Mobile Talk

I guess this is a technology that will never arrive or be successful in Malaysia. Iris Next Bus in collaboration with Singtel has provided the ability to check your next bus arrival time via sms. So simple, all you need to do is sms the bus stop number followed by the service number and send it to a short code and walla! you know how long more you need to wait before you make a split second decision to continue waiting for the bus, grab a cab or go to the neareat MRT station. With the efficient transportation system in Singapore, how long can one possibly wait, compared to Malaysia’s efficiently inefficient public transports. This is a convenience to the public given the fact that public transport is the most common means of transport in Singapore and better yet only cost them SGD0.05 per query. Unfortunately, it is only available to Singtel’s post-paid subscribers. Why is their competitors not coming up with the same facility, well, let’s just say it is an investment that only Singtel have the deep pockets to subsidize so much so the service can be given at such low rates.

Besides mobile, the bus arrival time can be queried from the SBS transit (Singapore’s bus company) website or wapsite at www.sbstransit.com.sg/mobileiris/. How the bus location is identified is the location of the bus is feedback to the HQ via GPS. Taxis have this location feedback facility too using technologies like Grid which allows HQ to get accurate information on the location of certain taxis so that they can query for the nearest taxi to their passengers.

Well, perhaps in Malaysia, the better sms technology will be querying for information on traffic conditions so that you know which roads to avoid at which times. This technology is also available in Singapore in which a Singtel subscriber (again!) can call a certain number to find out the traffic conditions in causeway prior to travelling out of Singapore. By calling a pre-defined number, an IVR will inform you the traffic condition in Causeway Link at the point of calling. Thus, subscribers are empowered to know if their trip North is worth taking and if they should use an alternative route like Tuas instead. The power of mobile services!

With trepidation, I stepped into the halls of Singapore Expo hoping to be enthralled despite what was said about the event this year. Less fanfare, less energy maybe except for the LG booth. How true was that. Nonetheless, I was still impressed with one thing: the number of countries that were exhibiting there: from Vietnam to Thailand to Australia to China. Even Israel was not one to miss exhibiting at this event. China’s booths were decorated in their standard red colors from top to bottom reminiscense of their national flag.

I was one who likes looking at the latest technology from NTT Docomo and thankfully I did not go away disappointed. An array of new technologies were displayed from a phone called ‘Sound Leaf’ that allows you to listen to your phone from any bones of your face, hence the name (this tech is exceptionally useful for those with hearing disorders) to child phone called Soma phone that allows kids to pull a trigger on the phone whenever there is an emergency so that their parents can locate the kids via GPS connected to the phone. NTT Docomo also took the contrarian approach in phone development. While all phone manufacturers from LG to Samsung to SonyEricsson were busy displaying their latest high-tech phones with shiny sliding covers of Shine by LG and phones supporting the latest broadcasting technology from HSPA (bye, bye HSDPA and HSUPA, huh?) to TDM, NTT Docomo conveniently displayed their simple, easy to use phones called the Simplure phone that is shaped in a way that is easy to hold and their fast to call phone that has so little functions and only buttons to make speed dials preconfigured for u. How cool is that! Like what everyone says, be different! And that was exactly what NTT Docomo did.

Next are mobile technologies from start ups like a company doing Digital Concierge with services like search facility for locations ard Singapore and mps pushed to u on a needed basis featured by Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore. Another start-up that got some following is a company that masks phone numbers so that u can call and sms anyone without displaying ur number on your friend’s or a stranger’s phone screen.

And how can I miss out technologies from Malaysia with an up and coming company called Green Packet promoting their peer to peer info exchange through PC called SonBuddy. I was not able to see more of Malaysian companies except Telekom that has a few operators under their umbrella including MobileOne of Singapore, XLcommindo of Indonesia and many others.
Walking past the ailes of Australian booths, I was impressed to see various mobile technologies related to weaponry and artillery on display.

So, what was the theme of the whole exhibition? Hmm…with the mix of technologies, everyone would be confused even though I do see lots of hardware and software, applications and services. Some say mobile advertising and some say mobile security but all in all there are just to much to pick one. Walking past the four halls in 3 hours added with some networking in between, I was panting by the time I got from one end of the halls to the other. I was glad I made the time to go, to be enthralled with all the techs on show.

I have gone through multiple conversations with people saying that the reason they do not browse the Internet on their mobile phones is not necessarily because of the lack of fast GPRS or EDGE network but due to the small handset screen sizes that makes viewing sites on mobile phones a horrible, eye-squinting experience. Well, how long can you stay on the mobile handset and see the small screens as opposed to seeing your 1024 X 768 screen on your PC or laptop? I have previously written about how one should design websites by taking note of this constraint but what if there really is too much to display on the wapsite or if the wapsites should simulate the web experience?

