Whatley Wednesday – Page 4

MIR: An Open Letter to Vodafone UK

James Whatley writes, this week, with an impassioned open letter to Vodafone. Write to your MP. Call your local radio station. Send letters to Arun!

– – –

(Not another mobile web rant, promise.)

Dear Vodafone,

Let’s get one thing out in the open before we start:

I love you.

There. I said it.

It’s out in the open for the entire world to see.

You and I have been together now for over ten years and although there have been a few ups and downs along the way, somehow we have always managed to pull through.

Red, what can I say? The years have been great.

I still regret the affair I had with Orange back in the 90s and I know that my foolish dalliance with 3 is best forgotten. I was weak. Led astray by promises of ‘revolutionary’ handsets and blinded by their multitude of minutes. Ultimately I was betrayed by my own greed. They just weren’t you Red.

After all these shortfalls, you were there for me, waiting to take me back with open arms whenever things went wrong.

I am a card carrying member…

… of your love parade and I am proud to say that I recommend you and your network to anyone looking to change providers, (and often to those that aren’t). Everything from the fantastic customer service to the virtually non-existent drop-call rate, Vodafone you put a smile on my face by never letting me down.

But as the years have gone by (and my monthly spend has slowly gone up) I have felt, lately, a strange detachment forming betwixt you and I.

Thing is, there is some shall we say, room for improvement.

When you rolled out 3.5G? Brilliant! Amazing in fact! But at Â£2.35per meg you and I both knew that something had to give… and it did! You went and released your own little data bundle… And at the same price as T-Mobile’s too! What a fantastic move… But no, you had to spoil my fun by going and capping it at 120mb. C’mon… You know can do better than that!

Signal strength is second to none. I cannot count the amount of times I’ve been out and about with friends and being the only Vodafone subscriber of the group has meant I was the only one in the with a signal.

However when it comes to your Tariffs, you may have great coverage but it seems that this comes at a price too. You’re, dare I say it, high maintenance.

Admittedly you’ve tried to wean me off my old school 3000mins per month tariff for ages now but you have nothing that comes anywhere near it currently. 1800mins for Â£75?! Shocking. You’re good but you’re not that good Red.
I’m not budging. Yeah ‘Stop the Clock‘ – is pretty cool but can I have Vodafone Passport?

“Not on such an old tariff Mr Whatley.”

RUBBISH!

Voda, you know I feel about you. Take me on my word: You need to catch up! You could be left behind! 3, who were once the laughing stock of the UK operator market, now have one of the sexiest offerings around with their X-Series.

See, o2 got the iPhone, (you did well to avoid that), and you went and got the N95 8GB for an exclusive amount of time. Excellent choice. But why did you have to cripple it with your own firmware?
It’s like three steps forward and two steps back sometimes, really.

Hopefully, when the iPhone v2 comes along you’ll be right there waiting to grab it and pass it onto to your loyal followers. Hell, if YOU get the next version of the iPhone, I might even get one.
Now there’s a statement.

Can you imagine? With you Voda and your super HSDPA (3.5G) and solid CS, network etc…

It would be killer.

But hey – that’s the future – let’s talk about now.

Let’s move onto the one thing that gets me the most… and I’m sorry to bring this up… (I mention it every time we speak) the ONE bugbear I have with you? The teeny tiny thing that I just cannot stand?!

MMS

Tell me, Red, why do you not offer ANY MMS bundles?

None. Nada. Zip. Absolutely, positively ZERO. NOT. A. THING.

Videos, sound clips, pictures… all charged 35p-50p a go. It drives me nuts about you. WHY OH WHY OH WHY?!

You offer one of the latest and best phones (the aforementioned 5MP beauty from Nokia) and you don’t offer ANY MMS bundles to support it?!!!!!?!!!

You say that the requirement isn’t there, that the advent of picture messaging has not been the success that the networks thought it would be…
Well, if you charge for every single MMS sent and don’t allow anyone to add anything to their monthly tariffs then what on earth do you expect?!

You gladly give me video call minutes (which I actually use from time to time) every month as part of my tariff, but not video messaging?! Insane.

It’s been like this since September 1st 2006 Vodafone and I’ve let it go month on month on month… This has got to stop!

Voda, I love you, and I think that you love me.
Try this, do it for the sake of us…

Make MMS free for a month.

Yes. That’s right. FREE. Like you did with Mobile TV, (albeit that was for three months), try it. SEE the uptake.

Look after your customers.
Love them.
Save them money.

And above all, save ME money. Help me love you more.

Yours hopefully,

James Whatley

MIR: Whatley’s mobile power user insights

Just a quick two parter this week – Ewan gave me my first actual assignment last week and I’m still putting the finishing touches to it, (i.e.: Still need to write it up proper-like).

