Digital Likeness » mobile

Nexus Gone

Andrea Hill — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 14:03:12 +0000

I had such high hopes for the Nexus One. The promised features were great, including the tight integration with google services.

Unfortunately, there were some serious flaws that prompted me to cancel my new T-Mobile service within the 14 day ‘buyer remorse window’ and send my new phone back to the Googleplex.

First and foremost, the Nexus One IS a phone. So when I can’t touch the screen during a call, let’s say to input information like on a touch-tone system, or even to hang up, there’s a serious user experience issue. I resorted to switching the phone into airplane mode just to lose the signal to hang up calls.

I didn’t come up with a solution for the second screen issue. Remember those first few pictures that showed up online of the new phone, where you really mostly just saw the reflection of the photographer? The phone is all but entirely unusable in bright sunlight. I live in Colorado: we have sun almost every day. To try to use this phone outdoors in the sun means squinting, angling the phone and trying to shield it from any light. It’s a mobile phone: I should be able to use it wherever I am.

Lastly, there were some general problems with the services. Many of the services tied directly into Google data, which is fine when Internet access is available. I got countless errors during my short term with the phone.

Anyone who has had an iPhone knows the joy of showing it to someone. Even the ease with which things scroll, the entire experience is special. I never felt that with the Nexus One. Even when I’d try to demo the features (I did love Google Maps Navigation), I didn’t always have faith that there would be anything to show.

So, I’m back on my iPhone 3G with AT&T. Thankfully, AT&T was fantastic when I came back, and didn’t make me sign a contract, so I will be ready to upgrade when the next version of the iPhone comes out!

Notifications: Nexus One 1, iPhone 3G 0

Andrea Hill — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 15:11:37 +0000

The Nexus One handles notifications beautifully: a status bar at the top of the screen shows icons related to activity, and a simple swipe of the fingers shows received emails, texts or tweets, missed calls, and other status items. You can click directly on any of the items to be pulled into that application, or clear the list.

This ability to run apps in the background and show the user a quick view of the status is great; no need to manually launch an app just to check a status. Although the iPhone has push notifications, the feature pales in comparison to the Android notifications, which often would flag an incoming email quicker than my Notify desktop app.

This quick view is particularly useful when checking the phone after a period of non-use, to get caught up on activities. It struck me that this is important for the Nexus One, because I don’t feel the same compulsion to be on it that I do with the iPhone. There is something simply enjoyable about using the iPhone, which is why you so often see folks simply playing with them. The Nexus One is much more utilitarian, in its use and feel. It’s a powerhouse, but I never felt the same draw to check it continuously. So the Nexus One needs to provide those notifications, to let you know what was going on while you were off doing something else.

Google Maps Navigation for the Nexus One

Andrea Hill — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 05:35:28 +0000

One of the main features that interested me in the Nexus One was turn-by-turn voice-guided navigation.

Almost all the features in the Nexus One have some level of voice support, and the navigation is no different. You can say things like “navigate to wagon wheel skate center” and it will guide you there. Obviously, it hooks into Google Maps, so there is no need to worry about purchasing updated maps for your car’s GPS. (You need only to be concerned with Internet access). It can also tap into traffic updates, letting you know if a particular route is congested, and suggest alternatives.

Yup: en route you can modify your path based on live traffic updates to determine which will be the quickest route.

For those who’ve been spoiled with a library of voices for their in-car GPS, the standard voice provided may be a bit disappointing. I also was quite surprised the system hadn’t learned that “Ft” on a highway sign should be pronounced “Fort” rather than “phht”. Overall, however, I was content enough with the service to claim that I really had little need for a different GPS device for my vehicle.

Google Maps Navigation is still in beta, but it is available for the latest Android phones.

Why I Switched from an iPhone to the Nexus One

Andrea Hill — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 15:22:48 +0000

Despite appearances, I’m not particularly an early adopter. I may be interested in new tech toys, but I generally don’t take the plunge right away. I waited until the iPhone 3G, I don’t have a Kindle or a Blu-Ray player. I barely even paid attention when the announcements of the $500 Google Phone started circulating.

But there are a few key features that the Google Phone offers that my iPhone can’t. And that was enough for me to make the switch, to T-Mobile and Android.

Google Voice. How often have I written about Google Voice on this blog? I love the service: and the fact that it was previously available to me via an app and then taken away has left me bitter. Obviously, the Google Nexus One phone integrates seamlessly with Google Voice.
Augmented Reality. Yes, it’s a buzzword, but it’s intriguing. My iPhone 3G lacked the magnetometer that would allow me to ever use any augmented reality app features, and beyond that of course Apple was very controlling in terms of allowing developers to access the requisite functions. I’ve been hearing about Layar and Google Googles and knew I’d need to change to a new device anyway to see what the fuss was about.
Voice Directions. Colorado recently put into effect a law on the use of mobile devices while in the car. The law itself is written oddly: I believe it calls out “inputting information into a mobile device” so arguably reading is still ok, but the fact that the Nexus One allows for verbal commands and will also speak point-to-point driving directions was another selling point.

