App Store Comparison - iPhone vs Android vs BlackBerry vs Windows Phone

Recently, I wrote about my take on the smartphone market. My conclusion was that the key factor to success is the availability of apps, noting that iPhone is way ahead of the game with Android following closely behind while Microsoft and BlackBerry are nowhere. But as soon as I published my blog post, Microsoft announced that they now have 100,000 apps in their app store. And I started doubting myself...

100,000 apps sounds like a pretty good number. I only use about 100 apps on my iPhone and so 100,000 is a lot to choose from. But there was this nagging feeling that the number of apps available is actually a pretty meaningless number. What I really care about is my apps. The apps that satisfy my needs. But which apps are those?

Well, I recently published a post about my favorite apps on the iPhone. I have distinguished between the coolest and the most useful apps. That’s a good list to start. In the article, I have mentioned a few solid alternatives and so let’s add them to the list too. I should also add a couple of service apps for services I use a lot like Marriott and Air Canada. They didn’t make the list but let’s see. And for a good measure, let’s add some of the event specific apps to the list. What could be more important right now than Wimbledon, Tour de France and the Olympics?

That results is a pretty good basket of meaningful, useful apps. There are 30 of them in total and I have all of them on my iPhone. No basket is perfect or entirely rational but a sample basket is useful. Just ask the Dow-Jones. So let’s take a look at how the other smartphones scored. I have checked the app stores for Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone. Here are the results:

The results? As expected, Android scored relatively high and by far the best. With 23 out of 30 apps available on Android, Google is not on the same level as Apple but certainly in contention. Microsoft Windows scored 16 out of 30 apps which was disappointing. That said, most of the big providers such as Netflix, Audible, Shazam or Evernote have made it as far as supporting Windows by now which is encouraging. But if you are looking for any more specialized apps for your Windows Phone, forget it.

BlackBerry, as expected, is far behind and considering that they are in the process of switching operating systems to QNX, the apps shortage is not going to improve anytime soon.

So there you have it. The next time any of these vendors start throwing around numbers like hundreds of thousands of available apps in their apps store, remember that such numbers matter little. What matters is - do they have the apps I need?

On Running, Technology, and Good Causes

I have recently become a runner - what started as a way to get back into shape after some injuries has now developed into a full-on midlife crisis.  Since I am training to run the Ottawa Marathon and raising money for a charity along the way, I wanted to write something about the technology related to running.

Boxing Day 10Miler, Hamilton

First, there are the fancy shoes and clothes which have evolved dramatically in the last years. Yes, that stuff is pretty high-tech and expensive too.  Basically, nobody runs in a t-shirt anymore - you need the latest and greatest dry-fit moisture whisk-away clothes and a pair of running shoes with extra support. That’s not to mention the fuel belts with high-tech nutrition from Gatorade to energy gels and recovery drinks.

But for us tech people, the gadgets are far more interesting. I run with a Garmin Forerunner 210 watch with a GPS receiver that also collects data from my foot chip and heart monitor. The foot pod measures my cadence, speed and distance when running indoors. Combined with the GPS based pace, speed, distance, elevation, and route and with the pulse data from my heart monitor, I am collecting more data on my watch than what Formula 1 cars were capable of just a few decades ago. Just check out the data from my recent race for the level of detail I get.

When training, I also run with my iPhone to listen to something that keeps my mind away from the miles. I usually listen to books from Audible.com which I like better than some peppy music, although that’s a matter of personal preference. I use wireless earphones that connect to the iPhone via a Bluetooth connection. I tried regular ear-buds for a while but the cable was always getting tangled.

The next level of technology is available online. From plentiful training advice, race registration, pace calculators, and training plans, the Web is full of useful info. But what I find particularly motivating is the mutual sharing of training data on social media. Most of the running software such as Endomondo, MapMyRun, NikePlus, and Garmin Connect not only display and analyze the data but also enable sharing it via Facebook and Twitter.

Seeing my Facebook friends post info about their training runs is very motivating - knowing that they will see my own results makes me run harder. I know that the frequent posts might annoy and sometimes even demoralize the non-runners but please forgive us. It’s not like we are tweeting what we’ve had for dinner... Mutual encouragement for sport enthusiasts is a great use of social media!

