JAJAH Development Blog

When I was a high school student, my parents often heard teachers say about me “he’s got potential, this kid, but he’s not fulfilling it”.  On the way home, my parents would ask me why am I’m not exercising my “potential”. I would told them that school is boring. Truth is, I was just being lazy. Other students in my class had perhaps less “potential” but they did their homework and prepared for tests. Eventually, these do-it-right students got better grades than me. These days, I feel the story repeats itself (no, I’m not back at school…). Replacing the “got potential” and “do it right” students are my cellular phones. I used to carry around simple (some would say primitive) Nokia 6021. This phone doesn’t have 3G, WiFi, advanced OS, GPS or even a camera. I used it for 3 main operations: alarm clock, calendar reminders and – duh! – calls. The phone excelled in all 3 operations. Really. Alarm always went off at the times it was set, reminders were easy to set and read, and, yes!, it even made and received phone calls (SMS included). All that, while not depleting the battery after mere hours. Life were good. About three weeks ago, I replaced my mobile phone at work. I had 4 choices (all Nokia): E51, 5800  XpressMusic,  3120 and 6210. I decided to go with 6210. It has HSPA connection, GPS, Symbian 9.3 and 3.2Mp camera. Since then, I sometimes find an analogy  between my school potential and my new smart phone. Sure, Nokia 6210 got potential, but, does it show? Is it better than  my old even-not-feature phone Nokia 6021? I’m not so sure. “God is in the details” Albert Einstein once said, and boy was he right! On many basic functionalities, Nokia 6021 performs much better than 6210. Let’s take for example the alarm clock. On 6021, I would simply set the alarm and that’s it. On 6210, the alarm’s setting automatically set the alarm to be repetitive which I don’t need. Cancelling it requires few more clicks on the phone. What’s more, I want the delay period to be 5 minutes like 6021’ settings and not the 6210’s 15 minutes. Calendar. There’s no option to set a time for a memo reminder. Only a date. I want to set my reminders at the time I want to. If I have too many reminders I could miss an important one because the calendar will not alert me. An even more important issue is that there is no option to set a call reminder. This is  an option that Nokia 6021 (the primitive one, remember?) has but 6210 Smartphone (?) don’t. How silly is that? I’m used to set call reminders quite often with 6021 but now I can’t. My final grunt, about calls, is more about the contacts application than the call itself. Usually, we call our friends either from the call log (pressing the green button shows previous calls made) or from the contacts. On 6021, I look for my contact, find it and press the green button. On 6210 it’s not that simple. Remember, we have a Smartphone here, and we need to demonstrate its potential, right? Right. If your contact has several phone numbers (mobile and home for example), 6210 will show them to you. Why not automatically select the first number as the default like 6021 does? Pressing the green button when the contact is displayed will trigger the call to the default number. Another issue with 6021is that if I search for a contact, select a number and call from it, the next time I want to use the contacts, it goes back to the contact I previously called. This is stupid. Why not return to the main screen of contacts (again, as 6021 does)? This is exactly where the smart-but-lazy-phone fails. Sure, its applications can run in the background and you can return to them instantly, unlike those ‘primitive’ phones.  Still, sometimes, the simple things works much better, like in 6021. Conclusion. Nokia 6210 Navigator is indeed smart. I like installing applications on it like TwitterMobile and Waze. I would definitely suggest users upgrading their phone to consider it as an option. However, looks like Nokia made a few mistakes in the UX department. It’s difficult balancing potential with simplicity, but I would expect Nokia to do better. If you’re “old-school” and just want to use your phone to make calls, stick with Nokia 6021.