Obviously those were just a few highlights that peaked my interest right away. I asked a few questions of other Android users, to ensure I could sync the phone with both my gmail accounts, and then took the plunge! As I get to use the phone more, I anticipate finding many more nice features that were lacking in my last device. And really, that’s to be expected: my iPhone 3G was 18 months old, and the pace at which these applications are developing is astounding.

Will the Nexus One be perfect? No, I know that. But it’s changing the game, possibly in ways we never would have expected. And in another 2 years, it’ll be time to try something new.

It’s Just a Phone!

Andrea Hill — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 13:12:55 +0000

Today my new Nexus One arrives in the mail. I’ll admit, I’m a bit apprehensive about it. I’m nervous about giving up my iPhone.

What? Really? It’s just a phone!

But I think most of us who have one know, it’s not just a phone. When I got my iPhone 3G a year and a half ago, it was really a bit of a status symbol: you stood apart as an iPhone user. Now there is really much more of a community feel. People TALK about their phones and their apps. Even as every user has a uniquely customized phone, there is some shared experience there. Yes: there is a reason why every book about User Experience talks about Apple. What Apple delivers is much more than a device.

But, I took the plunge after hearing just too many good things about the Nexus One. So Ari, you’ll get your wish and I’ll stop writing about my iPhone. There are obviously features that have caused me to make this change, but I have to admit, it’s not as easy a decision as you’d expect. It’s just a phone!

6 Reasons Your Organization Needs Google Voice

Andrea Hill — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:08:43 +0000

I’ve been trying out Google Voice for about 6 months now. I like the service, most notably the voicemail transcriptions, but I know I’m not taking advantage of the majority of the features of the service. You know who would, though? Smaller volunteer-run organizations.

I’ve spent several years in such organizations, and I just took on the role of Public Relations Committee Chairman for the Denver Roller Dolls Roller Derby League. Like many volunteer-run organizations, we have yearly elections, and membership of the overall organization is somewhat transient. We also don’t have a huge operating budget. Enter Google Voice.

Establish a free “info line.” If the organization is small, there may not be the budget for a generic line people can call. Having such a line can help establish credibility, and help those neophytes that don’t yet do everything on a computer!
Separate “individual” contact information from “positional” contact information. In an organization where leadership changes yearly, contacts should stay the same. Just as we can reassign an email alias like pr@denverrollerdolls.org, a google voice line can be forwarded to the new party with no inconvenience to those trying to reach her.
Reroute inquiries using custom groups. Recognized callers can be assigned to different groups, and receive different greetings or be routed to different phones. When the accountant calls, it can forward to the treasurer’s phone. When it’s a reporter, the media contact can answer. And when a member of the organization itself calls, they may hear a recording of upcoming events or latest news.
Concerned about that info line and the manpower needed to staff it? Set the line to “do not disturb” on a schedule and let it go right to voicemail.
Track phone messages as easily as emails. When messages are transcribed, they are either emailed or texted to a specified contact when can then forwarded them to the responsible party. If more than one individual needs to be apprised of the message, it can be tracked and archived for future use. No more lost messages or inaccurate recounts of a conversation.
Record entire conversations. And yes, both parties are made aware of it at the time. Need to conduct interviews, or want to be able to listen to a conversation later to ensure all the details are correct? Google Voice can allow you to record conversations (when someone calls you) to review or share later.

And one tip to setting up your account: be sure it is associated with a new google account. The same password is used to log into all associated google services, so you will want to establish a new account (i.e. orgphone@gmail.com) for the google voice service so someone is not compelled to share their password. That way you are truly overcoming the challenge of tying this service to a specific individual that may later leave your organization.

What other benefits can you think Google Voice have to offer organizations? Have you tried the service yourself? Thoughts?

What’s the deal with…Augmented Reality?

Andrea Hill — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 11:25:32 +0000

In the tech community, some folks have been talking about “augmented reality” for years. But only recently has it started to really catch the attention of a more mainstream crowd. What is this seemingly sci-fi catchphrase, and why should you be paying attention?

What IS Augmented Reality?

Augmented Reality (or AR) has been referred to as a way to “layer ‘virtual story worlds’ over the real world“.

Ever listen to an audio guide while traveling? You were augmenting your experience audibly. Augmented reality can allow you to do this visually as well.