So – as a bit of cheat – I thought I’d do a follow up post on last week’s Power User Insights.

To be more precise: Address some questions that were asked in the comments (as well as elsewhere online and off) and clarify a few points too…

But first, a quick user story:

At the weekend I killed the browser on my N95. I don’t know how or what I did exactly that made it die in such a spectacular fashion but die it did.

To the point where no matter how many times (or many ways for that matter) I tried to access the Mobile from my N95, it was having NONE of it. I clicked on the app, the screen flashed as if it was about to do something and after a second or two – it went back to the menu screen.

Panic.

Set.

In.

First thing I did was turn it off and turn it back on again… Nope, didn’t work.

Then I tried using one of my phone’s shortcuts to get to the web – Nope, that didn’t work either.

I had these horrid thoughts of having to hard reset* my phone and having to re-build it back up from scratch. Not good.

However – all was not lost – some research online uncovered some prior cases of aforementioned phone browser fever. The problem was in fact my cache. Obviously, not being able to clear it from within the browser was going to be a problem so I had to turn to my trusty Y-Browser.

Once I’d browsed to my C drive and cleared the cache, (over 500 items in there! Eeep!), the browser started working again just fine. Woohoo!

So as an FYI – if this happens to you – you know what to do.

On retrospect, if you were to put a Normob (Ewan – are you gonna trademark that?) into this situation what would they’ve done?

Left it? Sent it back to Nokia? Taken it back to the store?

90% of my friends would’ve done neither and probably just given their phone to me and asked me to fix it.

No, scrap that.

100% of my friends, relatives, acquaintances, colleagues etc… ALL give their phones to me to fix. Not a problem. I like doing it. But if they don’t know someone like me (or you) then what do they do?

Hand it in to a store only for it to be returned 3wks later with a note saying ‘water damage’ attached to it?

At this point I’m reminded of Ewan’s recent iPhone/Parent problems…

Ok. Well. Enough ranting and explaining – moving onto part 2:

Got some great feedback from the power user piece from last week so thanks again to all of those that took the time to response – fantastic insights – some of which I think are worth sharing (and linking to).

Terence – your first comment made me go back and edit part of the original content so it now reads:

“…as well as also managing to find time to update my facebook,
…reply to some Tweets…
…and catch up on Jaiku via their m.websites”

Being the mdot evangelist that I am I just assumed that you’d all know that’s how I’d be viewing my content! 😉

Google Reader was mentioned a couple of times – I was unaware that they had a mobile variant for this, and having only just discovered recently the wonders of all things RSS – I shall have to have a play at once!

Antoine of MMM had a great idea about a dock for your device. Apple have that one covered already but yes – a ‘centre of gravity’ for my Nokia device wherever I went would be great.

Mirko – I find when walking around London that 8 of 10 people tend to be either tourists or travelers themselves. Plus I am uber-reliant on my handset and use it whenever and wherever possible. I see your point but I think it’s just down to personal preference.

Active Notes. Well reminded. I used to have this but I think I lost it when I last upgraded my firmware. Anyone who uses the ‘notes’ app on their handset should really lookout for Active Notes. It’s quite handy.

Ben Smith suggests Road Sync for all your email needs. I personally use the one Mail 4 Exchange client that comes built in on my N95 (and on my E61i for that matter) but I shall definitely take a look at this one. Glad to see you find SpinVox as useful as I do too – and a big public thank you for the amount of feedback you sent in earlier this week. It has been circulated and the right people are devouring it as we speak!

Onto Dave’s question about Agile: Dave, I bought Agile Messenger originally about 2yrs ago now, (it maybe longer), for my then N70 and I loved it. At that time it was only around Â£7 (about 9 euros) and I had no problem paying for the full lifetime licence. I too have fring installed but to be honest, I only ever really use it when I need to chat to any of my Skype contacts, (you know who you are).

I’m not sure if Agile is worth as much as they’re charging for it these days but it is definitely worth taking looks as I’m certain they now offer a free trial period upon initial download.

Martin – I read your post – great read. Dopplr is something I will add to my bookmarks at the earliest opportunity.

Finally – Martin’s post reminded me of this great TED Talk I saw recently by Nokia Researcher, Jan Chipchase. Enjoy.

http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf

MIR: How do you use your mobile handset?

A day in the life of heavy mobile usage…

I am, by my own admission, a power user. This may come as no surprise to the regular readers. In fact, I’d hazard a guess that around half of Ewan’s reader-base would probably consider themselves within this category?

But, what defines a power user?

