.... Yes really everything! So that is all well and good, a consumer would be able to see exactly how their consumption would have an impact on the environment. For me though that was not enough.

What I really wanted to see was at the cash register, or online checkout, that instead of paying VAT, or sales tax, or possibly on top of that tax, the consumer would also pay a carbon tax. This would be the only way, in my view, to get consumers to change their mind and alter their consumption for the benefit of the planet. I am sure pretty soon off season fruit and vegetables imported from all places around the globe would be off most peoples menus. The carbon tax, increased because your bean has been flown in from Kenya, would make buying carbon wasteful products prohibitive. People would learn to use products that were in season or created within reach of where they lived.

Yeah I know this is short sighted, but I still think there could be a measure of this kind of carbon consumption introduced to encourage people to change. As I say, although people know about the issues or have heard about them, the only way to make a wholesale change on society is to hit them where it hurts. The hip pocket. Lets face it this is how most people vote nowadays. What's in it for me. What political party is going to leave me with the most money in my pocket? Well why not try this with consumption? Yep I will eat seasonal vegetables as they are they provide the lowest carbon footprint and are therefore the cheapest to buy. Simple.

Of course its not simple. Tracking the carbon produced during the production of a product is almost impossible without certain amounts of guess work and therein lies the problem. There would be a lot of high powered carbon analysists who would be paid massive amounts to come up with small numbers with respect to the Carbon produced in the production of pesticides used to grown beans in Kenya. There are just too many ingredients in the creation of even the simplest things, that it becomes almost impossible to measure. Still there must be ways to measure a reasonably accurate measure. Is there such thing though as a reasonably accurate tax. Unfortunately no.

Sure there are hurdles in the plan but that did not stop me! It was not just fruit, veg, crisps and everything in your shopping basket that I wanted this carbon tax slapped on. Cars for instance. You would pay carbon tax for the production of the car and then you would pay a once off tax for the carbon that the car produced during it's lifetime. This would put a dent in new car sales, but how long would it be until we saw a hydrogen fuel infrastructure rolled out across a country that hit gas guzzlers with a monstrous carbon tax. Pretty soon I imagine.

Yeah these changes would be pretty drastic, but I bet if you hit the hip pocket then society would change pretty quickly. Oh and all the tax raised. Well obviously this would have to go into renewable energy and finding replacements for our carbon rich energy consumption!

Sure it's simplistic, but you never know it might just work. I have all the Carbon measuring tools and integrated systems for managing this tax sorted out in my head. So if you want to make a go of it let me know and I'll formalise the idea and business plan ;-)

In the meantime:

• well done O2, but please be a little more serious about it so we can see its not just marketing bullshit.
• and think the next time you buy something. Our choices can have an impact on the very planet we need to survive.
• If you are really cluely invent the warp drive so we can ask friendly neighbouring planets if we can squat there for a while when our planet can no longer support us!

Have fun

Cheers

m

Mobile, And Facebook News For The End Of Week 33 and beginning of 34

So Thursday afternoon, west coast US time saw the much hyped facebook announcement regarding their location product and third party location API's. As can be seen by the logo a little unfortunate that it is comprised of a four in a square. This product launch even generated press coverage on Radio One, so you know it must be important.

As expected Facebook Places launched in the US yesterday http://awe.sm/59VYr iPhone only at this stage - A shame that the launch is iPhone and mobile site on HTML 5 devices only. Given Mr Zuckerburg apparently uses Android now I am surprised an initial launch was not also available on Android. Still I imagine it is not far behind

@gowalla Starting tomorrow, Gowalla check-ins you chose to post to Facebook will be shared as check-ins, not simply a status update. - The product also includes third party developer API's, as everyone expects an internet product to now have ;-). Gowalla and foursquare are among the initial launch partners. Check-ins on these services will now be posted to facebook as checks-ins on foursquare Places. Other launch partners include Yelp and Booyah. The trade off for providing access to third parties for facebook is that they get to embrace the cool of these early start ups while these companies get to embrace the facebook community for distribution. Following the launch of facebook places both foursquare and Gowalla announced their busiest weekends activity.

