Posts Tagged ‘Mobile’

Posted on September 4, 2009 - by Justin Hartman

Nokia 5530 XpressMusic iSync Plugin

Last night I decided to hook up the Nokia 5530 XpressMusic which I received from Nokia. Unfortunately for me this phone is not supported on Apple Mac – at all!

When I say at all I mean at all. For example, Nokia Software Updater isn’t compatible, Nokia PC Suite isn’t compatible, there is only limited Mac compatibility (i.e. GPRS & Bluetooth), Nokia Music isn’t supported so you can’t download songs to your Mac and finally, there is no iSync plugin for the 5530 XpressMusic either.

While I respect that Nokia are still in development with their Mac version of the Nokia Music app I am perplexed that there is no plugin for iSync. With no other access to Nokia applications, using iSync is the only way you can get contacts and calendar items to the phone and without the plugin the phone is pretty much useless.

I didn’t like this ofcourse so I’ve created a 5530 XpressMusic iSync plugin that any Mac user with this phone can happily download. Here’s what you need to do:

• Download the 5530 XpressMusic iSync plugin here
• Double-click the downloaded ZIP file and it will expand and leave you with a file called Nokia_5530_XpressMusic_isync_plugin_2v0.phoneplugin
• Now you need to move this file to the following location on your Mac: /Library/PhonePlugins/. You may need to create the PhonePlugins folder because mine didn’t exist when I did this.
• When you’re done, open up iSync and click on Add Device – it should pick up your 5530 and you can then double-click it to add it to iSync.

When this is all done, you should see the following screenshot and voila – you can now sync contacts and calendars with the Nokia 5530 XpressMusic on your Mac.

Posted on August 31, 2009 - by Justin Hartman

Nokia and their disruptive model for the music generation

On Thursday Nokia South Africa announced their new Comes with Music range of mobile phones. This new range is not just a series of sexy mobile phones but rather a new, disruptive model to take on the entire music DRM model.

What’s particularly special about Comes with Music is that with every purchase of a new handset (see supported models) you get 12 months of unlimited access to over 5 million songs on the Nokia Music Store. This translates into 5 million songs, for free, for life.

Yes you heard correct! You can download (potentially) all 5 million songs on the Nokia Music Store free of charge for one year. Once your twelve month subscription is over the songs you’ve downloaded are yours to keep for life. (read the press release for more info).

The caveats to this are that the songs are DRM protected and can not be burned to CD and are additionally linked to your PC and mobile handset. You can share music with other Comes with Music users but you will need an additional DRM license to share or copy your music to another device – which will cost you, naturally.

I’m not entirely sure how Nokia plan to really make money off this offering. You can be assured that people will download as many tracks as humanly possible, or as Telkom bandwidth allows, and that will cost them a pretty penny in licensing rights to the artists and record labels. That said, Nokia can be assured that people will continue to buy their mobile devices as a new phone purchase renews the subscription and who’d want to lose their music collection they’ve spent downloading over the last year?

What’s particularly interesting for me is the gauntlet that has now been set to other suppliers of digital music. In particular I wonder how this model will affect iTunes and in turn iPhone sales. I’m busy using the Nokia 5530 XpressMusic device which is very iPhone-like. It has full touch screen support, a 3.2 megapixel camera, records video and comes with 4GB microSD card which can be expanded to 32GB. Granted it’s not as responsive as the iPhone but did I mention free music, for life?

With iTunes music not being available in South Africa the Comes with Music model is sure to dominate this market and potentially hinder Apple’s ability to penetrate the music crowd if/when iTunes comes to SA. In addition, sites like Amazon etc. also don’t support purchasing of music in SA so I think Nokia have the right model at the right time in this market. I honestly expect this range of mobile phones to be a hit as people will buy them just for the music access.

Posted on May 28, 2009 - by Justin Hartman

Unboxing the HTC Magic (Android G2) phone

My Mom always told me that if you don’t ask you’ll never get and this is true of the HTC Magic phone which I received from the kind team at Leaf over the weekend.

I plan on doing quite a detailed blog post reviewing the phone and sharing my experiences but for now I thought I’d share the unboxing pics I took. You can view the full set of pics on Flickr over here.

What I will do is give you my initial thoughts which are mostly positive. The Android interface is super sexy and very intuative and for the most part is pretty damn stable. I’ve only experienced one or two freeze ups on some applications but I think that is application specific.

The major problem for me so far is the fact that the Android Marketplace (think Apple’s App Store for the iPhone) is not going to be available in South Africa. I have contacted the guys at Leaf to get more details and once I get an official response I’ll add that to my conclusive review of the phone. The Android Market place is a key element to extending an Android phone and considering the phone will retail for around R8,200 there has to be something to replace it else I’m not sure it’s worth it.

That said, I’ve already played around with Android mobile application development and Afrigator now has a Gatorpeeps Android application which you can download over here. You can see screenshots of the application in action and it was fun learning to do this.

