The problem I have is that I have one gadget (my dear Nokia N95) which does all of sorts of things in a mediocre way and other 200,000 million gadgets which do one thing very well and it looks like we’ll never get true convergence. You could argue that I have already an exceptional device because my mobile can take good pictures, play music and show videos but my point is that I will claim to finally have a “converged device” when I won’t need to buy something else with exactly the same functionality.

You can read about “one side of the coin” in this post:

“…convergence is the future, many portable devices can do many things at the same time, but at the end of the day when it comes to take a very good photo, you use your $1000 DSLR camera, when it comes to play a videogame seriously, you use your PlayStation and when it comes to record a video, you use your “serious” videocamera. …”

and this could be true for many years to come considering there is a new generation  which is growing up and is more than happy with “beta-quality” standards. Ok, I’m no saint and my generation was more than happy with VHS-quality videos but good quality products are now becoming a premium. Anyway, I don’t think this is the way it should be at all and Metadata Working Group is a fine example at how big companies can get together if they recognise the disadvantages of  walled gardens… Would defining a standard to move and process my data between devices reduce the barrier to convergence? Perhaps, here’s few examples:

• Renting Market. At the moment, there isn’t a gadget renting market because there isn’t a clear way to shift the data from place to place… Imagine if during a concert you can use the best camera on the market to take pictures and transfer all the data to your phone at the end of the event. Imagine that you don’t have to carry with you a 5kg bag all day just to take high quality pictures and don’t have to settle for mobile-quality pictures…well, data mobility could help that.
• My N95 does not have a FM Transmitter radio, but I could add one using a 3.5mm audio jack. Imagine the same modularity and extensibility with the camera, the memory and everything else…
• Imagine you have a saturated mobile market where mobile phones are becoming a commodity. Really really busy people have a blackberry and another phone; not so busy people have only one … What if you could move the data between two or more mobile phones (not from the same vendor) easily and transparently? Would you use the blackberry mobile during the day and keep the other in the bag and do the opposite in the evening? Would it help selling more phones? Perhaps…

We got to the point that not only different technologies are being converged into single multipurpose gadgets, but also content is being converged and I’m glad with have at least a starting point which is Internet but without a clear business reason I don’t think many companies will make any efforts towards convergence. I just hope that the next “open xxxx” or data portability project will bear some fruits data standards

Update:

I was writing post this and I just read about a microsoft patent to share resources

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The whole experience is very addictive because is basically a positive feedback loop (very engineering view, I know ) and you could seriously end up in an “unstable” mental and physical state. “Greed and fear” drive the economies around the world and I’ve been trying to understand what are the factors that influence the social interaction. I think it’s all down to “narcissism and control (of your data)“. Each one of them affects each other and both can drive you nuts!

Personally, I’m not into social networks (although I used to be a big reader of feeds and I subscribed to way too many of them) but Flickr gave me a glimpse of how addictive it could be.

I have been a Flickr user for years but only recently I started enjoying photography and as good Web2.0 etiquette suggests I sent some of my pictures to groups and as expected I received some positive feedback about them. Two minutes later I was hooked and it went on for days! Then suddenly one day, I decided to put my narcissism aside and started living the real life. On this addiction problem, there is a nice picture in Flickr that nails it and you can find long discussions in Flickr’s forums too!!

So, my goal is now more than ever to prioritise and save time (and cost) as much as possible and see if I can apply the old pareto principle.

I really hope it helps.

I don’t know if I’m excited or disappointed by the number of companies, platforms and ideas that are popping out every day! Being spoiled with choice is really good, but it really sucks when it comes to deciding which service I want to use and support.
The latest service I heard and which seemed really interesting is fav.or.it, but I was also interested in Hictu, Pownce, Jaiku, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Tumblr, Flickr, Locr, etc, etc, etc… you get the idea
I signed up on some of them, but I didn’t really use them considerably, hence the following thoughts.

Things I’m interested: I like sharing and comment images, videos, internet related stuff, thoughts about new ideas and experiences.

My constrains: I would like one repository for all of this. Images, text and everything should be in one place I can control, backup and shutdown at anytime without too much hassle. I have already a wiki-based website and a self-hosted wordpress blog and I don’t want to throw away the time I invested in those two system. I use heavily emails (possibly because it’s still a one-way system. ie. not like a chat which is a real time two-way system) and I like “pulling” information using RSS feeds (however, I would also like to change the way I read feeds but it’s a long story) and I have different way of interacting depending on who’s the target audience (ie. “A la Tumblr” with my friends for example).

What I’m after: As it is now, I’m not asking for much. I’d just like a service which satisfy the following two requirements:

• Seamless. I don’t want to start signing up, fill long forms, change too many privacy settings and in general waste too much time just for one service. I don’t want to change too much my lifestyle just to use, again, just one service. I don’t want to invite all my friends and ask them to join any service. The service should be mobile and compatible with my Nokia phones. It should be easy to use. It should not feel like an extra job when using it or just to keep up with the “admin work” of these services.

