Mr Uber Mobile, James Whatley, is uninspired by the mobile industry this week. I get this now and again. It happens — it’s strange, but there you go. You’d think that the launch of two new Nokias would have got him moving? Not really. How about the brand new Nokia N95 8GB he’s brandishing? Not really. Things are so back to front that, traditionally a loyal Jaiku user, Whatley has even been playing round more on Twitter.

Over to him:

- - -

I’ve been scratching my head for some time about what to write… I’ve had such bad writer’s block lately that Ewan actually gave me the week off last week.

To be honest – I’m still kind of stuck…

So here’s a roundup of the stuff I’ve been kicking around in my head lately:

Microblogs:

I’m hooked on Twitter.

I haven’t left Jaiku, not by any stretch. But do have a strange addiction to all things Twiterry at the moment… Don’t shoot me. It’s just the scope of the damn thing.

Put it this way:

On Jaiku I have a community. In twitter I have an audience.

Nokia:

Two new music phones announced yesterday, anyone notice? No? Yes? Meh.
I tuned in for the webcast when I nipped out for a latte yesterday and…
Well… Kinda wished I hadn’t.

*yawn* - Don’t just take my word for it, read what other people thought too.

Digs aside, (music phones ain’t my thing), but keeping the theme:

I’m really loving my new Nokia BH-501 Bluetooth earphones; a gift from a good friend at CTIA. Cheers for those, you know who you are.

Those earphones, combined with my new found love of Mobbler (Last.fm scrobbling S60 client) has made my music experience/sharing/social experience complete.

Earphones on, Mobbler on, Music on; Mobbler scrobbles my tracks on the move, uploads them to Last.fm, the feed from that goes into my Jaiku… and my lifestream is complete!

Well the music part of it anyway. It all makes me very happy. Good times.

Unfortunately: Earphones on, (Bluetooth Connection), Mobbler on, (Internet Connection), Music on also equates to the battery life of about 3-4hrs.

“She needs more power Cap’n!”

When will the handset manufacturers realise that us power users, as well as numerous functions also require uber batteries to support them! The N96 battery sent a few shivers across the blogosphere when it was announced (weighing in at 950mh only) but the Product Manger assured us that the applications had been optimised to use as little power as possible. We shall see…

What else?

Networks…

First up – Newsflash – Nokia N78 confirmed expected to arrive on Vodafone within 6wks. Nice.

Sticking with Voda - Thanks for the N95 8GB guys!

I really felt a bit icky when I first received it (special treatment and all that) but I’ve grown to like it – the screen is the big sell for me.

Shame you guys don’t do the N95-1 (original, silver flavour) anymore. I prefer being able to remove my memory and just dump music, images etc onto it over a card reader. Putting 6gigs of tunes on my phone when I first received it was an overnight process… and I really wish I was kidding.

And – this is a phone fault, not a network fault – the onboard ‘Mass Memory’ is SO SLOW it’s ridiculous. I often keep my SMS/MMS/Emails off of the phone memory, just to keep it free etc… I recommend NOT doing this with the 8GB. Makes using the messaging functions virtually impossible.
The S-L-O-W memory access also makes the recording of any video (straight to mass memory) equally futile. The image jerks continually and freezes and and and… Well it’s just rubbish.

So if I want to make any kind of recording I have to change the camera memory from mass to phone, record the video, then change the memory back, then transfer the file over…
Seriously, it’s PAINFUL.

Just a shame Vodafone don’t stock the N82.

I’ve touched upon this phone in the past and, having trialled the device at length (thank you WOM World) I can tell you that it is arguably one of the best handsets on the market today. 5MP camera, GPS, auto-screen rotation… etc etc… Something that makes it standout from the crowd in particular however is the Xenon Flash. Wow. Just WOW. I never thought the introduction of just one feature would change the way I feel about a device.

Two examples of picture quality:

The only reason I haven’t actually jumped ship and got one is that it’s on o2, and you all know how I feel about them. However, if you’re not in the UK – find out from your carrier where you can purchase the N82. Seriously it is that good.

The good news is for UK readers is that the N82 (as well as the N81 – meh) have both just been confirmed for release on 3UK next month.

So if you’re looking at upgrading or simply getting a new device/contract – then make sure you check this baby out.

Bad points? There are two that I personally know of.

The screen size. Now this one is arguable. I’ve recommended the N82 to four different people already (all of whom have gone on to purchase one) and they’ve reported no problems. But, having been an N95 user for the best part of 18mths now, getting used to something smaller took a little while. N95 users take note.

The buttons. Now these buttons suffer from ‘Marmite-Syndrome’. You either love them or you hate them. I *thought* I would hate them. I really did. They put me off. All I can say is: Try it. I found that actually they weren’t that bad at all. Depends how dexterous you are really, but don’t judge a book by its cover as it were…

But aside from that? Solid phone.

And that’s about it from me this week. Don’t know why it’s a bit hotch-potch, or as Ewan would say ‘all over the shop’, but it is.

I’m off to go play with an Archos this afternoon. Should be fun. Will report back next week…

Been playing around with ShoZu vs Location Tagger vs Flickr vs OVI etc as well.

Got a few other things percolating around upstairs but I guess I’m a bit bored really. Nothing new/exciting going on…

Someone send me something cool to play with huh? Get my brain working…

Cheers.

- - -

Don’t write off o2 entirely, James. Perhaps it would be interesting to get you to use o2 for two weeks as a test?

I’m also quite pleased the N82 is coming to Three UK. That’ll be my upgrade then…

If you have anything that you think James should look at to help him out of his mobile malaise, yell!

Right.

Today I was going to publish my third and final part of ‘The Joy of Ku’.

What with Jaiku’s recent announcement that YES they are re-opening registrations and that NO Google are not turning out the lights on our beloved life-streaming app.

What announcement am I talking about? Well here’s this from Jaiku’s own Jaikido blog:

“We’ve been working quietly for a while to port Jaiku to Google infrastructure. Today we’re taking off our welding goggles to announce Jaiku will be one of the first apps to run on the new Google App Engine.

The Google App Engine enables applications to leverage powerful Google technologies and scale up to millions of users without infrastructure headaches.

Jaiku will be fully deployed on the Google App Engine in the near future. Andy & co. are working hard to ensure the port is a success and we will make a further announcement once the port has been completed.”

Fantastic news!

Jyri was quoted on Jaiku later on that day as saying:

“…if all you notice is an increase in speed and reliability and re-opening of registrations, we’ve been successful.”

Brilliant.

However – today I will not be finalising my Jaiku opus. Something has reached my shores this morning that NEEDS to be blogged. I could NOT believe it when I read it. Could NOT!

The reason why I’m so annoyed about this is that I’ve been kicking around an article for while that reviews the quite frankly, fantastic Nokia N82. At the moment the Nokia N82 is (in the UK anyway) an o2 exclusive… The piece was going to end something like:

‘On o2? Get an N82. Not on o2? Move Networks and get an N82’.

However, that will no longer happen.

No Sirree bob.

News has come to me this morning from Vero Pepperrell, Chief Blog Mistress at Taptu, that The Register is reporting that o2 3G customers are being capped/throttled/limited to speeds of 128Kb/s.

128Kb/s!!!

A quick 3G speed test on my Vodafone N95 8GB hits me with slap bang on 300Kb/s.

That’s 3G only (not 3.5G aka HSDPA).

That’s more than double what o2 offer! And that’s before we even think about leaping onto 3.5G!

According to Vero, some smart chap over at 3G.co.uk did a speed test on the o2 network and here are the results:

GPRS 44kbit/sec
EDGE 145kbit/sec
3G 112kbit/sec
HSDPA 124kbit/sec

WOW. I am amazed.

iPhone owners on o2 using the EDGE network are getting FASTER connections than anyone on their 3G network!

*gasp*

I don’t really have much else to add to be honest…

My N82 review is still in the pipeline (as is my final part of the Joy of Ku), but I really must say RIGHT NOW that if you’re considering getting a new handset and you want to experience the wonders of the Mobile Web (over your network) then DO NOT go to o2.

I just needed to get that out of my system.

The FULL story is here on The Register – including updates and quotes from o2

And again – huge props to Vero at Taptu for waving this in my face first thing this morning.

Maybe it’s the 24 hour sound of money being well and truly spunked up the wall as you walk through the casinos or the plastic nature of Las Vegas that gets to you after one or two days — whatever the catalyst, James Whatley has found himself undergoing several epiphanies this week, most notably when it comes to S60, Facebook and phone user interfaces. Hit it, James…

- - -

And before you all call ‘April Fool’, this idea came around when I was invited along by Debi Jones of Mobile Jones to attend a roundtable discussion hosted by Airwide and MobileMessaging2.com entitled:

“Web 2.0 comes to Handsets — New Issues and Upside for Monetizing the Mobile Web”

It started with a brief overview from Steve Bratt, CEO of the W3C about Web 2.0 and the similarities with the Mobile industry etc… And then we broke out into four separate groups to each discuss particular questions.

