Samsung Galaxy S

The Galaxy S is Samsung’s latest Android handset.  There are so many Android phones out there that you need a really great advertising campaign (or a really great product) to stand out from the competition.

Let’s take a look at the Samsung campaign.

Small Isn’t Beautiful

Advert for GalaxyS on Guardian Mobile site

The advert is disproportionately small compared to the rest of the site.  The Android phone I’m viewing on has a screen width of 480 pixels – the advert looks tiny and pathetic.

At first I thought it was the Guardian mangling the advert – but a look at the URL shows that 4th Screen have decided to serve up a 168*28 image.

Tiny Banner Ad

Worse than that, they’ve blindly resized the image rather than rework it.  Take a look zoomed in – the text is illegible.

Tiny Banner Ad

The Micro-Site

The site behind the advert isn’t too bad.  But there’s nothing exciting about it.  Just a series of static pages.  You can visit it at http://galaxys.co.uk/

What Do You Want Your Customers To Do?

With every mobile advertising campaign, you need to think about what it is you want to accomplish.  This campaign is, presumably, designed to encourage people to buy the Samsung Galaxy S phone.  So, it would make sense if people could buy the phone from the site. No?

Try to buy the phone from this page

There are three glaring mistakes on this page.  Can you spot them?

1. No mention of price. Is this pre-pay or contract? Is this a premium product or a cheap and cheerful device?
2. No click-to-call.  Those phone numbers should be clickable and should take the customer straight through to the dedicated Galaxy S representatives.
3. Those images of the phone company logos are clickable – yet there’s nothing to suggest they are.

Still, clicking on those logos will let me buy the phone through a mobile-friendly shop. Right?

Mobile Companies Who Don’t Do Mobile

eTailing is hard.  Getting a web based shop up, running and profitable is tricky.  Getting a mobile version of that site can be even harder.  But if there were ever a company to do it well, you would expect them to be a mobile company.  Sadly, that’s not the case.

Vodafone's non-mobile website

Virgin's non-mobile site

So, our hapless user can’t use her phone to make a call to buy the handset, she can’t use the web browser to buy the handset.  Is she supposed to wander down to her local store to buy one? Way to make use of the mobile medium…

How To Fix It

All is not lost.  There are several easy steps which can be taken to fix this disaster.

• Serve up adverts which are correctly sized for the screen requesting them.
• Don’t resize adverts – create a unique advert for each screen size you’re targeting.
• Make you micro-site interesting. Add mobile YouTube videos.  Add wallpapers, ringtones, or competitions.  Give people a reason to visit the site and share it with their friends.
• Click To Call.  I don’t know how often I have to say this, but if your potential customers can’t place an order from your site – you will never convert them into a paying customer.
• Let the user know which parts of your site are clickable.
• Never redirect a user to a non-mobile website.  The user may have to pay the data charges and will get a site which they can’t use.
• Mobile e-tailing.  Three huge names in mobile – yet I can’t order this phone from my mobile. That’s just embarrassing. Either make a mobile friendly site, or give customers directions to their nearest store.

Share This

My second app presents a series of buttons which call the USSD commands – so you don’t have to remember if it’s the HLR or VLR which is queried by *#103#.

Useful, I know….

You can download the app by scanning in this QR code.

Android App - Vodafone UK USSD Commands

The majority of these codes only work on phones with a Vodafone UK SIM who are on the Vodafone UK network. I’ve no idea what the codes do on other networks.

A detailed explanation of the commands is available on Betavine.

Sadly, Android provides no native way to capture or interprate USSD responses. Please star the feature request if you’re interested in seeing this in future versions of Android.

One last thing – this app was neither designed nor approved by Vodafone UK. It has nothing to do with them!

Share This

For the next 6 years, 2 months, and 22 days, Tom Baker was The Doctor.

But, as these things are wont to do, it came to an end.  Forgive the spoilers, but The Doctor lay broken and bleeding after The Master threw him off the Pharos Project.  Death was certain.

And then…

Regeneration

On the 1st of September, 2003, a young and eager Terence Eden walked into Vodafone to start on the Graduate Training Scheme.

6 years and 7 months later, it’s time for a change.

Vodafone took me all over the world.  Well… Mostly Düsseldorf!  But meetings from San Francisco to Milan gave me plenty of jet-set glamour. Not to mention duty-free and airmiles.

They took me on a fascinating journey from technology to product management via security, handset testing and many other jobs in between.  I went from being the lowest rung on the ladder, to managing an international portal deployed in a dozen markets.

But, as even the Time Lords know, 6 years is a long time. It is time for me to regenerate.