• Converged. I just want to use one service for all my needs. I am a strong believer that a service which performs only one function but well (e.g. Google search) is more useful than 10 badly implemented ideas put together and converged services seem to be the opposite of one-but-efficient services . However, I think this applies only when there is a clear need for that idea. The abovementioned services might be useful at times, but they are superfluous at first so I don’t really want to start using any of them until I’m convinced they are not a fad.

So, what are my alternatives? Well, after signing up for many of these services/platforms over the years, I’m back to square one with the blogging platform. That’s probably why, so many people blog. It’s easy and powerful enough.
Anyway, I’ll have to change few things on my blog. I decided to change the content of my blog to share something more personal and create different feeds. One for public, one for not-so-public (consumption). If you are subscribed (not many anyway ), sorry for the inconvenience.

-Reda

PS. Web2.0 mind-map picture was taken from Wikipedia

Actually, the original title was “Usability not counteless features is good for Nokia phones” but then my train of thoughts focused on the N-Series (as well as S60 usability) in the end…

Reading this great summary from Russel and the following comments in this link, I recalled a previous post regarding the complex structure of S60 UI (could not find the link again but I found this instead from a year ago) and I completely agree with most of the problems on the complexity of S60. Some of the comments in Allaboutsymbian discussion were also quite unexpected and one question came to mind: Is it better to have a multi-functional allrounder device where each feature, its usability and customisation varies from average to good or have a device which has “few core” great features, great usability as well as customisation? I think the latter is most preferred and certainly the one I prefer. OK, I know nowadays we are blessed with convergence in many parts of our life and I don’t have any statistics about user preference, but I think the latter is the most preferred because the most successful stories are still the ones where the product has one clear goal, effective and simple use. I think of Google as the best example, but I could take several other Web2.0 companies as examples (as well as “old companies” like Hoover or Nutella – just because I’m a “sweet guy” ), where the user identifies the brand/product name with its use (which many brands don’t like).

Anyway, going back to the initial discussion, if you pack 100 features in your mobile phone the device will be perceived, I think, as “anonymous” if none of these features really stand out. On the contrary, if you make few great core application, the buyer will possibly appreciate its key points without really analysing and scrutinizing all the features and differences with other products (and hopefully also give some “brownie points” back to its brand – I’m thinking of Google again right now but also Apple).
Sure, you can add a N-Series logo to clarify its use among consumers but marketing is always limited by the product (and vice versa). If the product is not clearly defined first, the marketing will be less focused and effective. I might be dumb, but after several N-Series mobile phones, I’m still not sure what the N-Series logo is supposed to stand for (which by the way, was never printed on N95s until now)? Is it converged device, Multimedia computer, mp3 player, camera phone?

If you buy a Sony Ericsson Walman phone, you know what you are buying. Is it the same with N-Series mobile phones? Taking my mobile into the discussion, I’m currently using a N95 which is one of the latest “multimedia computers”… Do I think is a good mobile phone? Yes. Do I think is a great music player? No, it’s a good music player. GPS? Not working great if you ask me. Looking at my pictures in the gallery is also slow and definively not a “computer” experience. That already makes the N-Series name kind of useless and leaves a great opportunity for other brands to explore. I don’t think for example that the N-Series brand is as powerful and focused as the E-Series. The N-Series branding, to be as effective as Nokia wanted, must be associated to a Multimedia Computer that really stands out from the crowd and this is really not the case now. As far as I’m concerned, Nokia could have called it M-Series, as in More expensive, given that price tag is the common denominator among these mobile phones rather than features. One thing that really sets this mobile apart from others is the camera, which is outstanding compared to other manufacturers and that is possibly what the customer perceives when buying this mobile: they are mostly buying a camera phone. Where is the branding for that? Too limited for a converged device? Is Carl Zeiss Lens the only marketing catch phrase that Nokia could have come up with? Disappointing…

Well, I’m supposed to make some conclusion after this but I don’t think Nokia is going to drop the N-Series logo any time soon… There is a thing in my pocket but I really don’t know what is supposed to be…

-Reda

I really don’t like how the web is changing.

Creating content is an expensive and time-consuming business and different people have come up with different solutions, such as:

• Aggregators like Techmeme, Google News and the likes that do not create any content at all. They just link to the most popular sites.
• Taking snippets of blogs from different sources adding the source in the end, perhaps using the same pictures, almost same comments… Even better, people find other blogs that share the same excitement on a specific topic and sooner or later they end up writing on each other’s blogs with same comments over and over (that’s quite popular).
• Or Some simply stealing content from other people.

However, none of the above created any new content. And I don’t think it’s content curation as they just echoed whatever tiny content was created in the beginning, wasting everyone’s time reading, listening and watching the same thing over and over…

I hope that Web3.0 will not turn out to be a bigger echo chamber than Web2.0

-Reda

Lately I’m becoming a little too addicted to Internet and my RSS feeds…perhaps I should just switch off my laptop for a while

A glimmer of hope for Italian bloggers?

More links in my Google reader shared items