Nokia Kinetic

Befitting the day I suppose, I caught this over at IntoMobile last week during their coverage of Nokia World.

Interview Published at Mobile Advance

Mobile Advance has been publishing a series of interviews from people in and around the mobile ministry initiative/effort/meme. The latest of these interviews published is that of me based on my work with (and before) Mobile Ministry Magazine. Here’s a snippet of that interview:

5. What are some of the biggest obstacles to implementing effective mobile ministry? For you/your ministry? For the Christian world in general?
 
Mobile is still very new for many ministries. Some have just figured out how to get on the Internet train consistently, and mobile adds a layer of knowledge and engagement that should be familiar, but has unique challenges many aren’t ready to answer. For MMM, our challenge is getting people to talk about their challenges and successes with mobile. We’d be just fine if there was an easier way to get folks to document what they are attempting. For the Christian world, mobile is just big. And its unique in every instance. Many don’t focus on discipleship as much as they do activity and teaching, and so they miss that personalized level of life that mobile and discipleship tend to sit on. Mobile requires that kind of on-the-ground relationship…

Read the rest of this interview at Mobile Advance and then check out what I write and do at Mobile Ministry Magazine.

Conversations and Sketchnotes: Reflections from BarCamp Charlotte 6

Last Saturday, I attended BarCamp Charlotte 6 (@barcampclt). This "unconference" was in its sixth iteration, and I finally got over there. I wasn’t really sure of what to expect, but came away with a shirt pocket full of business cards, several side pockets of inspiration, and a few sketches that colored my impressions.

Carnival of the Mobilists No. 253 at Communities Dominate Brands

The Carnival of the Mobilists is a monthly blog carnival featuring some of the best perspectives in mobile from around the web. Each month has it hosted at a different website, and this month’s host was Tomi Ahonen/Communities Dominate Brands. Tomi wrapped this month’s collection of posts around David Bowie’s Changes – which makes for a rhythmic, unique approach to reading this month’s contributions. Besides my own, do make sure to check out others who were included in the 253^rd Carnival of the Mobilits.

Better Interfaces Needed, Not More Gadget Screens

A recent Harvard Business Review article, Yes You Need More Gadgets, starts off with the story of a woman who is distractred from remembering that the smartphone she is talking on also has her boarding pass for the plane she is about to board. It goes on to describe the situation and how that points to a failure of one device to do many things well. In my experince, and opinion, that would be true if interfaces were designed better. They aren’t, and that’s where this propentency to exclaim we need more gadgets comes from.

[Presentation] Minutes to Mobile Money at Hackerspace Charlotte

Tonite I’ll be at at Hackerspace Charlotte (@hackerspaceclt) giving a presentation titled Minutes to Money: How Africa Hacked the Cellphone and Changed the Credit Card Industry.

This talk (15-20min) will discuss the trend of mobile money (transfer and technologies) and how culture, economics, and mobile disruptions make for a fertile ground for such innovations.

Hackerspace Charlotte is located at 430 E 36th St Charlotte, NC. Feel free to come through. Its a free event,. Though, if you can’t attend, you can view the slide deck.

The Failure of Android as A Phone UX

I have a good idea of when it started, and it wasn’t with phones, it was with PDAs. There was a point where companies got this idea that marketing larger screens made more sense than improving the user experience (UX) that would drive usage, marketing, and service models. Later, the same thing happened with phones and for some weird reason, non-NBA players were speaking this as if it were the best thing that could happen to mobiles. We end up with these petite-handed people carrying around mobiles which are too large to be phones because that’s what carriers think sells best, and see little to no change with the user experience of having a larger screen or the dependencies towards physics with it (battery life, location of interface elements, etc.).

That’s just plain stupid.

Revisioning the Artist’s Canvas

Chandelier at Amelie's Bakery, Charlotte (in progress)

O’Reily Radar is always full of nuggets, even those that are worth a ton well after they are being published. That’s how I feel about this article talking about six features of the infinite canvas – even though this article is really more or less focusing on text/reading than in the art/drawing context that I’d like to explore here.

Wearable Computing: OmniTouch

OmniTouch by Microsoft Research

I’m quite interested in the field of wearable computing, especially as I see it relating to the next logical evolution of computing beyond mobile (hardware). OmniTouch is something that I came across while reading. Its a good bit bulky, but does enhance the spatial relationship people can have within computing interfaces.

I also am reminded of seeing something quite similar done with the Nokia N95 smartphone a number of years ago. Nice how history repeats itself, but finds ways of being reinterpreted in another toolset for additional learnings.

Responding to O’Reily Radar: When Will Tablets Replace Notebooks

I will admit off jump, when I read One Device to Rule Them All: When will a tablet replace a laptop + a smartphone? at O’Reily Radar, I read it wondering if this was another case of old cooties just not able to divorce their paradigm of tools from the paradigm of the productive behaviors they were apparently thought-action-leaders towards. Harsh, but I truly believe that in order to make insightful projections about where tech is going, you actually have to be going there before the road is made. I walk this out to a (emotional, financial, and sometimes social) fault. And yet, the perspective that I have gained seems to not be heard loud enough. Oh well, let’s just answer the question and see how things lay out.

[Palm Addict] Evernote As A Project Notebook

I’m a big fan of using applications that can skillfully handle several media types, especially when I’m working on various projects. Evernote as been great for me in this manner and I’ve recently written up a piece posted at Palm Addicts on just how this works:

Fast forward that half-decade plus and I’m back using a tablet (1st gen iPad 16GB WiFi) and instead of OneNote, I’m using Evernote. Evernote came out not too long after OneNote and its claim to fame then was its ability to be used on just about any computing device you could get your hands on. And even if there was no Evernote app, you had both the browser and email as means to interact with items you saved there. And its because of this ability that Evernote stayed on my radar and was one of the first applications I downloaded onto my iPad.

Read the rest at Palm Addict.

Suwappu (that 9th Mobile Aspect, Blended Realities)

Besides Suwappu from the folks at Berg, there is also that new Disney iPad Cars app and toy which uses the screen as a bit of an shifted-canvas approach to play.

That point about mobile blending realities, unlocking new experiences, can’t miss it. That’s more relevant than faster processors and whether Facebook is using an app or not.