Category: mobile-technology

I only just saw this on the twitter blog….

The UK has had an outsized cultural impact on the world. From music to sports to literature… and now – MMS with Twitter.

Today, not only has Orange UK turned on Twitter SMS, but it has added a first-of-its-kind special enhancement. Orange UK users can also send picture messages (MMS) to 86444 in addition to text messages because of a site that Orange UK has created called Snapshot. The best part is that it is incredibly simple to use:

1. Take a photo on your Orange mobile phone
2. Select 'Send via MMS' or 'Send multimedia message'
3. Send it to 86444

Twitter does not charge for this service. It's just like sending and receiving messages with your friends — your carrier's standard messaging rates apply. Give it a try by sending a text message to 86444 with the word “START.” This means that with the same shortcode, 86444, UK users can tweet via SMS with Vodafone, O2, and now Orange.

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The Apple App Store has blah blah number of apps I keep hearing. Frankly its getting a little tiresome to hear.

As most of us know its not all about the numbers. I personally will never use the Apple iTunes store because although they might be the biggest on the planet, they don't do dance music like Juno or AudioJelly. Like wise I wonder how useful those thousands of apps are on the Apple Apps store. But thats not the only thing I wonder.

I wonder… how many windows mobile applications there are in the world? Just Freeware PocketPC alone has 6,700+ apps which are just for windows mobile.

On that same point, I wonder… how many Apple Apps are freeware or not lite versions of a paided version? Percertages or actually numbers would be useful.

Android has a open app store, a bit like Windows Mobile I guess. So I wonder… if the percentages of free/paid apps are similar?

I wonder… how many apps on non apple hardware are shared p2p instead of through some centralised server. How many windows mobile users share cab files over bluetooth? How many Sony/Ericsson users share JAR/JAD files over Bluetooth?

The Blackberry Apps store isn't doing so well, I wonder…. if its down to the price of the apps?

I wonder… how many Symbian Apps there are? Like Windows mobile, theres a huge cottage industry which I bet once looked at in detailed will surprise.

I wonder… what percentage of the Apple app store is games? Also what percentage of Apple apps work with some other device/service compared to other app platforms? Are they mainly self contained or connect to others.

Finally I also have the obvious questions like what percentage of apps are most people using? Is there a few which most people use and the rest is all over the map or generally everyone using the same apps?

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So after the surprising announcement that Spotify was accepted by Apple on to (into) the App Store. And the recent Google Voice pondering, will Apple also allow Real's Rhapsody too and even more interestingly will Netflix get a on to the App store? What kind of justification could they use against those two but not the others? Will the FCC also add to the pressure of the app store submission process?

This is why being the filter between yes and no is a very bad position to be in. Apple will get it from every single direction, not only the large players but also the smaller players. Anyone considering building a App Store modeled on the Apple Store better take note (microsoft), this is simply not sustainable. One yes to one player such as Skype/Spotify, gives others the grounds to push there application too. I mean really whats the practical difference between Spotify and Rhapsody? Maybe Napster might also want to get in to the game, heck even Microsoft Music might get involved. If Netflix do get on to the app store, why would Apple not allow a specially crafted Boxee for example? Or even better examples Hulu or BBC's iplayer?

I know I bash Apple a lot but what would you say when Netflix come calling?

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So I'm getting more and more fed up with Windows Mobile as a operating system for my mobile phones, and finally the idea of this closed marketplace tipped me over the top. So I tried to first install Android on my HTC Touch HD and then later on my HTC Diamond. Sad to none of them have worked enough to give me a complete android operating system but I did want to point out where to go if you wanted to try it yourself. There's a lot of fluff out there and so it can be difficult to find exactly how to do it correctly.

So if you have a Orange HTC Touch HD aka HTC Blackstone you want to follow this guide to installing Android 1.0.

1. Disable the PIN from wince

2. Unzip to your SD card (it should create a directory named tmp):

   android_cupcake_2009-03-10.zip

3. Unplug your phone from the USB or configure it to use “Activesync” and not “Disk Drive”.
4. Softreset or reboot (switch off and on) your phone
5. Run haret.exe on your phone (under /tmp/boot)

If you have a Orange Touch Diamond or HTC Raphael or O2 XDA you want to follow this link.

