Adobe Flash is gonna’ hit Smartphones before you know it, they announced their support for Blackberry, Android, WebOS, Windows Mobile, and Symbian systems among the others.
I’ve been using an Android phone for nearly a month now and I do have the beta version of the Adobe Flash 10 player on it. Yes, it’s Flashy and it’s seamles.
Online Ads & Microsites go Mobile
With such a multimedia capable player going mobile there’s no more divide between Computer n’ Handheld devices in terms of reach and accessibility by advertisers. Having that said, many iPhone/Android applications that were made around limitation of having no Flash support to gather data from Flash based websites will deminish for good.
So what happens next? Now the whole tranformation of Desktop browser Ads to Mobile browser Ads starts. It won’t be anymore about showing the right content to Mobile users but showing Mobile Ads to Mobile users. And this transition will take place FAST! This change in Ad format or utility will be fast for two important reasons:
The same authorware, serving, and reporting systems that are used for normal web banners and matrixes could utilize n’ serve Mobile Ads
Unlike the Mobile Web(sites), Mobi, or em-dot Mobile Flash Ads won’t be a luxury add-on to your website to make it Accessible on Mobiles but in addition accelerating sites Ad-Space-Burnup; Selling more Ads. Thus, it will be a priority
So whoever said Mobile Ads will be slow, and that year would come sometime but we never know “when”. It’s Now!.
Finally did the switch to my first ever Nokia. Slick, Cheque, and Slim. E71. An iSync plugin and I was set with all my contacts and calendar items from my P1. Sony Ericsson is a religion as you know, not just a phone brand, but the delay in their releases kills! Another issue with SEs is that it gets really slow once you have your E-Mail client loaded with e-mails and files all over the directories. Couldn’t wait for the X1 nor the P3 and iPhone is out of question for me (it ain’t my thing).
The new tag line or the catch phrase for the new OperaMini beta 4 is “The web for the Now Generation”. At the first glance I read it as “for the New generation”. Got back and I was wondering why was the “N” in capital, then read it as it was–Now. It can’t be a typo, not cuz Opera wouldn’t make mistakes but “New Generation” has been repeatedly used and absued for the last decade. Time for something new, “Now Generation”?
First thing that came to my mind was the “Play Now” technology that comes with Sony Ericsson Mobiles. Which got me to the idea of having thins Instantly, PlayNow is a pay per listen service via a media player in SE phones. And now “Now Generation”. A generation that wants everything instantly and can’t wait.
If my reading of the phrase and their objective is right, then it’s all about having it instantly. Neat! The all “Now” style is hot and portrays the right “Now” attitude and demand from the web-users on Mobiles.
It’s amazing how a 90KB software could do so much using as little as possible of your processing cycles and storage spaces on your mobile. All possible by the power of Server-Side HTML rendering and optimization used in Opera Mini, with Beta 4 it’s gone all wild and now it supports Intelligent Zooming too!
A piece of software you’d never regret downloading using your mobile data bandwidth, guess what, 90Fills using your Wap Connection and 180Fills using your 3G Connection on Etisalat’sSIM card. How much was the price for the full version of Desktop Opera back in the days? Remember? And now, the best of the best in the Mini class is out and for free.
It’s in Beta, you’d receive many java.io.IOException erros, well, it’s still beta, but to my amazement, background images and images that are smaller than 5KBs do not get optimized thus giving you a cooler experience. All in all, in general, a mini version of what’s gonna’ be available on the full version of the Opera9 Mobile. Can’t wait for that.
UIQ enabled mobiles come with built-in Opera Mobile v.6, a lot of changes and updates have been made since then but only for S60 series of Nokia and Windows Mobile. So here we’ll play a little bit and test the latest available Opera and will see if Minimo is really the Mobile “Firefox”.
Opera 8.6 Mobile
The start screen is a simple screen with a number of links and a Yahoo search box. Although Opera usually supports Google on this version the search partner is Yahoo!.
Opera supports tab browsing, it supported it even in version six, the version that comes built-in with Sony Ericsson P990i and M600i. Supports a great deal of JavaScript and AJaX. Understands the mobile profiles and CSS media attribute. Highly mobile friendly.
Just like the WM Internet Explorer, it supports three kind of views:
Single Column
Desktop View
ScreenFit
It works fine with Mobile Optimized web pages and displays them right.
Minimo, the Mobile Firefox?
Just because it is hosted at Mozilla and uses the Mozilla engine doesn’t mean that this browser is really good, however, it is impressive. Tabbed, Toolbar-enabled rather than menu based interface. It’s so slow though.