I’ve still got the phone for about another week so I’m going to test it extensively and hopefully my full review will be an unbiased look at how the phone compares to others in the market.

Posted on May 19, 2009 - by Justin Hartman

Vodacom – please send me an HTC Magic

Vodacom, if you’re listening, I want to make it abundantly clear that I will not, under any circumstances, turn down an HTC Magic from you. Seriously though, since I found out Vodacom were bringing the HTC Magic to South Africa I’ve been scampering around trying to get my hands on one.

I’ve been an iPhone owner since January 2008 and this is by far the longest I’ve ever kept a phone without feeling the need for a replacement. Over the last 16 months I’ve written extensively about my experiences around being an iPhone user and rightly so – it’s the single biggest mobile device to hit the world since say… the Android OS.

While I still love my iPhone it’s time to part ways and the Android operating system has had me excited since it was announced. I doubt the Magic is really the iPhone killer but it’s clear that Android devices are going to get better and smarter as the technology and OS evolve.

Yesterday evening I was listening to the latest ZA Tech Podcast, aptly titled Paranoid Android, where Toby Shapshak takes us through some of the coolness that is the HTC Magic and now I’m even more convinced I need one seeing as my life literally revolves around Google Apps.

Thanks also to Duncan McLeod who mentioned a really cool email client called Postbox which I have duly installed and am now running on my Mac. Since I only use Google Apps for all my email I’ve found email clients (including Apple Mail) to be clunky and generally very slow with the Google IMAP servers however Postbox is not only fast but looks and functions great. Think of tabbed browsing for email and you’ll get an idea as to what Postbox can offer.

On a very amusing sidenote Toby and Simon Dingle claim that I made them swear during the podcast and you’ll see what they mean at around 11:00 minutes in the show. These guys had me in stitches and I’m pleased that I cracked a cool mention on the show.

Posted on February 12, 2009 - by Justin Hartman

Creating a mobile site with Yahoo! Blueprint

Yahoo! Blueprint, in theory, is an amazing and agile mobile development framework. Yahoo! describes Blueprint as…

…a platform for developing and distributing rich mobile Internet services. It offers a standards-based language, an easy-to-use toolkit, innovative features, and support across multiple runtime environments—allowing developers to maximize their reach across thousands of mobile devices.

When we first came across Blueprint at Afrigator we got really excited about the possibilities. Here you can develop a mobile site in a standard XML format and by integrating your mobile application into Blueprint it would interpret the markup, detect the mobile phone a user is on and in turn render an optimised mobile version tailored just for their device.

Well not really! To test it out I created a very simple mobile application that will return all the header information sent from Yahoo! to your webserver about the mobile device. All I did was use a simple getallheaders function wrapped in the Blueprint XML. In theory this simple application should render perfectly across thousands of devices.

Here’s my entire mobile application file which is accessible at bp.justinhartman.com.

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<?php
	header( "Content-Type: application/x-blueprint+xml" );
	header( "Cache-Control: no-cache" );
?>
 
<page>
  <content>
    <module>
      <header layout="simple">
        <layout-items>
          <block class="title">Mobile Headers</block>
        </layout-items>
      </header>
	<?php
	foreach (getallheaders() as $name => $value) {
		echo "<block>".$name.": ".$value."</block>";
	}
	?>
    </module>
  </content>
</page>

Accessing bp.justinhartman.com on my iPhone the application returned the following results which I was really impressed with.

So now I know the iPhone version works as expected but what about a Nokia 6610? Well the results are really disappointing. Instead of seeing the mobile headers all I get is a screen displaying my site description text (A simple application that shows you the headers from your mobile device.) with a message saying I need to install either Yahoo GO! or Opera Mini to view the application.

I tried to Install Yahoo GO! on the Nokia 6610 but I got another message saying my Windows Mobile device was not supported. How did a Symbian operating system become Windows Mobile? Anyway, I digress, I then installed Opera Mini as this was my only step left but alas more problems exist.

When accessing bp.justinhartman.com from within Opera Mini all I get is the same message, this time in French, asking me to install either Yahoo GO! or Opera Mini. Now I’m not sure if this is a Nokia 6610 problem as Opera Mini won’t work either but Yahoo! Blueprint has just failed a very simple test.

Yahoo! claim that they support thousands of mobile devices and as long as a mobile supports XHTML (including tables, forms and GIF/PNG/JPG images) and CSS2 then it should render perfectly. As you can tell my results are not as expected.

For now Blueprint has been thrown out the window as a new framework for us to develop Afrigator’s new mobile site. If it can’t even handle a 6610 then I have to wonder what phones it really will support.

I wonder if you guys can help me by accessing bp.justinhartman.com on your mobile phone and letting me know what you see. If you manage to see all your mobile headers then you know it’s working. If you do decide to help, please post your mobile phone manufacturer and model in the comment form below. Also, let me know if it works in Opera Mini on your side.

