mobile things
opinion and news on mobile gadgets and development
Jul
31
Phone mast problems are psychosomatic
Posted by grouchal in off-topic
Interesting BBC article that references a recent study that has looked into whether health problems from Mobile Phone masts are real or imagined.
the interesting thing is that a small fraction of those who claimed problems could tell when the mast was switched on or off - but those who believed the mast caused problems and thought it was switched on had a higher number of problems.
BBC NEWS | Health | Phone mast allergy ‘in the mind’
This makes me think of similar issues relating to WiFi in schools - I hope there is a similar study about this!!
Popularity: 74% [?]
Jul
17
Google Reader - Wii support
Posted by grouchal in Gadgets, off-topic
I have recently been given a Wii as a birthday present - which I am really enjoying.
One thing that I like is being able to browse the internet in front of the TV - which makes catching up on stuff much easier.
I found out yesterday that Google Reader has built in support for the Wii / Opera browser - you get a streamlined view of the page and if you press the 1 or 2 buttons on your remote you can get special menus for use in navigating!
This makes using Google Reader via the Wii much easier.
Well done Google - hopefully they will roll out this support to gmail also and all their other apps - that would be fantastic.
I hope that other sites start doing this - I wonder if there is a directory of Wii optimised sites anywhere?
Popularity: 68% [?]
Jun
25
iPhone - A Guided Tour
Posted by grouchal in iPhone, off-topic
20 interesting minutes - on the build up to Friday.
I have to say I like what I see - will be interested to see if a clone or the real thing makes it to Europe first!
Apple - iPhone - A Guided Tour
Read a rumour today that google might buy Apple - interesting!
Popularity: 75% [?]
Jun
22
network effects - a story here for the iPhone?
Posted by grouchal in iPhone, off-topic
Found this article today (thanks to the BBC News website) Are network effects getting weaker? on Skrentablog which talks about how various “hip” tools for networking - myspace the key example are becoming less “hip”.
The web is a great leveller for people, allowing small companies to compete with the large companies, allowing independents bands to compete with Stadium bands etc. It also allows consumers to become much more flexible in their approaches and also less loyal. I am no marketer, but this must have a big impact on brand.
Sony is going through a hard time as a brand at the moment but it is likely to come out well, it has a long history and this contributes to a strong brand. Myspace though has no such brand, nor LinkedIn, they are new and well known, but people have no loyalty to them, especially when they are no longer “cool”. This must be something that Bebo and Facebook are thinking about, and must have something ot do with Murdoch’s decision to sell mySpace to Yahoo.
Anyway what has this to do with the iPhone - well I wonder how much we value brand nowadays, a lot of the belief in creating the market they need for the iPhone is that iPod is “cool”, so the iPhone will be too. How much cooler will you be if you have an iPhone? Is the iPod just enough cool without becoming a geek? Although having an iPod has been about fitting in and having the same, most phone owners want to have something unique - will this change?
In broad terms it makes me question if the iPhone does succeed it suggests that mobile preferences are starting to converge and that the currently diverse market will start to shrink based on consumer demand. I guess that is why they are charging for the device upfront, this will make people not upgrade their phone at the end of the 12-18 month contract. I can’t help but feel though that innovation is coming from Nokia, Motorola and the others and it won’t be the dream Apple want to come true. All of the manufacturers need this constant upgrading cycle to continue - there are not many other devices that have an 18 month life.
Popularity: 75% [?]
Jun
22
PlanHQ - business planning online - a review
Posted by grouchal in off-topic, review
I have tried out a service on the web called PlanHQ a couple of times and from my first visit I thought that they had a very good potential. This visit had been about 4 months ago and I set-up a business plan using the software and it helped me pull my ideas together. I understood the product was still in beta at that point so was quite forgiving of the odd button not working and things like this.
I liked that the application had a button within it to allow people to give immediate feedback on the page that they were in to the developers - this seemed very logical to me and a great communication tool (I have since noticed it on other sites). Each time I came across a problem I noted it and then carried on with what I was doing - finding a workaround at most times.
What I like most about the service is the core idea - a business plan should not be a document but a living set of data that charts the plan for your company and allows you to look at it from lots of different perspectives. The document has now been reduced to an output from all this data to communicate your plan to other people - brilliant.
