It's been a while...

Its been quite some time since I've posted anything here. Sincere apologies. I've been pretty busy at my work as my managers have really been challenging me (aka kicking my ass) but its a good feeling to constantly push oneself. That said, I'll actually be working towards a mobile commerce related project and will be sure to update my general experience in dealing with this upcoming project here. Speaking of which, I read that Digby just locked in a new retail client, Wet Seal which makes the mobile platform war quite fierce between Digby and UsableNet. My only gripe with UsableNet at the moment is that they insist on making you use a subdomain based on UsableNet.

As far as Mobile OS front, I've been playing around with Google's NEXUS One since around the Middle of December. Because of the NDA from the party where I had access from, I didn't want to post any feedback on it until this month. The procrastination got to the best of me so a perfectly good draft of Nexus One is just sitting on my desktop. In short, the phone is pretty slick as far as hardware and software integration goes (love that little vibration when you press on the touchpad) but the hardware itself doesn't make you feel like its a premium phone. Don't get me wrong, the OLED display is crisp and the Snap Dragon CPU is blazingly fast, but my general take with Android OS has been that it is trying to be too smart, thus taking away some of the control and decision making a user is accustomed to (case in point, I had a heck of a time loading my contacts from MacBook address book to the darn thing). There is no doubt in my mind, Android has the staying power and my prediction still stands, Google Mobile will dominate this space very soon.

Other updates:
Mobile Monday Brooklyn, is an event for all mobile fans to gather up and drink Free Beers. Check it out if you are in the neighborhood and talk mobile.

Random shoutout:
I just discovered OakleyVault.com, pretty steep discounts on my favorite brand of sunglasses and casual apparels.

Earthquake Haiti:
Please support them anyway you can. Red Cross is taking donations via Mobile, simply text "90999" and you'll be making a donation via your cell phone bill. More options can be read here.

Happy Thanksgiving and Black Friday!

Cheers and greetings from New England, I hope everyone has enjoyed over stuffing their faces in with massive amount of turkey and gravy and is well rested for a full day of Black Friday gadget madness. This year, I feel like marketers are really waiting to the N-th hour to roll out the amazing deals and when the deals are announced, it feels like they are poured in massive volume.

Here is my strategy for this years Black Friday madness, try to stay focused! Focus on what you really need for your gadget lust and not get pursusaded into buying something you don't actually need. Don't settle for something just because its kind of a deal. Make sure the deal aligns with what you truly desire. As far as keeping track of the deals throughout the day, I rely on Google Reader and setup a dedicated deals sites (via RSS feed) and access it via my smartphone throughout the day; its more handy if you have WiFi setup throughout your house. In general, I will avoid going to the brick and mortar stores and stick to online deals. I, of course, keep a close eye on my favorite online retailer Amazon since they have the best combination between price and free shipping (after $25).

Lets get to this years noteworthy Gadget Deals:

* Maglite 2D and 3D LED Flashlights $15 was $24-25 (now expired)
* Metal Gear Solid 4 - $15 (now expired, back to $28)
* Garmin nuvi 285T w/ MSN Direct and Traffic - $129
* TOMTOM ONE 125SE - $59 from Walmart
* Lots of Blu Ray Movies on Sale (between $7 - $14), I picked up the Gladiator for $10
* New PS3 Slim w/ Infamous and Kill Zone 2 for $299 w/ $10 credit
* $121 Bonus from ING Direct with a new checking account (You'll get it 50 days later)

Mobile as a Second Thought

I'm talking to a friend, he'd asked me if I was available on a given date, I told him I'd check on my computer and get back; the whole time I have my iPhone w/ Google cal. syncd to iCal...

I'm walking with my wife to get some breakfast in town, uncertain if the Dunkin Donuts was on 6th or 7th Street where I needed to turn on to. For a moment I wished I "remembered" better, until I realized I could easily pull up 3 Dunkin Donuts in town via GMap on my iPhone...

I'm traveling to a destination, instruction and location were emailed to me, my immediate reaction is to print it out to take it with me... I could just as easily fetched the email and searched for directions on my phone...

There are probably a dozen more of my own personal experience where I "realized" my smartphone could have done the job. I think we are so used to the years and years of routine, stationary usage of computer desktops, printers and completely lack of mobility that made me think about my smartphone as a last resort. On that note, i hope folks can be more open to push their smartphones to their max, you'd be surprised to see how far you can go without a laptop...