It is really bad with background images, it displays them with wrong colors, it is basically a disastrous process of browsing pages with many graphics and stylings.
Worst of all, it does not understand the “media” attribute of CSS link reference, thus, it treats bot Screen and Handheld as the same profile and renders the same way.
Both of the browsers were made for Windows Mobile, Opera is really advanced and matured and it is obvious, it is incredibly Fast, faster than the Opera built-in in Sony Ericsson’s UIQ based mobiles. Minimo comes out really slow, it takes 2,3 minutes to load given an average Windows Mobile. After loading, accessing the UI is really slow as opening a new tab would take relatively long.
Following the latest trend in the Mobile Web Browsers market Opera will release a full browser for Mobiles incorporating the intellegent zoom and overviews of pages along with Widgets and advanced client-side capabilities. Joining the Mobile Safari and DeepFish, taking the small screen web browsing experience to the next level matching desktop experiences.
Better hardware, so why not?
It’s a confusing debate if you think about it, having the main challenge which is punching keypads and scrolling pitches to navigate. Getting back to the fact that loading Desktop optimized websites are bandwidth hungry despite the fact that they could be built with standards and clean structural markup, there’s always rich media and imagery that no matter how optimized they get or cached they still make up a good figure in KB downloads, considering the newness of the whole 3G/GPRS service packages and pricing models they’re so not welcoming.
Yes, better hardware, better interfaces and experiences are positive but the limitations haven’t been taken off the way yet, is this going to make it tougher to think of Mobile Optimized websites?
Or as Steve Jobs mentioned in the latest D5 interview that the Mobile Web as the tiny screens and tiny pages mean poor experience and not even close to a proper experience?
If these browsers take of, and get adopted, then we’re likely to spend more on Data plans and less on paying for Mobile Optimized web projects, that is the death of the Mobile Markup and even the dotMobi model.
Yes, Experience is king, but economic accessibility is a must, not forgetting that size really matters and differentiates the whole experience, I’m still so not convinced that this is the way the Mobile Web should’ve been directed.
At the end of the day, it’s a new industry all over again, and believe it or not, Jobs was right when he said iPhone would revlutionize the mobility world, yes it applies to the Mobile Web too, thin about how DeepFish and Opera 9 are coming out soon the whole Mobile Web design and use will change.
Another stage, another transition, another form to adopt and get adjusted to, for us Designers and Developers.
Not so big on such superstitious stuff, but today is 07/06/07, a year a go on 06/06/06 everyone went crazy for the 666 day, not forgetting the movie “The Omen”. Next month on the same day it’s going to be 777. Yea you could take it as a lucky day if you believe in 7 as a magical number. So many people are getting married on that day.
To me, after long debates with self and lots of research, I’ve come to a decision on starting a book on Mobile Web Design/Advertising/Marketing. I know many have been written already, it keeps on getting hotter as an industry n’ I believe I’ve got things to add. I’m going for it, what do you think?
Got a tiny outline ready to show publishers, think you can help or have ideas? Please do tell, I’d love to hear’em.
Sony Ericsson P1 was launched in UAE ten days ago, it’s the best Sony Ericsson smartphone ever! The smoothness of the M600i added to the utility nature of P990i gets you a new smartphone, the P1.
If you haven’t used the SE smartphones, then you’re possibly missing on some serious Mobile interactivity. UIQ interfaces are intimidating in the beginning, add the rocker-style QWERTY keyboard style, a week and you’re on for serious e-mailing and web browsing. Real desktop style RSS reading too!
Online, E-mail, and all the Multimedia in pocket are old News, every other phone’s got it. Feature wise, it has nothing more than the latest phones in the market, But why P1 is different? It’s the user experience, once engaged, you can’t take using another, see for yourself.
P1i Photos
Compared to most popular
Here’s a brief video:
P1i is really something. Okay it doesn’t come with GPS receiver nor a mapping app, although I was anticipating it so bad and wanned it, that’s a miss out there. But still I’m going for its grabs today.
Screen Digest’s latest press release shows a massive adoption of Mobile TV comparing to Mobile Gaming & Mobile Music.
It is the newest of all mobile content offerings – TV – that looks set to emerge as the strongest performer globally, delivering €4.7bn of revenue from 140 million subscribers by 2011. The new broadcast services, launched in only a handful of markets, are growing rapidly. For instance, Unicast services, delivered over existing 3G networks, have begun to generate real revenues in Europe.
