I've been playing around with Android. It's a great platform for development. I really appreciated the speed to release of the Android Market - it's instant. Having worked with iPhone and Ovi stores where approval can take days or even weeks, it's great to have the freedom to publish immediately. The first app I've created is "Advanced Test Card". You can download it by scanning in this QR…
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Once again my wrath is targeted at The Guardian, Barclays and Apple. Three massive companies - each one of whom could have stopped this advertising disaster. Mistake #1 Take a look at this rather charming advert on the Guardian's mobile site. The more astute among you will recognise the problem. I'm being advertised an iPhone game when I'm browsing the site using an Android phone. This is…
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It has been a while since I last posted in the Mobile Badvertising section. Mobile adverts are slowly improving. By every once in a while, I spot an advert of such mind numbing ineptitude that I am compelled to post. Orange Take a look at the latest offering from Orange - a large UK mobile network operator. Orange Advert on Guardian Spot it? It's the microscopic banner hidden away on the…
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I'm in the process of moving all my contacts from BlackBerry to Android. I've been moving contacts from phone to phone for close to 10 years - but I've never found a problem like this. Getting my contacts from BlackBerry to Google was simple. I exported a VCF of all my contacts from Outlook and imported them to Google. Simplicity. Everything worked. Syncing back to Android was easy - input…
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I was mightily disturbed to receive an email from Google apparently telling me I had purchased a Nexus One phone. Had I been hacked? Had my credit-card details been used to buy a phone? Were Google sending me one for free? Hello! Your new Nexus One phone has many cool and useful features. Learn more by clicking on the links to watch brief YouTube videos directly on your phone: Take…
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If you haven't already heard, I've joined the award winning team at Touchnote ltd. I was overwhelmed by the support of my friends on Twitter and by the excellent bloggers at Mobile Industry Review and The Really Mobile Project. http://www.mobileindustryreview.com/2010/04/vodafones-terence-eden-joins-touchnote.html Starting a new job is never easy - but you guys have given me wind in my…
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Mobile QR codes are fantastic. They're real-life hyperlinks. Snap them with your phone and go direct to a website. What could be better? The BBC, however, need a few lessons in how to optimise the experience. As part of their Prisoner Zero page - the BBC have an awesome "Wanted Poster". Here's the teaser image. Prisoner Zero - QR Code Let's take a look at the full QR code. This is about…
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It shouldn't come as a surprise to any reader of this blog that I'm a phone geek. And a Doctor Who geek. So, image my utter nerdgasm when we got to see the 11th Doctor using a mobile he'd nicked. The burning question is which phone? Touchscreen It's quite hard to see throughout the episode. It just looks like a standard touchscreen device in a rubber casing. I had wondered if the props team h…
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Weeks before Britons go to the polls, there's still no comprehensive list of candidates. Four citizens' initiatives have joined forces to tackle the problem. They've been gathering basic information about thousands of candidates and making the data public. "It may seem surprising but there simply is no single listing for all prospective parliamentary candidates. We want people to make an…
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The Twitter Engineering Team have a set of text processing classes which are meant to simplify and standardise the recognition of URLs, screen names, and hashtags. Dabr makes use of them to keep in conformance with Twitter's style. One of the advantages of the text processing is that it will recognise that www.example.com is a URL and automatically create a hyperlink. Considering that dropping…
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If you're outside of the UK, you will see adverts on the BBC site. This also happens on the mobile site. Here's a typical example. BBC Advert Intercontinental are a premium brand. No doubt their mobile advertising is really good. Right? First Impression Intercontinental Advert Page 1 We start off with a mobile friendly page. Almost. There are five flaws here. Large image. While vi…
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People have been very excited to see some new functionality in Dabr - the mobile Twitter client I develop for. But what is it and how does it work? @@ and geotag Reply to All The @@ symbol allows you to reply to all the people mentioned within the tweet. It only shows up on tweets which mention other users - so you should only ever see it when it can be used. Hitting @@ on the above tweet…
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