Our table had the not so easy task of answering the following:

“What are the three capabilities consumers will want in the future and what can the mobile industry do to help enable this?”

So, aside from the obvious ‘Consumers have NO IDEA what they want!’ rant I could’ve launched into, I was sitting there with a few folk chucking around such themes as personalized UI, location-based services and, my personal favourite, passive contextual awareness, (I’ll come back to this one at a later date).

Chatting away, sharing ideas, brain working overload… I had an epiphany:

“Scrap S60, give me facebook!”

The people at the table looked at me a little dumbfounded and I went onto explain it further…

“Rip out the standard UI in this handset (waving N95) put in facebook!”

The comments came thick and fast:

“Well, I like MySpace. Can’t I have a MySpace phone?”

“Didn’t Helio do that already?”

“Yeah. But you customize the UI couldn’t you? Give users that choice…”

“Ok. Give users the choice to customize their UI…”

“Blah blah blah…”

And that was cool and ok, it answered one of the three things we had to find and stuff… However, I think this is something that bears further thought.

What is Facebook?

By its own definition it is a Social Tool.

(Not a Social Network – you and your friends are the Network, not facebook – remember that one kids).

What is a mobile phone?

Also a Social Tool.

So my question is this: Why not converge the two?

I’ve spoken about facebook in the past and how the users can be segmented in different ways etc. But fundamentally, at the most basic level, facebook is when you think about it an extremely active contacts/address book, right?

Right.

Pour that into a handset and what do you get?

I’ll show you:

Your Contacts? Sync’d with facebook Friends.
But not only do I get numbers I also get pictures, updates, status etc.

Your Calendar? Sync’d with facebook Events.
But you get more detail, who’s coming etc (all linked across the different apps etc)

Your Games? Scrabulous anyone?!

What about SMS/Email/MMS? You’ve all sent a facebook message before right?

Your Camera? No change here. Oh, aside from photos being stored to your facebook gallery.

And Fun apps? If you read this blog I’m going to assume you’ve installed an app onto your phone before. You may well have even installed an app on your facebook too… see the link?

Don’t forget the Internet? Ahh… Here’s the killer see.

Facebook currently has no internet per se. No search. No Google box etc… That would be your link off and out of the facebook garden as it were. But hey, you never know with fb – they may well have Search on their roadmap.

Thinking about mobile search, searching the handset, like the current desktop search on the N95 or ‘Finder’ on any MacBook, would be like facebook!

Searching for ‘mobile geeks’ and i’d be shown the event, the group and also any and all of the contacts in my address book that are part of said party.

What about my favourite app, Jaiku? Build it in.

Status updates on facebook? The mini-feed? That becomes your life-stream right there.

It could work.

Think about it.

The number one thing that people hate about changing handsets is relearning the UI: “Aww man, I’m still getting used to it” etc…

What if the UI was the same?
What if you knew how to use the UI before you took the thing out of the box because it’s the same UI that you use every day on Facebook?
And all that’s before we even begin to talk about the trusted relationship that the consumer already has with facebook as a brand…

…

…

Ok, so – taking a breath – maybe the web UI is not built to work on a phone. Maybe having a ‘facebook phone’ would be almost as bad as Helio’s ‘MySpace Phone’.

But why not have the facebook engine running underneath a very basic UI. With all the information embedded and layered underneath each contact or event or picture, creating context sensitive content…Makes sense huh?

I guess what I’m getting at is the ideas and principles behind the semantic web, on your mobile.

It doesn’t have to be facebook. It could be anything. Just join the dots.

What do you think?

In years gone by, expert craftsmen were named Masters. Master Builders, Master Blacksmiths and so on. In this new period of our history, labels are changing. Whatley is one of the only Master Jaikus that I know. He knows and uses the service inside out.  Jaiku is his third eye.

Today we bring you part two of the Joy of Ku — Jaiku Unwrapped. Part One is here.

All good? The Master pulls down the hood of his dark billowing robe, turns toward us as we bow benevolently and…. over to James.

- - -

Ok – so those of you that read my last ‘official’ Whatley on Wednesday a fortnight ago (ignoring all the N95 shenanigans that happened in-between); and were quite interested to read my little introduction to Jaiku, then you’re probably wondering what I’m going to cover this week in part two of ‘Jaiku Unwrapped’ (nice title Ewan).

First up: Are you on Jaiku? If yes, read on. If no, go to http://jaikuinvites.com and get yourself in!

Next: Let’s talk about features

Well, there’s a lot to cover. I first encountered Jaiku way back in the Spring of 2007 as an early S60 app. This first iteration being ‘merely’ the cell tower naming, ‘life stream’ enabled, active contacts book… and breathe.

So what does that mean?

Cell Tower Naming – Each Jaiku user can name the cell tower that is currently in use by their mobile handset. This information is then shared with your [Jaiku] contacts. This is cool.

Most of the cell towers near me are called variations of Teddington; Teddington Station, High St, Home etc… and if any of my Jaiku buddies find themselves in the area, their Jaiku app updates their location accordingly. Can be fun when you’re browsing your contacts and you notice one of your friends is in one of your cells.

Life Streaming – Jaiku was at launch (and arguably still is in some respects) WAY ahead of its time when it comes to TRUE life-streaming. Any and all feeds can be pulled in and aggregated into the one stream. Here’s mine:

Comprising of my Last FM, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Various Blog Feeds.

All of my content in one place. Fantastic stuff. Interesting how this is now the business model for the relatively new ‘Friend Feed’. Something that I’m yet to try out… but I’m told offers a very similar service on the full life stream front. Big deal, Jaiku’s been doing it for ages.

Friend Feed lacks a mobile component however… which means no cool, location based stuff.

That aside, all of this life-streaming is no good if you can’t do anythingwith it. Which leads nicely into…

Active Contacts – Now that you (and your contacts) are all life streaming content or ‘Presence Information’, Jaiku takes on a more interesting role as a replacement for the native contacts application within the handset. Having Jaiku as an ‘Active Contacts’ book allows you to see who is and is not available for calling just from one quick glance. Each contact displays the stream coming from their handset – this encompasses everything I’ve mentioned so far (Location, Life Stream Feed Content) and adds to it calendar info (shared, hidden or just ‘busy’) AND profile information too.

The screens below are taken from the S60 app with my phone set to three different profiles:

The Profiles being General (Green), Vibrate (Amber) and Silent (Red) respectively.

If my Jaiku is displaying a red icon, now’s probably not a good time to call.

Note you can also see my latest ‘kus’ as well as the next event in my calendar; this information is opt-in as part of the sign-up. For the sake of sanity (and privacy) I normally have this set to ‘busy’ but have shared for the sake of the screenshots.

Having this option available for all of my contacts would be excellent.

A quick glance can show me:

Where you are, what you’re doing, what your plans are, what you’ve been listening to, the last photo you shared, the last video you shared, the last blog post you wrote…

It goes on.

All of this stuff comes together to form one S60 app that is truly something spectacular.

Not got an S60 handset? Try http://m.jaiku.com instead. Not as functional as the app but still easy and accessible from your handset.

All this so far has been about the utility. The product. The usability. The benefits.

In my next (and last) Jaiku-themed piece I’ll cover off the final piece of the puzzle.

The thing that, in my opinion, truly makes Jaiku special:

The Community.
First is this piece from Jonathan Greene who gives a rough outline of the features I’ve mentioned above. It’s a good read but the good stuff is at the end with his fantastic video (from last year!) about the (now live) beta client of the S60 app.

Second is this post from co-creator of Jaiku, Jyri Engestrom. Entitled:

“Blind Men’s Baseball – The Social Importance of Peripheral Vision”

This one quote: “phones were designed with the assumption that when a person picks up the receiver to dial a number, they already know who they want to call.” says it all for me…

Next week I’ll be in Las Vegas spreading the SpinVox love at CTIA.

If you’re heading out yourself, come find me and say ‘Hi’.

If not, see you in a fortnight.

Thanks for reading.

I posted a quick summary of James Whatley’s Vodafone experience just a few moments ago — just as this update arrived in my inbox… Over to James…

- - -
First up, if you missed the rant
on Friday, then you should go catch up or else none the following will make much sense.

HOLD MUSIC – BA BADADA BA BA BA DADA – BA BADADA BA BA BA DADA

Up to speed? Good.

Next up - I’m still with Vodafone.

Why?

Well. You’ll see.