One of the areas that this release misses is the Web textual or written content consumption. And yet the Videos. Here’s the release in PDF with charts and data.
Being in the Middle East, anybody for UAE or Gulf region statistics? Any idea?
I’ve received nine e-mails asking me how to configure Etisalat’s Mobile TV on Sony Ericsson smart phones namely P990 and M600. The problem lies in the tricky way of operating the Mobile TV from Etisalat’s side. So here I’ll explain how to make it work on your SE P990 and M600.
Requirements
As you were informed by Etisalat you need a 3G enabled mobile which P990 and M600 are, and a Wap Internet connection.
The confusion starts here. You need a 3G enabled mobile to view the Mobile TV channels while you still need a Wap connection which Etisalat calls Ewap.
Why do you need an Ewap connection? The irony is in the fact that Etisalat’s Weyak portal works only while browsing it through using the Ewap profile. A 3G Internet connection is different and Weyak’s Mobile Portal identifies only Ewap users. One more thing, you need to be subscribed to Weyak as well. Okay to get it straight we need these to start:
Ewap subscription/settings
Weyak subscription
Mobile TV subscription/settings
If you want a shortcut, skiping the Ewap subscription/settings and Weyak subscriptions and avoiding all the hassle skip to the third step to save yourself sometime and some subscription charges.
Ewap subscription/settings
Ewap subscription is Free, but it usually takes up to 24 hours until it gets activated. In case you did not want to subscribe to Ewap, I’ll be showing you a way of accessing the channels list without the need to neither of subscriptions to Weyak or even Ewap.
To subscribe to Etisalat’s Ewap dial **122#* follow the instructions and subscribe. Once you’re confirmed after 24 hours, you’ll be receiving the connection settings as SMS which you have to accept and install the settings.
So now you have the Ewap connection and you can browse the internet with it.
Weyak subscription
To subscribe to Weyak, send “a weyak” to “1010″ and you’re set.
Mobile Web Subscription/Settings
To subscribe to Mobile Web, send “s mtv” to “1010″, wait for a confirmation SMS, and then another SMS that holds your configurations.
At this point you’ll be having a connection by the name “live.ae” in your connection list. This is the connection that has to be used by your media player once trying to view the channels.
Connection Groups setup
This is the step that we’ll make everything work.
Go to: Main Menu>Tools>Control Panel>Connections>Internet Accounts. Under the “Account” tab, you’ll have all the setup connections and the built-in connections that come with the phone.
The trick is here, you have to be able to choose an Internet connection every time you use an application such as the Browser, E-Mail Client and the Media Player. Luckily the E-Mail client has an option to choose a group account to use for E-Mail access.
As for the Browser and the Media Player, we’ll have to work around it by taking the next two steps.
Enable “Show Connection Dialog”
Setup Connection groups to work with each type of application
To enable showing the connection dialog every time you access the Internet go to: Connections>Internet Accounts>More>Options and check the option “Show Connection Dialog”. So now whenever you open your Media Player to open an internet location it will ask you to choose a connection group which we will setup in the next step.
Setting up groups is really easy. Go to: Connections>Internet Accounts>More>New Account>Group Account. Create two groups:
Mobile TV
Data
Now go to the “Groups” tab. Choose “Mobile TV” and click on “Add new account”, you’ll be given the list of existing connections. Choose “live.ae” connection and save.
Do the same thing with the “Data” group and choose “Ewap” and save.
You should be set now.
Open your Media Player, it’s called “Online” in M600i, I can’t remember the name in P990i, but you could see the icon has a globe with a film strip around it. After you opened the Media Player, go to: More>New Link and enter the followings.
URL: rtsp://10.99.121.200/channel06.sdp
Name: BBC World
Do this for a test, if it worked then you’re set and working.
To have the whole list of channels in your media player for later reference. Here’s the list:
rtsp://10.99.121.200/channel01.sdp
rtsp://10.99.121.200/channel02.sdp
rtsp://10.99.121.200/channel03.sdp
rtsp://10.99.121.200/channel04.sdp
rtsp://10.99.121.200/channel05.sdp
rtsp://10.99.121.200/channel06.sdp
rtsp://10.99.121.200/channel07.sdp
rtsp://10.99.121.200/channel08.sdp
rtsp://10.99.121.200/channel09.sdp
rtsp://10.99.121.200/channel10.sdp
rtsp://10.99.121.200/channel11.sdp
And you’re done. Try the above and let me know how it works with you.