So, for the last time, I end this blog post with the words…

I currently work for Vodafone.  The opinions expressed are mine and mine alone and do not represent those of Vodafone Group.

Share This

112 is the European wide emergency services number. Wherever you are in the EU, dialling 112 will get you through to the local emergency services. In fact, most GSM networks outside of the EU will also route your call correctly.

This is an important day. Dialling 112 could save your life. Sadly, the UK isn’t doing anything to promote it.

So, what better way to celebrate than by designing a JIL widget to allow you to quickly dial 112 in an emergency? (That’s a rhetorical question…)

JIL Widget

I’ve written before about the JIL SDK and my professional involvement with it.

The JIL SDK allows us access to the telephony subsystem.  This allows us to directly place a call – usually via the native dialer application.  It’s a very simple call, all you do is pass it a string.  It will take 0-9+#*.  So, you can use it to call USSD commands.  Annoyingly, you can’t get information back from the commands – a problem also present in Android.

So, the code is simply

<script type="text/javascript">
    Widget.Telephony.initiateVoiceCall("112");
</script>

That’s it.

Logo

The EU has a logo that they want people to use for 112 promotion.

Their licensing terms are very enlightened (for a government organisation)

Any organisation, institution, company or individual willing to inform citizens of the European emergency number can use the materials informing about the 112 and general logo of the 112 which are available on our website.
Regardless of the size or the branch of economic/social/cultural activity, all the entities concerned with safety and emergency issues are welcomed to use these materials and ideas for their campaigns.

Download

Download and install the widget.

On the Vodafone H1, you may need to dial

*#35767#

to remove the H1’s security check.

If you’re interest in developing for this platform, there’s a €1,000,000 bounty up for grabs.  There’s also a Dev Camp at Mobile World Congress this year.

I work for Vodafone – this is my personal blog, I don’t to speak for them.  All opinions, claims and mistakes are my own.

Share This

I’ve tested this to work on the Vodafone 360 H1 – but it should work with any JIL handset.

Because it isn’t certified, you may need to dial

*#35767#

to remove the H1′s security check.

The code is very simple.  The JIL SDK allows you to call specific phone application – in this case, all I’ve done is invoked the browser.

<body>
   <script type="text/javascript">
      Widget.openURL("http://m.dabr.co.uk/");
   </script>
   <div>
      Launching Dabr!
   </div>
</body>

One thing to note, if you’re deploying the widgets from your website, ensure you have set the MIME type to “application/widget” – as per the W3C standards – otherwise many devices won’t recognise it as a valid widget.

If you’re interest in developing for this platform, there’s a €1,000,000 bounty up for grabs.  There’s also a Dev Camp at Mobile World Congress this year.

I work for Vodafone – this is my personal blog, I don’t to speak for them.  All opinions, claims and mistakes are my own.

Share This

This is a tricky blog post for me to write. I am involved in some aspects of Vodafone 360 (mostly My Web) but I certainly do not speak for my employers. I’m currently on holiday – and have been for the entire week – so I haven’t had any contact with work colleagues before writing this.

This post has been written in a hurry without adequate time to check spelling, facts, brand guidelines or if any of it makes sense. I beg your forgiveness pre-emptively.

I’ll try to stick to pointing out some provable inaccuracies and commenting on the industry in general.

Those of you with elephantine memories will remember Vizzavi — the 1.8 billion dollar balls-up joint venture between two commodity suppliers. On the one hand we had Big Red (“Vodafone”) fresh from buying up everyone it could under the direct reign of Sir Chris Gent. On the other hand we had Vivdendi, the mighty conglomerate, that, when it wasn’t arsing around with water companies, it was sodding about with music labels. The two of them got together and knocked out this massively ambitious WAP Portal and website that had a strategic promise hard to ignore. Free email integrated into your handset, online storage, synchronised address books and so on. Of course only the best handsets at the time could handle colour and the reality of WAP was beginning to dawn (the oft heard phrase from consumers: “How shit is this?”).

Sadly it wasn’t to be. Both companies got cold feet and dumped the service promptly before quickly erasing the memory.

I wasn’t working at Vodafone at the time – but as I understand it, Vizzavi was not dumped. It was absorbed by Vodafone and the service become known as Vodafone live. It’s a service that is still running today, has millions of customers and drives very healthy revenue streams.

Someone once said “Whenever someone says ‘Average User’ they mean ‘me’”. One of the problems I found when working on Vodafone live is that the average executive doesn’t use it. Live is great for its target audience – younger people who want to download games, watch mobile TV, chat, flirt, buy wallpapers and ringtones – but off less relevance for middle-aged suits.

But in the end, the people who sell minutes won over.