Thing is, this whole episode has really got me thinking about a LOT of stuff. So there’s a lot to cover with this follow up post, it might turn into another long one… So once again, thanks for reading.

First up – let’s pick up from where we left off.

The early hours of Friday morning:

01:30 – I email my rant over to Ewan

01:45 – He hits publish

01:46 – I post on Jaiku

04:52 – Nokia Geek re-posts the story on
his blog

07:40 – The story re-appears over on the blog by iFelix

08:57 – An SMS arrives from a friend within the walls of VF:

“Would you like me to try and escalate your N95 problem internally? Or would you prefer the vanilla experience?”

I choose the latter, (thank you though for your kind offer – you know who you are).

09:30 – Steve Litchfield links back to the story over at All
About Symbian

Then, at 09:39, the phone rings:

“Hello, James Whatley…”

“Hello there Mr Whatley, my name’s Amy and I’m calling from Vodafone. I hope you don’t mind me getting in contact like this, I’ve just been reading your blog…”

[Note from Ewan: We're speculating that 'Amy' is indeed Amy Rose as covered before on SMS Text News]

“I see…”

“Yes, I searched for your name on our system and then cross referenced the notes on the accounts that I found with your written version of events to see which James Whatley it could be and.. well I found you!”

“Right you are.”

“Mr Whatley, I’m dreadfully sorry for everything’s that happened regarding your N95. We’ve investigated it as much as we can this end and it seems the insurers have rather a lot hoops to jump through to process these claims, something we’re trying to rectify. And you see it’s basically a lot of red tape that we can’t really do much about…”

“Ok…”

“However, I’ve been in touch with them and sorted everything out and we should be able to get a replacement phone out to you as soon as possible. Now this normally happens on the next working day, but I’m going to make a few calls and see if we can’t get it out to you today.”

“Oh well, thank you very much…”

“Only thing is Mr Whatley, we don’t actually stock the silver N95 anymore. We only have the 8GB version, is that going to be ok?”

“Well, er… I actually prefer the silver one if I’m perfectly honest, but I can’t knock it I guess. It’s very kind of you to reach out like this. Yes. Ok. I’ll take it. Cheers.”

“Right then, I’ll sort things out with the insurance company. You will still have to pay the £25 excess charge for claiming but I can just pop that onto your next bill. I’ll give you a call back in a bit to confirm delivery.”

Brilliant. Fantastic. Wonderful.
Or is it?

We’ll come back to this one. Moving on.

09:50 – I get an email from Colin over at Nokia WOMWorld:

“Hi James

Your two week trial period for the N82 has finished, therefore we need to organise the return of the device…

Just kidding! Read about your “kaput” N95, so out of the goodness of our hearts we will extend the N82 trial period. How about I send out a bluetooth headset too, make it easier for you to call/pester/complain to Vodafone whilst on the move?”

I very nearly spat my latte out laughing… This did make me smile. A lot. Cheers guys.

10:00 – Steve over at S60Blogger made sure he
mentioned it too – which, incidentally, then got picked up a few more times on some insurance aggregation sites

10:10 – Paul Sweeney of VoiceSage talks about the Expectations
of GREAT Customer Service

11:29 – I come back to my desk and I have a missed call plus one new SMS:

Hi James, it’s Amy calling from Vodafone. Just calling you back as promised earlier. Got good news the phone is gonna be delivered to you today. Should be with you around 2:30. I will give you a call back, I’ll try you again in a little while just so that I can have another chance to chat to you. Thank you. Bye. - Spoken through SpinVox

14:30 you say? Not bad at all.

Lunch time rolls around and the department head out for a colleague’s birthday lunch.

13:25 – The phone rings:

“Hi, is that James Whatley?”

“Yes mate.”

“Alright, I’m just on Marlow High Street, looking for Wethered House (SpinVox HQ), can you direct us?”

“Actually mate, I’m just on the High Street myself. In Chez Gerard…”

“Oh I can see that, I’ll come meet you.”

13:30 – Yours truly takes delivery of a brand new, never-been-opened Nokia N95 8GB.

Just shy of 12hrs since the original article went live.

So – What have we learnt?

First thing: Vodafone have some kind of ‘Forum Intervention Team’ who are happy to step up to the plate whenever things need fixing, (but we knew this already).

This I must say is a HUGE step forward for any operator/network and is something the rest of the industry can learn from.

To have a team in place monitoring the blogosphere for anything of this nature is a great string to Vodafone UK’s bow.
And it’s the exact same thing I used to do 18mths ago for Refresh Mobile, (way back in their Mobizines days).

So kudos to you Red; you came through and you delivered. Nice work.

BUT.

And this is a big BUT that was repeated to me over email, IM, Jaiku, Twitter, SMS and even over the phone from my friends and colleagues alike:

“BUT JAMES?! Well done and everything – But what about the average user? If this happened to your Mum she wouldn’t sit down and write two thousand words on how annoyed she was nor would she know the right platform/channels to use to air said grievances! So, what about your Normobs?!”

Well. There’s a few ways you can look at this.

Ewan bet me £5 that I could’ve got a replacement handset from in-store over the weekend and he was probably right. So did I get preferential treatment? Yes. You could say I did. If I was your average every day customer without access to a reasonably well-read wireless news site, would I have got my replacement handset on the same day? Doubtful, (don’t forget though, I still had to pay the £25 excess, just like anyone else – all VF saved me was time).

This however does not necessarily make Vodafone bad. Later that day I was contacted by another friend of mine, again within the walls of Vodafone. He told me about the Forum Intervention Team and how (in his opinion) they do a good job. Not least because they fix what they can online but because every problem they solve gets put back into the system to try and ensure that the same doesn’t happen again. My contact also told me that Vodafone has a ‘Voice of the Customer’ forum. Everyone within Voda has the ability to raise issues to VOC so they can be investigated.

They don’t take this kind of thing lightly.

The good thing (I’m told) is that this whole episode has highlighted the ‘outsourced insurers’ problem to the VOC which will hopefully mean that the end user experience will improve in the long run.

This is great news.

Short term?

If you’re a normob (or if you know one) then the best advice I could give you would be to never give up. Keep calling back, keep kicking up a fuss and keep on keeping on until you get the level of service you think you deserve.

Now in closing; let’s address some of the questions raised in the the
comments of Friday’s piece::

Quite a few of you mentioned that I should’ve taken the insurance girl’s hints and just told them what they wanted to hear. You’re probably right. But you’re gonna have to excuse my naivety on this one chaps; the thought didn’t even cross my mind. I’ve never had to claim on insurance before and well – I didn’t know the game was played as such. I’ll know for future reference… that aside – it’s still a sorry state of affairs if this kind of behaviour is ‘the norm’.

Hands0n had a cheeky dig at the state of my N95. What can I say? I USE my handset! I don’t care for fancy covers or belt clips. My phone is purely functional. Admittedly I use every function available but that doesn’t mean I should keep it wrapped up in cotton wool. I love the battle scars on my N95. It shows how much I’ve really got out of it, y’know?

Maybe I should send it off to some kind of mobile phone war museum… Hehe.

Joking aside, this whole episode has taught us a LOT about Vodafone.

Yes, their CS sometimes falters but it’s clear they do care about their customers.

Yes, they gave me preferential treatment, but it’s only through people venting their anger (online or otherwise) at poor levels of service that any big company has any chance of learning/changing anything.

And the less said about the N95 4GB variant the better…

We interrupt the scheduled programming to bring you a Whatley on Friday exclusive…

- - -

AAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!

So – Those of you who follow me on Jaiku (http://whatleydude.jaiku.com) or on twitter (http://twitter.com/whatleydude) may have seen this message appear late last night:

“N95 – kaput :’(“

What follows is an account of two hours of my life from the early evening of last night (Thursday).

Vodafone have pissed me off. Their insurance company more so – they are CLEARLY a 3rd party with nothing to do with Vodafone and as such, let them down on an almost spectacular level.
That aside – VF’s CS has seen better days.

If this issue is not resolved by the weekend, I am off to 3.
You heard it here first.

So - What happened?

Well, over the past few weeks the N95 has taken a bit of a beating… it’s, how we say in the UK, ‘been in the wars a bit’. I’ve dropped it left, right and centre and even tossed it here and there too.

Note – it was camera tossing – see here.

Anyway - The phone has been fine. I went to a meeting yesterday afternoon, switched the phone off. All fine. I leave the meeting. Switch the phone on. All fine. I get to the station and, whilst waiting for my train, I decide to check the timetable… This is not possible. Not properly anyway. Because… every time I clicked one of the right sided centre keys, the screen went blank. Bugger.

Train arrives. I get on. I test it again. Same thing; Right centre keys make the screen go blank. Left centre keys bring it back. Bugger it.

