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Network-Hopping is the Norm, Welcome to the Mobile Social!

Probably not the most revealing information to anyone who spends time in the social networking environment, but a massive number of social networking users spend time on multiple services.

Carried out by Parks Associates, a market research and consulting firm focused on all product and service segments that are “digital” or provide connectivity within the home, the report confirmed that nearly 40% of MySpace users keep profiles on rival social networking sites such as Friendster and Facebook.

Nearly half of all social networkers, the report found, regularly use more than one site; one in six use three or more. The result is an increasingly interlinked environment tied together by links, widgets, and the users themselves.

“MySpace is a growing ecosystem and one that ironically now extends beyond MySpace itself,” Barrett explains.

Loyalty among smaller social networking sites is even lower than it is for the Big Three, with more than 50% of all users actively maintaining multiple profiles.

In Barrett’s view, this environment creates fertile ground for new social networking sites and application providers. “A handful of users are all it takes to connect new services to the MySpace-centered environment. From there it can begin to spread virally, assuming of course that it offers something people want.”
[SocialComputingMagazine.com]

Since there’s no clarifying detail here, I wonder how much of this is signed up and abandoned vs using them all. I’ve used Friendster, Six Degrees, Ryze and Upoc previously… all dead to me (and most of you) now.

I have profiles on Jaiku, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and MySpace. I don’t use MySpace but felt compelled a longtime ago to check it out and realized immediately it was not for me. I signed up for Facebook when it was first out as well though have been using it only recently. I spend a good amount of time on Jaiku (if you had not noticed) and considerably less on Twitter now. LinkedIn has a very specific professional networking purpose for me and I use it to find job listings as well as people who might provide assistance in my job search. Flickr is largely one way though I do participate in a few groups lightly and post the occasional comment on contacts images.

Social Networks are only valuable if you have “friends” there. I use quotes since the vast majority of my social network friends are not people I’ve met in person and most I’ve never even talked with on the phone. I have met and spoken to a few, but we are mainly friends through shared interests (not just what school or year in which I graduated) and that’s actually been very compelling for me. I guess that’s why I use Facebook less than I have Jaiku / Twitter. Though Facebook’s platformization has been received extremely well. It lets other social networking sites create apps so Facebook can become an aggregated hub. I have a bunch of my info passing into Facebook, but it’s not something I find very useful honestly. It seems that the people who get the most from it don’t actively blog or maintain some outward (since Facebook is behind a registration door) presence.

While users are moving through a variety of social networks, they are also actually moving around. Facebook gets that which is why they are trying to become a clearing house and also when it’s easy to stay connected through SMS and the mobile web. Jaiku and Twitter were clearly started with mobile in mind and is what is truly powerful about them — regardless of which you prefer.

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Yahoo! (Do not Pass) Go 2.0

Yahoo Go 2.0

Just as everyone is preparing to experience the real Internet on their mobile, Yahoo updated their mobile client, Go today. I have to say I was pretty excited to try it out on my Nokia N95 and downloaded it first thing this morning. Unfortunately my excitement was crushed pretty quickly.

After you sign in Yahoo Go attempts to connect and pull down any of your personalized info from the various services (maps, mail, flickr, weather news, entertainment etc…) or so I thought. Other than Mail and Flickr, I did not see anything actually personal – like I live in Katonah, NY, not Times Square and that’s where I like to see my local stuff thank you very much.

The application is elegantly designed and I like how they’ve structured things but it is brutally slow. You move laterally between widgets, but the movement happens in slow motion and you have to then wait for things to connect and load in most of the areas. The basic headlines are ready in news and entertainment, but I found Flickr to be far too slow to use. The N95 is hardly a slouch in speed but there’s something wacky going on here for it to run as slowly as it does. The previous version of Yahoo Go, which I never understood was more of a bookmark system into the Yahoo services which opened in your browser and I’m thinking that’s a better idea. Zurfer, the Yahoo Research labs application for Flickr offers similar functions to the Yahoo Go Flickr widget but I like it better and appreciate that it does one thing well and actually works on my cellular connection.

To top it off, Yahoo Go was not able to locate me with GPS (a cool option if it worked) and dropped my Wifi connection frequently which resulted in continuous errors. When it was connected, I foudn myself putting the phone down while it did it’s tasks since there was no point in simply staring at the screen for minutes at a time while the phone was busy.

