Mobile 2.0 by Mobile Monday SF

Speaking of Mobile Monday, there’s a Mobile 2.0 event being held in San Fran on the 6th Nov that looks very interesting.

Technorati Tags: conference, industry, mobile, momo, web2.0

The Next Mobile Monday – 6th November

The next Mobile Monday is scheduled for the 6th of November
The two companies presenting are great examples of companies that have ‘made it’ in the Australian mobile space:
1. HWW (come just to hear Jennifer speak, she’s probably the most knowledgable and articulate mobile speakers in Aust)
2. MapShed (Roy is sure to put on a good show)

See you there.

Technorati Tags: industry, mobile, momo, Sydney

World Usability Day 2006 Update

So things are progressing with the organisation of World Usability Day 2006. The local Sydney WUD event is going to be held at the NSW State Library on the 14th November.

I’m speaking on the day. Here’s the spiel:
1pm – 1:30pm ”Mobile Phones, People Who Use them and Usability”
Oliver Weidlich, Mobile Usability Specialist, Ideal Interfaces
Mobile phones are getting more and more sophisticated, but is that a good or a bad thing? Oliver will look at what people are using their mobile phones for in Australia, the issues they are having, and how the industry can help. He will also look at the latest developments in mobile user interfaces and customer experience and the opportunities for mobile devices in the future.
I’m also helping out by organising a Mobile Phone Race for the general public (with Ash & Michelle):
Mobile Phone Challenge (Outside NSW State Library – Macquarie Street, Sydney)
Start time: 10:30am
Finish time: 2:30pm

This is a public event held near the entrance to the State Library to attract interest in usability and the further WUD events inside the State Library. The mobile phone race will require 2 or 3 participants to access the phone’s camera, take a picture of a specific item (the camera bearer), and add a pre-determined text message to it. A number of text messages will be rotated between participants (same length, different words) so the phone doesn’t remember the words with predictive text input. The participants then have to find a number in the phone book and hit send to successfully to complete the task.

Technorati Tags: customerexperience, design, hci, idealinterfaces, industry, marketing, mobile, Sydney, ui, usability

My Next I.T. Purchase…

Apple released the new MacBook Pro with Core Duo 2
- Good to see the FW800 back (handy for HD back-ups)
- 7x faster than my current PowerBookG4 laptop is a nice claim, let’s see how it stacks up
- trying to decide on 160GB or 200GB HD (there’s a speed compromise)
- more memory as default (at 2GB)
All-in-all a nice package!

Technorati Tags: Apple

Pop!Tech Live :-)

The other conference I wanted to go to this year was PopTech. Looks like I won’t miss it after all:
“For the first time ever, the entire event is live online. You can even submit questions to speakers and contribute your ideas in real time. “
(via Kottke)

Technorati Tags: conference, customerexperience, design, industry, video, web2.0

New article: The Mobile Geeks Get Together

The AIMIA Mobile Content Industry Development Group just released their latest newsletter. Included as a feature is an article I wrote titled ‘The Mobile Geeks Get Together’ (MS Word, 48kb). It gives a high level overview of my recent trip to Helsinki, New York & California and the Mobile HCI and UbiComp conferences. It’s not quite as polished as it should be, but hopefully gets the main points across.

Technorati Tags: AIMIA, article, conference, hci, idealinterfaces, industry, MCIDG, mobile, mobilehci2006, Nokia, travel, ubicomp, ui, usability

Steve Jobs on the iPod – 5 years on

The 14th Oct is the 5th anniversary of the iPod (yes I had the original). Steven Levy interviews Steve Jobs and he says:

Q: What was the design lesson of the iPod?
A: Look at the design of a lot of consumer products—they’re really complicated surfaces. We tried make something much more holistic and simple. When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can oftentimes arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions. Most people just don’t put in the time or energy to get there. We believe that customers are smart, and want objects which are well thought through.

Technorati Tags: Apple, article, consumerelectronics, customerexperience, design, hci, industry, marketing, mobile, music, SteveJobs, ui, usability

Get ya podcasts here

Last week it was the Web Directions South Podcasts, this week it’s podcasts from:
1. The Future of Web Apps (via Tom Coates)
2. Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) conference (via Frank)

Technorati Tags: conference, design, industry, podcast

How to: Zonetag

Tom Coates walks through the process of getting you up and running with a Series 60 phone, a bluetooth GPS and Zonetag, so you can add geo coding to your photos on the go. Couple of people had this set up at UbiComp (Marc Davis etc), very cool

Technorati Tags: consumerelectronics, mobile, Nokia, Phonecam, ubicomp, web2.0, Yahoo!

Shane’s Blog too!

Hey if I’m going to promo Cyrus’ blog then Shane deserves one too.
Shane’s got some great things to say about mobile here in Australia. Although I don’t agree with all he’s got to say (and don’t have the bandwidth to respond most of the time – and he’s usually right anyway ) he’s certainly great at identifying a key topic and articulating his argument.

So be sure to add him to your feed reader!

Technorati Tags: blog, friends, mobile, Sydney