Well I kept on a diary this morning. Not for too long, a few hours, jotting down any mobile activity on the fly… Have a read:

7:05 – My N95 tries to wake me up to the sound of the Plain White Tees.

I hit snooze.

7:15 – My N95 tries to wake me up again.

I hit snooze.

7:17 – The calendar reminder I set myself the night before, pre-empting this state of affairs, wakes me up properly with the message ‘Wake up you sleeping fool – you have a meeting in town!’

I get up.

7:30 – Whilst getting washed and ready I check Vodafone’s ‘My Travel’ section of Vodafone Live! to see when’s the next train to Richmond. Twenty minutes from now. Cool.

7:40 – I leave the house. Earphones are in and my phone’s MP3 player is happily randomising the 5GB worth of music I have on the microSD card within, for my listening pleasure.

Along the brisk 5min walk to the station I quickly check my train times again (yes, I know I’ve already checked them but I’m insanely regimented about being on time) and then open my Jaiku client to see if my friend Jana is going to be on the same train as me.
She’s not, she’s working from home as she’s not feeling too well and her phone’s profile is on silent so there’s no point calling her either.

All of this from one quick glance at Jaiku. Nice.

7:52 – I board the train to Richmond. At this point my, quite frankly, invaluable Tube Map java app comes into play as I need to work out the quickest route to Piccadilly Circus; Richmond – Hammersmith – Piccadilly. Sorted.

8:05 – The outskirts of the District Line Underground are in fact overground and so I use this time to read up on the morning’s news.

Starting with Mippin, I work my way through: All About Symbian, SMS Text News, Darla Mack, Symbian-Guru.com, WiiWii.tv and anything else that might be of any interest.

I check my emails on the new http://beta.m.yahoo.com, (note – NOT on Yahoo Go. Yahoo Go is BAD), scan my IMs (Gtalk, MSN and Yahoo) using Agile Messenger , as well as also managing to find time to update my facebook, reply to some Tweets and catch up on Jaiku via their mdot websites!

As I head underground at Hammersmith, I start cross checking my work phone’s calendar (the E61i’s native app) against my personal calendar (the Handy Calendar app from Epocware – http://epocware.com/ ) to check for double bookings and the like… Glad I did, have a birthday on an away day that I need to get out of somehow, eek.

Incidentally – as a point of interest – I spot my 2nd iPhone ‘in the wild’. I’m tempted to ask the woman how she could justify it but she hides it away quick before anyone else notices she’s got one…

9:10 – I arrive at Piccadilly Circus and have no idea where I’m going for my meeting. I m.google the agency quick, grab their postcode from their website, tap that into my GPS and voila… it’s just round the corner. Easy peasy.

10:15 – One of the key people has to dash off after receiving a converted voicemail (as a text message, through SpinVox) from his Wife. Her car has just got a puncture and she needs his help. Unfortunate situation aside, that’s a little piece of magic right there. Without SpinVox he wouldn’t have called his Wife back until after the meeting. Already he gets it.

10:20 – I head off, but I need to write up some notes and check emails etc… So a quick SMS off to the Texperts is required methinks:

“I’m in Piccadilly. Where can I get a decent cup of coffee and some free wi-fi?”

10:25 – The answer comes back as: ‘The 5th View Cafe above Waterstones on Picadilly’ and off I trot.

10:30 – Setting up a mini-office over a cafe mocha I glance out the window. The view is amazing. Out pops the N95, I snap a quick photo and then upload it straight to my Flickr, via ShoZu.

Here’s the picture, by the way:

10:35 – I plug my ears back in and settle down to get on with some work.
The End.

So why bother writing this up? Three reasons really.

1) To give an insight into the usage habits of a genuine power user.

2) To find out more about the user habits of the SMS Text News reader base:
‘How do you eat yours?’

3) To ask if anyone out there thinks there is something missing: What application do you use every day that you could not live without?

Think of the Children

First published on Mobile Industry Review, January 2008

Welcome to 2008 folks and good luck to you in the year ahead.

I don’t know about you but, for some reason, 2008 seems to hold an awful lot of potential for me. There’s a definite air of excitement about the immediate future as we, as an industry… nay, as a race! …continue to carve out this new digital/mobile revolution.

I would argue that in this ever-changing landscape it is so easy to forget exactly how far we’ve come in these few short years…

But what I want to talk about now however, is not where we’ve been… but where we are going, and what lies ahead for those that will take up the reigns in the future.

So take a moment, indulge me if you will, and think of the children.

MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and of course their mobile counter-parts, are all tools that we take for granted…

‘Upload that, tag me in this… Add me, add me, ADD ME!’

Our entire lives are now, slowly but surely, online… and will remain so should we so wish, forever.