That’s the trouble with mobile operators. They still sell minutes. And sod about with transmission pylons and frequency layers. The folk in control are wedded to the idea of being a network. And this is right and proper. I want my handset to work whenever I need it to. Anywhere. That does take a lot of effort from very smart people.

When it came to vision, Vodafone blew it. They did the proper operator thing and waited-to-see.

Meanwhile we all bought bollox handsets year on year via ever-extending contracts. Some of us realised that PAYG offered a better deal but many simply wanted the handset with a slightly better camera. And 200 more minutes of talk time.

The market settled. All this talk of integrated mobile services disappeared from the radar and everything got back to normal.

Which is funny, because the phones that Voda (and many other operators around the world) sold included GPS, video-calling, RDS, mobile TV, tethering, accelerometers, touch-screens, photo uploading and printing, visual voicemail, email… the list goes on.

No doubt that Ewan has brusk words to say on all these features – that’s ok he’s not the target audience. Ewan’s a great chap with a huge amount of knowledge of the industry but – like me – he’s not normal.

The fact that you’re even reading this blog means that you’re probably outside the mass-market. And that’s ok. What you have to remember is that not everyone is like you. You are not the target market.

The iPhone delivered an experience. What’s more, it didn’t need a manual. It just worked.

I love this mythical idea that Apple “just works”. Type iPhone and Genius Bar into Twitter search and see how many people have broken iPhones or don’t know how to work certain features.

Find, if you can, someone who has never used or seen an iPhone. Sit over them and watch them try to use it. I love some of Apple’s design choices – but they’re not all intuitive. Who knows that Safari means “Internet”?

Every new handset brought a completely different user-interface and despite a 30 minute dedicated training session from each of her three sons, she couldn’t get to grips with it.
(SNIP)
Delivering a competitor to the iPhone experience is now a business critical objective. It’s not just the iPhone of course. But it’s a huge curse for the mobile operator. On one hand, they can use the device to win customers from their competing networks. On the other hand, the device itself simply sidesteps anything they offer and uses their network. No longer does the operator control the user experience. Thank god. No longer does the user get sent immediately to the ‘operator deck’ when they open their web browser. No. The iPhone simply sits on the data and telephony layer and ignores everything else. Perfect for the end-consumer, terrifying for the mobile operator.

Which, again, is funny. Vodafone sells the iPhone in 11 countries – UK and Ireland are coming in 2010. It is one phone out of many. Actually – and I’ll get shot for saying so – it is a fairly insignificant phone. It’s a device that only very wealthy people can afford. Don’t get me wrong – wealthy people help drive profit; but there are more people who can’t afford the iPhone than can. A lot more.

I want you to notice two contradictory ideas in the quote above.

1. It’s hard to move from phone to phone because they all have different interfaces.
2. Operators should stay away from monkeying with the phone’s interface.

Funnily enough, normal customers don’t agree with the latter point. You’ll notice that most operators customise the more atrocious firmware that they have been given and make a usable experience for the customer. They also try to make it consistent between manufacturers – so icon X always means address book and icon Y always means Browser. Of course, this leads to Operator lock in, rather than manufacturer lock in – but that’s a different story.

Far be it from me to suggest that Ewan’s synthetic rage is caused by Cognitive Dissonance :-).

Now, I’ll be quite careful about what I say in response to the next piece because I am involved in the service and don’t want to be out of step with anyone.

You only have to look at the total gang-fluck that is Vodafone 360 to see just how badly that’s going for them.

It’s a total mismatch in expectations — for everyone — from the normob to the geek.

The first thing I’d say is that neither Ewan nor I are in any position to say what Normobs want. We just can’t. It would be like Lewis Hamilton designing a family hatchback. Whatever our personal feelings, we almost always have to subjugate them and let professional usability and design experts guide our thinking.

Not one person in seniority seems to have said, ‘Er, look, I think it really should do contacts properly.’

That’s because everyone in seniority at Vodafone is either:

- concerned with network architecture
- concerned with getting more customers signed up
- concerned about how they’re doing in India

I’d point you to Vodafone’s annual report which shows just how much money is being made from data – it’s almost as much as SMS. To say that the people at the top don’t care about selling data, retaining customers, or creating value-added services is, at best, disingenuous. Every operator is – rightly or wrongly – fighting against being just a bit-pipe. Some ideas will work, some won’t.

Most Operators have – mistakenly, in my opinion – outsourced the management of the network infrastructure. I wish all Operators in the UK cared about network architecture they way Ewan thinks they do.

And this, I think, is the problem with Vodafone. They employ bucketloads of talented individuals, none of which, it seems, can make the seniority grade. Or if they do make it to seniority, they find themselves with power and influence over a very small section of the company’s product set.