How’s THAT possible?

Chris Grayson has created this simple video to explain how a combination of features on your cell phone can make mobile-aware AR possible:

And this is for real?

Yup! Owners of the iPhone 3GS users can get their first taste of AR googness in the new Yelp application. While there has been some controversy surrounding the inclusion of such a feature in the application, this doesn’t overshadow the significance of its inclusion at all.

The Yelp iPhone app has always offered an ability for users to find services based on their location, but Augmented Reality allows for an enhanced user experience. Looking through the “monocle”, you can see the street in front of you, but with Yelp results superimposed.

So what’s the controversy?

Developers had been asking for the ability to include Augmented Reality in their applications, and Apple had told them to wait until the next iPhone Operating System (3.1) upgrade. The Yelp developers tapped into some undocumented, private APIs to build out this functionality. The concern among developers is that this may further cause Apple to slow down the approval process on new applications to ensure they’re not violating the App Store rules. (Note: I seem to recall a Google App that did the same thing, without so much uproar).

Cool, sure. But where’s the applicability to my organization?

With AR just starting to seem viable and likely to have mass appeal, we’ve only started to consider where it may be used:

historical recreations of places (i.e. tours)
traffic updates
how-to instructional guides
home renovations/decorating

The iPhone is so cutting edge to support this!

Hm.. well, not really: the Android phone has supported Layar, an Augmented Reality browser, for several weeks now. And Augmented reality isn’t just a “mobile phone thing”, it is also showing up in the Entertainment industry in full force.

Below is a product demo of a new augmented reality game coming out from PlayStation in a few months:

For more about augmented reality, you can check out the Facebook page dedicated to such, or tagged articles on ReadWriteWeb.

Transitioning to Google Voice with GV Mobile iPhone App

Andrea Hill — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 12:37:58 +0000

Earlier this week, I wrote about Trying out the Google Voice service, focusing on some of the service highlights. But what made my transition to the new number even easier was the use of the GV Mobile iPhone application. This application is available in two versions: free and premium ($2.99).

One of the commonly cited shortcomings of the gvoice service is that your true number is not hidden by default when you call someone. There is a workaround where the dialer can call their gvoice number, press 2, and then the number they wish to reach. The GV Mobile application handles this: you dial the number you wish to reach, and the service calls YOU. When you accept the call, it forwards to your intended party. Yes, it’s not completely seamless, but it doesn’t require any additional thought. Both the free and the premium version of this service support this action.

The GV Mobile application ties directly into your phone’s address book for both dialing and sending SMS messages. (SMS messages available on the premium version only). The one shortcoming I’ve seen on the SMS feature is that you can’t send a text to multiple parties at once. However, it appears that way on the gvoice website as well, so that may be more of a shortcoming of gvoice than this application.

The free version of the application only offers calling features, and the premium version allows the user to send text messages, see a history of calls and check their voicemail. The screens are familiar, very similar to the native iPhone experience.

Moving to a new service is never easy, but the GV Mobile application by Sean Kovacs eases some of the pain of the transition. A noted future enhancement is an “offline” mode (currently the application is dependent on Internet connectivity), and while Sean has said it’s not in the product roadmap, I can see a definite benefit to using “push” technology. At that point, there would be no reason to use the integrated phone dialer and messaging features built into my phone.

If you’re using Google Voice on an iPhone, why don’t you have this app yet??

ADD: MobileCrunch just released an article comparing the features of a few iPhone gVoice apps: Battle Of The Google Voice iPhone Apps: VoiceCentral vs. GV Mobile

Trying out Google Voice

Andrea Hill — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 12:50:28 +0000

Google recently released invites for their Google Voice service, an outcome of their purchase of GrandCentral back in 2007. Although I missed the GrandCentral…train.., I did receive my new gvoice invite last week and have been slowly easing into using the service.

The main offering of the service appears to be call forwarding: you get a new phone number from the service, and then can set up rules as to where it should ring, and when. For example, calls during the day may be routed to a cell, whereas evening calls ring through to a home line. This can also encourage people to be more willing to share their number publicly, as it is masking their actual number.

I only have a cell phone, so forwarding calls isn’t really the big draw for me. But there were two main features that peaked my interest about the service:

sending SMS messages from the computer
personalized voicemail messages

From the Google Voice website, you can send SMS messages to anyone in your contacts list, and see the threaded response right on screen. No more surreptitiously tapping on your phone while at your desk! The threaded messages features is also great.

If you use a single phone number for your different social and professional groups, you may want to leave different voicemail greetings for them. I am planning to attend a conference in a few weeks, and anticipate leaving my schedule on my voicemail for certain approved callers, so facilitate our meeting up. The rest of the world will have no idea what sessions I’m attending (at least not via my voicemail).

