Smartphones Have Virtually Eliminated Boredom from the Modern Life

People are constantly on their phones. All day.

There's a flurry of debate over whether smartphones and their apps have become too addicting. While there is no complete agreement over how often smartphone users access their phones each day, estimates put the number at anywhere from 80 to 150 times. If you're a typical human who is awake about 16 hours a day, that's five to ten accesses per hour. Every hour. You might even put your own estimate much higher, or, instead, see it as one long continuous touch that consumes the entire day.

Independent of the discussion of whether this is a "good thing" or not, the ability to constantly engage with one's phone, checking messages from different apps, getting the latest news instantly, window shopping or achieving a new high score, the device has virtually eliminated the opportunity to be bored - acting as the glue that connects times when you're otherwise active. The smartphone acts as a space filler and a constant alternative for whatever else you might be doing.

Not too long ago, there was something we recognized as a quiet space between activities. Mental breaks. Whether that was standing at a corner for the light at the intersection to go green and allow us to cross the street, or taking an escalator at the mall, or waiting for the bus, we recognized those gaps as something like boredom. Was there nothing on TV? Bored. Forced to wait in line at the supermarket? Bored. Finished your book? Bored. Is the baseball season over? Bored for four months.

Think people aren't constantly on their phones while driving? Think again.

But this isn't the case now. If you look around at people, everyone is seemingly in a state of constant engagement with their phones. Drivers at intersections waiting for red lights to turn are waiting for cues from the cars next to them to indicate the signal has changed. Pedestrians are walking with their feet slightly askew to avoid unseen stumbles, and draft behind the people ahead of them, one hand holding the phone at an angle, looking up every few steps for potential surprise. Those waiting for the bus only interrupt their phone use to glance up and see if their ride is on its way.

Many a word has been spilled about how smartphones have invaded daily lives. Couples go to restaurants and read their phones instead of talking to one another. Colleagues may glance at their phones and tweet while you're talking to them, looking up on occasion to see if whatever you're saying is more interesting than whatever popped up on their screen. It's no longer a challenge to find something to do. Instead, it's a battle to see who can be the most sensational or carry enough weight to trump the alternative that is constantly available on a 4 or 5 inch screen.

Often, when presenting to rooms full of people at events, I see attendees on their phones. It's been years since you could authoritatively demand a 'laptops down' meeting and expect to get everyone's full attention. That people are going to try and deliver continuous parallel attention is a reality, and you are in a constant battle to earn their mind share, in a hope that your engagement will be more lasting and more significant than what their phone has selected to bring to the fore.

In the last decade plus, more of what we used to depend on full sized computers, cameras, televisions, maps and more has been miniaturized and made portable in our pocket. This has allowed our entertainment, learning and communications machines, our commerce engines... to be constantly with us. People meet their soulmates on their phone. They get paid on the phone. They can order food and have it delivered, all from their phone. If life's every important value, to consume, to share and to survive, can be designed and managed from your phone, it really begs the question of whether the world within the screen is less valuable than the one on the outside of it.

My own kids, still under 10, don't yet have phones. It's already challenging as a parent to provide them the structure they need to learn independently and prioritize work over entertainment, without giving them a magic device that does it all in their pocket constantly. But they do know they live in a world where boredom is a practical impossibility, and where everything is practically a request away.

Life moves faster now, and it isn't boring. That's no longer an option.

If You Took a Photo, You're Sharing it, Right?

Back in the olden days, or at least to the 1980s, proud parents would take photos of their family, have the film developed at a photo lab, and then take the hard copies of these photos home. Some of the photos would be placed in keepsake books. Others would be framed. But you pretty much had to be in the same physical location as the person holding the photo. They brought the photos to you, and you looked at them, lovingly, or at least passively, for a moment, before handing them back or to the next relative down the line.

Entire histories of lives come and gone are frozen in these physical collections - to be viewed irregularly, as memories are shared with nostalgia. But in the last two decades, our ability to take an exponentially increasing amount of photos, more quickly, in higher quality, and share them instantly practically anywhere, has turned the notion of scarcity on its head. Now anybody, should you choose, can see any photo you've ever taken, on any number of social outlets of your choice - whether you're using a phone or a more professional camera, or even +Google Glass.

