Archive - 2010
September 18th
Recovering a Bricked Nokia #N900
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 09/18/2010 - 10:51Well, I finally did it. Last night, I bricked my Nokia N900. Bricking a mobile device is making some change or update that causes the device to no longer start up properly. Normally mobile device users don't have to worry about bricking their devices. Most phone manufacturers and mobile carriers don't want people to brick the phone, so they lock it down and keep tight control over what can be installed for apps.
One of the reasons I like the N900 is that it allows you to experiment and install all kinds of apps, including those still in development or testing. It allows you to even change the operating system relatively easily. I bought mine nine months ago. This was when it first became commercially available so there were various early glitches. I have installed and tested all kinds of applications, including testing various operating systems. It is a surprising that I have not bricked the N900 months ago.
September 17th
PodcampCT Pre Registration
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 09/17/2010 - 15:38We are now a month away from PodcampCT. All that is left are some small details to be ironed out. So, we have decided to open up pre-registration. People who register early will be able to attend at a discount and will be helping us by giving us a better sense of who will be coming.
Please, if you can make it to PodcampCT, consider pre-registering.
#digiday - The Future of Apps
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 09/17/2010 - 11:07One of the panels at Digiday Social was "Is The App The Future of Social? . Perhaps it would have been better named, "What is the future of apps?"
Adam Broitman, Founder and Ringleader of Circ.us said that 80% of free apps that get downloaded do not get used on the second day, and only 5% are still in use 30 days later. He compared apps to the early days of AOL. Apps are convenient, but eventually, people want more open systems.
As an innovator/early adopter with a Nokia N900, a cellphone that is great for application developers that want to work with open source software, I am an outlier. I have a little over 100 apps loaded on my phone. They are all free apps and I use many of them very frequently.
On the other hand, every day I get several pitches for the latest new iPhone app. With over 250,000 application in the app store, it is hard to get noticed, and I suspect there are a lot of apps that are either duplicates or simply wastes of time.
I regularly respond to these pitches asking if there are plans to make the apps available on Android, Blackberry, Maemo/Meego, or as HTML5. Typically, the response is that something like that is in the works.
This illustrates two issues that apps developers need to face: cross platform development and apps discovery.
Right now, there are two major apps stores, one for the iPhone and one for Android. There are plenty of other apps stores around. An article in Rethink Wireless about HTC's latest move mentions
Verizon Wireless... is divorcing its Android V Cast Apps storefront from the generic Android Market and preloading its own apps storefront.
Another Rethink Wireless article talks about Nokia and Intel showing off updated app stores.
Purnima Kochikar, VP for Forum Nokia, the developer community, was pushing the line that she was "empowering developers, not chasing app store numbers".
The article talks a little bit about the Intel AppUp Center and mentions Meego in passing. It doesn't get into the issue of repositories that Maemo and Meego developers argue about. Yet the architecture of Maemo and Meego facilitate anyone to set up their own repository or app store.
The Nokia and Intel strategy is focused on Qt, a cross-platform application and user interface framework. The idea is that you can build an application in Qt and then compile it to run on any device that supports Qt. This is a great idea and if Broitman is right might be some of the direction that apps development is heading, except that iPhone and Android are not set up well for Qt applications yet.
There is one project that looks really interesting. It is Android Lighthouse which allows you to compile and package Qt applications for Android. I don't have an Android phone to play with right now, so I haven't tried it out, but it looks really promising.
There is also the Nitdroid project to run Android on the Nokia tablets, like the N900. I may install that at some point, but it repartitions the whole microSD card, so I'm waiting for a chance to explore this in more detail. When I have time to really explore it, I just might build some Qt apps to run on my N900 and see if I can get them to run under Maemo, Mer, Meego, and Nitdroid.