Finally, the technology managed to transform another aspect of running - fund-raising. Running and other amateur sports have long been connected to fund-raising efforts for various charities. Today, services such as Razoo or Kintera make it very easy to set up a fundraiser for one’s favorite charity and take care of all the payment processing. They even send the donors a receipt for their tax deduction.

I am now in the middle of my training program for the Ottawa Marathon on May 27th. For this occasion, I have set up a fundraiser for the American Heart Association and the Canadian Heart and Stroke Foundation (trying to accommodate either tax jurisdiction for the bulk of my friends). Please check it out and donate to support my cause. Your contribution goes to a great charitable organization that helps fight heart disease. Your donations are the greatest motivation for me as I am getting ready for the big race. And, the technology enthusiast in you will appreciate how technology transformed even this part of our life...

Donate online to Running with Heart at Razoo

Thank you!

Amazing Accessories for iPhone and iPad

The other day, I found myself in an electronic section of a department store and I noticed an entire shelf of accessories for the iPad and iPhone. Since we are in the middle of the Christmas shopping season, I have decided to devote my blog post to the lighter topic of amazing things you can use your iPad or iPhone for.

Most iPad and iPhone owners already have all kinds of chargers, docks, mounts, cases, speakers and keyboards and I will not be discussing those. Instead, I want to feature a bunch of interesting hardware add-ons that truly extend the use cases of the platform into previously unexpected applications.

Fitness
- Heart Monitor
Wahoo makes an ANT+ add-on (hardware) that communicates with the chest strap and monitors your heart rate while running. Wahoo also makes a similar monitor for biking.

- Blood Pressure Monitor
iHealth makes a blood pressure measuring system that keeps your history in an iPhone app.

- Scale
The scale from Withings gathers info such as weight, fat, muscle and body mass index and sends it to your iPhone via wi-fi network.

Photo
- Photo accessories
An amazing set of accessories from Photojojo can add filters and lenses to the iPhone camera and some of them can even turn it into an SLR camera.

- Microscope
This contraption by Brando feels like a square peg in a round hole but, it promises to turn your iPhone into a microscope at a very reasonable price.

Kids
- RC toys
The HELO TC helicopter by Griffin Technology uses the iPad as the remote control. Not bad, actually.

- Baby monitor
The baby monitor by iBaby allows you to see the baby on an iPad or iPhone.

- iPad toys
Disney produced a series of toys called AppMATes that interact with a iPad application. They look like the characters from Cars 2 which alone makes this game pretty cool.

Music
- iRig
This amazing gadget connects your electric guitar with an iPad and an amplifier and produces sound effects like a whole set of sound distortion pedals.

- Piano
The Piano Apprentice by ION turns your iPad into a pretty smart musical instrument.

- Scratch Mixer
Feeling like mixing some tunes for your next party? The Jensen DJ Scratch Mixer will help! I should perhaps also mention the Soulo karaoke system and the ION iCade at this time.

- Arcade
A gizmo that turns an iPad into an Arcade game machine? Atari!

Business
- Square
Credit card payments for everyone! Since receiving payments is still surprisingly difficult in the US, the Square solution s finally giving the little man a chance to solve this problem.

- Pico Projector
If you make your living by giving presentations to small groups of people - i.e. customer meetings - the combination of iPhone with Keynote and any of the pico projectors is something to consider!

- Radar detector
Cobra iRadar uses the iPhone as a display. Well, what can I say? Drive safely, folks!

You must admit these things are cool aren't they? What's amazing is that they all take the iPhone and iPad into new areas of applications which Apple has perhaps never envisioned. That's the sign of a true platform.

Merry Christmas!

I Want My iDishwasher

For years now, the world has been raving about the success of Apple products. Not just the computer platforms iMac, iPad and iPhone but also gadgets such as iPod and Apple TV have enjoyed a phenomenal success. Most pundits and consumers agree that the design, user experience and ease-of-use are key factors to their success.