With these barriers out of your way, with everyone having this seemingly infinite capability to capture practically every moment, you're also seeing people's intent for distribution change not for nostalgia to the past, but for a time sharing window of minutes or days. Photos are no longer looked back on as bits of the past that one happened, but in many cases, a lens (so to speak) into a shared present. Here's what I'm doing right now. Here's an experience I just had that you need to know about and engage with... right now.

I took all of these photos, but only shared some.

So as a parent, as I take photos at home or out on our trips, and see others with their various cameras and smartphones taking images in, I'm not thinking of these hardbound photo books that get passed to future generations, or even in most cases, online photo book equivalents like +SmugMug or +Shutterfly, but instead to ephemeral destinations in the stream, be it Facebook, Instagram, Google+ or Twitter. And the target audience has changed as well. The photos you're taking of your kids and friends aren't always for them to have a shared memory of what you did together, but instead for you to update other friends, other colleagues, and often strangers, to the experience you're having.

If I didn't share it, did it happen?

The more professional photographer may take hundreds or even thousands of photos on an adventure. They'll painstakingly go through each shot and find the very best ones that were captured with the optimal setup and lighting. Then, after much editing, they'll share a select few - a best of the best, to an audience who has come to expect a high level of quality from them. But for the rest of us, usually the best we'll do is pick our favorite few and lob them to the nearest social networks where our friends and family will see it. Or worse, we'll just delete the ones that make us look bad, and post the entire glob of photos as a collection - a digital slide show that hopes our friends will care enough to find their favorite, and leave us a comment, Like or +1 in return to give a head nod of agreement.

Now that my kids are entering their sixth year of life, and are on the home stretch of kindergarten, I've captured my unfair share of thousands of photos - some good, some bad. I've backed them all up to +Google Drive so I can get to all my photos on all my +Android and ChromeOS devices - or any device with an Internet connection, really. With online storage space becoming cheaper and the ease of posting getting down to almost zero, there's nothing stopping me from taking more photos. And the more smartphones and wearables we get with cameras, the more we can be constant amateur shutterbugs.

And think forward a bit - away from today's streams. As technology advances forward, the way we share changes. We've moved from slide carousels of vacations and Walgreen's photo labs to online photo book replicas, and in-stream editing. We're not backing up our photos to CDs and DVDs, and I don't see a future where I'll hand my kids a microscopic Flash drive upon graduation. They'll just know. Any photo that's ever been taken that I want them to have will be available - and I shouldn't have to do anything. We've eliminated the physical barriers that dictated how we share. Even more, these virtual walls are coming down. In the mean time, I bet when you take that photo, you're thinking where you're going to share it.

Mobile Data Goes Up, Phone Calls Go Down, Can't Explain That

By the end of last month, Verizon was regularly sending me updates on how close I was to reaching the top of my 4 gigabyte data cap available in the plan I share with my wife. A little over two weeks in, I had used more than two gigabytes, after three weeks a third, and by the end of the billing cycle, I could have hit maximum capacity, had I just left my favorite Spotify playlist on play and asked all my apps from Google Play to update simultaneously.

But I was nowhere near capacity for our shared voice plan. Not by a long shot. In fact, the month saw a record low in our actual voice usage, racking up less than an hour's time over 30 days, which averages down to less than 2 minutes per day, more than enough time to call home, say, "Are the kids fine? Do I need to get anything?" and hang up.

It's unlikely the activity seen in our own home is unusual. Where just a few years ago, one could see passersby talking on their phones as they jostled down the sidewalk, or ringing phones would be commonplace in cafes and restaurants, it seems more people are looking down at their phones to trade updates than picking one up for a quick call. At this point, it's likely most of us don't even know our best friend's phone numbers, but could rattle off a few hundred Twitter handles of mere acquaintances if it came down to it.