(Apocalyptic terminator-esque wars withstanding)

Our kin will be able to find and see everything… Family trees (post early 21st century) will be easier to seek out…

Finding out who Mummy used to date before she met Daddy will be there, right there, in the depths of your Mum’s mini-feed!

So, what of our children?

Growing up and having such easy access to their parent’s loves, lives, histories, past relationships, photos, activities…

It kinda puts the whole ‘Hey Ma! What did you do in the war?!’ question on its head. More like: ‘Hey Ma, why didn’t you keep a blog?’

Home videos, once the luxury of a rich relative, are now ubiquitous with the advent of the camera phone: I mean; a phone without a camera? An absurd thought… You’ve all got them. I think you’d be hard pressed to find someone who doesn’t have a camera on their phone, (by all means, let me know if you are one of these people!).

Of whom of you there that have children already, how many of them have mobile phones? What would you say is the acceptable age of getting ‘my first phone’?

(There’s got to be a Fisher Price toy in there somewhere)

Will our children be on Facebook? Doubtful say some – ‘Surely facebook won’t be cool enough and the kids of tomorrow will be using the next big thing’ is something that has been said to me before. Well – irrespective of your POV on that question…

Some parents are already setting up new blog accounts for their newborns. They’re chronicling everything from the first photo in the womb to little one’s first steps and first words.

How will our children cope with this new way of keeping personal history?

Answer: They just WILL.

Having never known any different…

However, one does wonder, in the years to come when the newborns of the late noughties find their way into school, will a new elite group be the rage in the playground? The Facebook Kids — whose parents embraced this new digital wave completely, and used it to track the entirety of their youngling’s lives to date…

And when the time comes, will these ‘Blog-Babies’ be given the logins to their blog like some twisted digital version of the keys to their first car? Or the first $100 from their lifelong trust fund? Of course, but only when they come of age, so to speak.

Could the parents become precious over this personal history? Could the kids reject it entirely?

‘My child ruined/deleted his blog’ is a Jerry Springer/Jeremy Kyle show waiting to happen…

So why am I talking about this here? Where’s the mobile angle?

These digital worlds are converging. We all know it. We can all see it. I’d say you’re all intelligent people; people with something to say.

So tell me dear reader, I know this is a lot to think over, but I am genuinely interested…

What are your thoughts?

As we race toward our online future, won’t somebody think of the children?

The Mobile Web and the ‘mdot’ solution

Hmm.

Ok – on the back of yesterday’s announcement of the new Mobile Pownce (http://m.pownce.com) site, I thought I’d tackle a subject this week that I (along with quite a few others I suspect) have quite strong opinions on:

The Mobile Web aka The Mobile Internet aka WAP aka the Internet, made Mobile.*

*Delete where applicable or just insert your naming convention of choice.
(We’ll come back to this one later).

Having had a rather long (read: head-bangingly frustrating) conversation with someone yesterday about how… all mobile sites will become irrelevant within 12 months as the Operators all follow Vodafone’s lead, and introduce rendering engines [like Novarra], which will offer up the full internet experience to the end user’*… I thought now would be a good time to have a rant which has been boiling away inside of me since my days at Mippin.

*My reaction at this point, in case you’re interested was to walk away, screaming.

This issue is something that I absolutely, 100%, fundamentally disagree with. People (normobs — normal mobile users) do not want the internet on their mobile. They think they do.

But they don’t.

What they want is the information from the internet, optimised and perfectly formatted for their handset. They would never tell you this, because, as I said, they just don’t know.

Compressing banner ads and re-sizing images to give an out-of-context and screwed up version of the website the user is trying to view is SUCH a poor experience it’s not even worth talking about, especially when others have already hit the nail on the head so perfectly — read more about the Vodafone contoversy in-depth here.

It’s an old story back from September but it is still relevant as shown when it came up at the recent Future of Mobile event.

To quote from Mobile Internet site creators, Wapple who, at the event, commented:

“Vodafone (and other operators) are taking a best guess at websites and dumbing them down to the lowest common denominator to fit mobile screens. They do not understand that mobile users want to interact with information in entirely different ways than they would for web.”

YES. YES. YES. The mobile internet user is, by definition, a completely different mental model to that of an internet user. The same applies to TV and Mobile TV, (which I have equally strong opinions on).

Moving on…

I am a huge evangelist of the ‘m. solution’, that is: Educating end users to drop the ‘www’ and simply insert an ‘m’ into your phone’s browser will take you to the mobile version of the site you are looking for.

Facebook has done a shed load of ground work in this area by introducing m.facebook.com to the masses. To my mind, the ‘m.’ is slowly becoming the de facto mobile website standard.