1. Download this file diam-20081229.tar.gz Mirror
2. You also need a copy of Haret.exe.
3. Unpack diam-20081229.tar.gz to your computer (e.g. your dekstop).
4. Create a folder on your Diamond's Internal Storage named 'tmp' and put the three files from the 'imgs' folder from the zip, along with the three files in the root of the zip (initrd…gz, default.txt and zImage) and the 'haret-0.5.2' executable into that folder
5. Start haret from your Diamond.
6. When nothing is happening ond screen anymore type '/init.android' (without the quotes) and press enter.
7. Android should now boot!

Best thing about these procedures is that if it works it doesn't screw up Windows Mobile so you can still use it after a soft restart. So you might as well try it and see what happens.

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TechCrunch has a post about the launch date of the Windows Mobile store and all the mistakes Microsoft are making.

Microsoft is stepping into this game ridiculously late. While there are already an estimated 20,000 applications for the Windows Mobile platform out there. Marketplace will only be available to WinMo 6.5 users next Fall and to 6.0 and 6.1 users by the end of this year. Microsoft is essentially acknowledging Apple got it right with its App Store years ago and is only now trying to follow in its footsteps.

n the meantime, Google has already gone live with the Android Market, while RIM has its App World for BlackBerry, Palm has introduced its App Catalog store and Nokia recently took the wraps off its Ovi Store. Heck, even handset maker LG beat Microsoft by launching its own application store with about 1,400 apps for Windows Mobile-powered phones just yesterday.

I wonder if by the time Microsoft finally gets around to pushing Marketplace for Mobile live, people are going to have a problem looking at it as a differentiating product rather than as a late catch-up play by Redmond.

Like I mentioned ages at Microsoft's Mix09, they should not have simply copied Apple. Even the revenue share is the same! They really had the chance to do something different but oh no, we need to play it safe. They should have taken advantage of the open nature of Windows mobile phones. Bluetooth sharing could have been huge for adhoc transfering of apps. But oh no play it safe. Well I'm this close to switching over to Android now.

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Doc Searls has quite a lot to say about the Apple Appstore in a blog post which centred around yet another application that Apple decided not to allow into there store, for reasons which are frankly questionable.

Apple’s App Store is an eWorld that succeeded. A nice big walled garden. Problem is, censorship isn’t good gardening. It is, says Corynne, “not just anti-competitive, discriminatory, censorial, and arbitrary, but downright absurd.” Or, as my very tasteful wife puts it, unattractive.

From Corynne’s post

iPhone owners who don’t want Apple playing the role of language police for their software should have the freedom to go elsewhere. This is precisely why EFF has asked the Copyright Office to grant an exemption to the DMCA for jailbreaking iPhones. It’s none of Apple’s business if I want an app on my phone that lets me read EFF’s RSS feed, use Sling Player over 3G, or read the Kama Sutra.

In the end, Apple backed down and reversed the decision but without putting on my Apple bashing hat on, this troubles me. If Microsoft did this to Windows Mobile, I would jack them in and move to something more open such as Android. There is some merit to a appstore and I'll give Apple credit for popularising the idea which had been tried elsewhere before. But at some point a open model has got to make a lot of sense. I was listening to Ryan Block on a podcast today talking about the Palm Pre. One of the comments he had about the iphone appstore was the amount of crap there is in it. He says he generally doesn't even bother looking through it anymore, instead he relies on the recommendations of friends and family. This model is exactly what I told the Windows mobile team in Mix09. People show a app and then can exchange the app to there friend via bluetooth, mms, etc. I'm not saying the experience of bluetooth is great but it works and totally breaks the wall of the appstore model. So much, that Microsoft as well as Apple have had to tighten up the appstore model to refuse any alternatives models and worst still nanny its audience.

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Never been a fan of Palms, I've always opted for the Microsoft PocketPC/Windows Mobile options but thats about to change with the launch of the Palm Pre. Some people are saying this is Palm's last stab at the market which they let trickle from there hands and going by the reaction in my aggregator, it seems like a good one. Us europeans are having to wait for ages because Palm went for a CDMA phone to kick things off instead of GSM, which I think is frankly silly but I understand the reasoning behind it. I really want to get my hands on one but not as much as this lady, who turned a shop into a drive-thru in her rush to get one, it would seem.

As usual there's tons of information about the phone including deconstruction photos and some good reviews. Will this make a impact? I think so. When I first heard about the WebOS, I was sceptical but it seems to be there and according to themselves, is not a second class citizen. Chris Mesina said to me a while ago while at the Next 09 conference that anything which leverage the web like this is on to a sure winner. This is the way things will be built in the near future. After the GoogleWave and now the launch of the Palm Pre, I'm in no doubt that Chris is right.

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