The story of how static land lines with inflexible phone numbers were rapidly diminished with mobile phone numbers that stuck with a person from plan to plan, phone to phone and more recently, carrier to carrier, is a well known one. Hotels can no longer expect you to rack up ridiculous phone bills for local calls and family updates, and hope they can instead get you to foot the bill for 24 hours of questionably high speed Internet instead. And the telecoms are no doubt praying that all of the youth addicted to texting stick with SMS and far away from the many different free services that connect people in real time.

When I was on a trip last month to Paris and London, I didn't even make an effort to ensure my phone worked in Europe after I had crossed the Atlantic. Where in years past, walking around with a less than functional phone would be crippling, and worth the extra quid to get a few megabytes and minutes, I replaced all that potential cost with daily Google+ hangouts to see the family face to face, and stuck near WiFi for everything else.

That's not intended to be a plug for Google+ hangouts (although you all know I work at Google and think hangouts are great), but a real clear example where traditional voice seems rather quaint. Instead of a voice relationship and fighting over the phone between my 3 youngsters, I could see them and their expressions, even to the point of making funny faces, from thousands of miles away.

Our phone voice use has never approached our max, and is at a new low.

What I did see, however, especially in London, was the availability of SIM cards with pre-paid contracts that were data only, with no voice attached. It's clear that in a world of apps, our mobile devices aren't expected to be held up against our ears, but in front of our eyes, ready for our hands' next command.

Voice calls now are the refuge of two major parties - the salesmen and the grandmothers, essentially. Receiving a phone call from a number you don't know, or a geography you don't visit is practically guaranteed to be a robocall or somebody wanting your money or your opinion. And grandmas get a pass because they've usually passed the point where they can learn new tricks.

Just like we passed a time where physical media made sense, becoming a clutter in our home, and practically all of us said goodbye to our landlines, I wonder how long it will be until we say goodbye to voice functionality on our phones, except in the event of an emergency. These devices won't cease to be communicators, as our primary point for email, social networking and photography, but voice is practically an also ran on the very devices initially created for that very purpose. It's very interesting to watch.

It Just Might Be the Droid You Are Looking For

If you are a long-time user of any product, be it a computer, a TV, a cell phone, or even power tools to help you with landscaping, you get comfortable and accustomed to those products' capabilities. As you become a product expert, you know what these products can do and cannot do, and unconsciously work your way around their limitations. Sometimes, you can try and highlight these limitations as not being relevant, or even say that their lack of a feature is to their benefit - when, in fact, that's not really true. That's how I felt earlier this week when I first came in contact with Motorola's Droid, the new iPhone competitor that has everybody's tongues wagging.

Whether it ends up taking share from Cupertino or not, it's no doubt a high quality device that you should be watching closely - just like all the other reviews you have no doubt seen online have said. While I have not been a big fan of their annoying ad campaign, it is the first Android-based phone that has caught my attention and had me looking just a little bit more of what the world is like outside an iPhone universe, when I remove my Apple-shaded sunglasses.

In December of last year, I said there were essentially two types of phones in the world: "iPhone and Not iPhone". The iPhone's vast array of applications, its touch-screen capabilities and unequalled Web browsing functionality essentially put BlackBerry and all other quasi-smartphones in the rear view mirror. Since then, Apple introduced the iPhone 3GS with video recording and speed improvements, but it is essentially the same device it was last year. What has changed is the world surrounding the iPhone. While Apple has been fighting with AT&T over getting acceptable coverage and things like Push or MMS going, Google's Android team has been pushing beyond their middling first-generation device and making something very competitive indeed.

One of the stones thrown at Apple's iPhone has been its lack of multitasking. (I mentioned this in my list from June: 10 Ways Apple's iPhone Leaves Me Wanting More) Earlier this week, Google announced free turn by turn GPS on their platform. My natural inclination was to not care, as I already have a standalone GPS unit, and I wouldn't want to force my iPhone into playing the role of GPS when it could be playing Sirius Radio. But this week, while driving with a Droid owner, not only were we hearing the turn by turn GPS on the Droid, but Pandora Radio was streaming via bluetooth audio to the car stereo.