Yes there are the guys from dotmobi (*wave*) who are doing a great job (in partnership with the W3C) in introducing Best Practices for Mobile Websites and anyone developing a mobile site right now would be foolish to not look at how these guys can help – but tell me this:
On a mobile phone, what is easier to type, remember and use?
http://m.yahoo.com or http://www.yahoo.mobi?

Now, putting all that aside and going back to my opening paragraph…

Just what is the correct naming convention for what this thing is that we are accessing through our mobile browsers?

Does it depend on what we’re accessing?

‘WAP’, for me, is a meaningless acronym which brings back memories of green and black screens on phones like the Nokia 7110. But still the word is bandied about within boardrooms as if it’s still cutting edge technology.

‘We need a WAP site!’
– ‘No. We don’t. We need a Mobile Website.’

‘WAP’, for me, is defined by the precursor wap. i.e.: wap.yahoo.com – there’s a WAP site for you. Two colours, basic text with a couple of links and that’s about it. WAP, for me, is the mobile equivalent of ‘Web 1.0’.

Internet made Mobile? See Vodafone’s poor attempts.

Failing that; for a meaningful attempt at taking internet content and making it mobile, try Mippin.

The Mobile Web? That’s where it’s at. Stick an ‘m’ in instead of the WAP or the W3 and see what you get.

If WAP is Web 1.0, then the Mobile Web is, to me, Web 2.0.

What say you?

MIR: Taking a firm hand with firmware

– – – –

Two weeks ago, after writing my review/rant about the N81 8GB, Stefan Constantinescu (of IntoMobile fame) left a comment:

‘With the new N95 firmware out that breathes new life into the device I too can’t understand why anyone would want the N81.’

Fantastic point Stefan, the new N95 firmware does INDEED breathe new life into the N95 and anyone that comes anywhere near me with their pre-V20 firmware will get it upgraded in a flash.

What a great move by Nokia. That is, of course, if Nokia actually bothered to TELL ANYONE ABOUT IT!

Yeah yeah yeah, so Nokia told a few bloggers and released a techie press release (maybe). But fundamentally – WHO is actually going to benefit?

Ok – so as an old friend used to say – let’s do a quick fag-packet analysis:

I reckon, best guess, maybe 5% (and that’s being EXTREMELY generous) of all N95 owners are aware that they can update the firmware (or ‘software’ as a normob may refer to it as) on their handset maybe?

Of that 5%, how many actually are going to know/check that there is a new firmware available.

You could probably argue yourself up to quite a high figure, what with the ‘firmware aware’ having a higher propensity to be techies/mobile geeks. But still.

Of THAT percentage, how many N95ers are going to risk upgrading their firmware, having had their fingers burnt in the past trying to upgrade a previous handset?

Or, what about those of us who have no intention of going anywhere near the Nokia Software Updater (NSU) after having heard such horror stories about bricked handsets and nudged USB cables?

Right – ok – how many hands are left up? Not many.

And even you brave few who are left standing still aren’t guaranteed a new piece of firmware because guess what?! Computer says no.

(Or in this case: Your Operator/Carrier – see some of the comments from last week’s article as a case in point).

Moving on from this – let’s take a look at the iPhone model.

The sync cradle becomes (as I heard recently) the centre of gravity for the user. They charge it, sync it and, above all, update it from one place.

The user is told, at point of sale, plug this into your PC/Mac and register online. That is the first thing the user does and immediately the user-behaviour has changed. Or has it?

How many iPhone users out there own (or have owned) an iPod? A fair few? Ok so how many of those users already associate having an Apple product that must be plugged/synced up to their Mac to optimise usage? Again – I’d bet a reasonable amount.

Apple have been very clever in a) Tapping into that pre-defined user behaviour and b) Educating the new user on how to get the most from their iPhone.

Nokia, to me at least, have a lot of catching up to do in this department. My N95 is a phone that happens to play music. The iPhone is sold as an iPod that happens to make calls.

This one simple, strategic change has resulted in a paradigm shift in how the end user benefits from updates back at base.

To put it simply: Push instead of pull.

When updating the firmware on a handset, Apple have it nailed.

Nokia we love you but, to reach the masses, you have a lot of catching up to do.

MIR: Whatley on Wednesday: Vodafone’s MusicStation

I woke up on Monday morning with the intention of writing this week’s Whatley on Wednesday piece about firmware and firmware upgrades.
Recently a fellow Mobile Geek of London was exclaiming to me that “Nokia Rule for doing this [latest release of their firmware – V20]”

I disagreed. The idea is great, but the application and execution leaves a lot to be desired.

