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The 3GSM Congress 2007 is over but the year continues to provide interesting meeting and discussion opportunities in real life for people working in the mobile industry. London is not only attractive for it’s monthly Mobile Monday gatherings but also for Symbian’s Smartphone Show and the Mobile User Experience Conference (MEX) which will take place on the 2nd and 3rd of May at the Wallacespace near Covent Garden.

It seems this conference is different for a number of reasons. Firstly, the conference has a 10 point ‘manifesto’ which deals with the current state of the mobile user experience and how the organizers around Marek Pawlowski think it can be improved. No beating around the bush, they come right to the point. The manifesto was then given out to potential speakers of the conference for them to choose one of these topics to kick off discussion from their point of view during the conference.

The speaker lineup is very interesting indeed as well. Christian Lindholm for example, one of my favorite ‘mobile’ personalities, formerly director at Nokia and serving as a VP at the mobile division of Yahoo for some time will lead a session on how mobiles and applications should adapt to changing physical environments of the mobile user. Among others, the speaker lineup also includes Cliff Crosbie, Director of Retail Marketing at Nokia, Al Russell, head of Mobile Internet & Content services at Vodafone, Mathew Menz, Head of Interaction Design of Motorola and Antti Ohrling, co-founder of Bylk.

The venue itself is also quite interesting. Instead of a standard conference place, the organizers have selected Wallacespace, which, judging from the pictures on their web space, is quite comfortable and very much different from normal conference places. I am quite thrilled about the whole lineup so if my daytime job allows, I’ll attend.

A bit late but great as always! So for the best what people have written in the mobile blog sphere in the past 1 (+ 0.5) weeks, head over to Pikesoft and enjoy!

Every now and then I see a presentation or read a piece on something and I think "yeah, he/she’s so right". It happened to me again this evening when I found "Mobile the 7th mass media is to internet like TV is to radio" by Tomi T. Ahonen over at Communities Dominate Brands. I you haven’t seen it so far take a look, it’s a real eye opener on why the mobile Internet does not only include all benefits of print media, audio and video recordings, the TV and the Internet but far surpasses them due to it’s unique capabilities.

He goes on to explain that developers should not aim at improving and creating new services to make the mobile Internet experience resemble the desktop Internet as close as possible. The is because the mobile is "Not the dumb little cousin of the Internet" as Tomi puts it. Instead, he argues that developers should use the mobile’s advantages such as it’s close relationship to it’s user, it’s unique identity, that it’s always on and always carried, that it has instant payment possibilities and it’s instantaneous support of the users creative impulses as guides and opportunities to create new services. Truly a masterpiece!

It’s good to see some companies have already understood this concept as mobile’s such as the Nokia’s NSeries phones, Sony Ericsson UIQ phones and others are great platforms to base such ideas on. The best phones, however, are no good if operators hide inside their walled gardens. But some of them have already understood and are embracing the future rather than to fight against it. Shining examples in recent months are Three with their free international roaming, German MVNOs offering prepaid mobile Internet access for a fair price to the masses, and operators such as One in Austria who have started selling high volume wireless Internet access for fair prices as well.

With an Internet tablet or a powerful mobile web browser running on devices like the Nokia N- or E-Series phones, this blog can be read on the go pretty much like on an ordinary PC. Many people, however, use less powerful browsers which need content adaptation. Additionally, network coverage while traveling can vary greatly and sometimes browsing while on a train or in the car is difficult. There are other ways, however, to read this and other blogs on the go:

• A mobile RSS feed reader: Similar to feed reader programs on the PC, users can make a list of their favorite blog feeds. The program then downloads the content of the feeds which can then be viewed off line. This is my favorite way of reading blogs both on the PC and on the mobile. Several mobile feed reader applications are available and my favorite is Resco News for S60.

• Opera Mini: If mobile phone processing power or high mobile Internet prices are an issue, Opera Mini is the solution. It’s a Java applet, runs on many phones, and uses a server on the net to format web pages for easy viewing on a small display. Pages are also compressed to save money and to reduce download times.

• Google Mobile: Offers a service which reformats pages for mobile viewing.

• Winksite: Among other things, Winksite can take RSS feeds to create mobile websites. This blog for example can be read with almost any mobile browser via http://winksite.com/msauter/wireless. For people with phones that include a 2D barcode reader application, I’ve supplied a code on the side bar which contains the URL of the mobile version of this blog.

