Tom Hume

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So, after resolutely deciding the iPhone wasn't going to sway me, then getting to play with one a few times in the US, I finally convinced myself that it was worth playing with in more depth. Just for research purposes, you understand. Just so I could give it a righteous slagging, and prove that Mr. Jobs doesn't know jack about mobile. You can tell which way this is going to go, can't you?

I've been using it for about 4 days now, and so far I've been quietly impressed. It's not the be-all and end-all, and there's a lot of stuff in it that is weak, but the complete package feels nice. As a 1.0 product I can see how it might get the rest of the mobile industry a bit shaken up; and it's interesting to see how a business that doesn't have to pay as much strategy tax has approached building a handset.

Bear in mind when reading this that I have a track record of spending my first few days with a new device thinking "ooh shiny" before reality kicks in. I'll follow up this post with some more thoughts in a week or so. But first, the good:

1. The screen is beautiful, and has survived 4 days scratchless. It doesn't appear to have gotten greasy from next-to-ear action either;
2. As you might expect, syncing with the mac works very well; all my contacts, calendars, bits of music and photos, have gone across without difficulty;
3. After some amusingly bad initial problems with the on-screen keypad, I'm now finding it faster for taking notes than a traditional phone 10-key pad. Predictivity in the text input really helps here, it tends to correct most of my spelling mistakes and learns words without sending you through a "teach me a new word please" flow which seems to be the standard for most T9 devices;
4. The chrome of the UI, all the useless but pretty zooming, flipping and fading, works really nicely; it's a bit showy but makes the whole experience of using the thing feel completely different to a mobile, or indeed any PDA I've used so far;
5. It's reasonably fast; I don't find myself waiting for things (beyond network connections) or being frustrated with speed;
6. It's a very nice little web tablet; Safari is slightly annoying on a small screen, but mainly because most of the content I'm accessing has been designed for large-screen use. Zooming in and out makes reading this stuff possible, though still a bit annoying. I've yet to use any "optimised for iPhone" services (like TypePad, say);

The bad?

1. The camera is inadequate. Mr Jobs talked up the optics in it as opposed to resolution, and to an extent I could go for that argument: the K800i doesn't take massively between photos than the K750i despite its increased resolution. But the iPhone camera doesn't really stack up - no flash, no auto-focus, bad for any action shots. It's a camera, and perhaps for a market that finds cameras in phones has some novelty value it's sufficient, but it's not a good one - which surprised me;
2. Related to the camera: no MMS and no video recording. MMS is annoying - I tend to send a few picture messages a week, but the only way to do this via the iPhone is email. Again, this feels a little US-centric. Video I'm surprised about as there's plenty of storage on the device - perhaps a software ugrade will bring it in future;
3. Networking is a tad annoying; I have an unlocked iPhone I'm using my Orange SIM in, so I can't access the web when I'm away from wi-fi coverage. I'm not sure how EDGE compares to 3G yet either, I'm going to try things with an O2 SIM when I get back and see;
4. Battery life isn't exactly impressive, but I'd half-expect to be charging this thing overnight every night anyway, so that's not such a problem;
5. There's not much capability for customising the phone - reordering menu icons, deciding which applications are most important, etc. Surprising given how popular this stuff is;
6. Lock-down: yeah, I know I've broken the rules by buying an unlocked iPhone and running it on an unauthorised network, but the raw iPhones inability to load third-party apps is annoying, and I'm - for the moment - unable to do software upgrades and keep the device working. Maybe this is just a taste of how things will be, but I can't help feeling this is (and I gag at using the phrase, so forgive me) "stifling innovation". See below;

And the interesting:

1. The iPhone does lots of things in a slightly different way to other handsets I've used, and this is quite refreshing - even when it's a bit different. So the act of making a call involves choosing to do so from the home screen (instead of just starting to dial); or choosing which number to dial from a selection within a contact with multiple numbers;
2. The unlocked iPhone I bought had an "installer" app on it, which presented a menu of apps (categorised) from various sources, all of which I could click on to download and install over the air. I think this is the best experience I've ever had of downloading and installing new apps - it worked so well it was breathtaking, so much better than the "text in and click a link", or "go to the portal and run through 8 WAP pages before downloading" experience we have here in Europe. Every phone should make it this simple (even for paid apps). It's doubly annoying that Apple choose to disable this feature - something like this should be in every iPhone, even if it only offers a selection of Apple or operator-approved extras;
3. The gestural UI is nice; most touch-sensitive devices I've used do the worst thing possible with a touch screen, which is violating Fitt's law and having you stab at small areas on the screen with a stylus or finger. The iPhone uses dragging motions a lot - even in some standard UI components (on-screen switches which can be flicked left or right), which works really well;
4. Top-menu links to content providers (weather info - Yahoo?, Youtube, stocks and shares), highlighted really nicely. Cocoon did this with Kizoom's train timetables WAP site promoted at a top level, but few operators seem to take this simple step so far;

Having said all this, so far I find the overall package really quite compelling; and I'm annoyed with myself for this, given the list of problems I have with the little beast.