We argued… and then decided it didn’t matter and discussed something else, (like whose round it was next). I left the pub with every intention to write this argument up (or at least my side of it) and post it right here for your reading (dis)pleasure. Delete where applicable.

That was until, just as I was leaving the house, I heard the latest single from UK indie group Scouting for Girls, ‘Elvis ain’t dead’. And, as with every song that you hear just before you leave the house in the morning, it became stuck in my head.

By the time I made it to the train station I had hummed the bloody thing to death and had decided that I needed this track NOW.

So I thought I’d make the most of NOW and jump onto Vodafone’s new Music Station service.

Awesome, not only will I get the track I want but I’ll also make notes throughout and then I can write it up as a review the service for SMS Text News. Score!

This – rather oddly – all happened before Monday’s Unlimited Drinks and also before yesterdays Omnifone stories that Ewan ran… Hmm… Telepathy’s working then.
But alas, Vodafone were not going to make it easy for me.

I arrived at the Vodafone Live! music page and I’m asked to download and install the Music Station Application (I had no idea it was an app?!).

Not a problem, I thought, I’ve done this before. I wonder how good their user education/hand holding is. To their merit, it’s not too bad at all. I think any average normob could find their way through this process. Well. Right up until they hit this point:

Rubbish. I tried again: Same problem.

This is becoming annoying. I turn the phone off, turn it back on again, try again and…. STILL the same problem!

I hit 191 on my phone and call customer service. After a little explaining I eventually get passed through to the technical dept…

‘Hello Mr Whatley, what error do you have?’

‘It says here: “Certificate error, contact the application vendor”.’

‘Is there an error code?’

‘No, it’s a certificate error… No number. I have a screenshot that I can email over if that helps?’

‘Er…(small amount of confusion at this point on my keenness to help maybe?) No sorry. We’re not actually allowed to give out our email addresses.’

‘Okaaaaaaaay…’

‘Can I call you back on a different line?’

So I say yes, and they do. And lo and behold I’m requested to repeat the process (obviously my word isn’t good enough) and guess what? Same error.

THEN I was asked to do something, and I must state that VF UK have NEVER EVER asked me to check this in the history of being a VF customer, they asked me to check my firmware!

To the layman – this is the software version that your phone is running. Same thing on every Nokia, got an N95? Try it now. *#0000# – anything below V20 means you really should think about upgrading.
(Benefits here.)

Anyway – ‘Sam’ (I think that was her name) informs me that my current firmware, (V20, obviously) is the problem as “the Music Station is only compatible with Vodafone branded firmware versions 10b and 10c”.

Let’s just pause and take that it in for a moment.

That’s right. Vodafone’s flagship ‘Hero’ service, The MUSIC STATION, the big one they’re pushing this Christmas does not work with the latest Nokia N95 firmware.

‘Sorry Mr Whatley, you’re going to have to go back to version 10.’

‘That is not going to happen.’

Thinking on this now, a few hours after the event, when I originally got the handset from Vodafone it was running V11. I didn’t even know VF had V10. On top of that – I didn’t know you could go backwards with firmware either! That’s a new one on me.

VFUK suck for not making sure their leading application is compatible with the latest Nokia firmware.

So I’m sorry folks – no MusicStation review from me today. I do have a MusicStation handset but alas the generic Nokia firmware that I’m running is not compatible with the service.

Doh.

EDIT: I met Terence Eden of Vodafone at the Unlimited Drinks on Monday. He explained to me that the Vodafone MusicStation is only compatible with Vodafone’s own firmware. He also assured me that the MusicStation does work above V10 as he has seen it working on (Voda’s own variants of) V11 and V12.

Terence’s defence was that I should not have changed my firmware from VF’s to Nokia’s Generic.

Thinking on this now – that’s not a bad argument – anyone who knows me knows how much I like to hack… ahem… augment my phones so I can the optimum functionality out of them.
Well. It’s not a bad argument when you consider someone who might not buy their handset directly from Vodafone. Whose firmware is already generic upon purchase, what about them?

Next week: That rant on firmware and firmware upgrades, (the one I wanted to write this week).

Whatley Wednesday – Nokia’s Latest “Music” Phone

Nokia’s Latest ‘Music Phone’ The N81 8GB.

First off can I state, for the record, that I tried.
I tried and I tried and I tried.
I really did!

Whenever I get a new handset I am aware there’s that ‘bedding in’ period of a couple of days where you have to get used to the nuances in the UI and re-learn the layout of the buttons etc… (you can stop grinning now you there at the back with the iPhone) …so please believe me when I say I was chuffed to bits when I got an email from those lovely people (and friends of SMSText News) over at Nokia WOMWorld asking me if I’d like to Trial their latest music device – the Nokia N81 8GB.