(out of principal, I'm going to email this entry to post on blogger)

Sent from my iPhone [edited on Desktop 3 hours later]

Engadget's Mobile Experience w/ iPhone 3G[s]

Engadget's Chief Editor Joshua Topolsky did a little rant and write up on his recent work-related mobile experience with the iPhone 3GS. While I agree with some of the frustration he felt w/ speed and multitasking, I'd still make the arguement that iPhone offers some of the best user experience as a compliment to a user (contact, email, web, PDF, Office viewer, calendar, Chat, Apps, etc...). It certainly lacks the way a computer should work (copy a file, file management, etc...) but its the best option on the market, atleast today.

SANDISK's 60-Second Mobile Video Contest

SanDisk is kicking it up a notch for your summer. Grab your video-capable mobile phone and start recording your summer vacation; then upload a 60-second video to YouTube.com/SANDISK for a chance to win some cold hard cash and cool prizes:

* One $5,000 Grand Prize Winner will be announced after the contest ends.
* Five $1,000 Weekly Prizes go to each week's best entry.
* 25 Weekly Finalists will each win a 16GB SanDisk® mobile memory card, MobileMate™ Micro Reader, and a t-shirt. That’s a total of 25 cards and 25 readers given away each week. Videos will be judged on originality, ability to capture summer spontaneity and entertainment factor.

In short, you must submit your footage by 8/10/2009 and SANDISK will do their drawing weekly. For the contest rules, visit here.

Bonus Giveaway: The Mobile Experience blog is going to giveaway a SanDisk 16GB microSD mobile memory card for its own (Thanks SanDisk for sponsoring this!). Go to Twitter.com and retweet this event: RT@MobilExperience SanDisk 60-Second Summer Mobile Phone Video Contest, win up to $5K http://bit.ly/J2rjr You must retweet by 8/31/2009!

Wireless Carriers Lack Mobile Websites

I was trying to do some research on my way to work this morning and was surprised to find that the top four US mobile telecoms did not have a mobile site or the ability to auto-detect a mobile browser and generate the proper web output. You'd think mobile carriers would be at the forefront of such movement.

Screenshots attached using iPhone 3G, firmware 3.0, Mobile Safari.

The Mobile Experience and Summer Vacations

This week I took a nice vacation with two other families and drove up to Cape Cod, Mass. We rented a house in the town of Harwich and had a blast going to the beaches, visited quaint little towns nearby, enjoyed fresh seafood, grilled everynight along with ice cold beers, wines, whiskey and scotch. Needless to say, I had a blast.
(Photo Caption: Blackberry Lane in Chatham, Cape Cod, MA, this is in no way associated w/ the popular smartphone, but very cool never-the-less)

I, of course, traveled with a handful of gadgets especially picked out for this trip to keep up with our activities on the go, I decided it would be fun to share along with some additional fruitful thoughts regarding to mobile gadgets: (inspired by Lifehacker's "whats in your bag" series, I've taken a photo of my bag and the essentials)

* iPhone 3G sporting my favorite iPhone case Griffin Clarifi - You know this one is a given (quick photo and sharing, email/voice communication and road trip music/entertainment). Along the way, I used Loopt application to broadcast my location so my buddy Yann can check on my driving status. The Griffin TuneFlex Aux w/ SmartClick (my review here) worked out great on the road
* V-MODA Vibe Duo Headphones
* Sony VAIOS TXN27N Ultraportable Laptop - Granted I didn't have to use this much for communication or information gathering, it did prove to be portable and handy when I organized our photos via built-in memory card reader (amongst the families) as well as using it as a portable DVD player for my daughter to watch Seasame Street on the 6 hour drive
* Canon SD630 Camera - This digital camera has a little age but still performs like a champ; it fits easily in my cargo shorts pocket where I can take along to just about anywhere
* Swiss Army Knife Swisschamp model - I never leave on a trip w/o this tool. Its a portable toolbox in my pocket. Regardless of what you need to do (ie. open a bottle of wine or beer, saw off a small branch or make basic repairs, etc...), its nice to have this bad boy with you. You'd be surprised how easy a party is ruined w/o a bottle opener
* Casio Pathfinder Watch PAW-1300Y-1VCR limited edition @ Amazon - Needless to say, weather, temperature and compass are great features for the great outdoors!
* Other Accessories: Sandisk 4GB Cruser Micro Jumpdrive, (2) Pilot Dr. Grip pens, Ethernet Cable, iPod cable and charger, mini-USB cable, and Clif bars

Packing all of these essentials gave me the comfort zone I needed even while on vacation; knowing that I have all the tools to keep my vacation going at 100% is a great feeling. All of them fits in a lightweight Brooklyn Industries backpack. It would have been nice to have picked up some two-way radio w/ a 5-20 mile radius so I could have kept in touch with my friends while we caravan around different towns throughout the cape; on the wishlist side, having a Loopt-like integration into car GPS would be very nice to keep your friends in touch.