I’ll start applying for the CEO’s job on Monday ;-)

Or they find out that they work in ‘Global’. Which is nice, but nobody at country level takes them seriously. Or, they work at country level, which means they can only influence their immediate country — and, since 360 is a ‘global’ offering (i.e. multi-country), there’s not much they can do except write a memo and ‘press’ for changes on the weekly conference call.

Now we get to the crux of the problem. How do you design a service – any service – which is acceptable for several dozen different countries and cultures, works well for ~300 million customers, and doesn’t contradict or break anything which already exists in those markets?

Apple – bless ‘em – started from an installed iPhone base of zero. Now, every time they make a change to their service offering they have to get it working across 3 devices and millions of customers. And, boy, do those customers howl when anything goes wrong.

It’s the same problem that any large company faces – you can’t please all the people all the time.

I might, for example, want to order a canvas print from a photo using Photobox.com. Or I might want to send my photo up to Facebook for my friends to laugh at. Perhaps I’d like to Twit-Pic it. Or maybe I’d like them to be copied directly into my Google Picasa?

Well tough.

I can’t.

Because somebody, somewhere, at Vodafone, decided that was out of their remit.

The service does allow posting of pictures to FaceBook. I wasn’t in the meeting that decide why only FaceBook for launch, but I imagine it was because FaceBook has the most users.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d love an API for my own personal project and I’d love to post to twitpic – but the reality is; that’s not where the Normobs are.

Did nobody in the specification meeting think to say ‘it’d be good if we synched contacts with, you know, all the major providers out there.’ The APIs are public!

No. None of the executives cared.

As you know, I come from a technical background and – somehow – find myself in marketing. I don’t think that marketing executives don’t care – I think that they don’t understand. I don’t mean to besmirch any of my colleagues, but they think customer first – developer later. We can argue as to whether that’s a good or bad thing, but it’s what happens in any large company when you have to think of the majority – not what’s cool among the geeks.

You cannot put disinterested executives in charge of this kind of service, because it demonstrates to absolutely anyone who cares to look, that the company is in dire straits.

Ah! Finally something we can agree on! No, not that Voda’s in dire straight, but that you can’t put executives in charge of things. A truly new and innovative project has to be created, managed and executed by a dedicated team who are passionate about it. That’s why start-ups do so well when they succeed. However, in any large publicly traded company, you’re working for the shareholder. Shareholders who want you to take risks – but not too many risks. Shareholders who want long-term profit – as long as they still get short term gains. Shareholders who want you to blow the competition out of the water – but not to be too early to market.

I am a Voda shareholder – and I’m confused about what I want.

The reality is that large companies rarely make innovative products.  They usually buy in the expertise because the majority of employees are making sure the existing stuff works correctly.  I think that what Voda does is fairly innovate for a company of its size but it is never going to risk it all on a dice throw.

I wonder if 360 will die a Vizzavi-style death by Q3 next year? If there are no changes, no action — if it’s just steady as she goes from Vodafone, it’s a virtual guarantee.

As I’ve already said, Vizzavi (as Vodafone live!) is still doing phenomenally well. It’s metamorphosing into Vodafone My Web and continues to grow and evolve. I wish all “deaths” were as rewarding.

I work on 360 – I’m incredibly proud of some parts of it. But, like Ewan, I’m not the average customer. We don’t get to decide our successes – we leave that to the woman with the Moto RAZR – AKA Ms Average.

Bootnote

As I said, written in a hurry.  I may edit this document for facts, spelling, political maschinations and on capricious whims.  This is a personal comment which, I hope, explains my private feelings.

Share This

Sometimes Brian, I find myself stuck in front of the laptop at like 10pm on a Sunday night. The kids are in bed, the wife isn’t far behind and there I am answering customer care questions over Twitter with some guy in Geneva! This isn’t my day job. I’m a developer. My question to you is sir; when does Batman sleep?

I find myself in a somewhat similar position.
My twitter account, like this blog, is strictly personal. These are my views, not those of my employers. Yet sometimes, I give what could be seen as professional advice.

I’m interested in phones – so when someone asks me for a phone recommendation, I’m usually happy to help. But should I recommend Vodafone devices? Should I recommend them a Vodafone device when I know there may be a better device on T-O2ang3?

On the one hand, my whuffie will increase if I offer an honest assessment – on the other hand, the share price may go up and I may get a commission if I recommend my company’s products.

What should I do?

When I see a story about a potentially corrupt deal in Africa – I’d usually be compelled to comment on it. But if the story involves my employers, I’m reluctant to.