It wasn't until shortly after that I put two and two together. While I was teasing about the GPS turn by turn being quiet, I was missing the point that the phone was multi-tasking, and on top of that, it had bluetooth audio out, which the iPhone does not. Because I have been a full-time iPhone user for more than a year, I had framed my understanding in terms of the iPhone, not in terms of what I really thought a phone could do.

At the risk of sounding like a big hypocrite given my pushing of the iPhone and its ecosystem for the last year, the Android platform is compelling - and even if it is a few tens of thousands of applications behind Cupertino in the application store, every iPhone developer I talk to is looking at Android in a way they have never truly considered the Palm. Android has e-mail and text messaging and Web browsing and contacts, just like the iPhone. It has the opportunity for simple games, just like the iPhone. I found myself playing a Boggle-like game on the Droid and it worked, as expected, of course.

But beyond the basics, the Droid is a very interesting hardware product. The Droid's camera puts the iPhone to shame - not only having more megapixels with better clarity, but auto-zooming on the object of note. It has an easily accessible full keyboard, which the iPhone obviously doesn't. It doesn't suffer from the oddities of the first Google offering, but is something you wouldn't be embarrassed to show off amidst your peers. The Verizon coverage certainly doesn't hurt either.

My use of the Droid this week was a major influence in my thinking of an Apple fan potentially "Going Google". If I assume that Android 2.0 is very good, and that Google is making major upgrades to their ecosystem at a faster rate than Apple is right now, then 3.0 and beyond will be extremely interesting. I don't think this will be the last phone that will catch our eye running Android over the next few months, and Apple's already said their holiday lineup is set in stone. So why not just take a look at the Droid and see if Google deserves your dollars?

Location, Location... Mobile

By Corvida Raven of SheGeeks.net (FriendFeed/Twitter)

Two years ago the mobile web was not a huge deal to me. I hated the way Pocket Internet Explorer (PIE) displayed web pages. Add that to the fact that I was deeply committed to graphic design at the time, and you'll understand why I ignored this market. It was frustrating to look at, and even harder to interact with. At the time, no one could reach me there. It was...(gasp!) a dead zone! (Dun, dun, duuuuuun!)

Today in Mobile

Fast forward to today when I'm checking my e-mails and RSS feeds from my iPhone. I'm getting directions from the Google Maps app on both my iPhone and Nokia E-75. I prefer Live Search Mobile on Motorola Q9c running Windows Mobile. Now that the mobile landscape is changing I've been changing with it. You almost have to have a mobile app or optimized site in order to pitch me.

I have three cell phones utilizing two of the best mobile web browsers available: Skyfire (Nokia, Windows Mobile) and Mobile Safari (iPhone). I'm also a lot more mobile than I was two years ago. Mobile optimized sites are simply becoming a must in this day and age. I'm here to let you know that you'd better hop on the bandwagon. However, don't just hop on the iPhone's bandwagon, Instead, make your services available to every mobile platform.

Mainstream Web Compatibility

With three devices running three different Mobile OS' and browsers, it should come as no surprise as to why mobile web cross-platform support is important to me. However, this isn't just personal. Mainstream users are dying to catch on to the mobile web too. The problem: the junk doesn't work on their phones. You can blame it on the handset all you want, but your users shouldn't be forced into buying a specific phone just to play with your service. In the same breath, they shouldn't be tied to their computer either.

Of course this doesn't apply to everyone. Limited functionality is a given with the mobile web, but you can't expect it to improve if you don't at least attempt to improve it. My friends are really trying to get into accessing information on the go while we're out and about. They see me do it all the time on my iPhone and think the iPhone is some sort of gadget god. They should be thinking that your app or service is great, not just the iPhone. They can't do that because if you take the iPhone out of the picture, they still wouldn't be able to use quite a few of the services I use.

Mobile Me & You

My location is ever-changing. I'm deeply invested in accessing information on the go. It's making my work more flexible and allowing me to make my day more productive. Now I can still go outside and socialize, with everything I need only a tap away on my phones, and I hate when I encounter something that can't be done until I'm back home with my laptop.

These days I'm waiting for Skype's iPhone App to be released. Can we say unlimited calling for cheap? I'm loving all the location awareness and Geo-tagging features that are being rolled out into mobile apps. However, the sites need the same love people. Not everyone owns an iPhone, you know.