Perhaps Yahoo Go’s main audience is a more mass oriented handset user who would not be able to do much of this otherwise. They do seem to have carrier partnerships as well as a retail partner with Best Buy. In my case, it was a good try, but I’m deleting this app and hope I save you the trouble.

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Advantage iPhone

I know it’s not out yet and no one has really touched or used it who can say anything but there are a few details I think will seriously make a difference in favor of iPhone vs other devices. 

First, all other features aside, if it gets even close to the battery rating Apple has released it will be the only phone in this class and makes for an impressive device just on that merit. Of course companies tend to exaggerate these numbers a bit so we’ll see. 

The Apple “just works” design philosophy. You know that the iPod portion will just work as you already know today’s iPod does but with the added benefit of the new multi-touch design. You’ll easily be able to manage photos, video and podcasts, contacts and calendars all within iTunes. iTunes sync works. 

I predict that Apple has nailed device memory usage. Today I use the Nokia N95 and if I have Jaiku and Gmail running and try to launch the browser something has to give. When that something gives (one of the two apps usually is forced to quit) I am only then able to run a single small web page. If I load a page from “the full internet” I will likely run out of memory. I may get lucky and find my first page loaded fine, but if I open a link to a second page it’s game over. The iPhone will support opening 8 web pages! 

My previous bump on the iPhone, included mention of what I am currently used to on the N95 and what’s missing – 3G, MMS, Video recording, ichat and only web apps. There’s also no Flash or Java / J2ME. Thinking further about this, it seems that all of these issues are potentially resolved with software updates. We’ve already been told to expect to be “surprised and delighted” with updates. The first is here now with the release of H.264 support for YouTube in the iPhone and AppleTV. Quicktime handles the media portion on the iPhone and seems to enable instant full-screen playback which certainly optimizes the viewing experience. 

The initial development for the device is annoying I’ll give you that. I don’t find bookmarks applications, but something I heard on TWIM yesterday got me thinking that perhaps there’s more coming. The initial device is not the final product and there will likely be changes which enable the experience to grow – again surprise and delight. The other end of the browser apps deal is Google Gears. There’s already a Webkit version and now Eric Schmidt come out with this nice helpful quote: 

“What you are really asking is to see my iPhone,” he quipped before producing a handset from his pocket. “iPhone is a powerful new device and is going to be particularly good for the apps that Google is building. You should expect other announcements from the two companies over time,” he said. [Cnet]   

It’s quite likely that the iPhone will actually be using some level of your local storage at all times for apps – things defined as applications, perhaps from Google initially given their close partnership, but who knows where it’s going. Think about GMail, Google Reader and Gmaps all working with some degree of offline access. 

The N95 also has GPS which the iPhone lacks yet there’s been so much done with A-GPS and Cell-ID lately it’s still totally possible to have Location Based Services. The GMaps they demo is certainly proof of this working. 

The 2MP uncovered camera is untested and will surely pale against the N95’s 5MP Carl Zeiss covered optics, but we’ll have to see how it really snaps. My N73 has a terrific 3MP camera – though also with Carl Zeiss optics. 2MP is still far more than the average phone user is accustomed to having and I’m sure they’ll dig it. 

Think that only really leaves one considerable omission… 3G. All I can think of here is software-defined radio. There’s just no way they can sell you a 2yr contract in 2007 without some path to 3G service. It’s not like AT&T is some also-ran carrier or that cellular radios have not been previously updated. 

So yes I am completely seduced by the iPhone. I’ve rationalized and justified it to myself. At minimum, it’s an iconic consumer electronics / mobile moment, but it’s more than likely to actually be a killer device. I want one!

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SimpleSpark – Explore and Share Web 2.0 Applications

Blog friend and Christian Gloddy has launched an amazingly comprehensive service called SimpleSpark. SimpleSpark provides a simple way for people to find and share information about Web 2.0 services and looks like a great site. His timing could not be better given the focus on Web 2.0 applications for iPhone and the rather high level of awareness for Web 2.0 as a result…

Once you start browsing the site, you’ll realize as I did that there are way more applications and services in this space than I was aware. Christian has done a really nice job with the design and made it simple to explore, breaking things into categories of interest. Once you sign up as a member you can review apps, edit the listing information and add apps you use to your profile. When you leave the site, you can still contribute by adding new services via bookmarklet and on your return you can scan through the pending listings and easily see what’s new.

