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Technology, Mobility, Usability and other Musings

Random musings on technology, mobility, usability, social media, the Web and other cool stuff

Has Twitter crossed the chasm?June 28

Image by Matt Hamm via Flickr

When I came across Twitter about an year back, I was bewildered. So I can put 140 characters on a web site to tell the world what I am doing at the moment… Who cares? And why would I want to know what others happen to be doing at the exact moment they decide to share it with the world? However, there were quite a few people using Twitter so I decided to investigate Why we tweet and discovered it’s quite valuable both personally and for business. Ever since I have been an avid twitterer.

But something changed recently… all of sudden Twitter exploded in the mainstream, it even made it to the cover of TIME. Everyone from kids to businesses to politicians to governments are twittering. A few examples:

• Governator Arnold (@Schwarzenegger) twittered about an emergency plane landing. Not o

Convergence of Terrestrial and Satellite mobile communication systemsApril 23

Mobile Satellite Services

Mobile Satellite Services like Iridium and GlobalStar have a long established reputation of being able to successfully deliver connectivity to the most remote regions of the planet. Unlike traditional mobile phone providers that utilize cell towers for signal strength, satellite phone providers connect to low earth orbiting satellites. These orbiting satellites enable satellite phone service to connect in seconds with a clear signal. So, if you are hiking, cruising or otherwise travelling in a remote area, and need to stay in touch, the satellite phone works best. Only about 14% of the whole world is out of cover.

However, to make a call, you may have to go outside, for you’ll often find they don’t work very well under a roof of any kind. And, the handsets are large and clunky with big ugly antennaes.

Terrestrial

Photo sharing: Facebook leads Flickr by a long marginApril 13

Flickr had been the leading Photo sharing site for quite a while but off late it’s been trumped by Facebook. Flickr adds about 3 million photos every day as opposed to Facebook which adds around 30 million photos every day. Social networks, it seems have come up as preferred locations for sharing photos as opposed to the photo sharing services.

Facebook Photos saw over 153 million uniques in Jan '09, while #2 Flickr saw only 66.7 million

Stan Schroeder of Mashable explains

Flickr has many additional features, and the images can be bigger, but ultimately people use Facebook for the same thing – sharing photos with their friends. Add to that the fact that photo management on Facebook is very elegantly done, with some sim

What makes a mobile phone tick?March 17

Isn’t this the million dollar question… although there are no straight answers, here are two important factors to consider while designing phones (or any product for that matter)

• Ensure the phone’s features are integrated with each other while maintaining ease of use in a meaningful way. It’s not about cramming more features, it’s about making those features work together to support a lifestyle. The buying decision comes down to the buyer’s perceived expectation of how well the phone will fulfill certain tasks. In other words, how well does a phone fit into the life of a consumer?

• Buying decisions are mostly driven by emotions, and we then use our intellect to add reasons and defend our emotional decision. Finding out these emotions is very important.

Tagged: design, Mobile, User Experience

Carnival of the Mobilists #162February 22

Welcome to the 162th edition of the Carnival, hosted for the first time here at Technology, Mobility, Usability and other Musings.

This has been a busy week for mobilists thanks to Mobile World Congress that concluded recently. Surprisingly, not many posts covering MWC have come up, I guess we’ll see them next week after people have had some time to put their thoughts together.

This has been a varied week covering a range of topics. So, let us begin, shall we?

Market Watch

From Communities Dominate Brands, Tomi talks about 3G penetration statistics marking a trend that indicates 3G’s success in any region it’s launched in.

Thomas Menguy of Vision Mobile looks at three