Going back to what I said previously: "I don't see this as meaningfully impacting on the mass market (other than giving a slight kicking to other handset vendors)"... I stand by this. I don't think this iPhone will be out there in enough numbers to justify much in the way of content specifically designed for it. What I do think it'll do (which I mentioned at the Mobile Web 2.0 panel I was on a couple of weeks back) is get a whole load of folks who were previously sceptical about mobility taking it seriously - which can only be a good thing for the mobile ecosystem as a whole.

Aha - I hadn't written about this until now, but seeing as Monday is his start day - it's time.

I'm delighted to reveal that we've persuaded Bryan Rieger to join Future Platforms full-time as our Senior Designer. If you keep up with mobile blogs (or in particular, mobile Flash), you'll have come across Bryan: he's been doing some fantastic stuff in this area over the last few years, and we can't wait to get working with him :)

Russell writes about some of the problems of J2ME development, and the slow pace of innovation in the mobile space (echoing some of the things I've been looking at in comparing mobile to fixed): "One of the challenges of mobile is that the mobile web just doesn’t provide the same user experience as its cousin the PC web, forcing many companies to implement a Java application, or JME, as it’s not been rechristened by Sun, to give users the full intended functionality."

At FP we're big on the mobile web at both a practical level (powering mobile campaigns, building microsites), and in assisting W3C, .mobi, the WURFL project and the like in pushing things forward; we have dot-mobi certified developers on board and we do a lot of work in this area.

But I don't believe that the future of mobile apps is completely browser-based: mobile web makes sense in many cases (and being easier to work with, certainly contributes to a groundswell of mobile content), but there are some things for which applications are much better: anything involving persistent storage (say, a messaging service), very customised interfaces (like games), or deep integration with the handset (using Bluetooth and GPS, for instance).

So I don't see the mobile web as competing with Java - there's room for both. Where I do see it clashing is with Flash, which hopes to bring mobility to the same group of developers (web guys and girls) but has so far failed to deliver on its promise. This is in part thanks to poor distribution of the (excellent) Flash player, but also I suspect thanks of apathy amongst Flash developers - who are forced to give up many recent advances in Flash to develop for mobile. I was quite surprised when we ran a local, well-advertised competition for mobile Flash content and received only a single entry from across a large, skilled community including many top-notch Flash developers.

Where I feel Russell is spot on is in his criticism of the development process for Java: "Yes, you can make changes easily, but the deployment cycle makes rapid deployment almost impossible, leading to small and large changes being introduced as part of regular updates, like software".

Too true, and there's a few things this brings to mind:

1. To do mobile Java development well - in any sort of reasonable timeframe - you need to have tools that help you build and port across a range of devices. We go from a standing start to launching across 100+ handsets when we add a new puzzle to the Puzzler Media portfolio, but the only way we can do this is by using Cactus, our in-house toolkit for J2ME. There are open source kits out there to do this, like J2ME Polish - obviously I think ours is niftier, but I'm biased ;)

2. You need to automate as much as possible, including UI testing. If you make a fix to the Motola V3 port of a product and it breaks the Samsung D600... you need to know this. And to do this with complete confidence, you need to test on real devices, so there's a manual burden too. I'm going to write about testing strategies for mobile in due course.

3. And one final thought: why not start out with a less monolithic product? If you can add, build and evolve your product over time (using a porting framework and automated testing), then there's less risk in tweaking features or adding to your product on the basis of observed user behaviour or explicit demands from your customers.
   

Having said all this, I'd completely agree with Russell when he suggests that "you need at least a stripped down mobile web version"; mobile web might not provide as much control over the user experience as an application, but it lets you mop up all those customers with handsets you didn't port to, comparitively cheaply.

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I received this email from Amazon a week or so back:

You are receiving this email because you registered with Amazon Mechanical Turk as a Requester with an address outside of the United States. We regret to inform you that Amazon Mechanical Turk will no longer support international Requester accounts starting October 1, 2007. On this date your Requester account will be closed.

A real shame, as we had a couple of interesting projects we were thinking might be a good fit with it over the last few months. But also a bit of a wake-up call: the lesson here is that unless a provider of APIs is going to commit to an SLA, or even their future availability, then it's probably foolish to rely on them. A semantic web of collaborating services is a lofty goal, but we'll still need commitments (probably underpinned by commercial relationships) to realise it.