Some highlights:

  • Explore over 3000 actively tracked and openly categorized web apps with screenshots, icons, feeds, reviews and concise summaries for easy browsing.
  • An intelligent search engine that understands the web app landscape. For example, flicker is flickr, delicious is del.icio.us, and thirty boxes is 30boxes.
  • Find apps by over 70 categories including Spreadsheets, Workspace & Wikis, Education, Fashion, Green Living and Family & Kids.
  • Share and save any of the apps with forty of the most popular bookmarking services including del.icio.us, digg, StumbleUpon, reddit, facebook, squidoo, and more.
  • Rate and review any web app in the catalog.
  • Track a competitive space with RSS feeds for individual categories, searches, as well as the newest additions to the catalog.
  • Submit new apps and edit the information on any existing app.

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Where are the extensions for Safari 3?

The update for the Safari 3 beta has been out for a week now yet none of the extensions seem to be updated to work with it yet. Since I’m not a developer, I can’t tell how much has changed under the hood, but from my eyes things seem similar enough… I’m not even thinking about Windows support at this time – just the existing Mac tools.

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T-Mobile, You used to be cool, what happened?

T-Mobile used to be cool. They were one of the first carriers in the US to offer the opportunity to use unlocked phones and they also were very early in WiFi deployments, tested Dual-Mode Services and even invested in VOIP company JahJah — Amazingly this coolness has been lost and while the left hand has been exploring the potential for advanced voice services, the right hand has begin smacking themselves back into the traditional and anti VOIP line.

If you’ve been an active follower of the working anywhere ethos, you’ve certainly used a TMO Hotspot here or overseas and probably used a VOIP service there as well… Today, though VOIP has become an issue for TMO in the UK and they are actually blocking it’s use on their networks – though cellular today, it could escalate to blocking VOIP over WiFi as well.

In case you missed the news recently TruPhone is rolling out a new version of their service. TruPhone offers a software download which enables users of WiFi enabled Nokia devices (N and E Series) to make VOIP calls over WiFi and now even 3G data. This is a great boon for the active traveller, caller and just someone looking to cut down on their monthly minute allocation. T-Mobiel has taken a remarkably active stance against Truphone and is blocking calls between their network and TruPhone, thus making themselves an island I would not want to be trapped on.

Here are some core FACTS worth noting:

  • T-Mobile has refused to interconnect with mobile VoIP provider Truphone: T-Mobile customers making a call to Truphone’s number range (07978 8xxxxx) will not be connected.
  • T-Mobile refuses to interconnect with operators offering VoIP as a matter of policy.
  • However T-Online Ventures, the venture capital arm of T-Mobile’s parent company Deutsche Telekom, has just invested in VoIP provider Jajah; T-Mobile connects with BT Fusion, a VoIP service; and T-Mobile has also announced a trial of a VoIP service in USA and Germany.
  • T-Mobile is required to ‘make calls or otherwise transmit electronic communications to every normal telephone number’, which it has refused to do in the case of Truphone and other VoIP operators.
  • The other four UK major mobile network operators – 3, O2, Orange and Vodafone – all interconnect with Truphone, leaving T-Mobile isolated on this issue.
  • T-Mobile’s current adverts display the slogan “Setting the internet free”.
  • Currently a ‘beta’ service, Truphone’s is prevented from launching fully until the 07978 8xxxxx number range is fully interconnected. Beta service customers are presently unaffected by this issue.
  • Other mobile operators have employed different methods to prevent VoIP uptake. There has already been the well-publicized removal of internet telephony functionality from Nokia’s popular N95 handset by Vodafone and Orange, and new data tariffs published by Vodafone that mean customers using VoIP will be charged more than for web browsing or email.

The CEO of Truphone, James Tragg said “T-Mobile will argue that it is not ‘blocking’ Truphone but is merely negotiating on price. T-Mobile receives 35p per minute from its customers but is offering only 0.21p per minute to Truphone even when Truphone’s costs are 9p per minute to terminate the call.

While I recognize that T-Mobile is a global company with views that may vary a bit by country, this stance is sure to extend into other regions soon enough. My advice is to switch and let them know just how ridiculous this attitude really is. The users can be in control, rather than the networks. We are willing and able to purchase advanced devices and have the right to use them. In this case voice is being used as a data service and if you buy an unlimited data plan, we should be able to use it. The walled garden approach has held excitement and innovation back long enough.