While I like Qt as a potential cross platform development tool, others at the conference suggested that ultimately everything will move to HTML5. I see several issues with this. Applications need to access information that might not be available to HTML5. Simple location information from a GPS might be available, but some of the more interesting bits of location information, such as the altitude might not be accessible. Things like the cameras, the accelerometer, the battery usage, or other tidbits of information from the mobile device might also not be available. In addition, I am concerned that HTML5 and Javascript or AJAX may run much more slowly that compiled Qt applications.
One application that I use quite a bit is Dorian, an eBook reader for the N900. I am reading eBooks that are stored on the N900. It is true that using lighttpd, or the file: protocol, I could make the books available online to an HTML5 application, but that seems like overkill. Things like books, music, pictures and video may be best accessed directly from the device.
Back to the issue of discovery, this is a key issue, not only for apps, but for many things people search for on the Internet. I hope to write more about the broader discovery issue soon. One panelist suggested that if discovery of apps is an issue, you need better control over the app stores. Yet Apple's control over its app store does not seem to have helped. Instead, it seems like you need better discovery mechanisms.
This takes us back to Broitman's comment about Apps being like AOL. As Google and Yahoo made it easier for people to discover the content they wanted online, they left the walled gardens of AOL and more people started creating webpages outside of AOL. It is reasonable to expect something similar will happen as it becomes easier to create new apps and search more locations for apps.
Apps should be an important part of marketers' strategies. For the time being, they might be able to get away with staying in the wall gardens of Apple. However, the smart players will explore cross platform apps and always fall back to an HTML5 page for mobile devices that don't support their apps.
So, if you are pitching a cool new app to me, be prepared for my question about cross platform capabilities, and know that I'm unlikely to write about it unless it runs on the N900 or has an HTML5 page.
September 16th
A Mosque in Her Nose
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 09/16/2010 - 21:03Leading up to September 11th, there were various discussions about religious intolerance. Should Muslim's be allowed to cultural center a few blocks away from Ground Zero? Should people burn copies of the Quran? Can a school suspend a student for wearing a religious symbol? You may have heard about the first couple issues, but I believe the third is equally important.
So, what is the story about the student wearing a religious symbol? No, she was not suspended for wearing a crucifix in a city where Catholic Churches were burned. Instead, she wore a nose stud to school.
Ariana Iacono belongs to The Church of Body Modification, a federally recognized religion. Their statement of faith says,
We believe our bodies belong only to ourselves and are a whole and integrated entity: mind, body, and soul. We maintain we have the right to alter them for spiritual and other reasons.
Personally, I am not a big fan of piercings or tattoos. For that matter, I'm not a big fan of other forms of body modification that seem to be more socially accepted like face lifts, liposuction, breast implants or hair dieing. On the other hand, I know several people who have had body modifications like having stents placed in their arteries or hips or knees replaced who have greatly improved the quality of their lives as a result.
So, if Ariana has a better self image as a result of a peridot stud in her nose, then she should be encouraged to wear it.
My ancestors came to this country fleeing religious persecution. It is part of our American heritage as well as our constitution to protect people's freedom of religion. This does not mean only different denominations of Christian Protestantism. It does not mean only protecting religious beliefs that we can understand or don't feel threatened by. It applies to all religions.
As with other cases of students' rights, the underlying issue here is why are our schools failing? Ariana's nose stud is a great opportunity to explore religious toleration, both today, and throughout the history of our great country. It is an opportunity to study what contributes to self esteem.
What I find most striking is the Mission Statement and Vision of Clayton High School
Mission Statement
Empowering All Students to Become Successful in a Global Society
Vision
The vision of Clayton High School is to
* create an atmosphere of inclusion which will foster the acceptance of diverse students
...
I hope that Clayton High School will empower all its students, including those that wear nose studs, to become successful in a global society and that they will create an atmosphere of inclusion which will foster the acceptance of students as diverse as those that wear nose rings.
@laurenperkins @ckieff - A #Digiday Unconference
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 09/16/2010 - 08:49Tuesday, I attended the Digiday Social Conference and ended up engaging in a metadiscussion with @laurenperkins and @ckieff about the conference. I suggested a #digiday unconference, but the idea is probably too big to fit into 140 characters, so I'm explaining it here.