For months now, the world is expecting the next line of devices from Apple that will surely yet again turn an established industry upside down. The device the iTV, or at least that’s what we think it will be called, is supposed to be an Internet-enabled TV set, no doubt seamlessly integrated with the iTunes store and all the other Apple gadgets in my house. iTV will most likely be a runaway success in an industry with many players, no differentiation and cut-trout margins. Apple will apply its magic and a boring TV set will become a must-have gadget at double the price of a regular TV set from Sony or Panasonic. My wife - who is not really the type of geek I am - is already planning on where to set it up in our house.

But I am seriously hoping for more. Looking around my house, I see many devices and appliances that need the Apple magic really badly. In our kitchen, we have a modern stove. It has 22 buttons plus a 10-key numeric keypad, not counting the knobs for the gas burners. I don’t know what all of those buttons are for. Nobody knows. Basic tasks such as preheating the oven require multiple button sequences which is usually done by trial-and-error. This is the MS-DOS v2.0 equivalent of a stove. I want an iStove.  

The iStove would have very simple controls, designed for what people do with a stove - cooking, baking, heating up food etc. The controls would be logically arranged and the operation would be easy to learn with no need of a manual. Think about the differences between the controls on the old MP3 players and the iPod. I want the iStove to be like the iPod.  

What’s more, the iStove would be cool looking. It would become the central point of the kitchen. I would love it just like I love my iMac, iPad, iPhone, and the iPod Nano that I’m wearing like a watch.

I want more than just the iStove. I want the iDishwasher. We have a brand new dishwasher that we absolutely hate. I want a dishwasher from Apple that I could love. I also want the iRefrigerator, iWaterSoftener, iWasher, iDryer, and iFurnace. I don’t want any more mysterious buttons, knobs and dials. I don’t know what they do and I don’t want to be spending hours figuring it out. I just want those devices and appliances to work. That’s all.

I am very encouraged by Nest and their new learning thermostat designed by former Apple designers. I’m pretty sure I will buy one as soon as it’s available. My current thermostat is very sophisticated with many programmable options but it is a pain to control. It is so hard that we rarely bother and instead either suffer in the cold or waste money and energy on heating. I love the idea of an iThermostat.

The way Apple has shaken up one industry after another is great for us consumers. Many of these industries have been piling up cash for years without ever caring about the customer. The home appliance and consumer electronics are such industries. For years, they have been competing with each other on useless features like a glass-top range (which sucks, by the way). As a result, it takes my ultra-modern TV set almost two minutes to boot up - longer  than it used to take those vacuum tubes to warm up. It’s time for the Apple magic to shake things up. I can’t wait and I will buy those gadgets!

High Fidelity Pictures

Today, I will discuss some exciting innovations in the world of photography. My interest was awakened by a recent article in The Economist titled Cameras Get Clever. It described some of the leading edge developments in the field of photography. Among them was a technology called high dynamic range (HDR) which can enhance your everyday pictures by overlaying three separate shots and then using the processing power of the camera to get the best exposure from each one of them.

Basically, a normal shot will have areas that are either too dark or too bright because the camera has to set the exposure based on a compromise across the entire image or a selected area. With HDR, the camera takes three separate shots within fractions of a second - one with exposure for the high tones, one for the low tones and one for middle tones. Then, the camera overlays these three pictures using algorithms that combine the best exposure from all three shots. The result are images that have a much better balance of tones and colors than the single shot based on a compromise. Or, do they?

Well, it was easy to test since the standard camera built into iPhone has the HDR feature today. Not many people know it but there is a button in the top center of the screen that allows you to turn on HDR which results in two pictures for each shot. One is a “normal” picture based on the compromise exposure while the other one is improved by HDR. Here is my test, using our dog as a model:

This is a  'normal' picture with a compromise-based exposure 

This is the same picture with a high dynamic range (HDR)

Now, which shot is better? The HDR shot clearly has a better balance. The dog’s face is not just black and white, it has some tone depth in it (number of shades). That comes at the cost of contrast and color richness which we can see in the normal picture. The problem is that on a bright sunny day, the colors really were very bright and the contrast was very strong. And, the dog is black and white, not gray. I checked.

That leads me to my point. With all the power of modern camera and post-processing software such as Photoshop, Aperture, iPhoto, or Picasa to name just a few, who is to decide that the picture I take should have more depth in the low or high tones? Why are the colors all wrong in artificial light? Why are the shots on a beach often overexposed? I understand all the technical issues behind it but what I want is a picture that looks exactly the way reality did.

