December 17, 2008

mobile facebook update (and hints at other things)...

my, my, my... how time does fly. has it really been since august that i last posted? well, i guess there's been no shortage of change going down in my world - but more on that in the not-too-distant future... for now, on to business:

accessing facebook from a mobile device is hardly novel and certainly not limited to any particular device vender. indeed, you can point any device with a browser to http://m.facebook.com and away you go. beyond that, there are multiple java-based or other clients available that come installed on or are downloadable to your device, some of which may be a bit more graphically-elegant than a browser-based solution. whatever the case, all are functional, in their own ways.

with the above as context, and given my historical penchant for posting on s60 devices (e.g. primarilly nokia symbian-based), i thought i'd offer a quick-and-dirty on a couple of alternatives i've been messing with.

first off, we've got the new facebook widset from nokia. not bad. not bad at all actually. simple and elegant UI - the facebook logo across top with tabs for home, profile, friends and inbox (device screenshot below). as for functionality, you've got pretty much the basics you'd expect in order to maintain presence in your social network - latest friend requests, messages, status updates, etc.; access to your and your friends' basic profile data, mini-feeds, pictures and walls; ability to update your status on-the-go as well as to engage in threaded messaging; and - somewhat novel - the ability to upload snapshots from your mobile's camera directly to your facebook profile (as opposed to cross posting through whichever service you might be using). again, not bad at all...


the process for getting yourself set up is pretty simple. go to http://www.widsets.com, register yourself, choose which widsets you want to have resident on your device (facebook is only one option), download the widsets client to your s60 device, launch it, sign-in to facebook and you're live.

for a slight twist on the facebook theme, check out the buddycloud solution - http://www.buddycloud.com (thanks for the heads up chanse). this has got some promise as an extension of the mobile facebook experience (twitter as well), if they can get critical mass participation - a not insignificant challenge.

as a standalone application, buddycloud bills itself as a "mobile social location platform" that allows you and others in your community/communities to share status, location and proximity (cool) between mobiles and beyond, e.g. with simple plugins for facebook and twitter. there are a couple of cool elements here: one, the geolocationing solution is good-old-fashioned cell-ID triangulation (assisted by gps, wifi and bluetooth according to buddycloud, but nonesuch seem to have evidenced themselves in my trialling). another: once installed on your device, the buddycloud client absorbs your phone contacts into its interface, allowing you to click on a contact and choose to call or "send my place" (or otherwise solicit to the world of buddycloud). the app also allows for a rich range of friend, group or community customization, and, quite cool for the multi-platform social networking/messaging fanatic, it supports chat with any jabber client (e.g. gtalk, etc.). and, as for the facebook plugin (i didn't test the twitter version), simple, basic, graceful - one of many ways to adjust and communicate your status and location to your social network (image of FB plugin and device launch screen below).

launch screen on an s60 device

facebook plug-in as appears on profile page

like the facebook widset, getting up-and-running on buddycloud is a simple process of registration and quick client install, from either your mobile or PC. gotta reiterate something here: as just a facebook (or twitter) extension, buddycloud may not have very long legs (beyond perhaps some alternative application of its platform) - after all, while it's great at pushing info to facebook or twitter, it's basic promise is another new community and, frankly, barring some amazing new twist on the concept, users aren't looking for yet more new communities. but, all of that said, if buddycloud does somehow succeed in building a critical mass of users, then they could indeed have something here (if nothing else, a higher price for that alternative application of its platform).

what's it all mean in the end? short and sweet: more simplification of and potential value-added experience related to the mobile extention to the internet. cool, sure. but neither of these is terribly earthshaking. indeed, i'm still chasing whatever that next big disruptive, game-changing thing might be...

later. big changes underway by the way...

