Tag: mobile

Sucks to be a PDA

Post ImageAccording to the most recent figures from IDC, worldwide shipments of PDAs fell 43.5% from 2006 to 2007. That’s the 15th consecutive quarter of decreasing sales for the industry, according to ars technica. It’s important to note that these figures refer to PDAs, and not to smartphones (which you could argue do roughly the same thing). Ars puts the data into perspective:

In the third quarter, IDC says that 728,000 PDA shipments were made globally. To put this in perspective, consider that Apple sold one million iPhones in only half a quarter, and RIM saw sales of more than three million BlackBerrys for the quarter ended September 1.

It seems as though I was only half right when I wrote this post. Turns out smartphones are more popular than ever, but mobile devices like the Pocket PC are indeed disappearing (save for a few niche markets).

I still think that pocket computing in its current form doesn’t have much of a future. I’m more convinced than ever (thanks to virtualization and other advances) that carrying your entire computer around in your pocket on a memory stick is going to become feasible and desirable. No need for a "pocket" version of everything or synchronization with a mobile device when that arrives.

Of course, it does make sense for some mobile devices to exist. Portable media players come to mind, as do the cell phone + calendar combination devices. I’d also like to see a "OneNote" device…something to replace the pen and paper for quick note taking.

Read: ars technica

I'm not usually an Apple fanboy but…

Yes, today Apple launched the iPod Touch. They also dropped the price of the iPhone by $200, which is certainly one way to thank early adopters. The official iPod Touch site is here, Engadget’s coverage is here, and there’s plenty more discussion here.

Multi-touch interface, 3.5-inch widescreen display, Wi-Fi web browsing with Safari, and more. Drool…

In January I said that “the launch of the iPhone bodes well for podcasting.” Today I was proven correct. Without the iPhone, there would be no touch iPod with Wi-Fi, and make no mistake about it, the new iPod Touch is pretty much the ultimate podcasting device.

Read: Engadget

Did you have problems with Telus Mobility last night?

I just got off the phone with a client service representative at Telus Mobility. The good news is that their support service is still fast and effective, as I mentioned back in May. The bad news is that the Telus network doesn’t seem incredibly stable.

Around 9 PM last night, my phone stopped working. I couldn’t make or receive any calls, nor could I send or receive text messages. Every attempt was greeted with an annoying “beep beep beep” and text messages just disappeared into the unknown. I was kind of lost without my phone, and I mentioned to Megan that I should almost buy a backup pay-as-you-go phone on another network for precisely this type of thing. She just laughed!

Calls started working again around midnight, but text messaging still was not working this morning. Hence the call to Telus. The service representative asked a bunch of questions, and by the way I was answering, I think she got the hint and asked if this had happened before. I said yes, unfortunately, and asked her to send the clearing message. She did, and also said she was going to “do a reset” which means I have to turn my phone off for twenty minutes. Stange, I know. Hopefully it works.

I wasn’t the only one with problems it seems:

I’d like to know what happened, and if it was limited to just Edmonton and area or whether it was more widespread. Too bad they suck at communicating that sort of thing. Telus needs a blog!

iPhone

Post ImageI am not crazy about Apple’s iPhone. Obviously it doesn’t work in Canada yet anyway, but it will, eventually. I think gadgets generally fall into two categories the day they launch: there are gadgets you “must have” right away, and there are gadgets where it’s wise to take a “wait and see” approach.

The difficult thing is that you can’t predict which of the two categories a particular gadget will fall into. I figured the Xbox 360 was in the first category, so I lined up and bought one the day it was released. That turned out to be a good decision (minus the lack of HDMI output). When the Wii came out, I figured it was in the second category. Turns out I probably could have bought that one right away! I think the iPhone falls into the second category, but I guess we’ll find out over the next few weeks.

Today is the first day where the lineups to buy the iPhone will be insane, though some individuals got started a couple days ago. The rules are basically that you can only buy two per person, and it’s first come, first serve.