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Jaiku Mobile – Lifestreaming with my friends

There are certainly no shortage of social networks at the moment, but I’ve found a nice home on Jaiku. There are some similarities with Jaiku and Twitter, but once you start to dive into Jaiku, you’ll note that the similarities remain at the surface.

When you visit either the main Jaiku page or a user’s page, you’ll see their availability, location, feeds, friends and a presence or “life” stream. Aside from simply posting a quick snippet on your status you can included feeds from any other source with an ATOM or RSS feed. In my case, I’ve got bookmarks, photos, videos and songs – all automatically posting to my page and informing my friends. This can turn into far more than you might want to be tracking from friends and contacts and Jaiku has also make it very easy to simply remove those updates from your contact’s flow. Jaiku offers a Symbian (S60v3) client and recently released a Widset for J2ME complient devices. Both are quite nice and elegant visually though the Widset offers a great deal more from the Jaiku website – like Channels which I hope will make it into the Mobile client. The Widset also offers a way to comment which is currently lacking in the release version though that should be resolved when the new update comes out next month.

I’ve been testing the Jaiku mobile beta for S60 3rd Edition devices for the past few days and while it’s still definitely a beta product, there are substantial advances here that make Jaiku an even richer experience. Instead of walking you through in words or even a screen-shot tour, I though I’d show you with video…

Before I started using this version of the client, I was only looking for a way to post, but the team has pushed things well beyond that “simple” request and enabled fully threaded discussion tracking. There’s no active notification (sound) yet, but it’s easy to see not only when there’s an update from a friend, but even how mnay have ben posted on a particular thread. You can also surf through an individual contact’s stream or if you prefer browse through your own with friends, which will show you everything that’s happening.

You can reply at any point to any comment or thread which is a killer detail. This enables Jaiku to be a fully interactive experience between participants. Jaiku has been intelligently managing threads and comments on the web, but having this level of control in the palm of your hand completes the experience.

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AJAX does not, an iPhone application make

get ready for iPhone

I like web apps as much as the next geek around here, but I find the decision (or lack therof) to make the iPhone DevKit the “Safari Engine.” Unless there’s some nifty way to make things work offline in cached mode, users are going to get frustrated quickly with the way things work. I know I’m saying all this before it’s even real, but in my experience with the various devices I’ve used (plenty… please feel free to search!) It’s much better not to have to rely on a net connection for getting things done.

Just think about the basic every day challenges of losing a connection in your browser while trying to do things like Gmail, RSS Reading, Calendaring any of the GTD web apps… and on and on. Dedicated apps can do far more often not just because they are not running in a browser (though that helps) but because the local filesystem can take full advantage of a device’s available resources. VOIP in-browser will be a no show though I’m sure that was part of the plan with ATT. No iChat for actual chat – so you are forced to use SMS. Google’s Gears which works on Webkit might make some of this better — but you need (currently) to remember to go offline first so that things sync. Otherwise, you’ll have nothing …

The latest bit is that there is limited to no flash support – perhaps the real reason behind the YouTube h.264 changes. I can’t see how running Safari in OSX will go on the majority of sites we all like to visit without Flash.

I find the iPhone very compelling, but I just keep bumping into rather annoying issues – No 3G, No iChat, only a 2MP camera, No MMS and now only web apps? $600 is a lot of cash for a device that you’ll be locked in on for 2 years when we will likely see a 2.0 release within 6 months. Apple stated they’d be looking to surprise and delight people … well there’s plenty of room for that.

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Zurfer – Mobilized Flickr!

Yahoo! Research Berkeley has developed Zurfer, an amazing application to engage and interact with Flickr. I’ve only been playing with this for about 10 minutes but I can tell it’s going to be one of my favorite mobile applications! This is definitley one of those things you need to use to fully enjoy and appreciate, but basically any social or exploratory activity you can do within Flickr, you can do from your phone.

You set your location when things start and can immediately see images that are local to you. Zurfer shows you images you’ve recently commented on, your contacts images, your images and then beyond that, it’s up to you. I’ve added a few groups I’ve recently joined as well as a tag pool for interesting gadgets. You can as they say go nuts!

It’s seriously fun! Get it now if your phone is supported… Nokia Series 2 and 3 as well as Motorola RAZR V3X.

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Gizmo updated on N95

I just updated the Gizmo client on my N95 (actually updated on my N800 as well) and have to say it’s very slick. You can add contacts from AIM and MSN with a coming soon on Jabber, Yahoo and iChat. I love that it’s integrated with my phonebook which means I only have to open my contacts and slide to the right one click to see who’s online with my various IM services. You can then chat or make a call to any of these contacts.