August 21, 2008

mobile web server (and so much more)...

needless to say, it's been quite some time since i posted on a mobile gimmick, gadget or what-have-you. but this is really kinda cool.

been playing around with the nokia mobile web server (MWS) application for the last couple of months. while this is by no means a ready-for-mainstream-consumer-primetime solution, the promise is really quite amazing - a real world demonstration of what blending context, mobility and the web is all about.

first things first... pay a visit to http://mymobilesite.net/. the instructions couldn't be simpler - register your nokia s60 device, download the mobile web server app, quick and easy install, a little customization/personalization of your site (easiest from fixed-pc), and, presto, you're hosting a website from your device.

ok, so what's that mean? in short, from any other device with a browser - pc or mobile - you or those you've granted access can remotely tap your contacts, calendar, gallery, etc. (including, should you be so possessed, your text messages, files, etc.)

but it's yet cooler. those you grant access can also check your presence, e.g. your location, whether you're on a call, what profile your phone's in, what sort of data connection you have, your battery life, etc. - see screenshot below.



really amazing...and yeah, maybe just a little bit spooky. yet further, should you choose to so allow, remote users can actually request an image from your phone's camera which is subsequently snapped without you necessarily ever knowing - and the image doesn't even show up in the phone's gallery after the fact.

the utility of this last feature may not be readily obvious (unless you're thinking espionage or law enforcement), but is easily demonstrated by the facebook plug-in so quickly and cleverly crafted for the MWS. as per the screenshot below, the plug-in captures select data from the phone - date, time, status, calendar, battery life - and then offers a quick and easy window for your facebook friends to shoot off a text message, or, way cool, to request a "what am i seeing now" picture. the latter, in this case, notifies your phone that a request has come from whichever facebook friend and gives you the option to a) capture an image and then b) send it. works quite elegantly (but some brief latency depending on your phone's data connection).



again, while this may well still be an app for the geek elite, it's quite an impressive demonstration of certain elements of what's to come in terms of mobile context and (re)introducing your physical presence to your virtual world. 'talk about connecting people...

later.

beach week 2008...


...amazing. once again. now counting the days 'til winter break...

July 27, 2008

dolan takes first at all stars...


...just turned six and swimming back in first leg of age eight-and-under IM relay. way cool.

and he's got three more years to swim this age group. yet cooler. (from the mobile)

July 20, 2008

the girls...


...swim team banquet. friggin' gorgeous. nuff said.

July 14, 2008

um... been awhile?

well, yeah... either the result of having shifted my presence (much more passive) to facebook, or, perhaps more aptly, my having simply had far less professional and personal bandwidth of late.

...in any event, with the rare exception of the occasional brief (ever so very) comments, this blog has been largely a one-way dialogue. so, a question i may regret: anyone out there that might be missing the musings?

bill (a first-ever signature)

June 23, 2008

happy 6th birthday dolan!


...from the mobile (of course)...

June 21, 2008

June 01, 2008

happy graduation brennan...


...how on earth did we get here so fast? (from the mobile)...

May 12, 2008

happy birthday kids


welcome to your teens...

(from the mobile)

February 19, 2008

steps towards mobile social networking...

...getting to be a crowded field...

so, sharing images and video from your mobile device is nothing new (albeit a richer experience today than mere months ago, by virtue, among other things, of higher quality image capture capability and faster/fatter broadband wireless connectivity). indeed, it's been two-and-a-half years since i first posted on the shozu / flickr solution, two years since i commented on vizrea and zonetag (which introduced an early if somewhat rudimentary geotagging solution), a year-and-a-half since i reviewed fotojive and blip.tv, and, finally, about a year since i covered comvu, a mobile streaming/webcast tool... nokia's recently released "share on ovi" (a key element of the overall nokia ovi internet services initiative) is yet another take on this theme - an elegant community-oriented implementation of the twango assets nokia acquired last year. and, trust me, there are any number of other alternatives out there to share content to and from your mobile device on a real-time basis.

and then there are the clients, widsets/widgets or web-based solutions designed to maintain your (mobile) presence and/or participate on-the-go in your myspace and facebook communities. mashing various solutions together is getting easier and easier, e.g. with shozu installed on my n95, one click sends whatever image i capture directly to my flickr account where it's immediately cross-posted to my facebook. initial set-up is quite painless, and from there on the actual functionality is transparent to me. same can be accomplished using a variety of alternatives, many referenced in the paragraph above.