Following my previous review about Twibble mobile application, I was asked to try out TwitterMobile. The application is produced by Tricast Solutions from UK and is written in J2ME so it should work on many mobile phones in the market. However, currently it works only on Sony-Ericsson and Nokia S60 240*320 devices. Lucky for me, I have a Nokia 6210 Navigator phone which have the right screen size, so I could try the application. Unlike Twibble, installation process is easy and user friendly. The user selects his phone type, enter his email and phone number and press the download button. Next, the user receives a special SMS message with a link to download the client. Pressing the link open-up the a mobile download page with a link to download the actual client. BTW, the mobile page seems to recognize the mobile model, but it turns out that’s due to the link. Meaning, the mobile site does NOT recognize the device’s user agent. This might cause problems for users who didn’t put the right model at the beginning of the process. It also means that Tricast could have saved 2-3 clicks till the actual download, but, it’s not a biggy. Download completed, it’s time to test the application. If I had to describe the application user-experience in one word, it will  have to be – Wow! The GUI is beautiful, just like Tricast say in their site. Using TWUIK reach media engine, the application flows elegantly between tweets and application options. The menu is not your conventional left-button-opens-a-doll-menu, but rather, a cool, mac-like graphic choices. Great job there Tricast! However, this is where the complements stop and the complains begin; and there’re quite a few of them. First of all, the user is not given a choice to save his password locally. More secured? maybe, but it’s annoying to type my 10-characters password. Next, the phone’s security manager prompt the user many times for web access approval. This is because the application is not signed-in with a certificate. Oh well, I could live with that (still, the GUI make up for it). We’re not done though. Unlike Twibble, Twitter Mobile doesn’t have the option to open a link inside a tweet. But wait, there’s more! if you want to tweet, you can but there’s no option to attach a picture! How lame is that?! I mean, the main point (at least for me) for having a mobile twitter application, is to tweet about an interesting event and add a picture to it. That in itself was enough to persuade me to stick with Twibble, but it’s not over here.  Want to check your @replies or your @direct-messages? Sorry. You have to pay 1.99£ for that. Yes, you heard me. A fee for a free service. No way,  José. The bottom line is that the application gets an A+ on the cool factor but fails in usability. Perhaps Tricast is using the client to demonstrate its TWUIK technology, I don’t know. I do know that if they hope to make serious money from the application itself, they will have to enable picture attachment, URL linking and most importantly, free basic services in twitter.

As an avid Twitter user, I’m hooked to the service. I use it mainly to learn abut interesting news as they happen but also to learn what my friends are doing. Twitter 140-only-words strength is somewhat a limitation when you want to capture your friends’ status. That’s where services like twitpic helps a lot. A picture is worth a thousand words and with Twitter, about  7.14 tweets! So, the best way  to convey your personal experience is by adding a pic link to your tweet, and preferably, as close as possible to the time of happening. That’s where mobile twitter applications comes into play. I recently installed Mobile Twibble application on Nokia 6210 Navigator and used it to update my status. Here’re my thoughts: Installation is not easy to the un-experienced mobile user. The user has to go to a general installation page on http://m.twibble.de. The page provides downloads to a dedicated BlackBerry application or a general J2ME application. The page is filled with semi-professional terms like jar and MIDP2 which are confusing to the novice user. Twibble would be best to recognize the device by its user agent header and provide step by step instructions on its web site. Another issue with the application is that there are actually two J2ME versions. Signed and unsigned. A phone without the proper certificates will fail the signed version, leaving the user confused. True, Twibble works best with signed application permissions (we’ll get to that later), but again, proper instructions with images on the web site would clarify the troubled user. Once installed, the application is very intuitive to use. the Navigation keys switch the view from your friends tweets to replies, Direct messages and customized searches that the user can configure. Still, if you follow more than 100 users , it’s not easy keeping track with limited size screen. Tweeting, on the other hand, is very easy. with one key short cut, the user sees the update page where he can set his status. The application also enables the user to add a picture from his saved images. However, for un-signed applications, finding the right image is difficult. First thing the user has to do is to find the folder where the images are stored. On my phone, it’s located in the somewhat enigmatic folder name E:/Images/100_2009/. Another problem is that usually, the images  themselves have un-friendly names like 20090721_004.jpg which makes it difficult selecting the right image. The application does provide the user with the option to view all images as thumbnails, but, un-signed application requires permission from the user before opening each image. This is quite an annoyance. However, since we’re tweeting live events, most likely the image the user wish to attach will be the amongst the last images taken. I wish Twibble would build a native Symbian plug-in that will add an option to tweet a picture directly from the native gallery application. In summary, once passing the installation hurdle, it’s easy to tweet your on-line events and attach pictures, especially if you installed the signed version.