RT @mashable Privacy Group Voices Concerns About Facebook Places - http://mash.to/2rEfw That was quick ;-) - It didn't take long for the naysayers to jump on the privacy bandwagon! Seriously if you are concerned about this simply don't use the services. No-one is forcing you to use them. I agree that sharing location can be a sensitive issue and if you are concerned then understand the privacy limitations and work within them. Foursquare have clearly stated how they manage privacy and how users can control what information is displayed through use of their product. I still have concerns over Gowalla privacy and this impacts my usage of the service. If you have taken time to understand how the privacy works and still have issues with the service then don't use it. If you work in privacy group in a large German company, or any German company for that matter, .... well probably best not use these services either ;-)

As hoped @foursquare and @gowalla partner with Facebook Places http://awe.sm/59VZQ Great for distribution! - as mentioned above, facebook places allows 3rd parties to integrate with the Places product. A great move for all involved. The new start-up community of check-in services gets to embrace many millions of facebook users, thus benefitting from increased distribution. Facebook hopes to get a bit of the cool factor of these services to rub off on its now old school product ;-). I do wonder though if facebook might end up smother these infant startup services with kindness though. Is anybody else a little worried that foursquare servers might not be able to cope with a massive spike in users?

RT @mashable Location-Based Text Message Ads Get a Major Boon - http://mash.to/2rAkc -> SMS Not dead - for the many billions of users of mobile users that do not own a smart phone SMS is not dead. Billions of SMS messages are still sent daily and it is a communication mechanism that is understood by almost every mobile user. Not everyone has a browser and a facebook app. Precisely why I like the twitter SMS services that are available. SMS is not a dead medium and this is a novel use for it, assuming that you have opted in to receive messages. Again Pricacy crusaders should probably avoid opting into this one as your brains might melt with concern.

Ofcom research about media consumption in the UK http://awe.sm/59VbU Smart phone ownership now 26.5%. Fbook consumes 45% mob net time - OK so smartphone usage might not be universal and SMS might be a means to communicate, but in the UK smart phones will be sold with breakfast cereal next year! The growth in smart phone usage is driving a surge in media consumption. At the moment your average UK resident consumes 25 hours of media a day! This is as most now have 2 smart phones ;-) Well OK this is not quite true, but if you are looking for the headline .... well probably don't use the one above ;-). Still smartphone usage and media consumption do flwo hand in hand.

RT @TechCrunch The Paranoid (and Germany) Can Relax, Facebook Dials Up Privacy With Places - http://tcrn.ch/ddqgEC by @evelynrusli - more privacy concerns about check-in services? Here's an explanation of how facebook handle it. Have a read. See if you are happy with it. If not then please don't use the service. The last time I checked facebook were not forcing you to do so?

RT @IntoMobile Leak: Photos: Nokia N9 [MeeGo, QWERTY, Finland's next flagship?] http://bit.ly/9cdhvV - Nokia's next flagship device. Fingers crossed it doesn't behave like a massive ship unable to change course to avert an impending disaster. One must reserve judgement until the device is launched.

RT @mashable Foursquare Experiences Record Signups After Launch of Facebook Places - http://mash.to/2sfre - As mentioned above. Will facebook inadvertently kill with kindness? Can foursquare cope with the load. Gowalla also commented about the massive spike in usage over the weekend on twitter.

More than 100 million people a month now use Google Maps for Mobile http://awe.sm/59XYR thats quite a few ;-) - Google know how to kill a party don't they. The day of launch of facebooks fledgling Places API's with the many fledgling companies integrating with it, Google drop a 100 million monthly users of Google Maps bomb on them. Nice timing Google ;-) Seriously impressive figures though. I think someone should let Google know that 2010 is the year of mobile! Or do you think they already know that ;-)

Providing the tools to allow your customer to have a sense of ownership of the product they use is essential http://goo.gl/b/v2CN - a blog entry I wrote about the benefit of talking to your Customers and how if you actually take the time to listen to them that in general the world will be a happier place! Sometimes it astonishes me that people forget that the Customer is actually an important piece of the product lifecycle. Some might suggest that without Customers there is no real point in making products.

Working with location-based apps will help prepare your business for the day when checkin apps are mainstream - http://awe.sm/59cVD - I touched on this in a previous post. Check-in services and other LBS services are not going to be going away any time soon. Companies that learn to embrace them and find out how to engage Customers within them are going to benefit hugely in the long run. They are not a passing fad. Imagine if you had access to millions of Customers and their location and didn't make something of it! Seriously! Are you mad??