and the mashing up continues. the marriage of location-based data with user-generated content is well underway - and this goes beyond simply geotagging images with location-based metadata. it's more about adding social-oriented context to your content. what nokia is doing with share on ovi and its nokia maps are examples (and, sticking to my randomly self-imposed rules, i'm not posting here to do nokia promotions, so 'nuff said on that stuff). but there are other examples as well...

the folks at gypsii have come up with a variation on the theme that merits checking out. simple on-line registration process, simple application download to your device. while definitely not my style, i'll let them speak for themselves in the following excerpt from their website: GyPSii allows users to share their real life experiences in the virtual world using mobile devices and the web. It is a social networking, search & location based suite of integrated mobile and web applications - for users to share, view & upload pictures, video, text and POI (points of interest) with a Geo-location - place and track each other in their select communities. Find people and places, points of interest, map and navigate to them all.

ok... so, that may be a bit hyperbolic (i've yet to test out all of the features), but there is something cool about this, whether capturing an image and cross posting to facebook (simple couple-clicks plug-in) with relevant geo-related metadata and associated map, or just randomly sharing your real-time geoposition. thing is though, beyond the initial "gee whiz" factor, gypsii faces the same challenges confronting any social networking upstart - the value of the solution is directly dependent on the critical mass employing the solution - or, in other words, it's all about building your subscriber/user base. the cross-post to facebook does allow me to share location and content with non-gypsii users, but not necessarily to quickly interact with them. and the search and location and POI functionality are only as good as the user-generated data that's been shared by other gypsii users. the same, incidentally could be said of ulocate's "where" solution, notwithstanding "where"'s paid POI content. "where," and ulocate's recently-acquired "buddy beacon" are actually quite cool (the former being live, the latter only launched on helio so far), and, frankly, should have merited an independent post, but shit, i've been busy...

the point of all of this? there's a lot going on. the momentum is fast. the complexity is daunting. the moving parts are many. the number of players engaged no less so. .. watch this space.

February 17, 2008

couple more from the morgan files...

additional classics courtesy of morgan rooting through the old albums. click on the thumbnails to zoom in...

morgan's 1st birthday...

early heavy reading - check out the title of book...

a classic july 4th shot...

classic, truly classic...


so... morgan's been digging through old photo albums and scanning pictures up to facebook. she came across an old favorite that i had almost forgotten - captured in a public square in guayaquil, ecuador - circa 1990-1991.

there is so much going on here...

- the contrast between an almost-glowing, towheaded morgan and the aging, something-less-than-well-bathed park regular (presumed).

- the further and startling contrast between morgan's all-too-white tennis shoes and the old dude's scarred and crusty bare feet.

- the strange, impromptu cupped-hand periscope through which the latter seems to be examining morgan.

- the iguana feasting on watermelon at morgan's feet, or the other one starting down the tree to get his fill.

- and, of course, perhaps most entertaining, the bizarre pepsi-branded signage admonishing park visitors not to mistreat the iguanas.

click on the image to zoom in. classic indeed...

February 05, 2008

so, let's recap...

...i've been quite quiet in recent weeks. so, what's been going on?

- company's been doing the re-org thing which has resulted in no end of transitional activity, new job, building new team, etc. etc. (and, all the while, continuing - at least through years' end - the old job).

- whole industry's going through a rather significant transition as well. value's shifted in short order from access, to devices, to digital/online services and content, but not (just) in the context of the latter standing alone. rather, while, yes, internet-based content and services are significant revenue-builders in their own right, so too do they add incremental value to devices and, yes, access. the race - across multiple dimensions - is on. and in force.

- meanwhile, kids are doin' great. kick ass soccer out of brogan (and of course the quad boys as well). cullen and luke nailed junior olympics qualifying times in swimming. ryan's taught himself guitar - and is seemingly scary talented. morgan's bringing home straight A's from university, and brennan's mere months away from heading off himself, with g'town a possible horizon. peyton couldn't be a sweeter, better, brighter teenager, and dolan, well, the boy's a handful, but in all the right ways.

- and what a season from the hoyas...

- and what a campaign going on between obama and hillary...

- and...

later.

January 20, 2008

one month later...

...yeah, it's been that long. to the extent that anyone's noticed, apologies for a month of silence. whole lot going on. fundamental change in job - stay tuned.