I’m just off into town for a couple of drinks with the lass and all of a sudden I have no phone… Damn.

What next? I do what any other Vodafone-loving man would do, I call Vodafone.

Here I have to pause. Here for a second, if merely for sheer dramatic effect I must take a moment… and breathe…

I have waxed lyrical about Red’s amazing customer service before, quite a lot actually; online and off.
Thing is with GOOD customer service, you become used to it.
It becomes “the norm”.
Anything less than above average is… well… just average.

I make the call. Bear in mind that as a ‘card carrying member’ (remember?) of Vodafone’s ‘best care’ program I have come to expect the following to happen:

“Hello Mr Whatley, how can I help you today?”

“Hello there, my phone is broken.”

“Ok Mr Whatley, we can get a replacement out to you with 24hrs, where would you like it to be delivered?”

And. That. Is. It. Job done.

This is what I expected to happen. What I got was something COMPLETELY to the contrary.

CALL 1 (bodes well doesn’t it?)

“Hello Mr Whatley, how can I help you today?”

“Hello there, I wonder if you can help actually. It’s my phone. The screen really, it started to go off and on earlier and now… well now it won’t even come on at all”

“And what phone do you have Mr Whatley? Says here you have the N95, is it the 8GB version?”

“No no, I’ve got an old school original N95.”

“Ok, and did you buy it from a store or over the phone?”

“Over the phone. I NEVER go in store.”

“Ok Mr Whatley, and what do you think may’ve the problem on the phone?”

“I’m not entirely sure to be honest, I do USE my phone. I mean REALLY use it. But I know I’ve definitely dropped it twice in the last two weeks…”

“Oh ok Mr Whatley, no problem. It sounds like you may have to make an insurance claim but that shouldn’t take a minute… Well I’ve just checked and it looks like we don’t actually have any N95s in stock anymore, but that’s ok. The insurance will just send you an 8GB instead… is that ok?”

Leaving aside my N95-1 preferences for a second…

“Oh.. er.. ok, can’t really complain! Yes, I guess that would be fine, thank you!”

“Ok Mr Whatley I’ll just put you through to the insurance department.”

“Thank you very much…”

HOLD MUSIC – BA BADADA BA BA BA DADA – BA BADADA BA BA BA DADA

“Hello you’re through to Vodafone In-sure-antz… *giggle* …”

Note – the giggling – the girl that I was put through to was clearly having some kind of joke on the other end of the line and was finding it hard to control her laughter. Hilarious.

“…Before I go on.. *giggle* stop it *giggle* ..can I just tell.. *giggle* …can I just tell you that callsarerecordedfortraininperposeees…” *muffled laughter*

I’ve worked in a call centre myself. This happens. You just get the giggles sometimes.
However, I wasn’t in the mood.

I hung up and re-dialled 191.
I get through to the woman sitting next to the first woman I spoke to the first time round.

“Oh, sorry to hear what’s happened Mr Whatley, I’ll try and put you through again…”

HOLD MUSIC

“Hi Mr Whatley, I’ve explained all your details and told them what the situation is, I’ll just put you through now…”

“Hello you’re through to Vodafone In-sure-antz, can I take your name please?”

“Haven’t you got it…? Ok. James Whatley”

“And how can I help?”

“You mean you weren’t told?”

“You want to make a claim sir?”

“Yes. The screen on my N95. It’s broken. I need to get it replaced.”

“And when did it break sir?”

“This afternoon.”

“As a result of what sir?”

“Well, I’ve dropped it recently.”

“When sir?”

“A couple of times. RECENTLY”

“Oh. So the screen was working today then sir?”

“Yes.”

“Did you drop it today sir?”

“No, but I think it’s an issue of overall wear and tear if you will…”

“But you didn’t drop it today sir?”

“Well, no but…”

“Well then the screen failure can’t be down to you dropping it Sir, *sigh*, it’s a warrantee issue. I’ll pass you back to customer care.”

Turns out ‘pass you back to customer care’ is a euphemism for ‘hang up on you’.

If you’ve made it this far – thank you – I applaud your reading efforts. By this time I had travelled from Oxford to Paddington and I’m now at Paddington Station when I make call number 3.

“Hello there, I don’t have time to go through this again. I just want to complain about the poor standard of service that your insurance company provides. First they lack professionalism and second they show no real willingness to help and/or cooperate…”

“Of course Mr Whatley, what is the problem?”

I explain. THIS TIME ROUND I’m advised that I will have to take the phone IN STORE to have it examined…

“Look. I don’t have time to do this now. I called to complain. I need to get on the tube. I’ll call back later…”

By now I am seething. I get off the tube at London Waterloo and the lass is running a little late. “I’ll try again” I think… CALL 4

“Hello there, I’ve had a rough time with CS so far this evening. I understand this isn’t your fault so I won’t scream and shout. My N95. It’s broken.”

“Ok sir, which one do you have? The 4GB or the 8GB?”

“Pardon?”

“Which N95 do you have sir? The 4GB or the 8GB?”

“Er… There isn’t a 4GB.”

“Yes there is Sir, it’s ok, you’ve probably got the 8GB, the black one right sir?”
(this time in a slightly condescending kind of ‘it’s ok sir, you don’t know about your silly little broken phone’ voice)

“Look, I don’t have the 8GB version of the phone. I have the silver one…”

“..The 4GB.”

“NO! THERE IS NO 4GB N95! I work in the bloody industry and I know this phone inside and out and unless you’ve started shipping them with a 4GB MicroSD card as standard then it does not exist. The original N95, the silver one, the one IN MY HAND, comes with 160MB internal flash memory and 64MB RAM. Not 4GB.”

“I’m sorry sir but…”

“Look, let’s no split hairs. I know I’m right on this. It’s not why I called. I called because my phone is broken…”

“Yes Mr Whatley, says here you’ve been advised to take it in-store to have it examined?”

“Yes, that’s right. But that’s not good enough. I need a replacement as soon as…”

“That’s ok sir, if you hand it over in-store they will pop it in a jiffy bag, send it off to be repaired and it will be back with 7 days tops.”

NOTE – I’ve been here before – it NEVER takes seven days. THIS is why I stopped going in-store.

“I doubt that. Plus what am I to do without a phone?”

“They’ll have a phone you can borrow sir…”

“Have you ever had to borrow one from in-store before?”

“They have the Sharp device range sir…”

“Yes. I know. Horrid devices. They’re not nice. Listen. You don’t get it. I’m a mobile phone blogger. It’s what I do. Not having a decent handset in this business is quite frankly a ridiculous notion and I REALLY need to get this sorted ASAP!”

“Yes sir, if you take it in-store tomorrow I’m sure they’ll be able to…”

At this point I gave up. I am SO mad. The phone, FOR WHATEVER REASON, no longer works. Actually, that’s incorrect. The screen no longer works. The phone works fine. In fact, I know my N95 THAT WELL, I’m able to send texts and make calls… in the dark if you will.

Fortunately I am lucky enough to currently be in possession of a Nokia N82 (kindly supplied by those lovely folk at WOM World (http://www.womworld.com/nseries), this device however I have been using as my work phone. That reluctant was I to give up my N95 as my main device I opted to switch out the E61i for the duration of the loan period.

While I’ve been typing up this tirade I’ve been backing up/restoring/sync-ing each device to switch the N82 into my main device and the E61i back to my work device.

Incidentally – I’m not even touching upon the review of the N82 yet, or the amazing differences between the Nseries and the Eseries range of devices that I uncovered by making this switch… they can all wait for another post.

This post - THIS ONE THAT YOU’RE READING RIGHT NOW – is about how disappointed I am with Vodafone. You may call me fickle, but have a read of it again. See if you’d settle for this kind of ‘service’.

I am NOT a happy customer.

And do you know what makes it worse? It’s happened before http://whatleydude.vox.com/library/post/rip-n95.html - same problem(s) http://whatleydude.vox.com/library/post/my-faith-has-been-tested-1.html

This time though there has been no resolve.

The issue is still open.

I genuinely do not know what to do next. My instinct tells me to call VF again - To keep on keeping on. This issue has happened before and I got a replacement within 24hrs.

Why is it any different now?

Why is Vodafone’s customer service so inconsistent?

Why do they allow such a shoddy experience when it comes to their mobile insurance – which, by the way, I PAY EXTRA FOR!

If I don’t have a new N95 by the end of the weekend, or at least, on its way to me by the end of the weekend – as I said at the beginning of this post – I’m going to 3.

And I’ll tell every soul that I ever sold onto Vodafone that they made a mistake and that Vodafone don’t care about their customers, nor do they care for their (outsourced) insurance – that’s not worth the paper it is written on.