Back in the late 60s, the electronics industry came up with a notion of high fidelity (hi-fi) which meant that the music you heard from your record, tape, radio, or CD was supposed to sound exactly as in the studio. What I want is hi-fi for pictures. I want the assurance that my picture will look the way I see the real world in that very moment.

Sure, there will be artists - and consumers - who will want to distort the reality for special effect just like there are artists who feel that they have to add a dramatic sky into every picture. That is the right of any author and it should always remain that way. But 99% of all pictures taken are not meant to be art. They are meant to visually capture reality. The real reality. My tiny little (yet incredibly powerful) camera is full of features that can alter the picture - from color accent to fish-eye effect. But there is no button for “authentic picture”.

Go ahead and test the HDR functionality on your iPhone. Features like HDR are important because they allow us to push the boundaries. Some of the innovations in the world of photography are just incredible and I can’t wait to use them. When I read the article mentioned above, I got very excited about Lytro and other technologies. The impact of these technologies could be amazing. Just like the change that digital cameras brought upon us when they replaced film.

As for my test above, I prefer the “normal” picture because it looks more like the actual scene I remember.

Struggles of a Professional iPhone User

A few weeks ago, I have made the switch from BlackBerry to iPhone. I’ve owned an iPad for almost a year now and there appeared to be no hope that most of the cool apps that iPad offers would ever appear on the BlackBerry OS. I was also getting increasingly disenchanted with the poor browser experience, with the lack of an iTunes-like tool to manage my content library (not that I am enamored with iTunes - a pretty poor program if you ask me) and with a variety of performance issues and freezes that plagued my BlackBerry lately. And so when the renewal time came up, I have made the switch into the promised land of Apple. 

iPhone Calendar

I should mention that I am at this point an all-in Apple user, having embraced at home everything from iMac, iPad, iPod, iTunes, AirPort, Time Capsule, AppleTV to now also the iPhone. I expected the iPhone to be inferior for making actual phone calls but who cares - the last thing I want to do with a smartphone is make phone calls. But actually, the iPhone makes phone calls just fine. I have, though, discovered numerous challenges that I honestly miss from my BlackBerry: 

1. Calendar
The calendar is pathetic which I knew from using it already on the iPhone. It does not not support the Exchange categories and so my iPhone calendar is monochromatic in contrast to the colorful experience in Outlook. That’s rather odd considering that this is an Apple calendar - as if the cool hip Mac guy swapped cloths with the chubby dull PC guy. I’m also having issues with the calendar not caching properly which means it always tries to rebuild itself by downloading all data from the server. Pretty annoying actually - even though this issue could have to do with our IT architecture rather than with my iPhone. 

2. Appointments
The most glaringly missed feature, one that suggests that Steve Jobs is secretly carrying a Blackberry under his black turtle-neck, is the inability to simply click on a phone number in a calendar appointment to dial it. Conference calls are apparently not something iPhone users are expected to do. This is such an appalling omission that I must suspect that Apple developers never actually used the iPhone 4 for anything but to track the performance of the Apple stock. 

3. Appointments (again)
The calendar does not allow some of the basic functions - I cannot forward an appointment, I cannot suggest an alternate time, the calendar message gets truncated and I don’t see a setting to prevent that. BlackBerry did these things and I need to use them daily. And while I’m complaining about the appointments, here are three requests I have for Microsoft: I want to be able to decline an appointment (saying clearly ‘no’) while keeping it in case my other engagement gets canceled which keeps happening all the time. I also want to see an ability to prioritize my appointments. And finally, I also want to have notes associated with calendar appointment before, during and after the appointment.  

4. Email Search
Where is the search button in email? Seriously? Is there some kind of magical four-finger flick motion I need to learn to evoke this basic function? C’mon, Apple! 

5. Contacts
My iPhone doesn’t allow me to look up people numbers in our corporate Exchange directory. Why not? Does Apple expect me to download the entire directory to the iPhone and maintain it by hand? Steve Jobs must apparently not be calling many people at Apple. Also,  phone numbers stored in incomplete format such as (519) 123-4567 cannot be dialed when roaming. Your number has to be in the complete format with a country code e.g. +1 (519) 123-4567. That limitation is regrettable and odd given that the OS knows when I am roaming and what my default country is and could thus easily complete the number automatically. 