It’s already hard to ignore iPhone-related news, and it’s not going to get any easier, at least for the next few days. That said, I’d be disappointed to look back in five years and not find a post about the iPhone. Most of the things I have read so far are kind of the same, but I did like Paul Colligan’s list of reasons for not lining up, especially his last point:

Ratatouille Opens On Friday Too! Shorter line, better snacks, my kids can come and Steve Jobs still makes money off of me.

Well said 🙂

If you are especially stoked about the iPhone, don’t miss Engadget’s coverage.

Telus Mobility Impresses

Post ImageAs you may know, my mobile phone provider is Telus Mobility. I have used them for years and for the most part, I’ve been content. Not excited, not angry, just content. I did write about some text message troubles I had back in January though, and noted:

…there was absolutely no wait time to talk to someone (minus the stupid speech recognition menu which took a couple minutes). This is a BIG improvement for Telus…normally you have to wait forever!

On Friday, I had another somewhat similar experience. My text messaging was not working as expected, so I called support. Right away I talked to a friendly lady who told me they were experiencing troubles in Alberta and B.C. with text message delivery. She connected me to network services anyway, to see if my problem was something more.

After about 15 minutes of waiting to talk to someone, I gave up. I hoped the problem was simply what the first lady had told me – temporary delays. Turns out she was right – my messages started working again late on Friday, and I started receiving a bunch of messages yesterday and today that were not delivered over the weekend.

As I walked in the door tonight around 7 PM though, it got even better! My cell rang and when I answered I was greeted by a recorded message from Telus Mobility. Turns out they were very sorry for the delay I had experienced Friday, and to apologize, they credited $5 to my account.

That’s the kind of thing that will make me a happy customer instead of a content customer. They went the extra mile. Well done Telus Mobility!

We need someone to complain to!

Post ImageTwitter is in the news again (at least in the blogosphere). Yesterday Jason Calacanis posted that he’d be willing to pay for a premium account on Twitter. Dave Winer then chimed in and said that it could be accomplished without Twitter’s help at all. And then Boris Mann posted a bit of a rant saying that Twitter is Jabber. Boris says:

My only explanation for the Twitter craze is that North Americans are still enamored of anything that can do the tiniest bit of mobile integration.

No Boris, there’s a very simple reason that Twitter is all the rage right now and Jabber is not (and never has been except among geeks) – we need someone to complain to. XMPP is great, but when something goes wrong, what do you do? Who do you turn to? At least when Twitter breaks I know who to contact.

It’s a fundamental problem with almost all open source projects – accountability is lost. This is especially true when you want to use the project for something serious, like Jason does. That’s why companies like Red Hat, IBM and Bryght are the ones we turn to for integrating open source technology. If something goes awry, I know there’s someone out there who will take my money to get it fixed.

Twitter doesn’t have that many users. It doesn’t have really impressive technology, as Boris has pointed out. Twitter is where it is today because it was created by and continues to be run by a corporate entity.

Read: Boris Mann

Canadian Mobile Data Access Sucks

Post ImageI readily admit I am simply echoing the chamber with this story, but it needs to be seen by as many people as possible. Mobile data service in Canada is horribly expensive. As Boris said, “this pricing structure is stifling mobile innovation in Canada.”

Here’s a graph that Thomas Purves made (click for the photo page):

Thomas explains:

The motto of the CRTC, Canada’s telcom regulator is “Communications in the Public Interest”. Right. If you live in Canada, write to your MP. The CRTC, as an institution, needs to be taken out and shot.

I would like to say that Canada is a 3rd world country when it comes to Mobile ICT, except you can clearly see from this chart that even *Rwanda* has orders of magnitude better Mobile Data service than Canada.

This is just sad. Certainly the CRTC is at fault, but the companies themselves deserve some of the blame as well. Write to your MP, but also write to your service provider.