How delighted I was when I heard Nokia’s announcement that they would release their Nokia Maps (a.k.a. Smart2Go) mapping application for handsets other than the Nokia N95. Right after coming back from the 3GSM congress, I downloaded a copy for my N93 and used it in the past couple of days together with a Nokia LD-3W Bluetooth GPS receiver. If you want to get a basic idea of what it does and how it works I can recommend a good intro on Antony Pranata’s blog. After using it for a couple of days now I sat down tonight to blog a bit about how the application performs in practice.

I decided to split this report in several parts as the mapping software is quite powerful and has more features than can be described in a single entry:

• Part 1: Navigation to close-by (100km) destinations.
• Part 2 (to come soon): Nokia maps as a guide for finding a location in a city while walking
• Part 3 (to come soon): Route planning and navigation for destinations 500+ kilometers away (more demanding than the task in part 1)

Part 1: Car Navigation To Close-By Destinations

License and Payment Model

Most features of Nokia maps can be used for free. The most important ones are certainly the free download of all maps, route planning and GPS city navigation on foot. Car navigation with voice commands, however, is not free. The pricing scheme is quite interesting. Western Europe maps for car navigation for a 30 day period are 10 euros. A three year license is 99 euros. In practice, I think this is quite a good idea as it’s possible to try the application for a month for a small sum before making a longer and more expensive commitment. For Nokia, selling their service this way has the additional benefit to bind customers to their phones for the next three years as the 3 year license can be used with another phone as well by safeguarding the activation code received during the payment procedure. Paying for voice navigation can be done directly in the application by entering your credit card information or by premium SMS.

Getting The Maps

There are several ways to transfer the maps to the phone. The most convenient way is to download them as they are needed over the air directly into the phone, either via Wifi or via the GSM/UMTS network. For my first test I tried both ways by searching for some destinations all over the world. Maps for the surroundings of these destinations were quickly downloaded. When zooming in or out or moving around the selected destination, additional parts are quickly added as well. Maps are not discarded after exiting the application and are re-used. In order not to use the GSM/UMTS network for my other tests I decided to download additional map parts via the Nokia MapLoader, a program on the PC. Over the PC additional maps can be downloaded to the memory card of the mobile phone within a matter of minutes. I decided to download the maps of Southern Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Rome (Lazio) and Paris (Ile de France). Together, the maps require around 200 megabytes, no big deal for my 2 GB memory card.

Selecting the Destination And Calculating A Route

A route for navigation is selected by using the current GPS location as starting point and by searching for a destination either by address, by previously stored location (landmark), from additional guides (to be bought separately), from recent searches or directly from the map. When searching for a specific address the application searches the maps already loaded and also remote maps in case an Internet connection is available. The beta version of the software I used had a pretty ugly bug in the search function. When I entered several words for the street name (e.g. "Rue Lafontaine") the search became stuck in an endless loop and I had to restart the phone. Searching for addresses works o.k. for single words ("e.g. Lafontaine") which also finds my "Rue Lafontaine". Search times are acceptable and a search takes about 15 seconds. Once the destination has been found the next step is to calculate the route and to display it. For my test I selected a destination about 50 kilometers away to see how long the route calculation would take. For my destination, the calculation took about one minute. Quite a long time when you already sit in the car, poised to go. Once the route is shown on the map one can start navigation. Again, the application takes about another minute to re-calculate the route before the first voice command is finally issued.(**) This is quite long in practice and the software designers should concentrate on making this process faster. However, it is still acceptable and usable.

Navigation

Navigation is pure joy. One can select 2D or 3D mode. The picture on the left shows how navigation looks like in 3D mode. Unlike on the picture, which was taken just when a turn occurred, the route to be taken is always shown in vertical direction, i.e. you always drive towards the upper side of the phone screen. I was a bit concerned that the screen would be a bit too small in practice. To my positive surprise, however, I had no issues with the screen size while driving, possibly also because the voice commands where clear and were given at the right time. Also the maps were up to date and newly built roundabouts were already known.