Mobile operators expect voice revenues to be overtaken by app downloads in 2013 http://bit.ly/bVzdeb Really? Really? How? via @feebeyer - again. Seriously! Are you mad? I do note that there is no source of the information in this article that says carriers are going to make more money from app downloads then they will from voice by 2013. Whoever actually said this can you please put your hand up? I will submit your name for the optimist of the decade award. Is it the WAC application store that is going to drive this carrier revenue? Maybe if you add up all access revenue and start charging content providers for content distribution, i.e. remove net neutrality, then maybe you might get a dent into that falling voice revenue! But if you charge for content distribution do you think some other players might get into the market and deliver free content based on an advertising model? I am not going to name names but when you think about it I am sure you could come up with one. Hey carriers have to make money, and there is still plenty to be made in content, access and distribution. I just have serious doubts about the statement that carriers will make more money from app downloads than voice within the next 3 years. There are other ways to make money though which I would be happy to discuss! We could even make money from access! ;-)

Cheers

M

Can You BBQ Left Over Pizza?

The answer is a resounding yes! So in a new section of this blog, possibly titled 'What Can You Cook In Your BBQ', every now and again I am going to see what you can cook in your BBQ, as it says on the tin, and report on the outcome here! I may also have left this a little late with respect to the fact that BBQ season has almost past us :-(. But still we could have an Indian Summer so there might be all sorts of chances to see what goes and what doesn't in the realm of the BBQ ;-). Also no matter what the weather a BBQ will be held in my backyard on Australia day next 26th of January. I hope it's not snowing, but even if it is I am going to give it a whirl. Here I will attempt to report on whether or not it is possibly to BBQ an Australian.

So have you ever regrettably, in a moment of weakness, ordered pizza from a well known pizza brand? You know the ones who bake their pizza's on a cardboard base? Well in a moment of sheer laziness we did this last night. The taste is bland as the cardboard the pizza is baked on but if you are lazy sometimes you don't always get something edible!

When we do this we inevitably end up with left over slices which end up in the fridge. See picture above. Sometimes these get consumed, however usually, in our case, they end up in the rubbish. Tonight however, inspired by a late BBQ season session for lunch, I started to think maybe it was possible to reheat the left over pizza slices on the BBQ. Not entirely sure why this thought entered my head, as we do have a perfectly functional oven, but enter my head it did. I was not going to rest the BBQ tongs until I had a chance to determine whether or not Pizza could be reheated on the BBQ!

I thought through the cooking options first. Would I try to cook the slices on both sides? This would create a challenge due to the relatively loose toppings on the top of the pizza. Although the cardboard pizza company uses only the finest ingredients that can be compressed together in a factory, each of these components, they are not really items of food after all, sits relatively loosely on top of the cardboard base. This plan was quickly eliminated as the correct reheating method. After all you don't flip the pizza when you are making it, nor do you flip it when you reheat it in a conventional oven. So as can be seen on the left, the slices were simply laid on the grill.

After a few minutes, with the BBQ lid down, piping hot pizza! To be honest it was possibly even nicer than it was the first time around. This was possibly due to it actually being hot as opposed to being lukewarm, as they typically are on delivery! I wouldn't say that the pizza was fantastic, however it was definitely better than the previous evening!

There is not much you can really do to make cardboard pizza bases taste interesting though. Still they did hold up very well on the grill as can be seen from the picture on the left. As you would expect there are grill marks on the slice, however it has not burnt. This pizza chain clearly uses quality cardboard! Maybe it is the very nature of the cardboard that made the grill reheating possible. Next time I make my own pizza, perhaps I should try reheating them on the BBQ as well to see if I get the same results? The only trouble is when I make pizza there is usually no leftovers to try with ;-) Maybe this is due to the fact that most of the pizza I make ends up crushed by whiskey or left on the ceiling as a result of a nasty base making accident? See photos below.

Anyway, should you have any left over pizza with a high concentration of cardboard within it, then do feel free to try BBQ'ing it without fear of an imminent cheesy disaster! BBQ'ing leftover pizza works, and it works quite well!

Cheers

M

P.S. Ohhh I should add if you only have a coal BBQ I would not spark it up to reheat pizza slices! It really would not be worth the effort! The only reason I tried is because we have a gas fired BBQ which takes a second to spark up and one or two minutes to heat up ;-).