My response? YES PLEASE!
Always happy to try out the latest handsets – they’ve sent me a couple before and irrespective of whether I liked the phone or not – it’s always been nice just having a play, y’know?

So, before I rant, here’s the good stuff:

The slider mechanism is the nicest to date. Every hand I’ve put it in has resulted in a ‘Ooooo… that’s nice’.
Taking photos is now easier. Simply hold down the ‘Shoot’ button to boot the cam and you’re away, (a’la the newer N95 models).
And that… is… Oop no – sorry – it’s got a really nice screen too. Yeah, that too.
Ok – that’s it.

Now for the bad stuff:

A complete lack of joined up thinking through the entire design of the handset.
Yes it’s a phone. Yes it does all the things a phone should do but it’s the little things that get me.

For instance:

The ‘c’ button is right next to the ‘play/pause’ music button. AARGH! Sorry. I say ‘right next to’ I mean ‘may as well be the same button’.
That’s right – a negative button right next to a positive button. By pushing the button that I want to stop doing something I accidentally push the button that starts doing something.
In this instance Kate Nash starts blaring out at me whenever I try and correct a misspelt SMS!

That ONE thing frustrated me SO much that within a week I went back to my N95. For the record you have NO IDEA how hard it was to not go back after day one. “No” I told myself “You must TRY and use it properly” –
(so good luck to Ewan on his ‘Normob Challenge’, I know I couldn’t do it)

There are a couple of other things that annoyed me – the overall ‘feel’ of the handset is a bit too plastic-like for my tastes. It’s like one of those dummy models you might find on the shelf of your local P4U.
The keylock system has changed. The N81 now features a ‘flick’ switch on the top that locks and unlocks with a quick flick. Which is fine up until it gets stuck in the flicked position where upon the phone continuously locks and unlocks until you un-jam the button.

*sigh*

Don’t get me wrong – Operators/Nokia will probably sell a bunch of them this Christmas as the cheaper alternative to the iPhone. What with it having an 8GB internal memory and being about Â£200 cheaper on an a similar contract. Yeah, why not?
It’s EVEN got the ipod-esque ‘Navi-Wheel’ – but even that has managed to become an annoyance…

(WHY have something as a USP on a handset and not even have it switched on out of the box?! YES. That’s right. You have to go in to your phone’s settings and manually switch the Navi-Wheel to ‘ON’ to actually get it to work)

The whole phone feels completely rushed and not thought through at all.
When shopping for a new phone this Christmas by all means have a look at the N81 and have a play too.. but I personally would not recommend it.

You (and Nokia) can do a whole lot better.

Whatley becomes a Flashmobbing gun slinger

The Date: 17/11/07
The Time: 14:00
The Place: Tate Modern
The Event: Flash Mob Finger Gun Shoot Out! (See facebook event)

Your friendly neighbourhood Whatley went undercover at the weekend and took part in his FIRST EVER (shocking – I know) Flash Mob event.

This is how it panned out…

12:00 – Alarm goes off, and I’m ill.
12:05 – Twitter comes in from my mate Ben: “Anyone who doesn’t go today is a loser”
12:10 – Practice gun poses in the mirror
12:11 – I realise I’m 27yrs old and if I’ve made it this far and I still need to practice my gun poses in the mirror then there’s clearly something wrong with me
13:10 – Packing my best Matrix poses I head off into London
13:55 – After fighting weekend trains and tubes I finally sprint into the main turbine room of the Tate Modern just in time for… Nothing.

Nothing at all.

No inconspicuous looking gunfighters, no shifty looking sharpshooters, no nothing.

Just a bunch of people milling around a giant crack in the floor (this apparent encroachment on every day health and safety standards is ‘art’ would you believe?).

I look around some more, I spy my friend Jay, he too is looking around for more ‘Finger Gunners’.
And still we find nothing.

13:59 – Suddenly become aware of a lot of people wearing sunglasses… Jay reminds me that this was part of ‘the uniform’. This I was unaware of.. Fortunately I just so happen to ALWAYS carry my SunnyGs so we don our specs… and we wait.

14:05 – By now the tension is unbearable. There quite frankly a LOT of people hovering around all wearing shades and giving sideways glances in all directions (but mainly… sideways).

We ALL know we’re here to shoot each other.. We ALL know why we’re ALL wearing sunglasses.. and yet we ALL know we have to wait for ‘The Signal’.

14:08 – The Signal!
Two girls. Both dressed in black, wearing red ties, appear in our midst. Spreading out we watch… AND THEN THEY DRAW!

Suddenly what looked like just a bunch of hollywood stars wondering around the Tate turns into an audition for the next John Woo film… Finger Guns are drawn… Stares are met… Breaths are held… until…

BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG!!!

And in seconds it’s all over… Too soon..
We came, we shot, we died:

Then we.. er.. kinda got up.. and went on our merry way!

Cue much bemusement from tourists, museum goers and security guards alike.

Hehehe…

And the Whatley Verdict? Awesome. Bring on the next one.

Any SMSTextNews Readers Flashmobbed before? Would love to hear your story…

PS – In case you are interested – the next planned event is here – bring ammo – I’ll see you there.

MIR: Future of Mobile 2007

Here’s the Whatleydude’s overview of the Future of Mobile conference held yesterday in London.

Morning. Whatley here reporting live, or semi live, after the event. I was fortunate enough to attend Carsonified’s ‘Future of Mobile‘ – which was held at the simply huge BFI IMAX Cinema at Waterloo yesterday.

During the event I kept my notes on Jaiku – this was awesome because not only was I able to quickly capture soundbites and thoughts on the fly but my colleagues, peers and Jaiku buddies were also able to comment (the whole thread can be found here).

I’ve been trying to regurgitate most of the content into some kind of context to make it easier to consume.. but the more I try the more I struggle! So.. I’m just gonna crack on and do my best.

Right then – the schedule (along with more detail re: the speakers) for the day can be found here. And I believe that the slides from the days presentations can be found not far from there too.

Moving on.

First Speaker: Tony Fish – Cool.
I thought of Ewan especially when I heard him say something along the lines of ‘The assumption of what is available on the web is what is wanted on the mobile web.. ..is utter bollocks – Brilliant. Here’s a slide from Tony’s presentation—- >

See?! MASSIVE SLIDES!

The next thing he said that rang true with me is something I truly believe in – which is ‘The mobile web is NOT an extension of the Internet’ More on this later.

There was a kind of Mobile Web ‘Content Sandwich’ that made up the first part of the day.

So first, the meat of the sandwich: This came in the form of Luca Passani of Admob and Andrea Trasatti of dotMobi talking about how the Mobile Web should be and how they think it should be done’ from an industry perspective.

And then – either side of these guys – (the sandwich bread – as it were) – Tony Fish and the Content Panel (Prashant of Mippin standing out in particular) talking about how the Mobile Web IS and how it’s being used from a USER perspective. This sandwich method demonstrated – to me at least – how the there are so many different ways of trying to get to the same destination.

Luca Passani of Admob had his rant at Vodafone – Big Wow. NEXT!

Dan Appelquist of Vodafone told us about ‘one web’ (something which I’m still not convinced about – my opinion being that the mobile web and the moving interweb are two completely different creatures and should be treated thusly).

Andreas Trasatti of dotMobi discussed about ‘Best Practices’. I’ve had various conversations about dotMobi and have made no secret of my feelings about (what I see as) the futility of this domain but -Â and this is a HUGE but – after having seen this presentation I understand now that it isn’t JUST about having a .mobi address. (I’m a firm believer in the m. solution) It’s more about putting in rules and regulations to help make the mobile web a friendlier place for the user in the long term.

As Dan Appelquist explained to me recently, “It’s not the URL destination, it’s what it looks like when you get there.”

Charles McCathieNevile of Opera talked about web browsing and without a doubt, wins the Best Comment of the Day prize with his one liner about widgets “Yeah, because I need another clock, right?”

Brian Fling of Blue Flavour – ‘The iPhone is the first Mobile 2.0 device’. Discuss!

Dave Burke of Google showed us some Android stuff – but I’m not a developer so, alas it made limited sense to me!

One thing that really stood out for me all day was that the conference was very focused on what was happening in mobile today. Whilst that’s useful to many, I, and I think a large majority of the delegates attended to find out more about the future. We were, I think, hoping for some insightful future-gazing viewpoints that didn’t quite materialise.

Tony Fish laid it out in his parting thoughts when he commented:

“Don’t forget voice when thinking about mobile”.

A valid reminder when 99.9% of all mobile users use their phones primarily for VOICE. So let’s take Voice and see what we can do with itÂ *cough* – SpinVox is Awesome – *cough*

Unfortunately the conference was simply far too much about the Mobile Web. In fact, a recurring theme of conversation throughout the ‘networking breaks’ during the day was the fact that the event should’ve been more accurately labelled ‘An Introduction to the mobile web‘ not ‘The Future of Mobile‘.

This takes nothing away from the efforts of the FOM speakers and/or organisers.. it’s just a comment on something that promised so much but didn’t actually deliver. But hey.. the post-conference party was good!

Please leave any questions in the comments field below and I’ll reply accordingly’

Cheers!