MobileViews Blog

Category: Mobile Devices

  • Can a Big Screen Kindle Save Local Newspapers?

    There’s a lot of speculation that Amazon’s press conference scheduled for this Wednesday will be used to introduce a big screen version of the Kindle ebook reader…

    New Amazon Device Debuts Wednesday (All Things Digital)

    The Big Screen Kindle Hail Mary To Newspapers Will Fall Incomplete (TechCrunch)

    TechnCrunch’s MG Siegler seems especially pessimistic about a large screen Kindle in general. He points out that the current Kindle 2 is overpriced (something that has held me back from buying one given my current book reading habits and pace) and that a larger Kindle would be too inconvenient to carry (I was thinking the same thing after reading the initial flurry of announcements).

    But, here’s a thought: What if Amazon prices the new large screen Kindle at $369 (the Kindle 2’s current price) and pushes the Kindle 2 price down to $199. Personally, I don’t think this is realistic given that the Kindle 2 just came out itself. But the Kindle 2 at $199 might convince fence sitters like me to buy one. And, it might even save local newspapers from going under if (and this is a big “if”) local papers can sell the Kindle 2 as part of their subscription and if (another big “if”) local newspapers can go truly hyperlocal (including advertisements and e-coupon technology).

    I would switch my subscription to an electronic one if my local papers moved to a good (keyword “good”) e-format (their current ones are ok, but not good). I’m not sure what pet owners who depend on newspapers would do if they went 100% e-newspaper though. Perhaps, newspapers could keep printing the Sunday editions for pet owners? 🙂

  • Windows 7 Release Candidate Boot to Login Screen Time on a Netbook (video)

    Like Windows 7 Beta, Windows 7 Release Candidate took just under 35 seconds to boot from a cold start to the login screen.

  • Turn on WiFi LED on Aspire One Running Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix

    Here’s a handy pointer that is a comment to a UNR blog item I wrote over on MobileContentToday…

    You can fix the led issue by installing the linux-backports-modules-jaunty package and restarting.

    Originally posted as a comment by heggied on mediabistro.com: MobileContentToday using Disqus.

  • Podcast 24: Conversation w/Nokia’s Ira Frimere and Joseph Gallo

    I spoke with Nokia’s Ira Frimere (Portfolio Manager for North America) and Joseph Gallo (Communications Specialist) about Nokia smartphones (what else?) in this podcast. ZDNet/NokiaExpert.com’s Matt Miller was scheduled to join us but was unable to because of technical issues.

  • Video Farewell to the Sony PSP Universal Media Disk (UMD)

    The Sony PSP UMD is apparently being abandoned with the release of the next generation PSP expected in June. Here’s my not-very-fond video farewell to an oddball storage format. Sony seems to specialize in odd storage formats, btw. Remember:

    – Beta tape (actually excellent quality but overtaken by VHS)
    – Mini-disc
    – Memory Stick

    And, perhaps Blu-Ray discs may join this group soon.

  • Flurry Marketing VP Sets the Record Straight About Their Study on Developer Platform Choices

    I wanted to bubble up this response from Flurry Marketing VP Peter Farago since I was pretty hard on another blogger’s interpretation of a Flurry report.

    Hi all,

    I work for Flurry, and completely agree that this is not a randomly selected, statistically significant sample. It clearly suffers from self-selection bias. Also, it’s worth noting that Flurry never positioned this data as a scientific study, but rather simply rolling up and presenting the data we were seeing so others could consume it. However, we believe there are things that can be learned from the data.

    Regarding not including Windows Mobile, Symbian (and Palm and BREW for anyone counting) in our roll-up, it’s simply because we don’t support those platforms. We shipped our analytics to support iPhone, Android, Blackberry and JavaME. We chose to hold off on the others due to the lack of demand from the developer community. We spoke with dozens of developers before we started building our service, and with many more since. To us, it seemed that the four platforms we covered matched what our customers wanted. We’d be happy to support other platforms, and it’s relatively easy for us to do, since the back end is built in a way that knocking out additional SDK’s for those is not a major issue. So we’re happy to do so, but just waiting for the right amount of demand (based on our POV of the market).

    What we think this could show is where the development community is spending its time. They are putting a significant amount of resources toward the iPhone vs. other platforms. We get very, very few requests to support WinMo. We do get more for Symbian, but primarily from Europe (which makes sense), but not quite as much as we would have once expected. And JavaME apps do run on the Symbian platform, so where the developer is using the J2ME app for S60, we could run there.

    Another issue I’d like to volunteer regarding the data is that with WinMo, Symbian, JavaME and Blackberry (two of which we cover) distribution of those applications primarily goes through the carrier channel. So if a developer wants to add an analytics solution to an existing app, she would have to go through the whole carrier submission and approval process all over again. Anyone who has dealt with carriers directly (I have my scars) knows this is challenging. Updating apps for iPhone and Android is very easy, relatively speaking. This could account for the proportions of support for iPhone and Android as well.

    Peter Farago
    VP Marketing
    www.flurry.com
    http://blog.flurry.com
    http://twitter.com/FlurryMobile

    Originally posted as a comment by Peter Farago on mediabistro.com: MobileContentToday using Disqus.