Read more by Corvida Raven at SheGeeks.net.

The Love/Hate Relationship With My Bluetooth Earpiece

With the state of California recently making it illegal to drive while using a cell phone that has not been equipped as hands-free, finding a bluetooth earpiece I was happy with was a must. A friend of mine passed along a top name-brand product, thanks to his having one too many. And while when it works, I have few complaints, just getting it to connect to my iPhone and stay connected is a multiple times a day struggle. Sometimes, it even seems like I spend more time getting the two products to talk than I do talking on them myself.

I don't want to throw the vendor under the bus, so I'll leave them out of it. But in my opinion, technologies should be able to auto-recognize one another, stay paired, and then work as expected. Instead, I find that the iPhone and the earpiece drop each other's connections any time I separate them by more than say, 10 feet, at any point, when I connect them they don't always stay paired, and I need to pair and unpair them multiple times a day.

The iPhone's setup for BlueTooth is relatively simple, I would think. Click on the Settings app, choose general, choose Bluetooth, make sure it's on, and then add a device to connect. Got it.

But what I'm finding is that the iPhone is a liar. It says it's connected, but if I try and make a call, it doesn't show the earpiece as an option. And on the flip side, if I pick up the iPhone to speak into it directly, it will flip the audio source to the earpiece without my asking. Grr.

The result is that I find myself charging the earpiece all day at work, overnight, and going through a multi-step process to keep them connected by brute force. Every time before I get into the car, I make sure I have both devices in close proximity. Then I clear whatever connection the iPhone thinks it has, I go back to the home menu and open up the preferences again. Then I force a new connection. And then, I still might find myself driving along the road, close to cursing, doing the dual device reconnection dance.

Given I often want my hands free at home as well - to type and take notes during an interview, or just to take care of the twins, getting the iPhone and earpiece to play well together is critical, and the flakiness is driving me nuts. When it works great, yay, but I'm not exactly set up to write an amazing testimonial.

What experiences have you found? Did I get a bum device? Does the iPhone just not take to Bluetooth all that well? Is it user error? I'm listening (as soon as I can get my earpiece in).

How Palm Pre Could Change the Game

By Phil Glockner of Scribkin (FriendFeed/Twitter)

The Palm Pre has surprisingly gotten the gadget industry abuzz after being announced at CES this year, after the company had largely been given up for dead after seeing its leadership decimated. And they are working to ensure the buzz doesn't end up being a one week blip. Apparently, Sprint has been 'softening the ground' so to speak by giving Palm Centro owners a sneak peek at this new gem to ensure a excited and willing reception when the Pre is released to retail. But today I wanted to speak more about some of the user interface choices Palm made in designing the software and hardware for this phone.

Hardware

The Pre is a silky little pebble of a device. When the screen is off, the shell is inviolate except for the single button and earphone grill. The back of the device is much the same, with speakerphone and camera ports. The back cover comes off to reveal the battery in case it needs to be replaced. So we have touchability covered. Yeah, I probably just invented that word. But it works.. the Pre looks touchable.

Surprise number two is a hidden keyboard. Slide the screen up and the keyboard (more of a thumb-board) is revealed. And if you look at this keyboard, you might notice a resemblance to the keyboard on the Palm Centro. I am sure this is no accident. The size and orientation tell me this is specifically to ease the transition of people off of other Palm products and on to the Pre.

There is a 3.5mm headphone jack.

On the front of the device, we have a single, centrally placed button. Visually, this may be a nod to the iPhone, but the button in fact does something quite different than the iPhone's 'home' button. Surprisingly, the button is actually the least interesting part of the area on the Pre. The smooth expanse of plastic surrounding the button is where the magic happens.

User Interface

While the iPhone has boldly wasted space around their home button in the name of asthetic pleasingness, Palm engineers have taken the concept of a 'touch area' going back all the way to the Palm Pilot and have extended the touch input sensor down around the button. This small change is at the core of the user-interface innovation on the Pre. It's extremely clever.

First, Palm probably secured a patent on gestures outside of the display area a long time ago.

Second, there is a competely mental resistance some people have to touching a surface with an image projecting through it. Think about when people at work touch your monitor screen. Doesn't that drive your crazy? I know it does me. And I have an iPhone, I'm constantly cleaning the screen. The touch area below the screen means no mental resistance to befouling the pretty display.

Third, and this is the big one, having these areas do the same magic no matter where you are in the interface means that they could get away with all sorts of interface cues, close and minimize buttons, menus, etc. When you sensitize yourself to what you are seeing when you watch one of the Pre OS demos, you will notice this. Applications only have content in them, no UI elements. When an app is relegated to a 'card' (what Pre calls an app running minimized or in the background), no controls appear. The Pre OS has the most invisible user interface of any smartphone currently out there.

Synergy

The last big game changer I am going to touch on is Palm's focus on what they call 'synergy.' They designed the Pre OS from the ground up to be aware of applications that live online (or 'in the cloud' or 'software as a service,' etc.) Apps like Google Mail, AOL Instant Messenger and MobileMe calendar sharing. But support for these things aren't bolted-on like they might be in an older, more established mobile OS. No, they are integrated so tightly that the apps combine all the information from these various sources and present to you a unified view.

In the world of online calendaring, this has been done for a while. Most calendaring applications have had the ability to display a full or filtered view of multiple overlaying calendars for years now. But how about your phonebook pulling in not only your email addressbook, but your buddy lists and other sources and then intelligently combining the results? How about an instant messaging application that not only shows you a combined view from AIM, Yahoo! IM, Google Talk, etc. but also shows you when you get an SMS in the same interface, or lets you choose how to send a message to your friend, via IM or SMS? And threads the resulting conversation together seamlessly? Now you are getting the picture.

Multitasking

Not a game changer, but worth noting. The OS lets you open and run any of its apps simultaneously. From a workflow perspective, this is essential and something the Blackberry gets right as well. The iPhone? Not so much.

Conclusion

What Palm has done here is fundamental stuff. It may not be as flashy as some other phones, but its real meat-and-potatoes work that will pay off big in the long run for them. Why? Wait until the phone is released. Get one and use it for a week. Then try to go back to your iPhone or Blackberry. You will find yourself wondering why your old phone is slow, or clumsy, or doesn't do something so simple you got used to it in 5 minutes on the Pre.

Final thought: When you remove the back cover to expose the battery, it appears that the battery is thicker than base of the phone (the part that doesn't slide up and down). How do they do that? The only thing I can think of is they have a hollow space behind the screen that allows the battery to intrude a bit. Fascinating.

Read more by Phil Glockner at Scribkin.com.

Four Reasons the Pre Might Save Palm

By Ken Stewart of ChangeForge (Twitter/FriendFeed)

In Palm’s recent keynote, Jon Rubinstein and Ed Colligan announced Palm’s bold new smartphone, the Pre. After what seemed like an eternity of languishing products and dying market share, Palm announced it’s intent to fight its way back to life.

While recent numbers indicated that PalmOS barely even appeared as a blip on the radar of worldwide smartphone sales (Gartner results Q3 2008), Palm may have itself a game changer. But does a piece of hardware, or even their new WebOS, constitute a lifeline for the battered Palm? Not a chance; their win must come from much deeper within.

When Apple introduced its revolutionary iPhone and OS, they knew competition would be on their heels. Soon after Research in Motion released its lukewarm attempt to compete, the BlackBerry Storm.

In watching Palm’s keynote, what sets them apart is not their product, but the platform on which they stand – a paradigm shift in how to impact your life and maybe their destiny. Colligan lists 4 key things that set Palm apart.

1. Know your competition:

Another innovator, SouthWest Airlines, understood that its greatest competition was not other airlines, but ground transportation. It understood that people flew to save time, and that people chose ground transportation because it was cheap and you could leave at your choosing.Colligan points out that Palm knew it was not competing with the personal computer when it launched, rather Palm’s competition was pen and paper, at that time. A thought process like that is what hallmarks the game-changers in any industry.