Posted on June 2, 2008 - by Justin Hartman

SA Blook, Chapter 7: The importance of technology in SA’s global emergence

Technology and globalisation go hand-in-hand. Globalisation unleashes technology, which in turn drives companies to plan production and sales on a global basis. Technology changes the work we do and the jobs created by it demand more education and training. It also changes the way business operates by transforming relationships between suppliers, producers, retailers and customers.

One aspect of globalisation that tends to be most apparent in almost every facet of life is the emergence of technology – particularly the way in which technology is globally integrating people of the world. The advent of the Internet has over the past decade provided a common platform upon which countries from all corners of the Earth are able to communicate and share information.

Global Emergence of the Information Age

In the space of thirty years technology has caused widespread improvements in access to information and economic potential.

If you consider that just twenty five years ago the use of personal computers was still limited to a fairly small number of technologically advanced people while the majority of people produced documents with typewriters.

Twenty years ago, large and hefty mobile phones were carried only by a small number of users and some fifteen years ago only limited universities and scientists were using, or had even heard about, the Internet.

Today however computers, mobile technology and the Internet have transformed communication and commerce, creating entirely new ways for retailers and their customers to transact and for businesses to manage the flow of production and market their products.

Websites, chat rooms, instant messaging systems, email, forums and other Internet-based communication systems have made it much easier for people with common interests to find each other, exchange information, and collaborate which was almost unheard of until the Information Age.

Technology Transformation in South Africa

With over 30 million subscribers the mobile industry in South Africa is booming. While this industry is largely controlled by the major mobile phone operators, making entry into the market difficult, almost every South African has access to mobile technology.

Internet adoption in South Africa has been slow off the starting blocks. There are some 5 million people accessing the Internet everyday and currently we have more than 1 million broadband subscribers yet these figures represent only a small portion of the population.

One of the primary reasons for the poor rate of adoption of broadband and the Internet, in comparison to the mobile industry, is the high-costs associated with going online. Added to this, South Africa has not had the technology or infrastructure to facilitate fast adoption rates and the early adopters have had to uncover defects and fund development of the technology further.

Fortunately, over the last couple years, companies and local government have been investing heavily in Fibre optics and the infrastructure needed which will not only help drive costs down but also increase accessibility and adoption through the use of these improved technologies.

Leveraging Technology

Technology facilitates the expansion of products, ideas, and resources among countries as well as people regardless of geographic location. Technology can be leveraged to create efficient and effective channels to exchange information and can be the catalyst for global integration.

The single greatest benefit of technology is its ability to multiply effort. This multiplier of technology turns the effort of one person into many.

Any business can leverage technology to work:

• Faster
• Productively
• Predictably
• Safer
• Efficiently

With the advances in technology any business can now do more with less.

Challenges and Successes

As an emerging market South Africa has some fundamental issues affecting global emergence. Some of these include high-costs, low Internet penetration, unemployment and lack of education, yet despite this advances in technology are producing many positive changes in our society.

Technology innovations have created new jobs, promoted the growth of new markets, and increased international trade and investment but one of the biggest technology challenges we need to address, which makes us unique to first-world countries, is the major divide between mobile and Internet users.

What is evidenced today is that only a small minority access the Internet while the majority of the population use their mobile phones for various tasks yet there is little to bridge the two users together.

The greatest opportunity that exists in our global emergence is the ability to understand how to use all this technology to our advantage, bridge the gap between mobile and Internet users, and in turn solve the various communication and technology problems that we are faced with as a developing country.

This post is a chapter of the SA Blook: A Piece of Significance, an online book written by a diverse group of writers with strong views of our country and the reality we find ourselves living in. The other chapters in the Blook are here:

Introduction
1. The new South Africa – is it real?
2. Is SA rich or poor?
3. What the world thinks of South Africa and what our global opportunities are
4. The importance of each individual’s contribution collectively
5. SA Inc and the business of doing business in SA
6. The beauty and grandeur that surrounds us
7. The importance of technology in SA’s global emergence
8. Building brand South Africa
9. Making the most of SA’s creative talents and abilities
10. Innovate for a better South Africa
11. The role of the younger generation in SA, and what we need to do to support them
12. Connecting South Africa – Communities that transcend technology
13. We are African – the role of collaboration in South Africa’s growth

Copyright Justin Hartman 2008. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No-derivatives 2.5 ZA license.

Posted on February 28, 2008 - by Justin Hartman

Afrigator optimised for the iPhone and iPod Touch

We announced on the Afrigator blog last night that our site is now optimised for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

This is something I’ve wanted to do for some time now and once we had the standard mobile site completed, integration for the iPhone version was simple.

I think this makes us the first website in Africa to launch an optimised version for Apple’s highly successful devices but I stand to be corrected.

It is unclear how successful the penetration is of the iPhone and iPod Touch in Africa but it’s going to be interesting to see what sort of uptake we have on this new platform.

Here are some screenshots of the interface and you can view a whole bunch more over here.