With that, I am spent. If you made it to the end, thanks.
If you’ve got a spare N95-1 lying around, let me know – I’m open to offers.

- - -

I have, incidentally, bet Whatley five pounds that if he takes his handset into a Vodafone store tomorrow, they will replace it there and then for him.

But the more I think on it, the more I wonder if actually, that’s not how things work. I wonder if the handsets in store are for ‘brand new customers only’ and not for replacements? We shall see.

James Whatley lives on Jaiku. I don’t think they’ve got a more prolific or exacting user. He really does spend a lot of his real time existence living through the service — which is why there is, perhaps, no one better qualified to give you a perspective on the Joy of Ku.

- - -

I’ve been meaning to write this piece for a while now. In fact, ever since Google made that purchase last year the whole blogosphere has been falling over itself trying to figure out exactly what Google intend to do with their now five-month-old purchase.

I had an eye on eventually contributing to this but by the time I got round to it, most of the good stuff had already been covered. Notably this piece by Jonathan Mulholland (”What Google has planned for Jaiku“).

Then there were the series of posts at the beginning of the year regarding the spate of errors/downtime that Jaiku kept throwing up – (downtime, by the way, is merely par the course for your average Twitter user… But we’ll leave that one there for now).

Again – this was aptly covered by someone else here (”Jaiku users flee to Twitter as a result of Google neglect“) and yet again ably kicked back by our friend Mr Mulholland (”Think Jaiku is loosing to Twitter? Wait ’til Android devices start shipping“).

(Damn he’s good)

So, what am I going to write about?

First off – without presuming too much – a brief explanation:

What is Jaiku?

* Micro-blogging (like twitter)
* Limited to 140 characters (like Twitter) to your first ‘Jaiku’
* Jaikus start threaded conversations (unlike Twitter) with no character limit (unlike Twitter)
* Jaiku also enables ‘Presence’ from your S60 handset: Location + Phone Profile + Latest Jaiku
* Jaiku as a feed aggregator – pulling in all your feeds into one single ‘life stream’
* An ‘active’ contacts book, when futurists debate the address book as being key to any user’s daily life, Jaiku is often looked upon as leading the way
* And above all, a community…

That’s that covered. So what now?

Right, well – and there’s definite sleeves rolling up going on here - thing is, since the Google buy-out, Jaiku has become ‘closed’ – aka ‘invitation only’.

Rubbish.

However another thing is – every user gets ten invites. EVERY user gets ten. If you’ve been there since the beginning or if you signed up an hour ago, ten invites is what you get.

So some clever chaps over at Weeno Media cracked onto this and thought that they’d play Google at their own game (remember Gmail invites folks?).

And their variant of this game? http://jaikuinvites.com.

What’s it for?

Well the clue is in the name. Jaiku Invites.

You need one? Let them know.

You got some to share? Let them know.

They do the hard part in the background and link up those that need them with those that have them spare.

Supply meets Demand. Magic.

Why the big fuss? Well this is kinda cool.

I’m using this space to tell you about this website because I want YOU to go and sign up for Jaiku RIGHT NOW.

Over the coming weeks I’m going to be going into what it is exactly I love about this service.

There are many, MANY reasons.

Is it the community? The threaded nature of conversation maybe?

What about the ‘presence’ enabled S60 application? Ahead of it’s time when it comes to true life-streaming.

Then there’s the different ways to contribute to the site itself, (text/app/web/m.web), every one of them having their own plus/minus points. They each deserve a mention too.

As I said at the beginning of this post, I’ve been trying to write a piece about my love affair with Jaiku for some time now.

Each time getting halfway through and realising I’ve gone completely off-piste and spend the next 15mins fighting my way back to the point, (see this post on my VOX for a perfect example).

So I’ve decided to break it up a bit. Consider it a bit like a book club.

I’ve told you about Jaiku, I’ve told you I love it, I’ve told you how to go and get it.

Next week I’ll tell you what is so bloody great about it… (if you haven’t worked it out already)

- - -

You can add Whatley as a friend by visiting him at http://whatleydude.jaiku.com — and you can get SMS Text News updates at http://smstextnews.jaiku.com.

I read this article last week entitled “Why 2008 won’t be the breakthrough year for Mobile Advertising”. It was originally published in the middle of Mobile World Congress.

It makes for very good reading and clearly outlines the one caveat that is currently preventing the mobile advertising boom that has been promised for the past seven years: Advertisers simply don’t have the money to buy mobile ads. Nate Elliott also goes onto theorise that interesting things may happen in 2009 and the real (European) breakthrough will come in 2010.

After spending a few days digesting, I have to say that it is one theory that I buy into… It’s nearly here and the recently announced Mobile Ad deals laid out in that piece show this. Combine that with the consistent month on month growth rate of companies like Blyk - who have bet the farm on this particular return of investment - and you can see that we’re almost at tipping point. But, again, as the article points out, we’ve been almost at tipping point for just shy of a decade.
By way of comparison, in the UK there’s a TV programme called Skins, (it’s young, a bit good, knows its audiences and once you’ve watched a few you’re hooked) and recently E4, the younger, digital sister channel of Channel 4, started airing Season 2.

This in itself is really no big deal. However the amount of cash spent on the blanket marketing is.

You can’t get away from it!

And not in a bad way either. The TV spots are stylised; hinting at character development and yet still keeping the dark, surreal undertone that flows throughout the show. The ’skincasts’, Podcasts containing interviews with the cast members are there for you to download to your MP3 player of choice, the community is there.

One of the interesting side effects of the first season, and something the UK media like to jump when there’s a slow news day, is the amount of young teenagers throwing themed ’skins parties’ and, if you’ve ever seen the show, they don’t leave much to the imagination.

The new campaigns around season 2 are aimed at these people. Tapping into this (youth) market, this mindset is a genius move that has (probably) done wonders for their ratings. And it’s not just TV ratings these days either. Other KPIs include web hits, unique visitors, content downloads, podcast listeners, community members etc… There’s a lot to be measured.

So what about Mobile? Is all the money in mobile ads? Probably not.

Is there money to be made from mobile ads? A little, although not the billions that everyone thinks. Not yet anyway. Not without some joined-up thinking around context vs content etc…

2yrs ago I was told ‘Content is King’, I said then what I still say now. Context is King. You can send me as much content as you like but if it doesn’t speak to me, I ain’t buying.

I digress.

Taking a look at the E4 mobile proposition.

Simple, optimised content which is easy to consume – Basic Mobile Web 101 (but I’ve talked about this before)

Taking a closer look – There are three tabs: Telly, Goss and… SKINS!

Brilliant - Not only that but you can watch a clip from Skins Episode 3 right now – one click away.

That’s great. Not just for the end-user experience but it speaks shedloads about the level of internal buy-in from all parties within the offices of E4.

Skins is clearly their ‘hero’ show for this season and is one of the channel’s better IPs.

This is a fantastic example of a blanket marketing campaign.

Mobile advertising needs to adopt similar thinking. You can’t just throw something into the mobile web and just expect it to work. You need strategy and process. Without this mobile advertising will never be the goose that will lay the golden egg. But it could well be a part of a few select bronze egg laying battery chickens.

The point I’m trying to make with the Skins example is that agencies and big media brands are finally coming to realise the amount of potential that lies in digital media. Mobile is part (albeit a new part) of this space.

And it won’t be long until they catch on. It just needs someone, or something, to make that first leap into the unknown.

James Whatley, newly returned from Mobile World Congress, documents his burgeoning excitement at the social networking possibilities with Nokia’s N-Gage. Sadly, standby for the ‘er, not at the moment’ responses from Nokia…

- - -

MWC - Wow. Cool. Loved it.

I was there on official business with SpinVox and the one KPI I had was to make sure that the headlines on the SpinVox message board were updated constantly. (See pic below)

So off I trotted around the congress to get the latest news and views and convert them, quite literally, into text.

And where did I end up? In all sorts of places… one of those places just happened to be the Nokia hospitality suite, on-hand and asking questions to the product managers of their new devices and services… The one I want to write about today? N-Gage… and what fell out of that particular session.

Here goes:

If we, the power users, (according to Jaakko Kaidesoja, lead director at N-Gage) define how future handsets will be created/designed then please, please, PLEASE allow us to DO MORE.

So - what do I want to ‘do’? Well, me personally? Not that much. I just want to have the option — the ability to do more with my devices.

Sitting in the Q&A with Jaakko, it struck me what was missing.

It was odd that, of the four Product Manager Q&A sessions that I was able to attend at MWC; OVI, N78, N96 and N-Gage respectively, the one I thought I would enjoy the least was the one that had the most potential.