Running Other Applications While Navigating

I like to listen to podcasts while driving so a main requirement for me is that the application allows other programs to run in the background. This works quite well in practice and on my way back I listened to a 45 minutes podcast running in the background while navigating. The occasional navigation speech commands and podcast audio were mixed and played over the speaker  simultaneously. Incoming calls mute the podcasts and one can accept or reject incoming calls as usual. When rejecting, the phone returns to the mapping application and resumes the podcast. When accepting a call, the mapping application was terminated, probably because the phone ran out of memory. Not good in practice as you have to stop afterwards and repeat the route planning. It could be that the mapping application was terminated because the podcast application was also running. Nothing that couldn’t be fixed with some additional memory…

Stability

Taken everything into account I am quite happy with the mapping application. It does its job and it does it well. Stability however, could still be improved. While using the mapping application this morning for example, the calendar reported an upcoming meeting while I was driving and using the mapping software. This prompted the phone to make a reset and to deny reactivation until I removed the battery for a couple of seconds. Not quite what you want to do while driving. It could have been the OS, it could have been the application which malfunctioned, but as a user I don’t care.

Summary

Part 1 was already quite convincing for me. If the application also performs well for navigation to destinations more than 500 km away (part 3 of this review), I’ll leave my old navigation system at home for my next trip. So much for today, more on other things you can do with Nokia maps in part 2 of this review. If you have any questions in the meantime, please leave a comment.

(**) Update: It’s also possible not to display the route and instead hit the back button a couple of times to leave route planning once the destination has been found and displayed on the map. Once out of route planning, the application still shows the selected destination on the map. From the menu, it’s now possible to select "navigate to" which saves the time required to calculate the route. Not quite obvious to do it this way but it saves a lot of time.

While I enjoyed the sights and sounds of Barcelona over the weekend, Phil Schwarzmann, a.k.a. the Voice of S60, was already back in Helsinki and was busy putting up the podcast we recorded on Thursday at the 3GSM congress. In the podcast we discuss the congress, the exhibition, S60 competition as well as my blog and a my latest book. The 14 minute podcast is available for download here.

Day two of my conference was packed dawn to dusk with interesting stuff. After all the announcements of new S60 devices the day before, I was more than keen to take a closer look at them at the Nokia and S60 booth. Unlike the year before, S60 joined their mother company in the main hall but fortunately was still separated a bit so most people rather went to the hopelessly overcrowded Nokia booth to stand in line rather than to go to S60 to check things out without any hassle.

I very much liked the E90, aka the new Nokia Communicator. Great resolution screen on the inside, smaller screen on the outside which is however fully usable. You can start web browsing on the big screen, close the Communicator and continue browsing on the smaller screen on the outside. Very smart. The E90 does GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA and Wifi, so fast Internet access should be no problem anymore where ever you go.

As hoped, I met Jouni, aka Marketing Man of S60 on their booth and we had a long chat about the new S60 3rd edition feature pack two. Things which stood out for me were for example the enhanced animation when browsing through the menus. Also, the new memory paging feature, which is a bit less obvious for the user, but which will hopefully prevent applications from being closed once the device runs out of memory because two many applications are open should further enhance usability a bit. This is my main pain point with the N93 at the moment as the browser just takes monumental amounts of memory when browsing on normal web pages. Memory paging in feature pack 2 allows the OS to page out parts of the memory used by applications waiting in the background to the Flash memory thus making room for the memory requirements of other applications running in the foreground. I didn’t see the new paging feature running yet so it remains to be seen how fast memory is paged in and out in practice.

I also went away very impressed from the N95 mapping application demo. The mapping application is now available for download from smart2go.com for lots of other S60 devices and I can’t wait to try it out myself as soon as I have some time to install it one my phone. Stay tuned for my usability report which I will do shortly.

I was also happy to finally meet Ganesh in person, who is in charge of the S60 browser marketing. You should check out the podcast Phil Schwarzman made with him a couple of months ago, which is available on the Voice of S60 homepage. I very much liked the new floating menu in the browser and the offline RSS reader capabilities.

In the afternoon, I was kindly invited to the S60 press panel and I got to talk to Lee Epting, Vice President of Forum Nokia and Matti Vaenskae, Vice President of Mobile Software Sales and Marketing. Quite an interesting panel for me, it gave me a lot of insight how S60 works on integrating all people from the value chain including mobile operators. Some interesting statistics from the panel: 85 million S60 devices have been shipped to date and 25 3rd edition phones models are already on the market (Compare that to a single iPhone which is not even on the market yet…)

Before completing my Nokia day at the exhibition at the S60 party at the Palau de la Musica, I went to my publisher to see how sales of my book are doing at the exhibition and in general. As every year, Wiley is at the Congress to show their wide variety of telecom books at the exhibition and I was glad to see that people were eagerly buying books.