Last week Facebook announced it has become an OpenID relying party: any user with OpenID URI can seamlessly login and register to Facebook. After users link their Facebook account to GMail account, they will be automatically logged-in to Facebook after having previously logged-in to GMail. This move is very good for the user. By using OpenID URIs, the user needs only one set of username/password with which he sign-in to his OpenID service provider. From that point on, the user doesn’t need to remember other set of credentials. Yoohoo! Freedom from long lists of passwords at last! Single sign on (SSO) poses great advantages to users and web sites. Registration and login processes become much easier to both sides. Users will be more inclined to register to a site without having to manually type their details, wait for the confirmation mail, press on conformation links and so on. Emerging web sites will benefit from easing registration to new users. However, one has to wonder why Facebook, which already managed to have hundreds of million of registered users without OpenID, would spend resources on this standard. One might say that being open to the web, playing nice and live in harmony with the rest of the big boys is good enough reason. I certainly support this attitude. Sharing, collaboration and overall openness is definitely the direction the web should aspire too. Still, in the wrong hands, utilizing OpenID can have negative consequences. Maybe I’m paranoid. Maybe I’m missing something but for me, the easiness of registration can also be honey trap. When a user links his Facebook account to a GMail account, Facebook ask for the user’s email, contacts, language and country. That information is not required for SSO. Facebook can use this information to learn more about the user, customize  its offerings, match GMail contacts with Facebook accounts and suggest user’s contacts to join  to Facebook. This kind of information is the bread and butter of many web sites. Web sites uses it for promotions, advertisements, customization and much more. Potentially, this information worth a lot for the web sites asking it. I wouldn’t be surprised if major players will start charging for that information crossing over. Maybe we can call it “Information border tax ”. What do you think?

As the concept of Social media grows so does the concept of Social Marketing. Yesterday I  attended a one of a kind dinner at Forelin, which is a chef seafood restaurant. The event was called “Eat & Twitt” and the purpose of it was to promote the restaurant and their new summer menu. This is the first time this is done in Israel, and I have not heard of a similar event done abroad… The event was organized by Liat Vardi–Bar, the talented  “out of the box” thinker I know and love and promoted by Yosi Tagori, which “invented” the concept of #fiddme on twitter. The guest included magazine and blog writers that are related to the food  and restaurant industry and twitter geeks which tweeted the entire dinner. In addition to the wonderful dinner served, there were different wines from Agur winery, and a lecture about food photography techniques, and there were even give always: a cooking book from selected chef  restaurants. This is the second time I attended  Forelins private room and enjoyed it so much. I love the setting and the service there! was one of the more fun events I have been to lately, waiting for the next one. Thanks Forelin! For more pics:http://picasaweb.google.com/jasmineah/EatTwitt# tweeting about it:

Windows Mobile 6.5 is done and that’s a good opportunity to provide a quick jump-start to developers wishing to learn more about the OS. Microsoft has a tendency to overload developers with abundant API of its various platforms and technologies. Windows Mobile is no different. Managed and native API, .Net, MFC, ATL, Win32… it’s all there for the confused developer. Luckily, Microsoft has recently published an article discussing APIs for Windows Mobile 6 and later, and how to select the best fit for your application needs. BTW, don’t be tempted to choose managed .Net API before fully understanding the functional requirements from your application and the devices it needs to run on. Win32 is better if you wish the application to run on as many devices as possible. A good place to learn Windows Mobile development is MSDN’s ramp up which is a community-based learning program, teaching various aspects in development for WM. Another excellent source for learning and help is blogs of mobile gurus. I recommend subscribing to the following blogs: Raffaele Limosaniblog, Alex Yakhnin, Christopher Fairbairn, Windows Mobile team blog, Reed and Steve blog, the Moth, and finally, Chris Craft (especially his 30 days of .Net series). OK. You’ve done your reading and fill ready to start developing? hold on. Make sure you took into account globalization and localization issues. Simon Judge lists many of them. Once done development, you need to QA your application. If your application aims for numerous devices in many countries, involving different networks, you should consider using DeviceAnywhere or maybe even Mob4Hire. Finished the cycle? congratulation! Now you can go and publish your application on Windows Marketplace.

