Russell Beattie reviews the new Cingular 2125 cell phone which is the one I carry around and have been taking pictures with while I’m here in Pittsburgh.
Category: sms
How to use new Cingular phone as modem
For those of you who are buying the new Cingular 2125 phone (the one I have) you might want to save these directions on how to use it as a GPRS/Edge modem in your references file for when you need to get on the Internet but no Wifi network is nearby. Thanks to Mike Poulson for doing the hard work.
Digitial lifestyle, movie reviews style
Yesterday Dave Winer, Patrick, and I were at the Metreon and said “let’s go see a movie.” But, we had no idea what we wanted to see. So, we went to the movie theater that’s inside the Metreon in San Francisco and started looking at what was playing. That we all did in “meatspace.” Er, by looking at the board. But, we couldn’t decide between a couple of movies. So Dave asks me “can you look up the reviews on your phone?”
“Yeah!”
I know that Google shows movie reviews right at the top of the search. So, I go to Google and type: last holiday. Of course it works. We look at the reviews, realize it’s a comedy, see that it’s rated OK and that it probably doesn’t have too much that would be inappropriate for Patrick to see.
It works AWESOME on my new Cingular 2125 phone. Having a readable screen makes all the difference.
You know, there’s a lot of heat and fire about the Microsoft and Google competition, but, seriously, who is the winner here? Microsoft made a few bucks by making the operating system for my cell phone. Google made a happier customer. Sounds like a win-win combination.
By the way, the cell phone didn’t come with the best two search engines loaded in favorites. I find that funny. Even Microsoft’s own mobile optimized search engine wasn’t loaded. That’s a nice and fast page to load.
By the way, MSN, Yahoo, and Google have special mobile services. It’s going to be interesting to watch these three to see who gets used more on cell phones:
MSN Mobile
Google Mobile
Yahoo Mobile
By the way, Shel Israel bought the same phone I have and said “it’s the first cell phone I’ve ever used that works in my own house.” When I was there I showed him mine had four bars and his didn’t even have a signal, even though we were both on Cingular. This phone rocks.
Anything else cell phone users should try while walking around?
Update: here’s a site that has various phone themes so you can make your phone look even cooler!
Russell is SSSSOOOO right about mobile usage
Having a great cell phone with a nice screen changes your life. And your usage habits. Most of what I use my data plan is data too. Why? Getting nice RSS aggregators for phones isn’t easy and they aren’t well known yet. Plus, there aren’t enough apps like Microsoft Research’s traffic application (that, I learned tonight, shows you live traffic camera pictures, that is so awesome!)
Anyway, all this is to point to Russell Beattie’s post about a Nokia presentation about how people use new cell phones. Russ is so right and we are so clueless about the usage that’s changing.
Flickr’ing an unusual Mix06 meeting
I thought we were just getting together to discuss our Mix06 conference and shoot a Channel 9 video but Jennifer Ritzinger had invited Anthony Weeks (here’s a picture of Jennifer standing with Jeff Sandquist, my boss). Now, if you followed my trip last year to Target’s headquarters you’ll remember that Anthony “recorded” that meeting by drawing on a wall during the meeting. It was cool seeing him again.
Well, Anthony just recorded our meeting the same way. So, I can finally show you how he works. He listens. He draws. All while we’re having the meeting. Here’s Anthony standing in front of his finished work and here he is working.
Steve Cellini (right) and Ray Winninger (blue shirt). Ray’s the guy who does most of the Mix06 blogs and is heading the content teams. Steve is running the thing (he was the guy in charge of the PDC too).
Here’s the rendition of the first 15 minutes of the meeting. Detail shot of “It’s Microsoft Unplugged.” (We were talking about how Mix should be different than, say, a TechED or a PDC). Detail shot #2 of Big New Microsoft Conference. Detail shot #3 of “the 72 hour conversation.” (We were taking about the role that blogs, RSS, and other communication types will play). Detail shot #4 of “blur between traditional roles of ‘designer’ and ‘developer'” (We were talking about how Sparkle will change development/design roles). Detail shot #5 of “The Web is Inevitable and it’s here to stay.” (I asked Ray if Microsoft was trying to kill the Web. Heheh, I always have to be a troublemaker).
These were sent to my Flickr account live from my new sooopppeeeerrr dooooppppeeerrrr SmartPhone and without checking with anyone. And wait until you see the video we shot!
By the way, Anthony still doesn’t have a Web site. All the business he gets is through word of mouth. And he’s freaking busy from what Jennifer told me.
A little more on mobile Websites
There’s been a bit more discussion of my post about sites that don’t work well on mobile phones (here’s a good roundup of posts on the Windows Mobile News site). A lot of people assumed I was asking for Web designers to do a special site just for mobile phones. I was not.
See, there are a few simple things you can do to make your site work properly on a mobile phone. Like what? The biggest mistake I see most bloggers do is put their navigation div on top of their content div. Nasty cause that forces small screens to scroll down. One one site I visited tonight that took 43 seconds. I won’t embarrass that guy. I’ll film a video instead to show what I’m talking about since most of the comments I’ve gotten made me realize that many of my readers have never even considered reading a Web site on a cell phone.
It’s amazing just how much you can read on a two-inch screen. It’s also amazing how much better RSS is than Web sites. Why? No pretty logos to scroll through and no multi-column layouts to make text hard to read. Anyway, this isn’t something most bloggers can fix by themselves. They need blog templates that have thought about small phones.
Is this important? Well, come to CES and look at my phone.
Update: Ralph Whitbeck asks: “Who really browses on their cell phone anyways?”
One wish for 2006…
Now that I have a sooppeerr dddoooppppeeeerr new cell phone (the Cingular 2125, it’s freaking awesome) I am looking at a lot of Web sites and RSS feeds.
One thing I wish is that Web site developers/designers would look at their site on a small screen with limited bandwidth.
So many sites suck really bad. I’m going to call these sites out with increasing frequency in 2006.
If your site makes you scroll for 20 minutes just to see your content, it sucks. It’ll get called out.
If your site squeezes a column so that it’s only one word wide, it sucks. It’ll get called out.
My wish? Please try your site on a cell phone (tonight I was comparing sites on a Treo, on a Blackbery, and on my phone. My phone was best, but there were lots of sites that sucked on all three).
Millions of Web users are out there with cell phones. If you don’t get your site to work properly with a cell phone, you’re turning away customers and that sucks. It’ll get called out.
Who should be first getting called out?
Oh, I got one. The Google Blogoscoped’s Philipp Lenssen calls out trends that should die in 2006. One of them even talked about the same trend I do (that mobile is now hugely important).
Well, on my cell phone this blog has a column size of a few characters forcing me to scroll forever just to read the article.
That’s unfortunate because I totally agree with the other points that Philipp makes.