The latest happenings in Mobile-land

Today sees the start of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. At the moment it doesn’t generate many column inches or airtime - certainly not anywhere near the Consumer Electronics Show - but the stuff at this event may well shape our future lives more than we realise.

WAP technology was always an over-hyped disappointment. People were so used to the easy-to-use interfaces of their computer and fast connection speeds that WAP was just too frustrating to use. And even now mobile internet leaves a lot to be desired. But that’s all set to change in the not-too-distant future as the Symbian operating system loses it’s stranglehold on the market. Being open-source, Google’s Android operating system will be nimble and user-focused, forcing the competition to try harder. And it will be service and application based, opening up amazing opportunities to connect with customers in a more timely way. He’s what Google’s Rich Miner has to say to the BBC about it:

However, the one company that is changing user expectations of mobile more than any other probably won’t be there. Apple’s iPhone has shown people that their user experience can be slick and intuitive. And that’s bound to rub off on the rest of the handset manufacturers. A few of them have so far missed the point and tried to copy the look of the iPhone - but the ones who copy Apple’s attitude to user experience are the ones who will do well. I fear, however, that they’ll simply do bad clones of the interface in the same way as a load of MP3 players tried to copy the iPod.

These are exciting times for mobile. I for one think that it’s a huge opportunity for businesses. But to succeed in this market, companies need to focus on usefulness rather than gimmicks. My girlfriend’s Unchained business is going to be mobile enabled in the next few days. We see it as the best way to get the information we offer into the customers’ hands exactly when they need it. We’re so sure that it’s the right way to go that we made sure it was included in the first version of the site.

We’re not the only ones. There is going to be an explosion of mobile applications and services over the next year or so. And I’m glad to be a part of it. I’ll be keeping my eye on the show as the week goes on.

Can a corporate viral ever compete with this?

I know I’ve got all filmy on your ass today. It’s because I’ve only just got film embedding sorted out on this blog!

I saw this at the weekend and couldn’t help laughing out loud. It’s just beautiful. It’s simply a moment of real life that few viral videos could ever compete with. This is what we need to measure ourselves against - not what other agencies are doing.

kerrrang chugga chugga wheeeeeeee

I just need to share with you what Poke got me for Christmas. It’s the ideal gadget for someone who is both a musician AND a geek - Guitar Rig.

It’s just amazing! You plug the foot pedal into a USB  port on your Mac and it’s like you’ve got every amp, speaker cabinet, microphone and effects pedal ever invented. I love it. I’ve spent many happy times with my Tele over the festive season pretending to be Jimi Hendrix, Keith Richards and Chuck Berry. Without the drugs, of course. Or the groupies. Oh well. Can’t have everything, I suppose.

It’s not often I go ‘wow!’

I found the ZYB site while strolling through del.icio.us the other day and I’ve just tried it. I’m amazed.

It lets you back up your contacts and calendar to a website and then encourages you to connect with your contacts in a community-style way. I’m ignoring the last bit because I think I’ve reached my capacity on communities and struggle to keep on top of the ones I’ve already signed up to. However, it’s the first bit that amazed me.

The site makes it really easy to find your exact model of phone, then it sends an application to your handset by text message. The phone automatically installs it (after the usual arse-covering ‘are you sure you want to do this?’ message) and when you run it, you see your data being uploaded onto the website and you can view it all within seconds.

My ghast was utterly flabbered. I love it when stuff just works. That’s the future, baby!

See ZYB for yourself.

Dictionary of Specific Generalities goes mobile

That’s right folks - this site is now available on your mobile phone. Simply point your phone’s browser to winksite.com/davebirss/blog or, if you’re all teched up, take a picture of the QR code below. Now you can never escape me [maniacal laugh goes here].

You’re not still using Internet Explorer, are you?

I discovered this article about lots of alternative web browsers (thanks to IA guru, Dean Wilson). And I’ve now downloaded a couple of them to my girlfriend’s Mac to see what they’re like (I’m kind of ‘between Macs’ so to speak!).

The first of these browsers is Flock.

It’s like a really slick browser with community stuff built in. It seems that once you sign into your delicious, flickr, youtube or facebook accounts your friends appear in a sidebar. You can then drag and drop web content on their names to share stuff with them. I’ve not tried it out properly yet. I plan to put it through its paces when I get my new Mac.

It’s also fully RSS-ed up. I didn’t really get into the whole RSS reader thing - I was too enthusiastic in subscribing to everything that interested me and then got disheartened when my unread articles topped the 1000 mark - but this seems like a nicer way of doing it.

The other browser I liked was Shiira.

It’s been programmed in Cocoa - which means that it’s made specifically for the Mac and runs about as fast as Safari. One of the features lets you do private surfing that doesn’t store cookies or history - which makes it ideal for people who surf for porn on a shared computer.

It also has a page dock so that you can see a thumbnail of your tabs. And you can view your web pages in full screen mode. Which makes for a rather yummy browsing experience on Flash sites.

Firefox has been my default browser for a couple of years now. But it looks like I’m going to be switching soon. As soon as I get my new laptop, that is.

Vector Magic lives up to its name

One of my colleagues passed around a link for a site called Vector Magic. It allows you to upload a graphic image and it automatically converts it to a vector file. I was a bit skeptical of how good it would be, but on the whole, I’m pretty impressed. I tried it first with a screengrab of a vector image and it performed really well. Then I decided to try it with a photograph of me (taken by my good friend and design god Dan Donovan). These are the results:

Pretty good. I had to offset the paths by half a pixel to fill in the tiny white lines around the blocks of colour - but I’m still impressed. This is a close up:

I love it when the internet offers you something useful like this. It’s impressed me enough to bookmark it, digg it, blog about it and send the link on to some of my friends. If only companies offered their customers this much value online.

Another piece of wonderful stuff from Jonathan Harris

I’ve loved everything I’ve seen from Jonathan Harris. So I was delighted to find another nugget of goodness from him today. It’s called ‘Universe’. It’s based on constellations in the night sky - but instead of showing join-the-dots images of ancient Greek myths, it does the same with today’s news. It’s a fantastic way of navigating big news stories and seeing how they relate. Switch off all the lights and gaze in wonder here: