Stilgherrian » iphone

Links for 26 June 2008 through 29 June 2008

del.icio.us — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 02:26:36 +0000

Stilgherrian’s links for 26 June 2008 through 29 June 2008:

Creatives grow better in the South West | YouTube: A brilliant 4-minute video explaining how to nurture creativity.
Top 10 reasons to hate the iPhone 3G | APC: A suitably well-researched piece to help counter the Apple fanboy hype. A phone is a tool. Not all tools are for everyone.
LEO Deutsch-Englisches Wörterbuch: A very fine-looking English-German dictionary site.

5 Random Semi-Related Posts

Aussie mobile providers “like deer in the iPhone headlights”

Stilgherrian — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 05:22:30 +0000

Dropping into Day 2 of the Mobile Content World conference last week was a step back in time. And not in a healthy Kyliesque mirror ball way. The hyper-connected Twitter rumour mill had told me something was wrong: they didn’t seem to understand what was happening. The rumours were right.

When user experience expert Oliver Weidlich of Ideal Interfaces showed them screenshots of the iPhone on the big screen, around 80% of the 150-odd audience sat up, alert, seeing it for the first time.

Huh?

Sure, Apple’s groundbreaking product isn’t officially available here until the (rumoured) 19 June opening of slick new Apple stores in Sydney and Melbourne. You don’t have to have bought into the whole Steve Jobs personality cult, bought one overseas and hacked it for Aussie networks. But if you claim to be professional and haven’t at least read about the iPhone a year after its release you should be shot.

Serial entrepreneur Randal (Rand) Leeb-du Toit thinks the industry has got it very wrong. The iPhone changes everything. “They were deer in the iPhone’s headlights,” he wrote. “The full browser experience is going to shake their businesses to their foundations.”

And the iPhone is completely different. “When you take it out of its box, it feels like they’ve built this product with you in mind,” says Leeb-du Toit, who’s been using an iPhone for a couple of months. “A mobile phone feels like it was designed by an engineer with engineers in mind, by the people who put the content on there, the telcos’ walled gardens.”

A lot of the conference was about getting users watch the content from big TV, movie and games houses. Twice the guy pimping one content management system said, “It’s all about creating a more addictive experience for young people.” What sort of ethic is that?

One session talked about “bringing the lounge room experience to the small screen”, which seems as sensible as bringing the tennis experience to the swimming pool. Meanwhile, iPhone users download stuff that’s meaningful for them, connect to their own computers to access their own data and, according to Google, generate ten times the search traffic as non-iPhone mobile users.

“The carriers see they’re about to be hit by the truck, so they’re over-analysing and over-complicating the situation with all their business models about content,” Leeb-du Toit told me. “They should be going open and simple.”

It’s appropriate that the conference was held at Sydney’s Star City Casino. Anyone ignoring the iPhone is gambling big. The dice are rolled 19 June.

5 Random Semi-Related Posts

Here’s episode 4!

Stilgherrian — Thu, 29 May 2008 14:29:31 +0000

Well the new computer certainly helped!

Replacing the obsolescent PowerBook G4 with shiny new MacBook Pro meant there was enough processing power to run everything for Stilgherrian Live Alpha episode 4: audio without breakup, a separate monitoring mix, drop-in videos, vision mixing… and even a two-camera shoot!

Content? Yeah there was content…

I talked about Mobile Content World, the gayness of Eurovision, Miranda Devine, the Politics & Technology Forum and the nature of broadcasting. And there was a fantastic song at the end.

The live audience reached 34 people at its peak, I think. It adds an interesting dynamic, though I’m still suffering from information overload trying to keep track of the chat and doing my own vision switching.

I’ll post some further thoughts some time in the next few days.

Episode 5 will be live on the Internet on Thursday 5 June at 9.30pm Sydney time.

5 Random Semi-Related Posts

At Mobile Content World tomorrow

Stilgherrian — Wed, 28 May 2008 08:17:33 +0000

For my sins, I now have a media pass to the Mobile Content World Australasia conference at Sydney’s Star City Casino. I missed Day 1 today, but from the programme Day 2 will be more interesting from my perspective. Centrally-planned control-freak TV organisations and telcos try to control what’s on mobile phone screens. Fail. We control what’s on our screens, thank you very much! From one clueful attendee today, “Folks all seem like deers in the iPhone headlights.”

5 Random Semi-Related Posts

Notes users on suicide watch

Stilgherrian — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 13:35:34 +0000

“Putting [Lotus] Notes on iPhone is like getting out a piece of exquisite Wedgwood china and using it to serve a steaming pile of dog shit. Have you ever seen Notes? It’s not software, it’s a form of punishment. Companies that use Notes have to staff not only a help desk but also a suicide prevention centre — it’s that bad.” From The Fake Steve Jobs diary, via Memex 1.1.

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Technology review of 2008 (sort of)

Stilgherrian — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 00:58:14 +0000

The BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones has a technology review of 2008, including:

September

Apple’s second generation 3g iPhone goes on sale. This time, as well as signing up to Apple’s network partner, customers have to bring a DNA sample to enter on the company database before the phone can be activated. “We’re just trying to make sure iPhone users all feel part of the Apple family,” a spokesman explains.

October

Nokia brings out its latest smartphone, the N99. As well as featuring music, live television, a manicure set and a device for getting stones out of horse’s shoes, it offers an ice-cream cornet with a chocolate flake. “And, unlike, the new 3g iPhone,” a spokesman explains, “it is 4g, making the mobile internet work properly for the first time.”

Hat tip to Memex 1.1.

5 Random Semi-Related Posts

iTrapped!

Stilgherrian — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 21:47:54 +0000

An “amusing trick” for owners of the over-hyped iPhone. If you take photos of your friends against some glass (or with a scanner) and make that their contact photo in your iPhone, then when they call it’ll look like they’re trapped in your phone! Thanks to The Apple Blog for the pointer.

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Is iPhone really such important news?

Stilgherrian — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 07:00:52 +0000

I wasn’t going to write anything about Apple’s new iPhone, because I knew it’d be analyzed to death pretty much everywhere else. But this blog posting (picture below) sums it up so nicely I just have to tell you.

Thanks to Hugh MacLeod for the pointer — and for linking to the more important news.

5 Random Semi-Related Posts

Apple iPhone parodies

Stilgherrian — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 12:40:02 +0000

Thanks to the ever-observant people at Signal vs Noise, I can draw your attention to Worth1000.com’s competition for fake designs for non-existent Apple products.

I can’t be the only one with infantile humour, because there’s lots of toilet-themed entries — though for my money this is the best.

As David Pogue writes in the New York Times, “All of these are funny because Apple is so about design. It’s just ripe for parody, in a way that no other company is.” Yes, as he asks, what would a parody of an HP computer look like?

SvN put a nice business spin on this:

If someone was going to make fun of your company, how would they do it? (And if there’s no answer, is that a sign you’re lacking a defined point of view?)

I suppose I really should post my analysis of the whole iPhone thing — but I might leave it until all the Apple zealots have grabbed a tissue and wiped themselves down.