Below is an example of the typical Laphroaig Scotch Whiskey Rolling pin that is essential in the production of my pizzas. This gives a nice smokey and petey flavour to the dough. Also the fact that the scotch is aged in oak adds a little extra to the taste.

After rolling in scotch, it is necessary to get the base back down off the ceiling before attempting to do anything else. This step occurs due to overzealous base stretching antics as can be seen below.

After ceiling extraction we usually end up with something edible however, as can hopefully be seen below. When I say hopefully I hope the picture does it justice, as opposed to you hopefully being able to see the picture.

What Is The Purpose Of Snails?

Is it just to serve them in garlic butter? Not sure. Although I find them to be fascinating creatures, other than consuming delicate leaf matter in the garden they don't seem to serve another purpose? Do they consume other garden pests, or are they part of the food chain for some other creature? It's not as if you see the urban foxes chowing down on them at lunch time. Well perhaps more an evening snack as you don't see many urban foxes at lunchtime. Again, when talking about foxes I am not referring to tarted up slappers, but the 4 legged variety ;-). You know the ones that used to be hunted by packs of dogs and groups of people on horses. Again if this has confused you I am still referring to the four legged variety.

I have just spent an hour or so pottering about the back garden, hanging out with the frogs and snails. A little bit of hedge trimming, mowing the lawn and edges interrupted the pottering for a little, but there was pottering to be done all the same. There are many frogs and snails, either hopping about when disturbed, or generally not moving very fast at all if disturbed. So frogs I get. They will get rid of the mosquito larvae hanging about or generally consume other insects that you might think are annoying. As it turns out if they are good for the frogs they should be far from annoying for us! But do snails provide a similar consumer service for us? Or in their consumer service to be serviced up in piping hot garlic butter? Note this only provides a real consumer service in France, and French restaurants elsewhere. Come to think of it Frogs provide a similar service in France as well! What is it with the French and their consumption of Garden wildlife? ;-) Next thing you know they'll be eating horses! ...... Oh. ;-)

I know your common garden snail typically gets in the way of your delicate plants and vegetable crops by frequently dining on them, but do they provide any other beneficial service in the garden? I really don't like the thought of disposing of them and if I have been I have simply been putting them out with the garden recycling bags. Ealing Council provide these and although the snails probably don't meet a fortunate ending by being put out in these bags, they are at least getting a good feed on the way ;-).

Question is, are snails good for the garden? Should they simply be left alone to chow down on your plants? After all people love salad leaf so why shouldn't snails get in on the action once in a while?

I will have a look about in the coming days and see if I can find an answer.

Cheers and have fun!

M

I Am The Owner Of The Web Service I Use

Before I start, I should let you know that this really is all common sense stuff. I really wanted to write this down though so I can refer people to it when I promote my sharing use case at work. I get frustrated continually talking about what I am about to discuss below, so I thought I would write it down!

As a customer of a web service I want to know that if I have feedback to provide to a web service that it will be acted on. Even if I have nothing to say about a web service I use, I want to know that I am able to make suggestions should I feel the need arise. For this reason I love web services that provide an ample distribution of services to allow their Customers get in touch with them. Communities such as twitter and Facebook, as well as many other social networks, make the development of such Customer feedback services almost free. Sure answering the comments and calls to actions on such forums is not free but managing this cost should be welcomed by the developer of services, as put simply, this means you have Customers engaging with your service who are willing to take the time to get in touch with you.

A Customer who can make a suggestion that is acted on, or get immediate help about using a web service when they have an issue, might become a loyal Customer. There is of course no guarantee. The only way to generate Customer evangelism of your service is by making Customers loyal to your service such that they come back again and again. This means that the improvements that they suggest, if valid, need to be acted on. Delivering continual product improvement keeps Customers interested in the service as they have the chance to explore new features and find out how they can use them in their every day lives. If it’s a feature they have requested then this will drive Customer loyalty even further. That being said even usable features can become stale so continual product improvement, i.e. continual product development, is the only way to keep a Customer loyal and create new Customers. Even an evangelic Customer will have trouble promoting a feature that they have been using for months. What they will promote is your new feature, especially if it helps them improve the usage of your service. Of course you are going to hear nothing but complaints if it decreases the joy of their usage of your product! This is a good thing though! Active and angry customers can generate positive improvements in your service as long as you are able to address their needs. This you do via your continual product evolution process.

