I don’t need a special UI for my iPhone, thanks May 23, 2008
Posted by geoffwolfe in : On Topic , add a commentWith the Safari browser and the iPhone’s sweet touch screen functionality, I can look at any web page and do what I would do on a laptop. Granted, browsing on the AT&T Edge network can try your patience, but when connected to wi-fi (and soon 3G), the browsing speed is perfectly reasonable.
So, it bothers me somewhat when I land on a site and they serve up an “optimized” UI for mobile devices (try MSNBC from your phone). Typically, there is less functionality available to you and in the MSNBC’s case, it won’t let you switch to the standard UI from a mobile device. I have the same issue with Twitter where the mobile UI doesn’t have the functions and details seen on the standard UI such as Reply, Delete, and how it was sent (Twirl, MessageDance, etc.).
If I choose the “Standard” UI option for Twitter on my iPhone, it works perfectly fine. Sure, maybe it’s small but two quick taps on the screen and it zooms in.
There was a lot of buzz yesterday about the availability of FF to Go which is an optimized FriendFeed UI for mobile devices. It lacks several of the features found in the standard UI, most notably search. Standard FriendFeed looks and works great on my iPhone.
At MessageDance, we believe in the future that the iPhone has brought us. Web companies don’t need to develop special UIs for mobile devices because the browsing abilities on ALL devices will move towards what the iPhone offers today. The same is true for companies that build resident application clients for mobile devices. Why not just take advantage of the native applications on the device? All you need is a good browser to access an application and an email client to use as an integration layer. Wi-fi is becoming ubiquitous so being connected all of the time seems less like a dream. Execution is critical; develop your applications accordingly.
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I sense a disruption in The Force! May 9, 2008
Posted by geoffwolfe in : On Topic , add a comment
Nokia’s CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo says he will reinvent Nokia into an Internet company as detailed by Anders Bylund of Ars Technica. It’s a clear reaction to the success of the iPhone (with the frenzy of activity around jailbreaking it and the new SDK), the poorly kept rumor about the Google Phone along with the Android platform, and of course the decreasing margins that always come with hardware. I disagree a bit with Nokia’s intention to not innovate in hardware design and Anders’ thought that mobile devices will converge to basically the same feature set because there is a lot to be done in the area of usability and power consumption that a device maker could still differentiate itself greatly. The iPhone is an incredible step forward but there is obvious room for improvements such as data input and power usage.
ALL mobile phones are fast becoming mobile computers (not limited to “smart phones”) with incredible power, storage, and Internet capabilities. While I believe you can still set yourself apart as a manufacturer, it will be the services and software native to the phone that will be an even stronger selling point. For web companies, why build an app or user interface specific to each device when a really good Internet browser is all you need? Safari on the iPhone proves this. Why build a special mobile data integration layer for each device when you can just use the email client native to the phone? Web companies should build their site and services with this in mind and the device/platform companies should optimize their native apps and OS for these simple requirements.
At MessageDance, we recognize that the browser and email are the apps found on virtually every PC and soon on every mobile device. We’re not too keen on being device-specific so we use the ubiquitous tools already available and everyone knows. Using the “Share” feature found on many social sites like YouTube and Digg (and probably on all sites sooner rather than later), our users can send their favorite content to their favorite social destination or their friends’ by using their MessageDance email address. They can create a blog post from their iPhone or Facebook Messages section by simply emailing it to “blog @ messagedance.com“. The blog post also can go automatically to Twitter. All of this is done by a simple yet powerful email address.
Nokia senses the disruption caused by the iPhone and Google. They believe the higher margin business will come from the platform and services built on top of their devices. This is a natural evolution as witnessed in the PC business as well with IBM focusing more on software and services. I hope they will continue to innovate on the devices as well as make the platform and native apps stronger so companies like MessageDance can innovate and develop their offerings to be useful anywhere and from any device.
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