I was also fortunate to speak to someone who gave me a futuristic solution to solve this problem by creating googles like those you use when you play Virtual 3D Games to view the mobile screen on a virtual big screen. Well, makes sense as how much bigger can a mobile screen go as people do not like carrying big phones in their handbags or on their hands anyway. It is with this vision that a company called Myvu has came up with video eyewear (googles) to see videos on iPod and wapsites on mobile on a virtual large screen. Their product is now available for sale for viewing videos on iPod up to 80GB of memory space.They even have a version of the eyewear for short-sighted users by providing the appropriate corection based on user’s experience. With this video google that costs USD300, people will not complain about viewing mobile wapsites anymore. It will be even cooler to browse wapsites on mobile now compared to surfing on your laptop.

Take a cue from these slides that have given me more knowledge on the best methods to design websites on a mobile. Never assume websites online can be replicated on mobile. With lack of good bandwidth on GPRS, wapsite designers not only need to ensure all your information and ‘call-to-action’ items (ie. downloading a content) need to be accessed fast within a few clicks, you also need to ensure only relevant information are presented on the front page and top of the wapsite. Remember, mobile users are not as patient and unlike website, you only have less than a few seconds to make an impression. And you thought website was bad. However, the good news is, almost everyone is seeing the importance of putiing the web on wap too.

Unlike the web where you only have 3 sizes of Internet browsers (and even then you can create a website for the resolution of the width of 768 only), there are so many handset models in the market using different browser types and sizes from Symbian to Java and even BREW in the US. The sizes range from 96 X 68 to 240 X 320 on newer models like Nokia N95. So, how does one design a standard wapsite for all handset models. You can’t and that is why transcoding is required for wapsites and contents delivered to the different handset models. Read more about how Novarra, a Mobile Internet company answers questions in relations to Mobile Web.

Also, a few sites like http://ready.mobi have been developed to evaluate mobile wapsites on how user friendly the site is and whether the site has a mobile (.mobi) version. It is suprising to note that a lot of popular websites like CNN and MSNBC do not have have a .mobi version yet.

Further references here: Oon Yeoh talks about the shape of mobile web to come.

Video: MEDC 07 Singapore Invite - Meet Derek Snyder (MEDC Global Content Manager)

Microsoft will hold a Mobile Devices Embedded Convention (MDEC) 2007 in Suntec City Singapore on 8 June. Would love to go but work is holding me up. Would have been a great opportunity to find out about development of mobile applications on a Windows Mobile platform which is the OS of my current HP PDA phone. Maybe there will be another convention for Symbian OS developers.

What is one of the online sites with AJAX capabilities that would make most sense to be used on mobile? Which site would you most likely to visit when you are on the go and all you have with you is your mobile? With the rage in twittering (meaning updating ppl in 15 words about what you are doing), and since its users update their activity every other minute(You can’t imagine how fast each post can come in, my post was gone down the page within seconds), twitterring while on the go makes sense and that is why mobile twitter is already long overdue. However, the founders did a good job by enabling a fast loading and easy to use mobile twitter with a simple interface for its simple functions. This is how I experimented on my mobile and manage to load the page in less than 30secs, login within 10s and updated my twitter also in the same time frame.Walla! Now everyone can update their twitter anytime anywhere even when you are in the toilet as long as there is GPRS coverage. Now, if only they have a mobile version of my twitter page. Start twittering on the go now: m.twitter.com. Oh yah, and if you are a member add me at username: princesse

As an advocate of Web 2.0 technology, I have been using Netvibes as my favourite AJAX webpage that collects my personal RSS feeds moving on from Bloglines and Protopage (which I still like with its features that enable saving of bookmarks using Post-it notes and saving of screenshots that links to websites). Recently I have find that the site is begining to get slower to load and the refreshing of the RSS feeds are resulting in my PC hanging.

Thus, in my search for the Next AJAX News Feeder, I came across an almost similar RSS feeds to Netvibes called iGoogle by none other than Google. I was apprehensive at first being someone who supports underdogs. I mean how much more can Google do that would be better than so many other RSS feeds out there who are specializing in it?