Given that I went into the N-Gage Q&A thinking that I probably wouldn’t enjoy it that much, Ricky ‘Symbian-Guru‘ Cadden and I, have often traded blows about mobile gaming (he loves it and I hate it), I was immensely surprised at a) how much it got my brain going and b) how much untapped potential S60 apps as have as a whole.

Maybe it was thanks to the previous three sessions I attended that this one got my brain ticking over so much. Geo Tagging for example, something I wrote about recently and has been possible (thanks to ShoZu) for over a year, is now ‘as standard’ across Nokia’s new hero handsets (the N78 and N96) but - hey guys, why stop at images?

The three questions I put to Jaakko were as follows:

Forgive if I’m taking this a step too far but given that the geo tagging functionality has been announced recently, wouldn’t it be cool if I could geo-tag my stats? i.e.: “Dude! I was HERE when I beat you!”

Jakko: That’s not possible but a good idea

Can I upload my stats to my OVI?

Jakko: Not yet, but it is something we would look at in the future

Can I sync my N-Gage contacts with the contacts in my phonebook?”

Jakko: Not yet, but it is something we would look at in the future

THIS is when my brain went into overdrive and I started systematically going through the applications on my handset to find which ones would make logical sense to link up. Starting with N-Gage, why can’t I browse my contacts, click on Ricky and send/book him a time to play [insert ngage game title here]? Ricky would then get an invite from me which he could accept, and in the background the handset would place an appointment into his calendar and link my name with my N-Gage username on his phone - synchronicity inside N-Gage and out - it just makes sense.

I can already attach images and suchlike to contacts; MP3s/Ringtones for example (which is great if you’re away from your phone; Imperial March playing? That’ll be Mum) so, let’s do more.

Given the functionality demonstrated by Jaiku’s presence information, and also some features which are disabled in the current client (but have been seen on the private beta - ie: direct to stream photo uploads and ‘what am I listening to?’ - last.fm-esque scrobbling on the move).

If Nokia can build in Location tagging, (which, to be honest, is a big ME TOO app that everyone will applaud them for, and yet us early adopters will continue to thank ShoZu) then why not put presence in as well?

This whole stream of consciousness leads me into what originally got me worked up. Strategic alignment across S60 (and why stop there?) applications.

Why not link everything up?!

Only by enabling these things from the off and N-Gaging (heh) the consumer with simple and easy to understand education, will you benefit from mass-adoption.

And I’ll leave it there, for now.

I’ve got a lot more that will hopefully filter through over the coming weeks.

So, stay tuned…

- - -

Thanks for that James. The ‘not yet’ responses really irritated the hell out of me because, I like you, think that there are a wealth of applications that could be — or should be — integrated into N-Gage that would make it a fabulous experience.

I’m severely unimpressed that you’re suggesting ideas to the product manager who’s telling you it’s a ‘good idea’. They should be light years ahead of us. Shouldn’t they? Or, maybe not.

There I go again. Me and my huge expectations. I keep setting my expectations at the wrong point with Nokia. My newly acquired management solution for this is to sit down, shut up and think of England, rather than get too frustrated.

More about N-Gage at n-gage.com.

Whatley is a Symbian guy, through and through. He’s got more applications on his Nokia then I can shake a stick at. But he’s tempted, sorely tempted by Apple’s iPhone. I suspect the o2 unlimited data plans are also annoying the hell out of him as he’s stuck with Vodafone’s paltry offering. But will an all new (well, not really) 16GB iPhone finally push him into the o2 shop?

- - -

I am not a ‘Mac Person’.

I’m getting there, (before you all start booing and hissing), and I’ve been known to get a bit ‘Mac curious’ every now and then.

It’s not through lack of trying though. In fact the other day I borrowed a MacBook Pro from SpinVox to take home and ‘test drive’ for the weekend. Only problem was it was one of those weekends when all of a sudden you have NO TIME to do a single bloody thing and I ended up handing it back Monday morning having only figured out how to get the bloody thing online, (and that took long enough).
Anyway – as I said – I’m getting there. One day I’ll make the jump.

The same thing however cannot be said for the iPhone.

I was at a lunch recently where upon I found myself sitting next to the editor of Mac Format magazine. He and I were discussing mobile et al and of course we ended up comparing devices. “Eww…” he said, looking my N95 “Already I’m thinking ‘PC! PC!’ I don’t know how you do it mate…” – and I in turn went on to mock his iPhone loveliness.

“But can yours do THIS?” he said, free scrolling up and down web pages like he hadn’t a care in the world.

“Well… No. But…”

“Come on. What’s so bad about it?!”

“Well… Er… the price for a start.”

“Forget the price. We know it’s over-priced. What else?”

“Um…”

And I stumbled. I lost my thought process. I looked at the N95 in my hands and the iPhone in his and I just stared blankly, grasping around for something… anything… that would aid me in my explanation…

Suddenly it came to me:

“Well no 3G for a start, or HSDPA. Plus the camera leaves a lot to be desired, (the one you do have doesn’t have a flash) and then there’s MMS…”

And I was away, fighting my corner like a true N95 loving mobile geek.
Once again all was well in the world.

However, I must say that as much as I profess to be an iPhone critic I cannot deny its beauty, its simplicity, and its innovation. Its sheer impact on the on industry we all know and love so well is truly something to behold.

Eventually, Mr Mac Format and I came to a friendly truce. He pointed out that I was probably never the target market for the iPhone in the first place and I acknowledged that the iPhone ‘mark 2’ would no doubt fix all the problems that I currently had with the device.

I applauded Apple for creating a device that my Mum could pick up and use and I also added that the masterstroke that was making the menu screen the same as the home screen was just pure Genius. Talk about removing barriers to entry. Brilliant.

So why the iPhone love?
Why now, after all this time?
Have I fallen over and bashed my head somewhere around SpinVox HQ?
Well …No.

The fact is I still mock and point and laugh at anyone who’s mug enough to fork out the minimum £900ish that is required for an iPhone in this country, (on o2 in the UK it is £269 for the 8GB variant + £35pcm (min) for the 18mth contract = £899), and I still insist on putting everyone off of purchasing one wherever I go and whoever I talk to.

The question I always ask is: “Why do you need an iPhone?”

The answer is often: “I need one.”

Wow.

A pure emotional decision that is not based around utility whatsoever, just some clever marketing, (and I don’t say that lightly; ‘clever marketing’ in this instance is like saying Britney Spears is ‘a bit mental’), huge brand awareness and a near-subconscious desire to own this beautiful thing that can only really explained if the Pied Piper of Hamelin appeared in the ads himself.

So what else drives this insatiable need? The price puts me off. I’ve made that much clear.

But we’ve also established that I am not the target market for this handset. Are you?
We’ll come back to that one…

Ewan recently wrote that the iPhone would ‘only ever be a bit player’. Well given that it is merely one handset in a market of thousands well then I’d have to agree. But of course that wasn’t the intention was it? The intention (as was clearly laid out by some of the more balanced comments to that piece and of course by Mr Jobs himself), was to gain a single digit market share.

Here we are less than one week away from the biggest and most highly regarded event in the mobile sector and Apple seem to have done just that. Maybe next week we’ll see what the industry reaction is. What have the other handset manufacturers got up their sleeves?

If anything…

Coming back to the target market question – I’ll leave you with the comments I made a few days back in response to another iPhone piece:

“It’s interesting -

When it comes to the pricing issue - you do have to stop for a moment and think about why o2 launched the iPhone at that RRP.

In the UK the economy in general has recently seen a downturn in overall sales of products but an upturn in overall value of said market(s). Consumers are fleeing the every day, mass-produced, mass-market products and are saving their cash and investing in the latest luxury ‘designer’ items.

Therefore there’s a school of thought that o2 knew exactly what they were doing when they launched at £269.99 + contract. They were pricing the everyday ‘common man’ consumer *out*.

Instantly making the iPhone tap into that hidden snob inside us all, (well, not us, but them, y’know… The Normobs).

I was at dinner recently and the two gentlemen at the next table were talking; discussing work etc… and halfway through one exchange the gentleman diagonally opposite to me produced and iPhone from his pocket, waved it sufficiently around to make sure that everyone saw and then placed it on the table in front of him.

Conversation stopper right there. Followed by gasps of

“You’ve got one?! Where from? OMG it’s gorgeous! Does it do email?”

Etc etc…

The iPhone has been subconsciously marketed as a luxury device. By having one you are instantly making a statement: “Look at me. Look at what I can afford.”

I actually heard someone say recently: “I want an iPhone. I can afford one too. I just don’t think I’m cool enough. I don’t deserve one yet…”

The device is *cool*, outside of this industry we all move in. Yes we think it lacks key features… that’s because it does.
And yes we think it’s over-priced… Well that’s the point.

o2 don’t want every Tom, Dick and Harry to have one.
o2 want every Tom, Dick and Harry to WANT one.