Where is the Mobile Experience going?

Apple iPhone, in my opinion, is one of the biggest influence in mobile movement for the smartphone market because it has become the "it" device for personal task management. For a commuter, an iPhone does quite a bit from media player, email communication, web surfing to unlimited potential via a friendly mobile app store (for mCommerce, utilities, etc...).

With Palm Pre coming next week, I can't help but wonder just how will this new device transform our mobile experience. If its anything like the Android, which is great but nothing exceeding what the iPhone has done, then it would just be another "flavor" of the existing mobile experience.

I am hoping for more, by more, I mean to be further detached ourselves from a personal computer and rely on smartphones solely. I want the mobile browser to be truly capable of handling secure pages, complex forms and tables, flash video and more. I want multi-tasking and more CPU power. I yearn for the day where I can truly rely on my smartphone for everything I need from a laptop.

I am anxiously awaiting for 6/6/09 to find out what the Palm Pre can deliver!

New PSP Go Picture Revealed

Engadget posted some leaked photos of the new PSP Go due out in hours. The word is that this portable slider gaming handheld is coming out in the fall and will not be an attempt to replace the current PSP-3000. Official image has been leaked here as well. I can't wait to find out whats in store for us spec-wise although one analog stick is still pretty sucky. Definitely stirring up the mobile experience pool!

Giveaway: New Plantronics Premium Headset

[Update: 4/21/2009 - The submission will close at Midnight PST today. BTW, the cat is out of the bag as far as design goes... check it out here.]

Plantronics is set to reveal a brand new premium noise-cancellation headset on April 23, 2009. Very little is being told but this is what we know thus far:
* A lot of R&D has been poured into this new product
* Over 24 rounds of human testing ensuring comfort during extended wear
* Bluetooth ?
* Noise-Canceling, in-ear bud design
* Flagship, Premium headphone, likely to supersede its current top dog Discovery 925

To celebrate this new product launch, Plantronics has built a sneak peek website for a countdown to the release date. They encourage for the curious bunch to check back often for more product images as we get closer to the big day.

Here comes the fun part. theMobileExperience.com is going to to give away two units of this headset to be shipped right on the release date, simply:
1. Leave us a comment about Plantronics' sneak peek site and/or the early images of the headset
2. Send me an email with your valid email address to giveaway@themobileexperience.com

Rules:
* Please complete both steps by 4/21/2009 Midnight PST
* Must be 18 or older and live in the 50 States (USA)
* Winners will be randomly chosen by theMobileExperience.com on 4/22/2009
* Winners will be contacted via email and must respond within 72 hours, or another winner will be chosen by theMobileExperience.com
* Plantronics will ship the headsets directly to the eligible winners
* Your email address will be confidential and be tossed away after the giveaway is finished

Shark 15.6V Cordless Vac, a different mobile experience

Update: 03/17/09 - I found this bad ass version of the Shark from Bed Bath Beyond. 16.8V of power with a bigger motorized brush head. In the words of Barney Stinson, legend.... ... wait for it... -ary.

Today, I am blogging a slightly different mobile experience. Ever since I moved out to the East Coast, I haven't had the convenience of a private car garage to upkeep my car. My poor ride has been quite dirty since I can't hook up a vacuum to keep the interior clean in a public parking garage. I finally started to research for a portable vacuum solution. I need a cordless vac that is powerful and last long enough to clean out my car's interior including the trunk space (if done right, roughly lasting 7 to 10 minutes of non-stop suction).

Growing up, my parents had a dust buster that is hooked up to a car's cig lighter, I always remembered it being quite weak, so I know I had to checkout the specs. Upon research, I found two cordless products rated at 15.6V. Those familiar with power tools will know that as you get up to 15V+, these tools have ample power to do just about anything. The two choices were: 1. Black and Decker dust buster ($54 from Amazon) and 2. Shark Cordless Vac ($39 from Amazon). The Shark brand was big few years ago on infomercials and some auto forum folks said they've been happy with it. Amazon has about a dozen reviews for the Black and Decker at time of writing while the Shark Cordless Vac had about 100+. By popular choice, I went with the Shark vac and I am happy with my choice.

