Luarnet

Cultura keitai

KEITAI: TALKING TO THE GURUS. Interesante entrevista con Howard Rheingold y Mizuko Ito sobre el teléfono móvil en Japón (conocido como keitai). Howard Rheingold señala los aspectos más sociales, destacando que los usos más interesantes de esos dispositivos los inventan los propios usuarios cuando los adaptan a sus necesides. Por ejemplo, el SMS no se diseñó pensando que sería usado por los jóvenes para comunicarse:

Keep in mind that the original operators who enabled SMS, the killer app for teens and mobile phones, had NO IDEA that it would either be popular with youth or would be a revenue generator. The engineers build the SMS specification into the GSM standard, When young people got their hands on a medium that enabled them — for the first time! — to communicate directly with their peers without parents or teachers overhearing, they started using it. The ability to send a few words to a friend, instead of initiating a phone call, became both economically and socially attractive to others. But keep in mind as well that the whole 3G model was created by the same operators who formerly had no clue that people would use SMS for social communication. The PC, the Internet, SMS, and DoCoMo were all successful because the users, not the manufacturer or operator, invented uses for the technology. Handset manufacturers have been slow to catch on, as well — isn’t it weird that the first millions of cameraphones were sold without a single-click mechanism for sending pictures to your online gallery?

You can be sure that the most important applications of the next generation of mobile culture will be those that are adopted or appropriated by kids on the streets of Shanghai or Milan or Rio, not those that are invented through focus groups in skyscrapers.

Mizuko Ito se centra más en usos concretos y en los contextos de la utilización de móviles. Sobre la edad para el primero móvil comenta:

Until recently, entering high school was generally the time when you got your first mobile. Nowadays it is becoming more and more common for middle and even elementary school kids to have them. I think it will continue to become more pervasive among younger ages, though it is teenagers who will probably continue to be the heaviest users. Generally, the research shows that parents buy younger children mobiles because of the perception of risk, but of course they get used for social uses. There are already mobiles targeted to children that are specially designed to be easier to use, to be able to get locational information, or to have a limited number of numbers that they can call. But they haven’t been terribly popular at least so far.

Bluescan

Bluescan es una aplicación Java para móviles inspirada en Jabberwocky. La aplicación va mostrando los dispositivos bluetooth con los que se encuentra el teléfono. A medida que pasa el tiempo, los dispositivos se van perdiendo en el fondo de la pantalla. Los dispositivos recién encontrado aparecen en rojo, mientras que los visto ateriormente aparecen en verde. El icono aparece más grande si el dispositivo se ha encontrado muchas veces. No tiene mayor propósito que ilustrar la cantidad de gente que no conocemos y con la que nos encontramos todos los días.

(vía textually.org)

Box.net para móviles

Box.net mobile es la versión móvil de servicio de almacenamiento Box.net. Permite enviar fotografías, documentos y demás archivos para disponer de ellos en cualquier momento. Por el momento, con las tarifas actuales de conexión por datos, no es muy útil a menos que lo necesites. Pero la idea es ciertamente interesante.

(vía Russell Beattie Notebook)

Cómo escoger una plataforma de desarrollo móvil

How to choose a mobile platform analiza las opciones (SMS y MMS, MIDP, Symbian, Pocket PC, Smartphone y PalmOS), examina costes, tiempos y beneficios:

I’ve focused in this column on considerations to help you choose the right mobile platform, starting with some questions to help you define your software project. Knowing the scope and limitations of your application — from both a development and a market perspective — is paramount in choosing the right technology to build it. From there, you’ll want to consider market factors such as whether your application falls into a niche that is already dominated by a given technology or range of devices and the anticipated return on investment from your app. Finally, think about the development itself.

(vía Mobile Phone Development)

Teléfonos móviles y cine

En Estados Unidos pretenden impedir el uso de teléfonos móviles en los cines. La justificación es que molesta al resto de los espectadores, lo que reduce el número de personas que van al cine. No lo veo nada claro. Ir al cine es cada vez más molesto y caro, y ésas parecen razones más importantes. Además, van a perder a todo el segmento de los padres paraonicos y otras personas que no puedan, o no quieran, estar desconectadas.

Minimo

Minimo es el navegador de Mozilla para pequeños dispositivos. Hay una versión para Windows Mobile:

The Minimo has been focused on code-size and runtime footprint reduction, small screen usablity, and porting to small consumer devices. We hope to make Minimo the browser of choice on small devices, or machines with limited system resources; taking advantage of Mozilla’s support for a broad and comprehensive set of standards and the variety of content on the web, proven security, international support, and cross platform capability.

Harry Potter y la tecnología del futuro

Harry Potter and the Internet of Things discute el mundo de Harry Potter como guía para la tecnología del mañana:

Essentially, as computer and communications technology become sufficiently advanced as to become invisible, and as the boundaries between the worlds of bits and atoms grow fuzzier, behavior that currently seems magical will become programmable.

De forma similar hablaba Jakob Nielsen en su In the Future, We’ll All Be Harry Potter:

By saying that we’ll one day be like Harry Potter, I don’t mean that we’ll fly around on broomsticks or play three-dimensional ballgames (though virtual reality will let enthusiasts play Quidditch matches). What I do mean is that we’re about to experience a world where spirit inhabits formerly inanimate objects.

Much of the Harry Potter books’ charm comes from the quirky magic objects that surround Harry and his friends. Rather than being solid and static, these objects embody initiative and activity. This is precisely the shift we’ll experience as computational power moves beyond the desktop into everyday objects.