Being a technology enthusiast, I tried it out nevertheless. It helps that I already have a Google account and all I need to do is login to use the new feature. And boy was I impressed! iGoogle not only allow we to add as many feeds into various categorized tabs just like Netvibes but it also allows me to add tools like Calculator, Dictionary, Map(GPS) Reader, Weather Forecasts and To-do lists. There are many more tools I can select. One of the most impressive feature is iGoogle automatically adds RSS feeds according to the keywords in your category tabs. So, if I add ‘Technology’, all feeds from technology websites will auomatically be added, ie cnet.com, pcworld.com and engadget.com, good for those who have limited websites to add. For someone who also like a bit of good aesthetics, I am amazed when iGoogle not only allow me to add and change themes but the theme also changes according to the time in your country. You can see the theme now is at night as it is already 1am in Singapore but when I open my iGoogle tomorrow morning, the theme changes to morning with sunshine. The best part is I can set this as my default homepage so that I can read news feeds whenever I want to and use the Google search engine immediately. Great stickiness don’t you think.

Even before iGoogle, a lot of companies are already in this space making this is space overly crowded. Another worth mentioning is inewsdaily.com which already has an available list of famous RSS feeds site which strips away the personalization and customization part of RSS feeds but useful for those who lack the time to explore sites on their own. Meanwhile, Orange, a massive European mobile phone carrier that is now a subsidiary of France Télécom, is beta testing a customizable Ajax homepage product called Bubbletop however, only available for Orange subscribers with over 90 million mobile customers which means this will be incorporated into their mobile products.

Take your pick but with a big player like Google, would you use others? The competition has gotten stiffer.

Another interesting mobile application introduced in Singapore recently is called ColorCode, a service that allows you to zap the picture of a color coded picture to receive more information about the product or service. For example, if you want to find out more about the Football service provided by Starhub above, all you need to do is to take a photo of the logo in the poster and send it to ZapCode’s short code and walla, you will be delivered more information about the contents, ie. special discounts when you purchase a football jersey at a Starhub booth or free subscriptions to EPL alert SMS services. Sometimes, the response provided will be the wapsite of the service in which you can visit regularly to get more updates. The color codes can be presented on print ads, tv and newspapers and instead of you typing in the wapsite url, you can easily have it delivered to you by sending back the color code indicated in the ads. I have been noticing a few color coded ads on Straits Times recently but haven’t tried the service myself.

It is a technology that will save you the trouble of keying in the not easily identifiable wapsite url of the service. This will encourage the use of GPRS and wap to access more information on the service, a new and effective way of promoting a service. With more people who are tech-savvy owning handsets with cameras pre-built, it is a service that is easily accessible as long as you own a camera phone.

The trouble of using this service is that you have to download the application onto your phone before you can snap the photo. Thus, not everyone who owns a camera phone can snap the photo and have them converted to a wapsite or sms info on the service until you download the right application. However, I see potential in this service especially if people can get free offers from snapping a photo and getting more info about it. Next to come is snapping photos of not only color coded images but any RGB colored images to get more info. Maybe by then you do not have to download the application onto your phone.

I am starting an evaluation section on new mobile technologies that have come out of Asia Pacific that has impressed me so far. Mostly start-ups from Singapore as this is what I have been following anyway.

Very few mobile technology impressed me until this came along. Simple and solves a prominent problem everyone has with their mobile phones. How many times have you complained that there is not enough memory in your phone to store all your favorite mp3 or photo albums? How many times have you complained that you have too many email accounts to remember that you tend to forget the passwords? How many times have you complained that international call charges on your phone bills are far too high?

One of the best application on phone to be launched in Singapore recently is called Pfingo by a company called Mozat. The best thing is to create as much buzz as possible, they are providing free trials to the first 2000 who registers. Well, of course they have the budget to do that if they are sponsored by Starhub. Dang! I was late by a few hours else I could make any international calls for free.

A company started by ex-NUS students from China, they launched three type of products called PfingoTalk that gives free call over IP at any WiFi hotspots at a low monthly fee, PfingoActive that brings emails, blogging, rss feeds and chatting under one platform and the most interesting is allow you to remotely access files from your mobile to your PC or even external shared foldrs and PfingoMail that allows easy synchronization of mails from PC to mobile up to 5 email accounts. All contacts and calendars from different devices can be kept and organized on PfingoMail. Of course the one everyones are excited about is PfingoActive as now they can listen to mp3s stored on their PC, access large files frm server and view photos from photo albums without compromising the limited storage space on mobile phones. The rest of the features are not that much to shout about but gives us value added service which will make this application sticky for all Starhub as well as future Starhub users.

Thus, it is with applications like this that what Michael Yin, the CEO of Mozat says rings true: “Mobile phones are the future”.