After a long time of no women events, we are planning a women only event for entrepreneur women. The goal of the event is to unite women in the Hi-Tech industry and create an inspiring and supportive platform for women entrepreneurship. The event is of the F5 – Refreshing women’s venture group and will take place this upcoming Sunday, in the private VIP room at Foreline restaurant in Tel Aviv (there is free parking!!). The event will include dinner and a lecture “My entrepreneurship experience and about leveraging new media to live a LIP (location independent professional) lifestyle." by Maya Elhalal, which will share with us her experience. There are limited places, so RSVP ASAP on the Facebook Event here.

Mobile devices are no longer tools for calling someone. That’s a known fact. You can take pictures with it, read emails, navigate, read web content, check your calendar and more. However, in the mass user eyes, it is still not regarded as an extension to your computer. Sometimes, when I’m outside my home or office, I come across interesting stuff; movie posters, concerts, commercials or even a quick glance at a newspaper’s headline. For example, I can see a poster about  Antonio Gades’s flamenco version of “Carmen” and wish to learn when and where it shows. Until recently, my mobile options to get this information were limited. I’d have to  open my browser, go to Google and type something like “gades carmen tel aviv”. Then I’d have to go over the results and look for the information I want. That’s very tedious even if you have iPhone. Next comes Nokia. Nokia has recently launched a beta application called Nokia Point & Find. The application, currently available in USA and UK only and for Nokia N95 models, utilizes the compound of phone’s camera, Internet connection and GPS to recognize a real life object and get information relevant to the context and location. For example, users of the service could get information about movie like reviews, local show times, trailers and could even buy tickets on-line. What I like most about the service is the management portal Nokia provides for publishers. Nokia wouldn’t want to have a dedicated professional service team to configure campaigns. Instead, Nokia’s management portal enables the publishers to do it themselves. What I don’t like is that the application is relevant only to N95 models in the USA and UK. Plus, the user will have to download and install the application. Finally there’s  Kooaba. Koomba is a spin-off company from the ETH Zurich, an outstanding science and technology university in Switzerland. Their technology was already used in several campaigns and looks very mature. Mobile users can send images in various ways: email, MMS, iPhone and J2ME applications, although video calls are not available yet. Publishers can use  a web-based campaign manager to set up their account. The company also offers API for partners and developers. Overall, this is very exciting! The products above demonstrate how to use the distinctive benefits that mobile device has to offer to provide new experiences for mobile users and business opportunities for publishers.

I recently got a new W500 Laptop (4062-2GX), while it’s supper fast and has a great display it is somewhat of a disappointed. As an avid ThinkPad users I can tell you – this is not an IBM laptop… it’s not built the same way my old T43 is built, and there are small things that make what used to be a great product into a good to very good product. It started with my W500 mouse getting hanged, drove me crazy, I reinstalled the OS, drivers, searched the web only to realize there’s a known hardware malfunction – it was replaced super fast (2 days), but yet I did not expect this from an IBM laptop. Than came the Blue Screens. After a while I decided it’s time to dig deeper and get this resolved. My Blue Screens where at iaStor.sys – to make a long story short there’s an Intel driver called AHCI driver that you can see here: When you update your driver, or go to Windows Update it will look at Intel to see if this driver needs an update. But Surprise! while the Windows / Driver Update thinks your driver is updated there’s a new driver on Lenovo’s web site (which they are not too vocal about) Version #8.6.3 (which is newer than what I had from Intel) that you can download here: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/MIGR-70477.html Once I installed it BSoD are gone, at least for now… Putting all this aside there’s a great lesson for me as a developer – it is the small but annoying things that make the difference between a very good and an excellent product. Hope you find this helpful. Amichay

iphonetouch.blorge has recently published a story from Arnold Zafra about top 40 best iPhone optimized web sites. Our own iphone.jajah.com is one of the top 40 web sites!  The site is amongst a respectable list of other iphone optimized sites like Amazon, CBS News, Digg, Meebo, Google and Twitter. Mr. Zafra found these sites to be “useful and highly iPhone optimized sites that will enhance your online iPhone experience”. JAJAH iphone’s dedicated web site, launched at December 2007, has aimed to fully optimize the device capabilities while maintaining a simple and easy user experience. Mr. Zafra story is a testimony for JAJAH efforts in providing a variety of mobile solutions to make low cost calls.