Let me start off by providing bits of background. DM2 Media produces a series of conferences around digital publishing, media. and marketing called Digiday. There is Digiday Social, Digiday Mobile, Digiday Apps, Digiday Target and probably a few others that I am forgetting right now. They tend to overlap a fair amount. After all targeted social media campaigns using mobile apps are an important part of where digital publishing, media. and marketing is going.
I attend, and write about many of the Digiday conferences and often have great discussions with Chris Kieff about them on Twitter and during the networking breaks.
About half way through Digiday Social, Lauren Perkins asked Chris, "What do you think of @digiday so far?" Chris replied, "not bad, there is some substance this time. I'm pleased with the lack of 2 year old references. You?" One particular two year old reference that Chris was referring to was Motrin Moms. He tweeted about how glad he was that they made it through the conference without a reference to Motrin's famous social media fail.
Lauren replied, "Was hoping to hear more about where we as an industry go next - how we are going to use innovation". I'm with Lauren. I would love to have some good discussions about where we go next. Chris responded, "That discussion happens behind closed doors and costs more money... :) "
The discussion meandered on and Lauren said, "I would say that #digiday has great speakers but a lot of the content is for those who are not engrossed in it every day". I think Lauren was right about that, but there is some value to speaking to newbies. As I see it, Digiday is an opportunity to help new people learn about the value of social, mobile, targeted apps and related strategies.
I jumped in and suggested "A digiday unconference might be really interesting." Lauren replied, " interesting.... what do you propose for an un @digiday event?"
I am a big fan of unconferences and regular readers of my blog will recall discussions about Podcamps; unconferences about podcasting and social media. The Podcamps I've attended tend to be mostly aimed at individual content creators, and not at people in the marketing and media worlds. A Podcamp aimed at those in the biz might be really interesting.
Podcamps are unconferences that grew out of barcamps, which are unconferences in the Open Space Technology tradition. They are typically free, or have a minimal cost.
Wikipedia defines an unconference as a "facilitated, participant-driven conference centered on a theme or purpose". My experiences with unconferences have been that they are great for emerging topics. The day before Digiday Social, Peggy Holman's new book, Engaging Emergence: Turning Upheaval into Opportunity came out. I've attended unconferences facilitated by Peggy and she is a master at it and her book is one that people interested in emerging trends, such as social, mobile, targeted apps and related strategies should read.
Good unconferences, in my opinion, should be brainstorming sessions, without product pitches. Powerpoint presentations are a good way to lose an audience at an unconference. In many ways, it seems like a good social marketing strategy should be very similar to an unconference. It should listen to the audience and engage them. It should encourage user generated content.
I suspect the fear that many brands have of a social media campaign, "What if someone says something bad about my brand or does something inappropriate?" is very similar to the fear that people have of unconferences. People like to be in control, whether it be of the marketing campaign or the conference experience, but the big wins come when people give up a little bit of control and let something exciting and perhaps even viral emerge.
So, what would a #digiday unconference be like? Imagine DM2 Media gathering some of the best and the brightest in the worlds of social, mobile, targetted, and apps in a large room. Everyone would get a brief moment to introduce themselves and suggest a topic or two that they are interested in. The organizers would gather up the topics and arrange them to be in breakout rooms. There would be no presenter and no pitches Instead, there would be a moderator and a note taker. Probably the best note taking would be done via twitter. Everyone would participate, sharing ideas, experiences and passions.
To the extent that a sponsor wanted something specific about their products, sessions could be included where people would sit around and talk about the products. The sponsor would be well advised to provide a very brief, "this is what the product is" introduction, followed by a chance for users to share experiences and prospects to ask questions or share ideas of things they would like to do with the product. It would be like a good social campaign targeted at users and potential users.
Broader topics could also be explored, such as "What is the future of Apps?" Instead of listening to three or four sages on the stage talk about it, a lot of interesting new ideas could emerge from the participants.
So, what do you say? Anyone up for UnDigiday?