Read: Thomas Purves

Ringtones are a complete rip-off

Post ImageI’ve never purchased a ringtone for my cell phone, and I don’t ever intend to – they are just too damn expensive. How expensive? On Telus, ringtones cost $3.50 CDN each. With Bell, they range from $2.50 to $4.00 CDN each. And on Rogers, comparable ringtones start at $3.00 CDN each, excluding a 75 cent download fee.

So after a little math we get an average cost of $3.50 CDN for a single ringtone. What else could you buy for $3.50?

  • My favorite – two items from the McDonald’s Value Picks Menu. And for 49 cents more, you could get one of the Value Meals.
  • You could purchase three complete songs from iTunes.
  • Two 710 ml bottles of Gatorade at Wal-Mart.
  • Almost two Grande coffees at Starbucks, or two Extra Large coffees at McDonald’s.
  • You could store 20 GB of data at Amazon S3 for a month. Or 1 GB for 20 months. Or you could transfer up to 15 GB in a month.
  • Any one of the 63,275 items available on eBay in just the DVD, HD-DVD & Blu-ray category that are less than $3.50.
  • A breakfast sandwich from Tim Horton’s.
  • And of course, three items from pretty much any dollar store!

Can you think of a worse deal? Cupcakes are expensive. Perhaps gas – you could only get 4.3 liters in Edmonton today for $3.50 CDN. Transportation in general sucks actually. One trip on ETS costs $2.50 CDN.

The high price of ringtones is just sick. Why pay Bell $4.00 for a ringtone when you could pay them $5.99 and get an entire movie streamed to your phone? It’s absurd.

Please don’t buy ringtones – it only encourages the wireless carriers to charge such ridiculous prices.

Txt Msg Troubles on Telus

Post ImageI guess you could say I’m a bit of a text messaging addict. It’s a very useful technology, and I try to make the most of it. So when something went wrong on Saturday that prevented me from receiving messages, I almost went crazy! In the morning, Dickson had sent me a message. Throughout the day I continued to get the same message, over and over, until I stopped receiving messages altogether around 6 PM.

I called Telus today to get it fixed, and after a quick phone call, everything was back to normal (I then received 23 text messages and 3 voice mails all at once). The lady that helped me was very friendly, and certainly seemed to know what she was doing. I asked her what went wrong, and this is what she said:

Sometimes if you are sent two messages at the same time, it causes problems with the queue. I was able to send two test messages to your phone that cleared up the jam.

Now I can only assume that she was trying to answer my question in layman’s terms, but still, doesn’t that sound like an odd reason? I mean what is the point of having a queue in the first place? The queue is there so that messages can be sent reliably, even if they are sent at the same time!

I’m really kind of curious about how the system works now. I also wonder if Telus is using an in-house system or a solution provided by a third party. Either way, it seems some improvements could be made!

Also: I should note that there was absolutely no wait time to talk to someone (minus the stupid speech recognition menu which took a couple minutes). This is a BIG improvement for Telus…normally you have to wait forever!

Podcasting will win big thanks to the iPhone

Post ImageThe iPhone has already had a big impact on the technology industry, what with the stock prices of both RIM and Palm falling sharply today, and it will continue to have an impact over the next couple years. Certainly when it launches this summer, we’ll find out if all the hype is justified. And there will most certainly be copycat designs.

In any case, I think the launch of the iPhone bodes well for podcasting.

Apple describes the iPhone as “a breakthrough Internet communications device” thanks to its support for Wi-Fi and EDGE. We know that it runs OS X under the hood, and that it supports Widgets. It isn’t entirely clear just yet if it’ll be possible to get a podcatcher running on the iPhone, at least from everything I have read, but the idea certainly seems plausible.

Apple’s iPhone will let you walk around with Wi-Fi Internet access in your pocket. Even if it can’t podcatch all by itself, other device manufacturers and future editions of the iPhone most certainly will. The iPhone will open up the “pocket Wi-Fi device floodgates”, so to speak.

Heck, maybe it will even prompt Microsoft to open up the Zune’s Wi-Fi capabilities.

It might not be apparent for quite a while, but I am confident that the iPhone will have nothing but a positive impact on podcasting.