PICNIC07: The revolution in personal fabrication, Neil Gershenfeld

Fablabs: in between the large digital fabricators at MIT, and the personal fabricators we will have in 20 years time. Costs less to send the means to create objects, than it does to send the objects themselves.

Shows $10m chip fab: fundamentally it spreads stuff around and bakes it. Contrast with the ribosome: assembler of amino acids, basically a digital machine. Shows a computer made from bubbles in fluid. Bits are carrying information, but also material. What's a digital revolution? Adding digitisation to phone systems (by Shannon) improved them. Von Neumann did the same for computers in the 50s; for old analog machines, the longer you ran them the worse an answer you got. Chip fabs are still fundamentally analogue. Not a computer connected to a tool, they should be the tool: bringing the programmability of the digital world to the physical world.

Started a class at MIT: How to make (almost) anything.

Shows off ScreamBody.

"Animals are underserved for their IT needs": Interpet explorer.

In a world of personal fabrication, you create technology for yourself, not for mass production.

Fablabs are a hack, they're not the real thing. Shows K&R with a PDP: the moment computer systems went timesharing. The Fablabs today are a PDP - at the time everything was anarchic and the PDP was in the middle of this mess; right now we're at the start of an era, with the labs getting faster, cheaper, and better.

Fablabs don't fit into current organisational structures: e.g. the Pentagon love this from a hearts and minds perspective, but they don't have an office to do tech research that doesn't involve blowing things up. "Anyone being able to make anything, anywhere breaks everyones organisational boundaries".

PICNIC07: Identity 2.0, Dick Hardt

Identity is difficult to describe: blind men and elephants. Contrasts German wikipedia entry for "identity" to UK and Dutch ones. Characteristics by which an individual is identifiable, either of herself or as part of her social group.

Lets you separate one person from a group of people; or it's a bunch of different personas. It lets you predict behaviour based on roles: prior knowledge kicks in when you see someone in a uniform, say.

How is it conveyed? Verbally, requiring trust. Official papers enabling trust on a local scale. Modern identity based around photo ID (passports etc).

Where is it used? ID transactions: party identification (who is this?), authorisation, profile exchange (telling something about yourself). Photo ID reduced friction. There's a lot of privacy (DVLA don't interact with a store I might use my driving license as age ID in).

Attributes of identity.

Identity 1.0 is all about records.

Verified digital identity is not what you give to the site, it's what the site builds up about you (e.g. ebay trading history): you can't carry it around with you.

Identity 2.0: a new architecture for this, elements of which are being used during the Olympics. Simple and open wins. Today, identity is closed, complex and stored in silos by individual sites.

2017: broadband everywhere, cheap storage, more use of electronic storage, mobile, device convergence, digital natives. Minimal passwords, rich portable profiles, portable credentials, rich attributes to share with sites, reputation services, proving you're human (to avoid CAPTCHA),

See also here

PICNIC07: Urban Playgrounds, Matt Adams of Blast Theory

Artist working since 1991, making a range of artworks particularly game-based projects.

Shows "Can you see me now": using real-world runners controlled by players at laptops, to avoid being caught by virtual-world runners. Avatars communicate with their players by voice; players need to guide them to collect photos, using the cityscape as a field of play.

"Uncle Roy Is All Around You": exploring a meaningful connection between the fabric of the city and game play, using small city areas and tightly authored content.

These games are challenging to build and don't scale: this is the theme from a few of the speakers this morning. They need to learn about LocoMatrix :)

"Rider Spoke" in collaboration with Mixed Reality Lab of Nottingham Uni, launching October.

Piss, battery low so switching off until I find power. Which means no blogging of the rest of this or Mr Cerveny's talk... (as if mere written word can pretend to contain him...)

PICNIC07: Urban Playgrounds, Christian Nold

Does "participatory sensory mapping": what do you do with this data you can gather, how do you turn it into a political proposition? What are the tools we can use to rethink the space?

He blindfolds children and has them led along by someone else, using other senses (smell, etc.) for local area. Produces a sensory deprivation map, a set of experiences geolocated: beautiful. 50% of categorisations are negative, 22% neutral, 28% positive.

Turns this into getting kids involved with local politics: there's a road in front of the school full of traffic and smells.

Next project: lie detector + GPS unit, to create emotion maps. Tends to do these in areas of regeneration - e.g. Stockport. PDAs are good, but physical paper maps are nice because you can stand around them: they talk in a language people can understand.

Really really nice looking stuff :)