The Shark Cordless Vac comes with two additional attachments: a narrow crevice tool and a spinning motorized head (like a full size vac). The vac itself provides a powerful suction for a mobile device; using the narrow crevice tool will intensify the suction for concentrated regions. The motorized spinner head is whats cool about this vac. I usually lay the floor mats out on the floor and use this spinning head to pickup the dust bunnies, dirt, and crumbs. Whats really cool is the way the spinning head is designed; it has two prongs which attaches to the vac head that provides the juice from the unit's battery to spin motor. The result is effective ways to quickly picking up all sorts of dust and dirt effectivey. I can only imagine if I didn't have this attachment, I would spend twice amount the time per floor mat which would end up draining my battery out completely.

The only thing I have to complaint about is the time it takes to charge. Preliminary charging is 20 hours, which is highly recommended by the manufacturer. Incremental charges, atleast for me, has been about 12+ hours. There is no indicator to show me when charging is completed so its a little bit of guess work. One thing on my wishlist is if in the future, they release a version capable of handling both dry/wet applications like some shop vacs.

Overall, I am very pleased with this product and how it functions. This little vac is handy for any occasion throughout the house. My car's interior, is at last, clean like the way I kept my cars when I lived in the west coast. Now I just gotta figure out a way to wash the exterior of my car.

Some thoughts on Mobile Applications

There is no doubt in my mind mobile application is the key to future of smartphones. I always knew the limitation of a phone’s screensize posed inherent challenges to prevent same user experience compared to desktop web applications. We must capitalize on a phone’s native feature set (input, output, keyboard, touchscreen, UI, OS) to provide a robust mobile experience which is only possible via mobile apps.

A quick history: Mobile apps have come a long way. Gone are those days when we have to pay or download an app to our desktop and use a sync software to install the application to your handheld. Today, most applications can be downloaded and installed over air directly from handset if you provide a download link within its browser. This is true across all platforms (Symbian S60, iPhone OS X, Windows Mobile and yes, even Palm OS). With Apple’s iTunes leading the way and Google’s G1 Marketplace to follow, the market for mobile applications is aggregating and serious money is being thrown at this new marketplace.

A few random thoughts come to mind when thinking about monetizing mobile applications:

1. To monetize anything in the mobile space has proven to be difficult, there hasn’t been any substantial growth in the mobile ads space which has been pushing for quite some time, seeing iTunes rock out with their high volume is very exciting. However the iTunes eco-system has now been tainted with loads of free or cheap applications fighting for first page ranking, making it very difficult for those interested in selling for a at a premium for a higher margin

2. Iconfactory’s Principal Craig Hockenberry’s “letter to Steve” (an amazing piece and analysis of iTunes store) brought out lots of interesting points, however, I can’t help but wonder if mobile applications should cost money at all? I, generally, prefer to download free open source applications for my desktop, so why should this mentality change in the mobile space? In my opinion regarding to Mr. Hockenberry’s concern about iTunes store becoming more cluttered and higher priced apps don’t get the light of day, perhaps mobile apps companies should build in a marketing fund outside of iTunes to help market their higher priced mobile applications. Same practice as desktop software or video games for that matter. Seems like Apple listened, a little bit.

3. As far how to monetize and be rewarded if mobile applications were free, the Cydia installer within jailbroken iPhones seems to be working out quite well where it is being subsidized by ad supported revenue (see screenshot). Granted, I don’t know if the actual developers see any of that ad dollar in this scenario, I certainly have paid attention to a few ads myself while downloading awesome, function-enhancing applications free of cost to me. Perhaps there is something here.

the mobile experience giveaway - Celebrating 2 Year Anniversary (2nd week update)

I started "the mobile experience" blog two years ago when I was in between jobs. I had taken a month off from the hustle and bustle of the NYC media agency scene and decided to create something for my own. At that time, my goal was to, 1). explore and document my thoughts on a topic that I am genuinely passionate about and 2). learn how blogging and related social marketing platforms work in the world of online marketing. I am happy to say that this blog has given me some unique opportunities to voice my opinion and learn to apply what I learned to my full time job. Over the course of the past two years, I have been very fortunate to have worked with some very good PR professionals representing solid companies in the mobile world. They've worked with me to provide latest information and review samples to give content for this blog. Since the Holidays is here, I would like to give away some of those review items to my faithful readers.

How to win something: Follow me on Twitter and send me a direct message between now until December 31st. I will randomly draw two names each week and give away the following items. I will announce more drawing and prizes every Monday until 12/31/2008. So comeback often for more updates. Cheers! *This giveaway is for the contiguous 48 U.S. States only.