6. No super-apps
I always thought that the super-app concept from BlackBerry was a little bogus - it touts cross-integration between apps that makes so much sense that I couldn’t imagine it would not be there. Well, I can imagine it now since the apps on my iPhone are completely isolated from each other. The concept is pretty straight forward - for example, every time I see a person in an app, I should be able to access that person’s profile straight from within the app - I should be able to call, email, IM, or whatever other means of communication I have. Similarly, I should be able to share (via email, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) any content asset from within any application. These things are inherent to the BlackBerry OS and yet they don’t exist on the iPhone.

7. Multi-tasking
Apple’s claim that multi-tasking is supported since iPhone 4 - true, as long as one of the tasks is listening to music. Something as basic as checking the calendar while on the phone is not possible. This one threw me off as I always thought that all those teenage consumers - the primary target audience for Apple - are heavily into multi-tasking doing chats in 10 sessions at a time while talking on the phone, tweeting, facebooking, and doing homework all at the same time. They might but not on the iPhone. 

These are some of the examples of functionality I miss from my iPhone. They are basic level features used daily by every professional in business. My experience is re-affirming to me what I have already suspected - Apple does not care for nor understand the business user. They will keep piling up awesome features for playing music, movies, talking to friends, taking pictures and all the other things consumers do and love but the business users are not Apple’s priority. 

I still think that the iPhone is a superior device and I am going to stay with it for now. I am locked into my 2 year plan anyway - courtesy of my customer-loving wireless service provider. But the lack of support for business users is a huge opportunity for RIM which has a massive head start in this space. This is where they grew up and this is where they should dominate. Their marketing messages should be focused on the business user rather than chasing consumers (which I wrote about in December 2010). Business users like me should be told to keep their BlackBerry but nobody is telling them that.

Web Experience Management in the Mobile Era

I had the opportunity to participate in an interesting conversation during a customer visit a few days ago that I think deserves a blog post. The customer - a company in the consumer packaged goods market - is facing an interesting challenge. They have today approximately three dozen web properties and each one of them is being translated into dozens of languages. If you do the math, that makes over 400 sites. This is already a pretty complex scenario that requires a web content management solution.

However, that this is only the beginning of the problem. So far, all the web properties have been designed for the desktop browser which is really easy. Desktop browsers are all the same when it comes down to user experience. However, the company is already gearing up for the mobile era. In fact, they told us they expect that the desktop will be relegated to a niche and that the mobile device will take over. They expect that the mobile device will become the primary user experience.

But this is where the problem lies. Mobile devices are by far not as homogeneous as desktops today. In fact, they may need to support at least six mobile operating systems - Apple iOS, Google Android, RIM BlackBerry, RIM PlayBook, Microsoft Windows Phone 7, and HP webOS. Each of the mobile operating systems has its own quirks and limitations - i.e. some support Flash and others don’t.

On top of that, each device has a different form factor and screen resolution. For example, the iPad is bigger than the iPhone, though both use the iOS operating system. The iPhone ‘retina’ display can handle a higher image quality than a similar device using Google Android even though both screens have the same size.

This multitude of operating systems and form factors leads to an explosion of different permutations in user experience - there are literally hundreds of them. And dealing with them is the job of the web content management (WCM) system.

The WCM system is able to identify the device and deliver the right content in the right template. That means that each content asset has to be readily available in a multitude of formats and resolutions. In addition, all images need to be re-sized, re-formatted and adjusted for the target devices. Video has to be converted and re-sized as well.That’s the job of a digital asset management (DAM) solution. These are the cornerstones of proper web experience management in the mobile era.

The key is not to cut any corners. The customer’s goal was the best possible user experience and they understand that the right user experience requires the right content in the right format and form factor. But they also understand that performance is an essential part of user experience and delivering content with the highest possible speed means to deliver it in the optimal resolution.