As I dug into the service a bit more, I found many more great features to enjoy.

There is a very robust use of groups in the gvoice product.I can assign users to groups, and settings can be applied globally, to groups, or individual callers. I already mentioned an application of personal greetings for groups. In addition to this, or routing calls to different places, there is another interesting feature: call presentation.

If call presentation is on, you are presented with several options when someone calls. You can

answer the call
send it to voicemail
send it to voicemail, but “Listen In”
answer the call, and record the conversation. Note for this last option, both callers hear the system state that the call is being recorded.

With the iPhone’s visual voicemail, I get a list of who has called and can navigate from one message to another to listen in. Well gvoice takes it one step further, by transcribing the voicemail and emailing it to me. I can also embed a recording of the voicemail on a webpage, or email it to someone else. The transcriptions aren’t perfect, but they’re good enough to get a sense of whether the message is worth listening to or not.

Because the service is still so new, there are a few bugs yet to be worked out. Namely, I can’t call my gvoice number from my work phone. Yet I can call the gvoice number of a friend whose number starts with a different area code. There is some speculation as to what the problem is, but it hasn’t yet been confirmed (or fixed). Still, I’m content with the service enough to try to transition over to it.

There are some user experience hiccups so far, namely around the surfacing of the caller’s original number, but I have found a solution that seems to be working well so far, in the form of an iPhone app. I’ll discuss it in another blog post later this week.

What’s more Mobile than AAA?

Andrea Hill — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 12:49:43 +0000

‘What’s more mobile than the American Automobile Association’, I found myself thinking as I was stranded on the side of the road last night. Evidently, the unique benefits to mobile haven’t yet come to AAA Colorado. However, I had some time to consider it for them:

Sitting on the side of the road in Denver, Colorado, I searched on google mobile search for “AAA Colorado”. As one may expect, the first suggestion was “www.aaacolorado.com.” But how frustrating when I was then presented with an invite to take a survey, and then an automatic redirect to AAA Washington and Northern Idaho’s site. Which is also not mobile friendly. I just wanted someone to come help me with my vehicle…in this state!

Eventually I got the number from 1-800-GOOG-411 and then had to wade through several levels of a voice-automated system before I was able to open a new ticket for roadside assistance.

A mobile-specific site

Once I was back home, I did google “AAA Mobile” and find there is a .mobi site as well as a AAA Mobile Application for some Sprint phones (focusing primarily on navigation). But I didn’t know that, so it was no use to me when I needed help. If you have such a site and you want it to be the primary access point for mobile users, test whether or not visitors to your primary site are on mobile devices, and either ask them if they wish to view the mobile site, or direct them seamlessly.

The idea of redirecting people to a mobile experience is a bit contentious, because you’re assuming you know what the visitor is coming for. Twitter handles this by allowing a mobile user to switch between “standard” and “mobile” views.

Even the .mobi site is not really optimized for “roadside assistance” purposes, requiring several screens before simply giving me a phone number to call.

An ideal opportunity for mobile

While AAA offers many programs, I’d bet that roadside assistance is probably one of the most frequently used, and the one most pressing for people accessing the AAA website via their phones. As for any good user-centered design – consider the needs of the visitor, and make it easy for him to complete his tasks. Roadside assistance is time- and situation-sensitive, and therefore it makes more sense to surface this option quickly.

Location-awareness

According to Skyhook, there are over 2,500 location-aware iPhone applications in the App store. Think about the first question they ask you when you call Roadside assistance – “are you in a safe place?” Having a location-aware application would at least confirm where that place was, and then only the safeness of it would have to be ascertained.

Location awareness could be used for several purposes with a national organization like AAA. With the current .mobi site, the very first screen asks your home zip code. While there may be some business rule relative to a person’s home state versus the state they’re currently in, an awareness of where they currently are may be a convenient “shortcut”. (Indeed, when a visitor is on a mobile device, any shortcut is going to be appreciated). This is a model that Google uses: they prepopulate a field, but let you choose to change it if it’s incorrect.

Persistent information storage

When I managed to talk to someone at AAA, she needed my membership number, and then they could access my vehicle and membership information. What if I could manage that information myself, rather than having to provide the number every time? Certainly, this may actually increase the complexity of the interaction (if I have to log into a system), but it’s a possibility, and creates more of a sense of a membership than individual transactions. As well, if the web is used to keep track of my service requests, I may be more easily targeted for different products or services in the future.

…and then my car was again drivable and I stopped brainstorming on this subject. How else do you think AAA could offer mobile roadside assistance?