And trust me, they do.”

_______________________________________________

I’ll be in Barcelona next week, attending Mobile World Congress with SpinVox. If you’re going to be at the conference, why not come say hi? We’ll be in Hall 2, stand 2D33. Trust me; you won’t be able to miss it.

See you there!

This week Whatley is going all Web 2.0 on your ass. It’s all very well having these magnificent tools at our disposal — but how do you actually get them working? I’ve always liked the concept of geotagging my images — but haven’t quite got round to working out how to do it. It’s actually refreshingly simple. Here’s James with the overview:

- - -

There’s been a lot of buzz online lately about Nokia Beta Labs’ latest software release – the Nokia Location Tagger.

A quick overview from Nokia:

“With Nokia Location Tagger, you can automatically tag your location data to your pictures. As you take a picture, your GPS coordinates are saved to the EXIF header of the JPEG file. You can use this data later, for example, to locate your pictures on a map.”

That’s a great feature – Fantastic!
(more on the application of this functionality later)

Nokia also go on to say:

“In the near future, we hope to make location tagging a seamlessly integrated part of your Nokia experience. Until then, Nokia Location Tagger is a small standalone application that gives you a sneak preview. We are not planning to productize this application as such, but we’d love to hear your thoughts already now, so that we have time to take it into account in the mainstream development.”

EVEN BETTER!

However, I will not be using this application. I have absolutely no need for it whatsoever. Installing the Nokia Location Tagger onto my handset would be a complete and utter waste of time.

Why? Well, since downloading and installing Share Online 3.0 (another Nokia Beta Labs product) the Web Upload part of my N95 has been rendered useless. I’m told this is probably something to with http protocols on Vodafone; an early Jaiku beta release had similar problems. However the difference is I could uninstall Jaiku. This is not the case with Share Online 3.0. Grr…

So how do I upload media from my N95? Answer: ShoZu.

Yes it does all the cool things like photo/video uploads to all my sharing sites etc but Ricky covered most of that yesterday.

The ‘other’ cool thing that ShoZu does is… *drum roll please* …Geo Tagging!

That’s right. Exactly the same thing that Nokia’s Location Tagger! ShoZu however announced this feature at LAST YEAR’S 3GSM! …nearly a full year ago.

But I’m not here to moan about Nokia playing catch up AGAIN…

I mean, that thing that the iPhone does when you turn it like *that*?
SO cool.
Wouldn’t it be great if the N95 could do that?! If only it had something like a built-in accelerometer…

No wait.

As I said – I’m not here to moan about that – I’m here to show you what this kinda stuff can DO!

Right then.

First you need a GPS enabled phone – an N95 for example.
Then you need ShoZu, (with the GPS tagging switched to ‘on’).

Once you’ve got those two sorted get yourself a Flickr account and enable the two following options:

1. Import EXIF Location Data - http://flickr.com/account/geo/exif/?from=privacy
2. Import Geotagged Photos - http://flickr.com/account/geo/import

All done? Good. Now take a few photos and upload as you like. Got that far? Excellent.

Now go to your Flickr page – here’s mine http://flickr.com/photos/whatleydude/

Scroll to the bottom and you should see some feeds – you want the geoFeed.

Right click on that and then ‘copy link location’.

Once you’ve done that – get off to www.google.com/maps and right click, paste into the search box and ‘search maps’.

You SHOULD end up with something >like this:

N95 + ShoZu + Geotags + Flickr + GeoRSS + Google Maps = Mash Up Central!

Give it a go and see what you come up with. I was chuffed to bits when I finally got mine together and working correctly. Hence the desire to impart knowledge I guess. Two quick notes before I sign off. First a big thanks to the my Jaiku buddies who inspired me to put this post together and second to point out another great use of ShoZu.

Enjoy! J

James Whatley writes, this week, with an impassioned open letter to Vodafone. Write to your MP. Call your local radio station. Send letters to Arun!

- - -

(Not another mobile web rant, promise.)

Dear Vodafone,

Let’s get one thing out in the open before we start:

I love you.

There. I said it.

It’s out in the open for the entire world to see.

You and I have been together now for over ten years and although there have been a few ups and downs along the way, somehow we have always managed to pull through.

Red, what can I say? The years have been great.

I still regret the affair I had with Orange back in the 90s and I know that my foolish dalliance with 3 is best forgotten. I was weak. Led astray by promises of ‘revolutionary’ handsets and blinded by their multitude of minutes. Ultimately I was betrayed by my own greed. They just weren’t you Red.

After all these shortfalls, you were there for me, waiting to take me back with open arms whenever things went wrong.

I am a card carrying member…

… of your love parade and I am proud to say that I recommend you and your network to anyone looking to change providers, (and often to those that aren’t). Everything from the fantastic customer service to the virtually non-existent drop-call rate, Vodafone you put a smile on my face by never letting me down.

But as the years have gone by (and my monthly spend has slowly gone up) I have felt, lately, a strange detachment forming betwixt you and I.

Thing is, there is some shall we say, room for improvement.

When you rolled out 3.5G? Brilliant! Amazing in fact! But at £2.35per meg you and I both knew that something had to give… and it did! You went and released your own little data bundle… And at the same price as T-Mobile’s too! What a fantastic move… But no, you had to spoil my fun by going and capping it at 120mb. C’mon… You know can do better than that!

Signal strength is second to none. I cannot count the amount of times I’ve been out and about with friends and being the only Vodafone subscriber of the group has meant I was the only one in the with a signal.

However when it comes to your Tariffs, you may have great coverage but it seems that this comes at a price too. You’re, dare I say it, high maintenance.

Admittedly you’ve tried to wean me off my old school 3000mins per month tariff for ages now but you have nothing that comes anywhere near it currently. 1800mins for £75?! Shocking. You’re good but you’re not that good Red.
I’m not budging. Yeah ‘Stop the Clock’ - is pretty cool but can I have Vodafone Passport?

“Not on such an old tariff Mr Whatley”.

RUBBISH!

Voda, you know I feel about you. Take me on my word: You need to catch up! You could be left behind! 3, who were once the laughing stock of the UK operator market, now have one of the sexiest offerings around with their X-Series.

See, o2 got the iPhone, (you did well to avoid that), and you went and got the N95 8GB for an exclusive amount of time. Excellent choice. But why did you have to cripple it with your own firmware?
It’s like three steps forward and two steps back sometimes, really.

Hopefully, when the iPhone v2 comes along you’ll be right there waiting to grab it and pass it onto to your loyal followers. Hell, if YOU get the next version of the iPhone, I might even get one.
Now there’s a statement.

Can you imagine? With you Voda and your super HSDPA (3.5G) and solid CS, network etc…

It would be killer.

But hey – that’s the future – let’s talk about now.

Let’s move onto the one thing that gets me the most… and I’m sorry to bring this up… (I mention it every time we speak) the ONE bugbear I have with you? The teeny tiny thing that I just cannot stand?!

MMS

Tell me, Red, why do you not offer ANY MMS bundles?

None. Nada. Zip. Absolutely, positively ZERO. NOT. A. THING.

Videos, sound clips, pictures… all charged 35p-50p a go. It drives me nuts about you. WHY OH WHY OH WHY?!

You offer one of the latest and best phones (the aforementioned 5MP beauty from Nokia) and you don’t offer ANY MMS bundles to support it?!!!!!?!!!

You say that the requirement isn’t there, that the advent of picture messaging has not been the success that the networks thought it would be…
Well, if you charge for every single MMS sent and don’t allow anyone to add anything to their monthly tariffs then what on earth do you expect?!

You gladly give me video call minutes (which I actually use from time to time) every month as part of my tariff, but not video messaging?! Insane.

It’s been like this since September 1st 2006 Vodafone and I’ve let it go month on month on month… This has got to stop!

Voda, I love you, and I think that you love me.
Try this, do it for the sake of us…

Make MMS free for a month.

Yes. That’s right. FREE. Like you did with Mobile TV, (albeit that was for three months), try it. SEE the uptake.

Look after your customers.
Love them.
Save them money.

And above all, save ME money. Help me love you more.

Yours hopefully,

James Whatley

Just a quick two parter this week – Ewan gave me my first ‘actual’ assignment last week and I’m still putting the finishing touches to it, (i.e.: Still need to write it up proper-like).

So – as a bit of cheat – I thought I’d do a follow up post on last week’s Power User Insights.

To be more precise: Address some questions that were asked in the comments (as well as elsewhere online and off) and clarify a few points too…

But first, a quick user story:

At the weekend I killed the browser on my N95. I don’t know how or what I did exactly that made it die in such a spectacular fashion but die it did.