The second story is no less interesting or important – but can I risk being seen as an employee giving an official critique on the company? Can I risk the potential drop in share price?  Can I risk my personal comments infringing on my professional life?

What should I do?

I’m not Batman – I’m barely even Alfred. I work to live – I don’t live to work.

I think it’s accepted that I can use my private persona to improve my public persona. I can answer professional questions in a personal capacity.  But if I do it too much, I risk being seen as nothing but a company stooge – without any of the protection of an “official” professional.

Recently, the role was reversed. My employers recently asked me to use my personal network to the benefit of my private network. At the launch of Vodafone 360 they wanted me to live twitter, twitpic, Qik and YouTube from my personal account.

This presented a problem for me. When I breach the sanctity of my personal account with professional content, do I devalue myself.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think I’m Shakespeare being paid to fill Romeo and Juliet with references to Durex, but I like to think I have some integrity.

What Do You Think?

So, I asked the people who follow me.

edent

(Terence Eden)

I've been asked to twitter for a Vodafone launch event. Should I do it from @edent or should I keep this non-professional?

On 9-9-2009 10:26:26 from UberTwitter

Reassuringly, the answers they gave were all in a similar vein.

AndrewGrill

(Andrew Grill)

@edent Why not set up an "event" twitter handle for the event - keep all separate

On 9-9-2009 10:27:13 from TweetDeck in reply to Terence Eden

rachelclarke

(Rachel Clarke)

@edent do it from another account - with the occasional cross-tweet from this one

On 9-9-2009 10:28:01 from web in reply to Terence Eden

technokitten

(Helen Keegan)

@edent depends how interested you think we'll be in reading the tweets. @andrewgrill's idea of sep acct is good.

On 9-9-2009 10:29:13 from dabr in reply to Terence Eden

denny

(Denny)

@edent I quite like convergence, but would doing it from @edent compromise your ability to speak for yourself in future?

On 9-9-2009 10:31:22 from dabr in reply to Terence Eden

sammachin

(Sam Machin)

@edent Surely thats what @vodafoneuk is for? Accounts for specific events don't make much sense as you don't build followers.

On 9-9-2009 10:33:28 from web in reply to Terence Eden

ilicco

(Ilicco Elia)

@edent definitely @vodafoneuk although a few of the purtinent titbits from edent is good too

On 9-9-2009 10:42:13 from TweetDeck in reply to Terence Eden

DominicTravers

(dominictravers)

@edent I concur with the keep it seperate to your personal account, I for one value your opinions as entirely your own.

On 9-9-2009 10:46:31 from dabr in reply to Terence Eden

millarm

(Matt Millar)

@edent do it from the vodafone official account ( @vodafoneuk ), and retweet that from your account @vodafoneuk

On 9-9-2009 13:14:23 from Tweetie in reply to Terence Eden

So, that’s what I did. I tweeted and twitpic’d from @Vodafone_Group.

I didn’t have time to set up a separate Qik account, so I used my own.

When I saw something that I thought my followers would find genuinely interesting, I retweeted my “professional” account.

But I feel uneasy about this. I don’t want to be seen as “just” a Vodafone employee. I was originally @Vodaclone on twitter, but I changed my name to fully disassociate myself from my (current) employer.

I want to be interesting enough to be friends with.  I don’t want people to be friendly with me only because of what I do 9-5.  I also don’t want to alienate those who are interested in me by appearing to be partisan.

Reversing the Roles

What prompted me to write this post was a tweet I made this morning.

edent

(Terence Eden)

@bash @kate_day any chance you could have a quiet word with someone about CC & flickr? http://bit.ly/Rnrex

On 15-10-2009 08:44:02 from UberTwitter in reply to Basheera Khan

Both Bash and Kate work for the Telegraph. Neither of them tweet in a personal capacity.

I can’t help feeling that I abused their personal space to ask them a professional question. Both were very polite in answering me. But, if they’re anything like me, they’ll soon find it tiresome to have every Tom, Dick and Harry asking them the same banal questions again and again.

I’m a firm believer in life/work balance. How do I square this with my desire to help my friends and help my employers? Is it even possible to demarcate between the personal and the professional?

When does Bruce Wayne get a night off?

Share This

I rarely comment on Vodafone specific topics, but as I’ve already reviewed Dabr and UberTwitter – it would be a shame to leave out Vodafone Update.

The usual disclaimer applies – I work for Vodafone Group, but I do not speak for them. Vodafone Update was developed by Vodafone Germany – I don’t think I know anyone involved with it though.

http://www.vodafone.de/update

First, a word of warning. Because this application was developed by Vodafone Germany, the interface is in German. I didn’t listen too hard to Mrs Everington at school – so my 2 years of German back in 1994-1996 isn’t really up to the task. I’m sure some of the problems I encounter wouldn’t be an issue if I spoke the language.