Week 1 (Drawing Takes Place 12/13/2008): I'll be giving away the 1). Aura Bluetooth Speaker and 2). SanDisk Sansa slotMusic Player w/ Nelly MicroSD DRM-Free Album
Winners of week 1 drawing has been notified via Twitter via direct message. Send me your shipping address via direct mail so I can ship you these items!






Week 2 (Drawing Takes Place 12/20/2008): I'll be giving away the 1). Griffin Reflect iPhone 3G case and 2). Griffin SmartTalk + Reflect case for iPod Touch 2G. SanDisk has graciously tossed in two goodies for my 2nd year anniversary giveaway: SanDisk 8GB Mobile Ultra MicroSDHC and 16GB Mobile Ultra MicroSDHC (Thanks Jody P. from Lyman PR). So a total of four winners with five items will be announced.






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the mobile experience giveaway - Celebrating 2 Year Anniversary

I started "the mobile experience" blog two years ago when I was in between jobs. I had taken a month off from the hustle and bustle of the NYC media agency scene and decided to create something for my own. At that time, my goal was to, 1). explore and document my thoughts on a topic that I am genuinely passionate about and 2). learn how blogging and related social marketing platforms work in the world of online marketing. I am happy to say that this blog has given me some unique opportunities to voice my opinion and learn to apply what I learned to my full time job. Over the course of the past two years, I have been very fortunate to have worked with some very good PR professionals representing solid companies in the mobile world. They've worked with me to provide latest information and review samples to give content for this blog. Since the Holidays is here, I would like to give away some of those review items to my faithful readers.

How to win something: Follow me on Twitter and send me a direct message between now until December 31st. I will randomly draw two names each week and give away the following items. I will announce more drawing and prizes every Monday until 12/31/2008. So comeback often for more updates. Cheers! *This giveaway is for the contiguous 48 U.S. States only.

Week 1 (Drawing Takes Place 12/13/2008): I'll be giving away the 1). Aura Bluetooth Speaker and 2). SanDisk Sansa slotMusic Player w/ Nelly MicroSD DRM-Free Album
Winners of week 1 drawing has been notified via Twitter via direct message. Send me your shipping address via direct mail so I can ship you these items!






Week 2 (Drawing Takes Place 12/20/2008): I'll be giving away the 1). Griffin Reflect iPhone 3G case and 2). Griffin SmartTalk + Reflect case for iPod Touch 2G. SanDisk has graciously tossed in two goodies for my 2nd year anniversary giveaway: SanDisk 8GB Mobile Ultra MicroSDHC and 16GB Mobile Ultra MicroSDHC (Thanks Jody P. from Lyman PR). So a total of four winners with five items will be announced.






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"the mobile experience" blog goes, well... MOBILE

I've been wanting to take this blog to a mobile platform for quite some time. I was actually surprised to learn that of all things, Google (Blogger team) haven't already come up with a way to parse and render blogspot accounts to a formatted for mobile screen. I suppose with all the customization that is going on, it'd be a nightmare for Blogspot account to figure out what to display or not.

mobile.theMobileExperience.com is born!

So here I am, trying to construct a somewhat dynamic and mobile-friendly website (mostly optimized for iPhone's Safari browser). After some research online, I learned that the mobile Safari browser relies on a unique meta tag called "viewport". In short, because desktop browsers rely on the ability to resize a window to deal with webpage scaling, iPhone's fix width browser gives you the ability to zoom in n' out via two-finger spread. By implementing the meta tag "viewport", you can control how your page is displayed and scaled at launch from an iPhone. Apparently, the viewport is pretty flexible, allows you to set your content width between 200 all the way to 10,000.

The trick I've learned thus far has been setting the initial scale to display my content end to end. For example, if you have a webpage which uses 640 pixel width, I would set the initial-scale to 0.5 to basically scale down 50% so it fits iPhones 320 pixel width perfectly when holding the phone upright in portrait mode.

I used a feedburner "BuzzBoost" function to generate the latest 10 entries from this blog to be displayed on the mobile-friendly site. As mentioned yesterday, Apple offers a nice guideline to help you build a far more advanced mobile web capable of using all of iPhone or iPod Touch's bells and whistles. This is just the first stage for me. I intend to do a little more and get better at optimizing my content for mobile handsets.

PS - I noticed some folks building websites with really wide table or div (900+ pixels) but uses really large thumbnail and font. They proposely let iPhone scale giantic fonts and pictures down. My guess is that they do this because they want people who accidently land on these pages via Desktop to still be able to operate with ease? I am open to any thoughts or feedback regarding to best practices for iPhone browsers.