2. Simplify people’s lives:

People’s lives are complex and fast-paced. We have information stored in many different places and are often torn between merging the data to achieve congruency and silo-ing the information to attain some level of separation in the varied facets of our lives.

From offering conduits which connect your disparate web services together to mechanisms which avoid duplicate data, Palm seeks to help you view your content holistically – while allowing you the option to filter and compartmentalize as you see fit.

3. Make the technology invisible:

"Fingers, not buttons. Pockets not processors," Colligan quips, exemplifying their focus on making the device interact with you and not forcing you to interact with the device.By optimizing the user experience, both in hardware and software, Palm strives to achieve a state of just being. Whether seeking to interact with the platform as a phone or full-featured information kiosk, the Pre could very well offer options to students of efficiency the iPhone might have missed.

While hardly minimalist, Palm subscribes to the notion of, "Technology that works well should get out of the way."

4. Know thyself, and to thine own-self be true:

"Mobile is in our DNA," Ed boldly states. Palm knows who it is and what it does; the Pre is an attempt to not simply state what Palm does, but what Palm does better than anyone else!Until this announcement, Palm had been quietly fading away, until most had written it off. Rubenstein and Colligan deftly dodge the long absence with talk of what Palm does well, which partners are in place, and how focused they are on the Palm developers and ecosystem as a whole.

So not only is Palm being true to itself, they are hoping to once again revolutionize the way in which the smartphone market is thought of. They acknowledge that while product is important, Palm’s platform is the stage upon which success is built. Only time will tell, but the future looks bright for Palm and the Pre. Their most certainly is a steep mountain to climb in a combative market that won't pull any punches.

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Ken Stewart’s blog, ChangeForge.com, focuses on the collision between the constantly changing worlds of business and technology. To learn more about Ken, visit his about page. You may also find Ken on FriendFeed, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

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iPhone, BlackBerry, and Windows Mobile… Oh My!

By Ken Stewart of ChangeForge (Twitter/FriendFeed)

No one cares about the platform, they care about the experience – right?

In days gone by, there was (and probably still is) a lot of talk about the platform itself. However, gone are the days where you should care about the platform. We have moved from a society stuck in our love-hate relationship with the platform to that of desire for seamless delivery of a solution – we are looking for results.

InformationWeek predicts 2009 as “The Year of the Mobile Apps” in their December 22 issue. With Apple stepping onto the scene with the App Store, Apple has moved more than 300 million mobile apps from the store right to your hand. The experience is easy and painless: we get what we want, when we want it, right in our hand – now!

The numbers don’t lie. Apple has successfully captured 23 percent of the market according to a ChangeWave report in December, with Palm and Motorola suffering losses of almost half of their respective market share: Palm suffered a drop from 18 to 9 percent, while Motorola shed 3 percent to crash land at 4 percent.

Windows Mobile slid precipitously, allowing Apple to overtake it in worldwide sales, and oddly enough, there were no numbers released for Smartphones running the new Google Android OS. However estimates released by HTC put initial sales at approximately 1 million units sold as of December 31, 2008.

RIM Still On Top

Still on top however is Research In Motion (RIM), maker of the recently released BlackBerry Storm. The recent launch of its new platform helped RIM edge up 3 percent to perch at a rocky 43 percent market share. This positive number was only shadowed by the fact that Apple continues to gain on it’s rival by leaps and bounds.

RIM took notice, and architected a $19 million deal to by Chalk Media. Chalk Media, perhaps best known for its Mobile Chalkboard application, is seen as a vehicle for helping RIM deliver rich media to perspective business and government clients. What’s the attraction, you ask?

RIM’s BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) allows organizations, large and small, to effectively manage mobile devices across the organization. Windows Mobile and Apple’s iPhone only have rudimentary controls for the most simplistic of data needs… and no centralized controls from which application deployment can be administered. This is a big drawback for companies wishing to actually manage how their information is accessed.

Oracle and Information Builders have built “enterprise app interfaces” for the iPhone, in the hope this will allow subscribing enterprises to effectively deploy applications via this console, but many companies cite difficulties in working with Apple to deploy software via the App Store.