Of course it is not going to be possible to implement every new feature request, or address every angry complaint or rant, the following day, but a quick, and personal response, i.e. not generated by a machine, saying “Thanks for your feedback, we are looking into this…” will allow the Customer to feel they have an impact on your product. This promotes a sense of ownership of the product. Allow the Customer to feel they are the owner of the product, and their opinion counts, then wow you are well on the way to creating a Customer who will become an evangelist of your service. If you ‘ping them off’ (Note in this case ‘ping them off’ does not mean delete ;-) ) a note when you have implemented their feature request or fixed their issue, asking them if the work you have done is OK, then wow, as long as you are up for the long term relationship, you have a Customer for life!

Of course at some stage the overhead of managing this relationship becomes a real cost burden, but wow what a problem to have. If you have too many queries to address and too many feature requests to add, then you have a service that is actively used by a load of Customers and you are doing something right. Hopefully a mass of Customers also equates to increased revenue ;-). Start developing forums to allow the many users of your service to address their issues by themselves. As the developer of a service you can then allow your evangelists to help you and allow them to become a further and integral part of the product community. It would also help if you rewarded these evangelists somehow. There are many mechanisms to do this from promoting them as super users, or indeed if you actually have a physical product, give them one for their hard work. As an example if you are a mobile network you could reward loyal Customer evangelists with a free mobile contract or even a free handset.

There is a complete flipside to this concept of Customer loyalty and evangelism as well. As a developer, at least for me, the key concern about your product is that in the end it is being used. You might not agree with every feature you are asked to implement, but as long as you know that it is being used by Customers that you are actually able to provide for, then there is a strong chance that you will be a loyal Customer yourself. If you can create happy and loyal Customers, in almost all cases you will create a happy, loyal development team. This will create a belief in the development team that they can excel and deliver above what is expected as they will be able to get instantaneous Customer feedback. Actually hearing a Customer likes your product is such a powerful incentive to deliver something that is great. Hearing that your Customer doesn’t like your product is not so great, but as long as you can share and communicate with them, this should provide a driven team to deliver improvements above the minimum required. I would like to address this in more detail though in a later blog.

Of course this is a simplistic view of the concept of creating a loyal Customer who actually chooses to use your product over someone else’s. However if you want to add value to a Customer experience on the internet, in my view, the only way to do this is create Customer loyalty which can then possibly translate into evangelism. The only way you can do this is by promoting the concept of Customer ownership of a service by providing mechanisms for Customers to feel that their input, and therefore time spent, on a service is truly valued.

Of course you can also choose to not communicate with your Customers. Where do you think Customer isolation will get you though?

In my view, every product that is developed the concept of how the Customer can actually feel as though they are the owner of a service needs to be addressed first. Of course the actual product feature itself is clearly important, but if a Customer cannot easily share the product experience, be that good or bad, with the developers of the product as well as their friends, then it doesn’t matter how good the product experience is. To stick out in a very crowded market, Customers, should they choose to, must be able to feel they belong.

That’s it for now. As I said at the top of this blog, I really think this is common sense, but all too often you see products that do not allow for the web community to embrace them.

Cheers

M

Mobile News (a little late) - Mid Week 33

So once again a collection of links and thoughts about the mobile world that I found interesting in the past few days. I felt as though this past week had been a little slower in the mobile world. Possibly less mobile announcements this week from Google ;-). Lets just see what tomorrow brings with Facebook's imminent announcement of Geo-services APIs! According to all the tech press announcements should be but a few hours away. Will worry about that tomorrow though! In the meantime!

Oracle has filed suit against Google over its ever-more-popular mobile operating system,Android. http://awe.sm/59Iun via @mashable - Although Google fervently deny it, Oracle are suing them over Android citing "That Android competes with Java as an operating system platform for cellular telephones and other mobile devices and that the Android stack employs Java apps running on a Java based framework" and that their patents have been infringed. From the press so far I think this seems pretty clear cut to me. Oracle do have a case. This one will drag out for a while but I certainly hope that phones don't get impounded and destroyed. After plenty of lawyer hours, as lets face it they need the money, lets hope Google fork out the required money and people are friends again. After all I am sure Larry Ellison and Eric Schmidt are reasonable people right? Right? It would sort of suck if this halts Google development and thus slows down Android creativity. Surely its just patent collectors rattling sabres at each other. Let's see.