Mobility is the new frontier for web experience management. Mobility adds a tremendous reach. Just think about all those countries that never had the opportunity to deploy a desktop based infrastructure and that are now going directly to mobile web. But to do mobility right, user experience has to be a priority. And with the multitude of sites, languages and devices, that could be a daunting task without the right tools.

Testing Samsung Omnia Running Windows Phone 7

My office is very close to the office of our head of development for OpenText Everywhere. As it turns out, he’s the ultimate gadget man. He gets all kinds of devices to test them. The result will apparently be Everywhere running everywhere - at least that’s his excuse for getting all those gadgets. In any case, I’m keeping him on my good side as I like to play with the gadgets. A few days ago, I got to test the Samsung Omnia 7 for a week. His words were: “I’d like you to test it and blog about it. Just don’t post any pictures of me...”. I'm developing a reputation internally, I guess.

The Omnia 7 is a Windows Phone 7 powered smartphone and since I have never had the opportunity to play with Microsoft’s latest OS, I jumped at it. The Windows Phone 7 OS is Microsoft’s 12th version of their mobile OS - a lineage that started with Pocket PC 2000. It was a road paved with many disappointments and so I was a little skeptical about the Windows Phone 7 operating system.

But first I must comment on the Samsung Omnia 7 phone itself. It is very nice. I was pretty impressed by the Samsung Galaxy tablet a couple of months ago and the Omnia is a similarly cool device. It is sleek, made of a great composite material, and I love its 4" screen. The screen is slightly larger than the iPhone and the device is also thinner than the original iPhone. I don't have iPhone 4 yet and so I could only compare it with the 'old iPhone'. The picture gives you an idea of the two devices side by side.

Samsung's Omnia compared with Apple's iPhone

I also liked that the Omnia has a USB interface, replaceable battery, and a built-in radio. The touchscreen is sharp and worked well.  That said, I struggled a bit with the typing although I struggle with the iPhone too since I got used to the iPad. Talking about typing, I liked how the system provides multiple suggestions for possible words as you type. It worked pretty well.

The typing suggestions work pretty well

I also loved the camera button which is a real 'hardware button' that is placed in the right place when you hold the device sideways to take a picture. That said, the camera is lousy - I failed to take an acceptable picture even after several tries.

The screen didn't always switch automatically when I turned the phone from vertical to horizontal. It worked fine in some applications (i.e. Twitter) but it wouldn't switch in others. Notably, it appeared to never switch in the operating system which was rather annoying. Talking about the operating system, it was well organized - I was able to easily find every function. What was weird was the fact that the screen content often wouldn't fit onto the screen itself and the OS ended up cropping it instead of resizing. That was sometimes looking cool and artsy but often annoying and sometimes even unusable.

Not only does the text not fit on the screen, the screen didn't flip to horizontal either

I liked the big tiles that you can pin on the homepage - they made it easy to customize the device and to simplify its use - very handy while driving (which is of course illegal and I would never do). The tiles allowed me to set up the device in a way that resembled more of a mobile phone rather than a smartphone with simple and straight forward functionality. This cellphone level simplicity will surely appeal to some users.

The biggest drawback of the phone was it's Microsoft centricity. Basically, it wants me to live in a Microsoft world that consists of Windows Live, Hotmail, Zune, MSN, Bing, etc. I was able to connect to my Yahoo! Mail easily but I failed to figure out how to connect to my Exchange-based work email. That was surprising since iPhone makes that task really easy. Unfortunately, the operating system treated the Yahoo users as second-class citizens compared to the few users I have in Hotmail. Same thing happened with the Facebok users. The system asked me to connect with Facebook which didn't lead to any obvious benefit. I have downloaded the Facebook app from the Windows Markeplace and it was great but it didn't connect to the rest of the OS capabilities in any way.

The Marketplace was straight forward but the assortment is far, far behind iTunes. I loved the fact that many applications offered a “try before you buy” option which is something iTunes needs to introduce. The music store is as poorly supplied as the app store and movies are not available at all. The Bing search is omnipresent, in fact, it keeps popping up often to my annoyance when not expected - Microsoft is clearly obsessed with search right now. That said, search in the Marketplace lacks the ability to sort results by content type and I was having a hard time finding anything in the long results list consisting of apps, games, and music. Should Microsoft gain support of the developer community and end up with some 100,000 applications, nobody will be able to find anything.

