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The DO's and DON'Ts of mobile solutions
We've been doing a number of presentations over the last few months under the heading above. I thought it might be a good regular theme to report on the top DO's and DON'ts that we come across as we build mobile and wireless solutions. So here's one to kick us off.
The "soft stuff" will kill ya.
It's common when thinking about designing a new mobility solution to focus on the technology - what techies typically percieve as being both the "cool" stuff, and the hard stuff: GPRS, data rates, XML-RPC, device operating systems, synchronisation strategies, on-device security. It's often easy to forget that on any given project, it's probably the "soft" stuff will cause the most trouble.
Continue reading "The DO's and DON'Ts of mobile solutions"Cool OSA/Parlay Applications
We're keeping a look out for new and innovative OSA/Parlay applications. If OSA/Parlay is new to you, check out the Parlay website or our White Paper.
Anyway, Irish-based Alatto has a new offering that looks interesting - customised audio ring back tones. Basically, it lets the user choose some music that they'll hear when waiting for someone they're calling to answer. Sounds simple? Eh, yes, so's SMS. And so was the introduction of this service in Korea, where apparently it grabbed $100M in revenue for SK Telecom!
For a cool and groovy demo, see www.alatto.com/ringbacktones.htm.
Java/Bluetooth Activity
Rococo runs the Java/Bluetooth website www.jabwt.com, and administrates the associated mailing list. I've just been looking at the traffic on the mailing list, and it's quite interesting as a barometer of general interest in this niche technology, and in the JSR82 Java/Bluetooth APIs.
For the early part of 2003, the traffic was pretty low on the site, but once new hardware, and specifically, phones, were announced that supported the JSR82 APIs, traffic began to steadily increase. It's now running at about 150+ postings per month, up from roughly 15-30 per month a year ago.
A lot of the postings are technical/code queries. A FAQ is desperately needed, which we're hoping to get started any day now.
Mobile Guide to Terrorism
A rather unusual offering in the mobile arena caught my eye last week: a mobile guide to terrorism!
From Stephenson Strategies, this PDA-based guide provides various databases of terrorism-related information, including:
- Survival Plans (ready made plans under differents heads to use in case of an attack)
- Survival Response (including key contact infromation, decision trees)
- Travel guides (one international, and one US)
The authors have taken the official US Government publications and condensed them for handy PDA-usage.
The international travel guide includes such gems as "How not to dress like an American". As a resident of Dublin, this caught my eye - you always seem to be able to pick out an American tourist on the street. I had never considered that this could be security consideration, but we live in strange times.