RT @mashable Google Launches “Chrome to Phone” - http://mash.to/2oMNV - on top of sharing history with your chrome desktop browser, announced last week, Chrome will now let you push websites to your phone as well. So just before home time push that article to your mobile so you can read on the train home. Another demonstration of how products can converge when you own the complete distribution mechanism, i.e. PC and mobile.

RT @ feebeyer HTC Breaks Into Top 10 List Of Gobal Device Makers Thanks To Android. Now holds the No. 8 spot, http://cnt.to/m7P - I really like HTC phones. Although pretty clunky the first Android Phone, the G1, was a real cracker. Now the HTC Desire is up there with the iPhone. I am not 100% enamoured of their Windows Mobile devices but their Android ones are great. Let's see what they can do with Windows Phone 7 though? Seems that the rest of the world is starting to like HTC as well. Now they are building HTC branded devices, where previously they typically built devices that were branded by carriers, they really are making a foothold in the market. 8th place in such a massive market is entirely respectable. I think they will be heading northward on the charts for the next few years.

T-mobile roaming data passes are a winner.£5 for 20MB over 5 days. Compare this to any other UK network and its a bargain. - ok so roaming data is unfortunately not free. I really wish it was but lets face it, it's not and it won't be for a good while, if ever. When I say free I do mean as part of your contract. However when I go to mainland Europe with my iPhone O2 want to charge me £3 per MB of data! What? In a world of apps where you don't know what is really going on in the background in terms of data transfer you have no idea how you can control your spend. I guess the same can be said for the browser. Do you really know how much data is being transferred when you access a web page? No not really. So you have no idea how much you are being charged. Its crazy. T-Mobile on the other hand force you to buy a roaming data bundle. You can get various packages but I typically go for the £5 for 20 MB, usable over 5 days. I note the same amount of data on O2 would cost £60! I can then go data crazy on my phone knowing that I will be prevented from costing myself a fortune. If I use all of the allowance my data access stops and, if I want to, I buy another pass. At all stages I know exactly what my spend is. Also 20 MB on your average twitter checking, facebook access and internet browsing does last a good while. Sure if you stream content it disappears rapidly but at least you find out immediately that you have consumed data and you can then choose to buy more or change your browsing habits while roaming. Roaming data passes are such a great concept and such a good deal. Safe and far cheaper than the other networks. I seriously wish the other networks would follow suite. Especially O2 where whom I have my iPhone contract with!

Actually http://www.mob4hire.com is a very cool concept. Shame none of the handsets I have matches a current project! Would like to try - one of the hardest things about developing in mobile is testing. There are so many devices with different form factors and different browsers. Also different mobile networks can create havoc with your product. Having access to all targetted handsets in every region is almost impossible! Especially as a garage developer. You might have the money in a big company to get access to handsets but in a small company or a startup, no way! This site attempts to hook up people with mobile phones in different countries to companies who want a specific phone, on a specific network in a specific country. Product developers post detail about their application and how they want it tested, and testers can bid to do the testing. That's right testers actually get paid to test. It's a brilliant concept that I hope gets embraced by the developer world. To be fair I have not been able to test the end to end process as the project I bid for had already closed. Still I got a nice note from the developer and I will check back regularly to see if I can lend a hand (and get paid ;-) )

RT MobileCrunch Qualcomm will ship 1.5GHz dual-core snapdragons in Q4, phones may come as early as Christmas - http://is.gd/ekaZ6 - OK so when did the processor speed become a selling point for smart phones? Was this late last year with the launch of the first 1GHz snapdragon processor or a little before? A couple of years ago no one cared! As long as the phone worked no-one really knew what the processor was doing. No-one really cared that the phone had one! Now it seems like a selling point! I cannot wait until I get me a 4GHz mobile processor for my hand warming application that will sell millions during winter! After all its almost impossible to work a touch screen phone with gloves on? so my app maxes the CPU out, less a little bit, so your other app can also run, in order to generate a massive amount of heat such that you can use your handset on even the coldest of days glove free! OK its a little ahead of its time but Moores Law tells me it should be fine by the end of Winter 2012. Rock on!!

RT @IntoMobile Microsoft confirms game based on Halo franchise coming to Windows Phone 7 http://bit.ly/cbYbXR 50 - 60 games at launch - this one crept up on me a little. Games titles for the Windows Phone 7 launch. They actually look pretty good! Also the tie in with Xbox 360 and Halo could also drive some traffic to WP7 from the hardcore gamers out there. This is something that will sell these phones I think. OK I havn't tried the games or the integration to Xbox 360 but it's sounding very good. Interesting to see what happens in this space. To be honest I had sort of written off WP7 a little but maybe I have done this too early. Now interested to see what they can do. Look forward to the release.

OK so after a chore break (Going to the club for a jar or two and then chores) and several formatting issues with Blogger, I need to finish this off!

RT @mklucher That's a lotta games: http://bit.ly/9L7cms and http://bit.ly/cXsj4B #WP7 launch titles - more links to news about the games available for the WP7 launch.

RT @openvideoads has a new home at Longtail Video.. new releases, documentation, forums and a dev site @ http://www.openvideoads.org - This is the work of a friend of mine. I have often said that a developer site, other than hosting stuff at Google Code would do wonders. I think this is a really great start. I am sure that there is more to come down the road. I am not currently in the business of Video advertising but do follow what my friend is doing with keen interest. If you know anyone into video advertising on the web do send them in this direction. It could be worth their while.

RT @feebeyer @foursquare announces some more controls for how users share location and contact information http://rww.tw/chDOkl - this is good. Foursquare seem to be paying attention to the privacy concerns of their users. Privacy with respect to location based gaming and services is clearly an issue. Having worked on internet services for the German market I know in some countries it is far more of a monstrous issue than in others. Web services need to allow users to control who sees their information and when. They also need to do this simply. Just because a user interacts with a web service doesn't mean they want the world to see the results. Location is an even more private, or at least should be, concern as it allows people to see where you are exactly at this moment. The possible consequences of this should be obvious to see. Happy to see foursquare looking into this and addressing concerns. Will also be happier when Gowalla do.

At the time of the Peanut Butter manifesto you had to think the guys a dolt. Sometimes thou I really understand where he was coming from - OK. I have long campaigned for the fact that if a Customer feels they belong to a web service then they are more likely to use it, believe in it and evangelise it. Apart from creating a great web service, tools have to be given to a Customer to feel they can belong. The first is a mechanism to engage with the creators of the web service. If you give a Customer a means to suggest a new feature, or a mechanism to comment, and the creators of the service actually respond, then you have a Customer that is far more likely to repay in kind and be an active user of the service. It's common sense. If a Customer has their concerns, comments or praise addressed then their time and effort, and hopefully creative input, is clearly valued. Give that Customer the means to share their positive experience, or negative experience that was turned around to be positive, then there is a chance that they might become an evangelist for your product. Nothing of course is set in stone, but provide the tools and it might happen. Don't provide the tools and it will never happen! For developers of a web service, or in fact the builders of any product, if they are empowered to make changes and can see their ideas coming to fruition they they too will feel that they belong to the service. A sense of empowerment breeds a sense of responsibility. Once the creators of a service ultimately have the responsibility for its delivery then guaranteed you will not do things to meet the minimum requirement. Instead you will have a group of people that choose to excel and deliver beyond expectations. Empowering developers with responsibility will ultimately empower Customers to choose to use your service and promote it. Remove responsibility? The ultimate outcome? Average product and people who will deliver whatever is required, but will probably not go the extra mile. The choice, in my view is simple and obvious.

G2 coming to T-Mobile US http://g2.t-mobile.com/ Intrigued to see the spec, and if good when it will be available in the UK - despite it being rather unattractive, with a bizarre what could only be described as a quadruple chin, I really loved the Android G1. It was the first Android device and to me it really showed what Android was capable of. OK the form factor sucked but the keyboard was actually great to use. As with anything in mobile it's lifespan was limited and within 6 months it was basically obsolete, especially in the Android time frame! How many Android releases have their been in the past 18 months? That said a great phone. Consequently I am intrigued my the concept of the G2. I know nothing about it. Don't know the spec, don't know the form factor. I hope it is Android Froyo. It has to be right? Lets see if the hardware lives up to my high expectations. If it does I would like to know when it will be available in England please!!

OK that's all for this entry. Given it's Wednesday night now I don't think I will post more mobile news on Friday. Maybe who knows? I should probably be getting back in the garden anyway! OK thats it!

See y'all later

Cheers

M