The device provides promising support for Microsoft Office with the key applications available as part of the operating system. Having Word and Excel is great. That said, I couldn't test the synchronization with my desktop since my desktop happens to be a Mac and Windows Phone 7 doesn't  integrate with a Mac. That's pretty much a K.O. criterion for me.

I was somewhat surprised that Flash isn’t supported. We all understand by now that Steve Jobs hates Flash which is why the iPhone does not support it but I didn’t realize that Steve Balmer hated it too. I tried to download the Flash player from the Adobe web site but the operating system is apparently not supported.

I have tested the actual phone capabilities with a SIM card from my BlackBerry which worked fine. I have liked the three buttons on the phone's face which include the home/menu button (just like the iPhone) and also the 'back' button (awesome) and the 'search' button. The hardware buttons on the side were in the way and I ended up turning the phone off inadvertently several times. That happens to me on a BlackBerry too and I ended up disabling some of the buttons eventually. I did like that camera button, though.

Watching my 7 years old son play a game tells a lot of ease of use and ergonomics

All in all, the Samsung Omnia 7 is an intriguing smartphone. It will not work for anyone who's already hooked into the Apple world through iMac, iTunes, iPod, or AppleTV but I can see how someone who's upgrading from a regular mobile phone could end up with a Windows based phone. If you live in the Microsoft universe, this phone must be great but the only such people I know are Microsoft employees.

I wonder if Samsung provides the Omnia with the Google Android operating system. They probably do. It must be an awesome gadget...

PS: If anyone from RIM is reading this, you should know that I can’t wait to test the PlayBook. I’ll even run across the parking lot to your offices to pick one up ;-)

OpenText Is Everywhere - Even On a PlayBook

OpenText announced a new release of Everywhere last week at Content World. And since there was a lot of buzz about a lot of things at Content World, I want to add a few thoughts and comments about this mobility announcement. No, I won't talk about the usual features and benefits of mobile applications. Instead, I took a look under the hood of the product.

This is the second product release of OpenText Everywhere. Its primary focus is on expanding the capabilities that expose the functionality of the underlying ECM Suite with focus on process automation, social interactions, and content access. It is also adding support for Apple’s iPhone and iPad devices, alongside the previously provided support for RIM’s BlackBerry. And in his keynote, OpenText’s CTO Eugene Roman demonstrated an early version of OpenText Everywhere running on RIM’s PlayBook. That was apparently the first time the PlayBook has been shown outside of keynotes delivered by a RIM executive. Yes, OpenText and RIM are both headquartered in Waterloo and so there is an obvious connection there. (Note: The support for Playbook has not been formally announced yet but rather eluded to in a fairly public forum).


The thing that makes Everywhere distinctive is its design. Instead of trying to be a mobile rendition of an existing desktop application, it has been designed natively as a mobile enterprise application. Here are some examples of what makes it enterprise-ready:

- Bandwidth-Management: Managing bandwidth utilization is critical and not just because of performance. Bandwidth on a mobile device costs money. And when you are on international roaming, it costs a lot of money. To avoid spiraling communication costs, the mobile applications has to be designed as much less “chatty” – something that is often not a big concern for desktop applications. When accessing a 20 MB PowerPoint presentation, you don’t really want the file downloaded to your iPhone – the roaming charges could be excessive. OpenText Everywhere solves it by converting the presentation on the server-side into a set of images rendered on the fly. OpenText owns this rendition technology since the 2008 acquisition of Spicer and this technology is now embedded into the OpenText Everywhere application.

- Connectivity: Many of my iPad applications are useless if I don’t have any connection. All I get is an error message which might be OK for a free consumer application but an enterprise application needs to be productive even if when I am on a plane with no connectivity at all. OpenText Everywhere makes this possible to work offline and it queues up my activities for when I reconnect. In addition, Everywhere allows to be configured to work over Wi-Fi or 3G to better manage my connectivity.