The service is there to help you plan in the first place - but also to get you to keep the document alive as you grow your business, and easily compare progress against the plan.
They finished their beta a while back and I knew that I would have to pay for the service - but decided that it didn’t give me enough value to be worth the 30 day trial.
I chose to revisit the site last week as I am in a phase of planning again and I got it working quite easily. I was disappointed with what I found though. The design has changed and I think as a result of this - there were lots of bugs again - buttons didn’t work, error pages appeared. I was so disappointed as I believe in these guys vision but they seem to be going backwards not forwards. What I had found previously as a great beta application that I thought had potential and was recommending to people had become a much less usable application, which I found frustrating to use myself let alone recommend.
I had made a couple of recommendations about the site after the beta - the first was to make it multi-currency which they have done - but this still has bugs - graphs and charts show dollar signs still. The second was to look at the financial planning and allow sales forecasts to have a combination of product, price and volume to allow easier planning.
I found myself now using a combination of google docs and spreadsheets to allow collaborative reviews of the text and figures and I am using Zoho Project to manage the goals tasks.
If the financial element within planHQ was better I think I would pay for it for sure (once usability was fixed).
Truely Unique - part of their service which shines out as an example of what they are trying to do is the analysis tool for comparing markets, requirements and competition. I can honestly say that this took is fantastic at helping you see the woods for the trees, understand what it is your markets want and compare this with what is being delivered. I have gained insight in to my market place with this tool and it has been instrumental in changing my strategy, and the great thing is you can use this tool for free in the first 30 days - then move to easier to use tools for the rest of the cycle with your business plan.
Here is my suggestion to the planHQ guys:
Your belief in an idea is great - you are at the beginning of setting a benchmark in on-line business tools, but you are only just beginning. Look to the Markets section of the product and continue to innovate along these lines in other areas - remember you are not creating a new way to output a business plan document, but a new way of building & maintaining a business plan that allows you to review data in many ways.Your QA processes need to improve greatly - there is nothing worse than pressing UPDATE and nothing happens after you have just spent time typing something in, and there are many bugs like these. Your designers and technical guys need to sit with some users and use this software, at the moment the reasons not to use it out weight the reasons to use it.
I cannot say enough how much I think these guys have the right idea, but the execution is really letting them down at the moment.
Popularity: 65% [?]
Jun
8
Deluge of posts - sorry been on holiday
Posted by grouchal in off-topic
What a great set of posts today - couldn’t keep that up every day - but I’ve been away for 10 days and had a backlog of stuff that needed to be pointed out!
Popularity: 26% [?]
Jun
8
Londonist: Free Wifi in London…Mapped
Posted by grouchal in Gadgets, off-topic
Nice and useful - I just wish there was a mobile version of it so that I could look on my phone when choosing where to go - not having to plan when I’m at home - or find an internet cafe to look it up! 
Londonist: Free Wifi in London…Mapped
Popularity: 25% [?]
May
24
mobile brain scanners!?
Posted by grouchal in Gadgets, Technology, off-topic
Walkman-style brain scanner ::: Pink Tentacle
Came across this article about brain scans that I’m not completely convinced isn’t some sort of April’s fool (for one the picture looks to be about 20 years old).
It is an interesting idea though - but I’m not sure what for! I can see for research into how brains work this might be a brilliant tool - I an see as a medical device for monitoring a patients brain it could be interesting. However - what can it realistically determine and how much of what it can determine can be correctly understood?
The idea seems to be just that an idea an concept more than something close to useful or real - but who knows what the next step will be - perhaps integration with iTunes?
Popularity: 41% [?]
May
16
starting a blog
Posted by grouchal in off-topic
Well this is quite a bit more work than I thought it was going to be - I thought it’d be easy to find a few stories put them on-line and provide a bit of commentary and opinion.
I tend to find opinion quite easy normally - but this written word is much harder to deal with. Anyway we are one week in now lets see how things go.
I know that there are a lot of mobile gadget and development blogs out there - some seem to write every hour - I’m hoping to just provide daily posts on items I think are interesting and relevant.
I should confess I tried this before on another subject - m-learning and it didn’t go well - in fact I only recently posted on there after a 8 month absence - let’s see how this one goes!
Popularity: 38% [?]