Gizmo seems to run in the background which is nice so it’s “just on” once you’ve established which networks (cellular and wifi) you want it to use…

Here’s a quick round-up in Screenshots:

Main Screen - SIP enabled

Contacts on N95 ... Gizmo is on the Right SideMain Gizmo Screen

Adding IM ServicesContact Actions

Contact Detail OptionsGizmo Activities ...

Gizmo Version 1.0

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Google Gears for Webkit — Let’s get it going on S60!

While it’s not even possible to run Google Gears on Safari for OSX since it’s not in the release version, we should collectively be thinking about how to get this into S60 devices which also use the Webkit engine in the browser. I’m sure Apple will be figuring out a way to get it into the iPhone.

With a bit of development time, and a firmware update and we should be able to activate offline browsing and other tricks on our multimedia computers… While we are on the topic, I’d really like to see this implemented on the Linux end for the N800 as well within Minimo or perhaps even the rumored Firefox for Nokia Tablets I’ve heard some rumblings about.

From the official Google Blog…

Have you heard about Google Gears? It’s an extension to your favorite web browser and a new open source project from Google. It adds support for local data storage and helps web application developers manage resources so you can make your web application work offline. It is currently available for Linux, Windows, and Macintosh platforms and you can learn more at http://gears.google.com. I got a chance to work on this product for WebKit, which is the render engine Safari is based on, and we’re happy to announce that the source code is available to all Mac developers today.

Since Google Gears is leveraging the latest technology from WebKit, it is currently not compatible with the shipping versions of Safari (Mac OS X 10.4.x and 419.x). So, if you want to play with Google Gears for WebKit, you’ll have to download a recent WebKit build from http://nightly.webkit.org.

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Exporting HD to AppleTV from Final Cut

Perhaps I’ve missed something here, but I’ve noticed that when you export an HD project to AppleTV from within Final Cut Express HD, you get an SD format (4:3) file. If however, you first do a full quicktime output (1080i) and then export to AppleTV from within Quicktime Pro, you get a proper 16:9 720p file.

I don’t know why this is, but it’s happened regularly enough to me the past few weeks that I thought I’d share so others could avoid the same frustration.

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Testing Video Services

I was all pumped about Vimeo recently as I like the compression they use for Flash. Viddler seems to do much the same if not even better and gets away with the upload limit — always a good thing. I just realized though that Blip.TV is by far the best for higher quality, larger video.

Here’s a sample (from our recent storm) I’ve posted to Viddler:

and on Blip:


Click To Play

I’ve already reached my max on Vimeo for the week so no chance to upload this file.

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Salling Clicker 3.5

Salling Clicker is an old favorite of mine and was finally updated to support S60v3 devices which means you can run it on quite a few N-Series units including the new N95. I’ve downloaded and installed it and love having the functionality back again.

I now have full remote control of my Mac, which pauses iTunes, VLC, EyeTV when a call comes in on my cell. The callerID notification floats nicely on-screen which is handy and lets me decide what I want to do with a call without even taking the phone from my pocket. One very cool new feature is the ability to control your system over a WLAN connection, rather than just the usual bluetooth, which will certainly make controlling iTunes from downstairs quite handy…

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Netvibes via Widets

via Nokia Press Release…

The Netvibes Ecosystem’s entire collection of 85,000+ feeds includes recently announced content from major media outlets including CBS, CNN Money, Entertainment Weekly, Forbes.com, InStyle, LATimes.com, Newsweek, People, Real Simple, Sports Illustrated, Time, USA Today, and washingtonpost.com. Netvibes Ecosystem also hosts official content for many celebrity partners including 50 Cent, Ben Harper, G-Unit, Ice Cube, Mandy Moore, Moby, and Snoop Dogg. As a leading provider of user-generated feeds, the Netvibes Ecosystem comprises a large collection of entertainment, lifestyle, news, sports, and television feeds.

I think Widsets is either something you love and use all the time or something you choose to ignore. I’ve been in the ignore camp, as I have more than a few ways to get my data on the go. I still find this interesting however as this is still a cool way to mobilize content — especially if you use a personal Netvibes page.

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And we’re back…

WordPress updated to 2.1.2.  Kind of a pain and scary to delete everything, but it’s all back online now and hopefully something I don’t have to do for a long time.