- Security: Security is paramount for enterprise applications and it is a major concern for mobile devices accessing your confidential data. Today, IT has to support a multitude of devices with different security capabilities while some are corporate while others are employee owned. OpenText Everywhere leverages the existing security infrastructure of the device for encryption and the ability to wipe clean a lost device. This is much easier with BlackBerry than with other devices but that will be the topic of a future blog post. OpenText Everywhere has been also designed to support existing security policies such as use of a directory-based authentication and the leverage of the highly secure and compliant infrastructure provided by the ECM Suite.

- Usability: A mobile enterprise application cannot be just a scaled down version of a desktop application. To gain user acceptance, the applications need to be designed specifically for the mobile device and ideally leverage functionality of the application the employees use regularly. That means it must not attempt to squeeze the same amount of information and the same number of buttons on each screen. To do this, OpenText Everywhere has been designed with the device in mind and it takes advantage of the unique facilities of each device (e.g. touch screen vs keyboard) and push notifications – again, these concepts don’t really exist on the desktop. As a result, for example the Everywhere screens for search results and ‘my assignments’ list look and behave differently than on desktop – they are optimized for the task at hand and for the device.

I see more and more of my co-workers using mobile devices as their default tool. While mobile enterprise applications are still in their infancy, I expect that the mobile interface will be the default user interface in the not too distant future.

Virtual Reality and Real Virtuality

I have written before about modern software and hardware systems that help us practice our skills in new ways in Virtual Reality with Real Pain. As a follow up, I have assembled a small collection of examples that I have stumbled upon since.

The first video is of a painter David Jon Kassan, demonstrating how the popular sketching on iPad can be taken to the next level. Or maybe a few levels above that:



This next video is of a Japanese magician Shinya showing some really interesting tricks that combine the iPad screen magic with off the screen magic – moving seamlessly from virtual reality to the 'real reality'.



The final video shows the band Atomic Tom improvising a real song with real arrangement on a set of iPhones. This definitely takes the iPad jamming to the next level:



As you can see, all these examples have one thing in common. They combine the virtual reality with the real experience. They don't replace a skill through automation but rather they allow us to exercise the skill without having to have what often amounts to very expensive set of tools or materials.

Sorry IT, the Time of Homogeneous Environments is Over

In the early days of computing, the IT (information technology) world used to be wonderful. There was typically just one computer in the organization to worry about - a mainframe or a mini. The computer was locked in a secure data center and all users used the same hardware and software. This centralized IT environment was relatively easy to manage, control, and secure. IT was in charge and the users couldn’t do anything but work with their applications. Life was beautiful.

But then came Intel and Microsoft and put a computer on every desk and ever since Novell has connected them together, the IT world became a nightmare. (We called it IS back then but I digress). Every user had a different PC and everyone used different software. And what was even worse, the users could tamper with it. They were able to install new applications, add additional hardware such as cameras or external drives, and compromise security by taking the data home, contracting viruses and committing other sins. The IT environments became extremely difficult to manage and impossible to secure.

Then decades later, IT was finally regaining control. After years of desktop dominance, Microsoft was establishing a position where they could control the entire environment: the desktop OS, the desktop apps, the network OS, the database, the Office infrastructure, the server based apps, and even the systems management tools to automatically configure the desktops and prevent users from tampering with them. IT was just inches away from the goal line – Microsoft’s promise of the beautiful life was very tempting.

But Microsoft got distracted - first by AOL and Yahoo!, then by Nintendo and Sony, then by Google, and now by Apple, and Facebook. The results are quite evident – Microsoft is losing its monopoly on the desktop. In my professional life, I have never seen so many iMacs, iPads, iPhones, Androids, and BlackBerrys that people around me use to do their job. These are desktops, tablets and mobile devices that use no Microsoft software at all.

Many people buy these devices on their own, regardless of what the company’s IT standard is. They simply help each other get them integrated with the corporate systems and circumvent IT altogether. And IT is on the defensive again as they have to do what they users want. The Microsoft monopoly and its promise of a homogeneous environment is fading and the good old days of mainframe are not coming back.

The old IT mantra that ”nobody gets fired for buying Microsoft” is shaking. The users are taking over. They are rebelling against Windows, Exchange, and PowerPoint. What they want is iMac, iPad, iPhone and Android and the two hundred thousand applications these systems offer. The time of homogeneous environments is over. Long live the freedom of choice!