Posts Tagged with ‘mobile’

Yesterday Research In Motion announced BlackBerry Storm that is obviously yet another direct competitor to Apple’s iPhone 3G.
The major disadvantage for BlackBerry Storm is that this phone lacks Wi-Fi support but there are other things where the new device is even stronger than iPhone, like removable battery, 3.2-megapixel camera, and cut-and-paste editing functionality.
Here I have compiled a table (based on the official specifications by manufacturers) to compare the new BlackBerry Storm with its main competitors - the already popular iPhone [...]

I'm a texter.  I'm addicted.  I actually prefer texting to phone calls; you can talk to seven people at once as opposed to just one, and SMS messages tend to cut down on conversational fluff that saps your precious time.  Because most people aren't addicted like me, they don't care to shoot the breeze with their fingers.  In fact, that tends to mean they don't text me at all, but leave me voicemail after voicemail, in spite of the fact [...]

Please excuse the obvious irony in the above title, but it couldn't be left alone.  For those of you who aren't familiar with Loopt, it is a mobile social locating platform that is pushing many of the current boundaries in mobile social networking, not the least of which are privacy boundaries.  Loopt's biggest obstacle right now is getting GPS-equipped handsets into consumer hands and making GPS service somewhat affordable.
Though not much can be done on Loopt's end to force GPS-enabled [...]

Last week I attended the Twin Tech media event in Washington, D.C, and one topic that kept popping up in conversation was the issue of privacy in this relatively new world of mobile social networking.  Mobile social platforms designed to keep track of users' locations are all the rage, just like VGA camera-phones were many, many moons ago.
Though we may not be at the point where everyone can be found at the touch of a mobile screen, that day [...]

I think there are a lot of people who still point at the divide between someone's "social" life — that being the life they possess as a member of internet-based communities and networks — and "real" social life, saying the void can't be crossed.  While we might not be at the point where our two social lives overlap seamlessly, there is still a lot of value in developing tools for understanding and enhancing our social life in the physical world.
One [...]

You have the most successful touchscreen handset on the market, your brand image could sell contacts to the blind, and guess what?  You are largely responsible for a roadblock in the advancement of mobile social networking.  What I'm referring to is the fact that new iPhone applications are not allowed to run continuously as a background processes. 
Of course, I doubt Apple or its head man Steve Jobs directly intend to inhibit the advancement of mobile social media by [...]

Though I'm not a parent, I do feel like a relatively close uncle, being able to watch Twitter grow up and get big.  Twitter experienced quite a significant growth spurt today when it acquired the separate Twitter search platform Summize, a buyout that fellow writer Leslie Poston recently explored.
Now Twitter is starting to look like a much more grown-up platform.  It would be unfair to say that Twitter has been doing it wrong all along by not having [...]

There's a lot to be said for simplicity.  Simplicity can mean focused and directed, but it can also mean lacking.  Reaching a balance of features and complexity while maintaining clarity and simplicity is a difficult task for any mobile social platform developer.  Though I feel like I'm beating a dead horse, I think the best mobile social platforms will be ones that aggregate the most popular computer-based platforms natively as full-time applications run over the data networks of mobile handsets.  [...]

There's nothing quite like the smell of a copy-cat early in the morning.  But then, what else would we expect of our trusty social network Facebook?  Aside from the many other cues Facebook has taken from different social platforms, when the Facebook app rolled out this morning as part of the iPhone Apps store, there were more than a few people who noticed striking similarities between the Facebook App and one rather popular micro-messaging application. 
Its hard to miss similarities [...]