So much for the days events and news, pictures as always on Flickr.

The first highlight of my 3GSM experience yesterday were the MobileMonday Global Peer Awards. Lots of people showed up and it was very much a Web 2.0 / Conference 2.0 feeling. Many people knew many people from their blogs and other activities on the net.

Rudy de Waele of m-trends and founder of Momo Barcelona did a great job to bring everyone together: A first class jury for the awards with people like Carlo Longino of MobHappy, Russell Buckley of AdMob, and Daniel Applequist of Momo London just to name a few. Next to the jury there was a first class audience, first class networking during the breaks and first class sponsors like Telefonica and Reitek without whom something of this dimension with several hundred people attending would not have been possible.

To the hard facts now: 24 (!) Mobile Monday chapters have sent their best startup to Barcelona to present. I was quite impressed with the AsiaPac Region with India having had at least three cities presenting as well as several chapters from China. My personal favorites for the best startup idea were PartyStrands of Barcelona with their interactive party music system, the people from the chapter in Ukraine with their online game (sorry, I forgot your company name…), the people from MoMo Paris with their browser scrolling idea, the mobile payment solution from the Bangalore chapter and the S60 MMS and SMS encryption and security solution from the Bangkok chapter. I was also quite fascinated by the Wifi positioning presentation, of which I have heard before but never quite understood the concept until yesterday. Very cool stuff!

In the end, the jury award went to Plazes, quite known already in the blog sphere for their mobile social location service. Another award went to the guys from the MoMo Paris chapter with their innovative scrolling solution about which I have to find out more and about which I will write separately. Finally, Rudy de Waele got the award for the best Carnival of the Mobilist post of last year. All very deserved!

To close this post in Techdirt fashion, I have to note that I did not see a single Blackberry user at the event. Nokia Eseries and Nseries devices on the other hand were everywhere. I leave it to you to figure this one out 😉

For pictures, head over to Flickr.

So it is finally Monday morning and the exhibition has opened it’s doors. It’s still rather quiet here no queues and shoving scenes at the entrance and inside the halls yet. It’s not going to last. This morning is my free morning, no appointments to run to, just walking through the exhibition halls to discover new things.

Some people are saying that the most important thing about 3GSM is not the Congress itself but what happens around it. I tend to agree. Last night I went to the Mobile Sunday Barcelona, organized by Stuart Mudie and Rudy de Waele. Lot’s of people came who I knew, who knew me and lot’s of people I haven’t met before. William probably got the prize for coming from the most distant place, the Philippines. Rafe of AllAboutSymbian.com had difficulties making sure his N95 prototype didn’t get lost while wandering through many hands 😉

To make it a real mobile party, MyStrands was there with their PartyStrands (http://mystrands.com) music system which lets people influence the choice of music that is played via SMS, or via the Internet either via GPRS/UMTS or over the free Wifi which was in place last night. The system also allowed party goes to send text messages and pictures which were then displayed on the big screens.  A truly enjoyable evening. Thanks to the organizers and a hello to all people I met last night.

Zooming back to today: This is going to be a short exhibition day for me as the Mobile Monday Peer Awards will take place this afternoon starting at three. 700+ people have registered and it’s going to be a monumental event. Looking forward very much to it.

So, before I sign off for the moment, here’s a link to Flickr where you will find the images I take during the week: http://flickr.com/tags/mtrends

I am feverishly looking forward to my departure to Barcelona for the 3GSMWorldCongress. Day to day work will come to a halt and I can’t wait to meet a lot of people for interesting conversations. Web 2.0 has definitely transformed my 3GSM Congress experience and I hope I can help to transform the experience a bit for you as well if are not able to attend in person.

As you can see in this blog post from last year, I’ve upgraded my mobile kit to stay in touch and to blog from the congress from a Nokia 6680 to an N93 this year. Freddy and Montserrat now have a premium place on the phone’s memory card while the paper notebook and city guide are still with me. Again, I will use eMail and Lifeblog to post directly to this blog, so watch this space for the latest and greatest from the congress.

Shozu will help me to post pictures and short comments to flickr. Rudy over at m-trends.org and I will tag our pictures and short comments with ‘mtrends‘ and you can find them easily via this link.

Another thing you might want to watch closely are the Mobile Monday Global Peer Awards on Monday afternoon (12 February 2007). There will be a life webcast of the event via comvu. Should be a lot of fun!