Let’s Go

Let's Go!

I’ll only be covering Twitter and TwitPic in this review – Facebook just didn’t work for me. This review was carried out on a BlackBerry 9000 – but the application also works on the Fisher-Price iPhone, Yahoo’s Android and S60.

Adding Twitter

The developers have done the sensible thing of using OAuth for authenticating you to Twitter. Unfortunately, Twitter doesn’t have a mobile OAuth page – yet. So the first time I went in I got an error page.

Error Page

Oddly, the page is in English. Perhaps this means that they will be internationalising the client for other markets?

On my second attempt I was able to log in using my twitter credentials.

OAuth

Twitter really needs to make OAuth more friendly to mobile browsers if they want to reduce the proliferation of the security anti-pattern of telling users to give away their username and password.

Twitter Features

Update shows the standard Twitter timeline and allows you to update, send twitpics, reply retweet and do most of the usual Twitter activities – it does have a number of shortcomings.

Standart Timeline

Tweeting

Sending a tweet is simplicity itself. As well as a character counter, the entire screen lets you know if your breach 140 characters. You can also send a twitpic directly from a tweet – as evidenced by the camera icon in the bottom left corner.

Danger! Over 140 Characters

Annoyingly, this message pops up after every tweet you send.

How annoying

My schoolboy German is enough to know it probably says “tweet sent successfully”. Does this really need to be shown every time? There’s no way to turn it off that I can tell.

Reading Tweets

Update supports all the standard features – clickable hashtags, @ replies, DMs, retweeting and clickable URLs.

A single tweet

It even allows you to see a user’s basic information.

Basic Information

Shortcomings

It is sorely lacking in terms of advanced features. Clients like UberTwitter and Swift let you see twitpics and other images in line. Dabr even lets you see previews of YouTube videos.

No Image Previews

There are no shortcut keys. In UberTwitter, I can hit T for the Top of timeline, R to Reply to a tweet, G to Go to a user. Update has none of these advanced features.

Twitpic doesn’t use OAuth – this means if you want to upload photos from the camera or gallery, you need to type in your Twitter username and password. A retrograde step given the earlier efforts to implement OAuth correctly.

However, this is only version 1.0.5…

Only a start

I’m sure future versions will improve. I’ll also try the Android client to see what features it has.

Stay tuned for the next review which will talk about how I tried – and failed – to get Facebook working.

Vodafone Update is available from http://www.vodafone.de/update – or search your device’s app store.

Share This

There has been a lot of talk recently about alternate VoiceMail Providers – especially those who transcribe or otherwise deliver your message.  I thought I’d give an overview of the four (!) VoiceMail services I use.

All screenshots taken on a BlackBerry 9000 to show you what the on phone experience is like.

Transcription Services

These are service which turn your caller’s voice message into a text.  Quick to read and subtle to check.

SpinVox

SpinVox is getting a bit of bad press at the moment. Regardless of the controversy, the service works. You set them as your voicemail provider and you receive a text (and optional email) with the transcription of your message.

A typical SpinVox message

The message appears to come from the caller’s number – so it’s easy to reply by text or voice.

They include links for you to listen to the message and – crucially – allow you to dictate a reply. So, you call the number, leave a message, they get sent a text.

SpinVox Vox Links

SpinVox is currently free in the UK for the first 30 days, although you may be charged for the cost of the diverted call. Thereafter it’s £5 per month.

Vodafone Respond Plus

While debate rages about how many call centres SpinVox uses, there’s no doubt that Vodafone UK’s Respond Plus is staffed entirely by humans. When you call, you get a pleasant UK based call centre worker saying “This is Terence Eden’s personal answer service” (you have a limited number of greeting options). You tell the answerer your message and they transcribe it and send via SMS.

Respond Plus - Various Messages

There are a few problems with the service – mostly they hark back to the days when it was used for pagers.

• It doesn’t show you the original caller’s number.
• ALL CAPS.

But a pretty good service, nevertheless.

Costs are 25p per minute for the divert, at 33p per text. Plus VAT.

Alternate Delivery

Different ways to get the audio of your message – commonly called Visual Voicemail.

HulloMail

HulloMail have a simple proposition. They deliver your voicemail as an MP3 attached to an email. If you’ve got a supported phone, they provide a “Visual Voicemail” style application.

HulloMail email

HullMail email - message details

Attached to the email is an MP3 of your message. Perfect for archiving.

An MP3 attachment from HulloMail

HulloMail is currently free in the UK, although you may be charged for the cost of the diverted call.  The application is also free.