The Take Away

So the takeaway is that Apple and RIM appear to have the greatest lead in this game for US based sales. Apple demonstrated that a solid, dependable platform with an intuitive interface to purchase apps is a solid combination, but is still truly lacking in enterprise-rich features it needs to gain true acceptance. While RIM maintains a strong lead because of its stance on security and centralized management, figures indicate that only 33 percent of Storm users were “very satisfied” with their experience of the device, as opposed to 77 percent of purchasers of the original iPhone.

These numbers clearly indicate RIM’s BlackBerry has a long way to go before it can consider itself a sure-thing, but it is making plays to remain viable in both the business and consumer markets by latching onto the concept of mobile application development and delivery in hopes of staving off Apple’s momentum.

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Ken Stewart’s blog, ChangeForge.com, focuses on the collision between the constantly changing worlds of business and technology. To learn more about Ken, visit his about page. You may also find Ken on FriendFeed, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

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The Mobile Revolution Has Arrived

By Rob Diana of Regular Geek (Twitter/FriendFeed)

Some people have been waiting for the mobile Web to arrive for years. The one mobile developer blog I have read over the years has been Russell Beattie.

Disappointingly, he gave up his dream of the mobile Web back in April of this year. This is disappointing for a few reasons. First, you always hate to see an entrepreneur quit. Second, Russell is a smart guy who has been hyping the mobile Web for years, but has just been too early for most people. Lastly, I think if he and his company were able to wait another year, there might have been hope.

Why would another year have made a difference? Well, it is the convergence of a few things. iPhone 3G was released with much hype this year. BlackBerry is finally making a move in the consumer space as well. The Curve has been a great device, but they are trying to compete directly with the iPhone with their new Storm. Google, Android and TMobile are also making an attempt to compete with the G1. All of these devices, but to a lesser extent with the Curve, are large screened, full browser, consumer oriented devices. Gone are the days of the "ooh, look how pretty the RAZR is".

Daniel Pritchett wrote on LouisGray.com about the changes that are coming as well:

The continued market growth of iPhones, Netbooks, Blackberries and other tools make mobile browser support more and more important. Here’s a quick thought experiment for you: If you’re running site analytics, look and see how many of your viewers run a resolution lower than 800x600. Nearly 6% of all visitors to this site are using these low-resolution devices. Most of them are using the 320x396 screen of the iPhone and iPod touch family.

In addition to the general usability of the new mobile browsers and screen size, the application stores put a centralized location to find new applications. This is a big change that was started by the iPhone, and it is a fantastic change. Blackberry and the Android based phones have also opened application stores in order to compete effectively. This has created a real economy for mobile applications, and is something that Mr. Beattie would have loved. Of course, the applications only fit on these phones because of the expanded memory. The iPhone 3G comes in 8GB and 16GB sizes. The Blackberry phones are typically shipped with 2GB, but accept removable storage in the form of microSD cards.

Of course, these advances in speed and memory allow us to use the phones as an mp3 player, or even to play streaming audio and video. This was not even remotely possible a few years ago. The network speeds were not available for streaming anything. Finally, the phones have dropped in price far enough that normal people can buy them. You no longer have to be a high ranking corporate employee to get a good Blackberry. Both the iPhone and the Blackberry phones have models at $200 with a service contract.

Why does all of this matter now? We could play music on our phones a few years ago. Blackberry has had email integration for several years as well. However, the convergence of all these things has only recently happened at a reasonable price point. Normal people, not just gadget geeks and early adopters, are finally getting comfortable with using their phone for more than phone calls. As an example, my wife inherited my Blackberry Curve. I just purchased it this summer, and a month later received a new Curve from my employer. So, my wife now has a Blackberry and is slowly getting addicted to it. She can now check email on a page that looks something like the internet version of her email. She loves the full keyboard for text messaging. She syncs the phone with Outlook every day to ensure that she has her contacts and calendar in both places. Could she do this with her 2 year old Motorola or Nokia phone? No, not really. Her old phone could barely play a ringtone that sounded like music.

That reminds me, I have to load her Curve with some music. She has been bugging me for days about that. Yep, you can do that now.

Read more by Rob Diana at RegularGeek.com.