Vodafone.net

I’m biased, but I think that Vodafone Mail is one of the earliest Visual Voicemail style services. It gives you a mobile website which allows you to read your emails and listen to your voicemails.

Vodafone Mail - new messages

A simple interface for emails, voicemails and – bizarrely – faxes.

Vodafone Mail - Message Details

Fairly straightforward and fast.  You can listen to the messages in whichever order suits you best.

Vodafone Mail - Message Details

The web interface also allows you to download the message in MP3 format.

The interface is very dated – and they’re not accepting new connections. Although a new service is coming to replace it – so I’m told.  There is no extra voicemail charge for using the service.

Conclusion

None of the services are perfect. I’d like the usability of SpinVox, the accuracy of Respond Plus, the MP3 delivery of HulloMail and the mobile web interface of Vodafone.net.

In my day to day life, I flip between SpinVox and Respond Plus – transcription rules the roost. However it is done.

Share This

A quick review of MobileCampBrighton.

Brighton is such a delightful city that it’s hard to begrudge it stealing one’s Saturday morning lie-in. As I wandered the laines looking for The Skiff, I was worried about how successful this BarCamp event would be. It was the same weekend as the popular Convention on Modern Liberty and it was being held outside London. Added to my worries was the fact that I had convinced Vodafone to sponsor the event – if it didn’t go well, it would be a personal and professional disappointment.

I needn’t have been so worried.

This was the site that greeted me at the door.

The Skiff began to fill up rapidly. One usually expect about a 30% drop off in participants – especially at a free event – but I think there were more attendees than were anticipated!

Usually BarCamps have several sessions running at once. The advantages being that more people can present and group sizes are manageable. However, this often leads to a bit of confusion as sessions finish at different times and a bit of heartache as one has to decide between two equally compelling talks.

Due to the relatively small number of participants, we managed to do all the presentations sequentially in the one room. This would not have been possible – or desirable – at a larger unconference, but here it worked beautifully.

The Sessions

(Photo courtesy of Pixelm Image is BY-NC-SA.)

So, a brief run down of the talks I found memorable.

Ribot gave a talk on the “Emotion, Behaviour and Human Context” focusing on the power of sketches. As designers & developers, we often go for the big bang approach. Often it’s more productive to paper prototype – it’s faster and you’ll be less emotionally attached to a “bad” idea.

Some sketches.

Marten van Wezel gave us his experience of building successful communities. I’d never quite realised the strategies one needs to employ to keep a service pleasant for its users.

A good looking fellow called Terence Eden, basically rehashed his blog post about mobile contextual advertising and its inasivness. A good points to come out of the discussion was the need for VRM (Vendor Relationship Management). Something I’ll be looking into closely.

Priya Prakash spoke about her research in to emerging market. This was an absolutley fascinating discussion about how different people use new technology. A choice quote was “if you want to see how people use technology, go to nail salons and cafes”.

That most melifulous of speaker, Terence Eden snaked his way onto the board again to say “Fuck the iPhone (and not in a good way)”. Regular readers will know of my distaste for Jobs’ Toy, but this was a discussion about how the focus on cool new phones and gadgets basically ignored a large swathe of the population. While it’s personally very exciting to develop for the cutting edge, we must not forget that the majority of people are on 18 month contracts and won’t be able to get to our products for some time.

Tom Morris gave us his thoughts on making mobile applications and services more relavent by making them easier to develop. It’s a good idea, but I still think the barrier to entry for programming (IDE, text commands, language paradigms) make it too hard for regular users to even think about programming.

Raul – a linguist – shared his experiences with how languages change to fit the digital landscape.

There were several other talks and I’ll link to the Qik streams / videos when I find them.

The final event of the day was a “fastest text” competition. Marten van Wezel won Army of Two and Nik won Spore. Both prizes were generously donated by Jessica Gwyther, the Games Content Development Manager at Vodafone Group.

I really got a lot out of this camp – it’s great to meet new people who aren’t afraid to challenge your ideas.

You can view the back channel chatter on twitter (or Google’s search for mobileCampBrighton if twitter is down…)

From a professional point of view, I felt that sponsorship was worthwhile. I got to demo our new products in front of a very intense audience and they gave great feedback. Hopefully I’ve left a good impression in participants minds about Vodafone and Betavine – if nothing else, they’ll remember that Vodafone provides a decent lunch!

So, no post from me can end without criticism. This is no different, although it’s aimed at organisers for all the BarCamps I’ve been to.

1. Time keeping is paramount. After the first session we were already running 45 minutes behind schedule. With some quick thinking from DanW and a bit of discipline from the participants we were able to finish on time without curtailing the programme of events. Every BarCamp should have a big clock on the wall or each presenting space to let presenters know how long they’ve got.
2. Organisers shouldn’t feel afraid to call for order. It’s really tempting to let intra-audience discussions flow freely. Indeed, I’m as guilty as anyone of talking vociferously when I should be listening. But organisers have two main jobs – keep everything running on time and stop presenters from being intimidated. I noticed that a few times the audience took over from a presenter and – except that’s where it’s the presenter’s intention – it’s a little ugly.

Overall – a highly successful MobileCamp. I can’t wait for the next one!

Share This

Recently, this topic has been reignited with an interview with Jayanthi Rangarajan in Mobile Marketing Magazine - so I thought I would share my thoughts and opinions.

I was partly involved with the launch of transcoding in the UK – this blog is not an official Vodafone comment. This is just me giving my opinion.

One thing that consistently crops up is the myth that users are given no control over their transcoding experience. This is, simply put, not true.

The first time that a (Vodafone UK) user attempts to visit a regular web page, they are presented with the following screen.
They can choose whether or not to adapt pages. When they are on an adapted page, they can choose to see the unmodified page.

They can – at any time – change their preferences.

I think that’s fairly standard across most operators.

So, onto the meat of the issue…

It’s my opinion that transcoding is needed – in some cases. There are far too many sites out there which don’t work adequately with mobile browsers and don’t provide a mobile version. Webmasters need to create standards compliant code. Until every mobile browser passes the Acid2 test and every webmaster’s pages validate we need transcoding proxies.

It’s my opinion that browsing a full-fat website on a tiny screen while using a GPRS connection is painful. As much as I’d like everyone to go out and buy an N95 and move to an area with HSDPA coverage, that’s not going to happen. We need a way to make web browsing pleasant for those who don’t want to upgrade their phone or move house.

It’s my opinion that when a user requests a page, they should get that page. If I visit the Wall Street Journal – that’s the page I want. I didn’t request the mobile version. But this still leaves the issue of webmasters informing their readers what versions are available and letting them make that choice.

It’s my opinion that the original user agent should be sent. But this still leaves us with the tricky problem of what to do when a site turns round and says “You must use Internet Explorer 5.0 or better to view this site“.

It’s my opinion that proxies shouldn’t transcode mobile content. But what should they do if they see a .com site serving a page with a mime type of HTML and with a doctype of HTML4? How is it to know that the content is already mobile friendly in that case?

It’s my opinion that most customers like transcoding. It costs money to run a transcoding service. It costs a company money every time someone rings or writes in to complain. If the cost of dealing with complaints exceeds the profit from what they’re complaining about, that service won’t be around much longer. I can’t reveal how many customers transcode – but as the service is still being provided, it’s fairly obvious that people are using it and not complaining in great volume. Other operators are launching transcoding because the majority of customers find it useful and it enhances their revenue.

It’s my opinion that the way transcoding was rolled out in Vodafone UK (and other markets) was fairly insensitive to the needs of the industry. But with the lack of best practice guidelines and any widely attended industry bodies it’s hard to have the foresight to make all the right choices. It’s great that the W3C has come up with a best practice guide.

It’s my opinion that some (not all) mobile content producers are worried that their market share will decline because people can now visit their favourite web sites rather than being restricted to specially crafted mobile sites. That’s a problem faced by networks as well – why subscribe to an operator’s news service when you can visit the BBC News?

It’s my opinion that operators and transcoders need to work more closely with the community. There’s been too much stomping around by the operators when they should have been consulting and informing. It’s great that sites like betavine.net provide a forum where we can discuss our issues. I only wish it had been proactive rather than reactive.

Finally, it’s my opinion that we’re all civilised adults. There’s no need for spiteful name calling, threatening remarks or otherwise abusive behaviour. Not only is it nasty and upsetting for some of those on the receiving end – it’s also unprofessional and hurts your cause. People aren’t robots – they act emotionally. When they’re on the receiving end of sustained vitriolic attacks, they’re not very likely to turn round and say “You know, I’m deeply offended by what you implied about my parentage, but I’m going to make the changes you’re demanding anyway”.

In a perfect world, we wouldn’t need transcoding because all sites would use CSS and XHTML to their best advantage. We wouldn’t need WURFL or DeviceAtlas because devices would broadcast their specifications and gracefully deal with content they couldn’t handle. We wouldn’t need to fuss around with whitelists and blacklists because mobile friendly sites would unequivocally show that they were mobile friendly. We’d all be consulted every time an operator wanted to make a change to their network that impacted us.

The only way we get to live in a perfect world is if we build it ourselves.

Remember, these are my personal thoughts. I welcome all polite discussion.

Share This