To the point where no matter how many times (or many ways for that matter) I tried to access the Mobile from my N95, it was having NONE of it. I clicked on the app, the screen flashed as if it was about to do something and after a second or two – it went back to the menu screen.

Panic.

Set.

In.

First thing I did was turn it off and turn it back on again… Nope, didn’t work.

Then I tried using one of my phone’s shortcuts to get to the web – Nope, that didn’t work either.

I had these horrid thoughts of having to hard reset* my phone and having to re-build it back up from scratch. Not good.

However – all was not lost – some research online uncovered some prior cases of aforementioned phone browser fever. The problem was in fact my cache. Obviously, not being able to clear it from within the browser was going to be a problem so I had to turn to my trusty Y-Browser.

Once I’d browsed to my C drive and cleared the cache, (over 500 items in there! Eeep!), the browser started working again just fine. Woohoo!

So as an FYI - if this happens to you – you know what to do.

On retrospect, if you were to put a Normob (Ewan – are you gonna trademark that?) into this situation what would they’ve done?

Left it? Sent it back to Nokia? Taken it back to the store?

90% of my friends would’ve done neither and probably just given their phone to me and asked me to fix it.

No, scrap that.

100% of my friends, relatives, acquaintances, colleagues etc… ALL give their phones to me to fix. Not a problem. I like doing it. But if they don’t know someone like me (or you) then what do they do?

Hand it in to a store only for it to be returned 3wks later with a note saying ‘water damage’ attached to it?

At this point I’m reminded of Ewan’s recent iPhone/Parent problems…

Ok. Well. Enough ranting and explaining – moving onto part 2:

Got some great feedback from the power user piece from last week so thanks again to all of those that took the time to response – fantastic insights – some of which I think are worth sharing (and linking to).

Terence – your first comment made me go back and edit part of the original content so it now reads:

“…as well as also managing to find time to update my facebook, reply to some Tweets and catch up on Jaiku via their m.websites!”

Being the m dot evangelist that I am I just assumed that you’d all know that’s how I’d be viewing my content!

Google Reader was mentioned a couple of times – I was unaware that they had a mobile variant for this, and having only just discovered recently the wonders of all things RSS - I shall have to have a play at once!

Antoine of MMM had a great idea about a dock for your device. Apple have that one covered already but yes – a ‘centre of gravity’ for my Nokia device wherever I went would be great.

Mirko – I find when walking around London that 8 of 10 people tend to be either tourists or travelers themselves. Plus I am uber-reliant on my handset and use it whenever and wherever possible. I see your point but I think it’s just down to personal preference.

Active Notes. Well reminded. I used to have this but I think I lost it when I last upgraded my firmware. Anyone who uses the ‘notes’ app on their handset should really lookout for Active Notes. It’s quite handy.

Ben suggests Road Sync for all your email needs. I personally use the one Mail 4 Exchange client that comes built in on my N95 (and on my E61i for that matter) but I shall definitely take a look at this one. Glad to see you find SpinVox as useful as I do too – and a big public thank you for the amount of feedback you sent in earlier this week. It has been circulated and the right people are devouring it as we speak!

Onto Dave’s question about Agile: Dave, I bought Agile Messenger originally about 2yrs ago now, (it maybe longer), for my then N70 and I loved it. At that time it was only around £7 (about 9 euros) and I had no problem paying for the full lifetime licence. I too have fring installed but to be honest, I only ever really use it when I need to chat to any of my Skype contacts, (you know who you are).

I’m not sure if Agile is worth as much as they’re charging for it these days but it is definitely worth taking looks as I’m certain they now offer a free trial period upon initial download.

Martin – I read your post – great read. Dopplr is something I will add to my bookmarks at the earliest opportunity.

Finally – Martin’s post reminded me of this great TED Talk I saw recently by Nokia Researcher, Jan Chipchase. Enjoy.

This week James documents more or less every use of his mobile phone during a morning’s work. It makes for fascinating reading — just how often did you check/use your mobile in the last 60 minutes?

- - -

I am, by my own admission, a power user. This may come as no surprise to the regular readers. In fact, I’d hazard a guess that around half of Ewan’s reader-base would probably consider themselves within this category?

But, what defines a power user?

Well I kept on a diary this morning. Not for too long, a few hours, jotting down any mobile activity on the fly… Have a read:

7:05 – My N95 tries to wake me up to the sound of the Plain White Ts.

I hit snooze.

7:15 – My N95 tries to wake me up again.

I hit snooze.

7:17 – The calendar reminder I set myself the night before, pre-empting this state of affairs, wakes me up properly with the message “Wake up you sleeping fool – you have a meeting in town!”

I get up.

7:30 – Whilst getting washed and ready I check Vodafone’s ‘My Travel’ section of Vodafone Live! to see when’s the next train to Richmond. Twenty minutes from now. Cool.

7:40 – I leave the house. Earphones are in and my phone’s MP3 player is happily randomising the 5GB worth of music I have on the microSD card within, for my listening pleasure.

Along the brisk 5min walk to the station I quickly check my train times again (yes, I know I’ve already checked them but I’m insanely regimented about being on time) and then open my Jaiku client to see if my friend Jana is going to be on the same train as me.
She’s not, she’s working from home as she’s not feeling too well and her phone’s profile is on silent so there’s no point calling her either.

All of this from one quick glance at Jaiku. Nice.

7:52 – I board the train to Richmond. At this point my, quite frankly, invaluable Tube Map java app comes into play as I need to work out the quickest route to Piccadilly Circus; Richmond – Hammersmith – Piccadilly. Sorted.

8:05 – The outskirts of the District Line Underground are in fact overground and so I use this time to read up on the morning’s news.

Starting with Mippin, I work my way through: All About Symbian, SMS Text News, Darla Mack, Symbian-Guru.com, WiiWii.tv and anything else that might be of any interest.

I check my emails on the new http://beta.m.yahoo.com, (note – NOT on Yahoo Go. Yahoo Go is BAD), scan my IMs (Gtalk, MSN and Yahoo) using Agile Messenger , as well as also managing to find time to update my facebook, reply to some Tweets and catch up on Jaiku via their m.websites!

As I head underground at Hammersmith, I start cross checking my work phone’s calendar (the E61i’s native app) against my personal calendar (the ‘Handy Calendar app from Epocware - http://epocware.com/ ) to check for double bookings and the like… Glad I did, have a birthday on an away day that I need to get out of somehow, eek.

Incidentally – as a point of interest – I spot my 2nd iPhone ‘in the wild’. I’m tempted to ask the woman how she could justify it but she hides it away quick before anyone else notices she’s got one…

9:10 – I arrive at Piccadilly Circus and have no idea where I’m going for my meeting. I m.google the agency quick, grab their postcode from their website, tap that into my GPS and voila… it’s just round the corner. Easy peasy.

10:15 – One of the key people has to dash off after receiving a converted voicemail (as a text message, through SpinVox) from his Wife. Her car has just got a puncture and she needs his help. Unfortunate situation aside, that’s a little piece of magic right there. Without SpinVox he wouldn’t have called his Wife back until after the meeting. Already he gets it.

10:20 – I head off, but I need to write up some notes and check emails etc… So a quick SMS off to the Textperts is required methinks:

“I’m in Piccadilly. Where can I get a decent cup of coffee and some free wi-fi?”

10:25 – The answer comes back as: “The 5th View Cafe above Waterstones on Picadilly” and off I trot.

10:30 – Setting up a mini-office over a cafe mocha I glance out the window. The view is amazing. Out pops the N95, I snap a quick photo and then upload it straight to my Flickr, via ShoZu.

Here’s the picture, by the way:

10:35 – I plug my ears back in and settle down to get on with some work.
The End.

So why bother writing this up? Three reasons really.

1) To give an insight into the usage habits of a genuine power user.

2) To find out more about the user habits of the SMS Text News reader base:
“How do you eat yours?”

3) To ask if anyone out there thinks there is something missing: What application do you use every day that you could not live without?

James Whatley is in a thoughtful mood at the turn of the year with his first Whatley on Wednesday of 2008.

- - - - -

Welcome to 2008 folks and good luck to you in the year ahead.

I don’t know about you but, for some reason, 2008 seems to hold an awful lot of potential for me. There’s a definite air of excitement about the immediate future as we, as an industry… nay, as a race! …continue to carve out this new digital/mobile revolution.

I would argue that in this ever-changing landscape it is so easy to forget exactly how far we’ve come in these few short years…

But what I want to talk about now however, is not where we’ve been… but where we are going, and what lies ahead for those that will take up the reigns in the future.

So take a moment, indulge me if you will, and think of the children.

MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and of course their mobile counter-parts, are all tools that we take for granted…

“Upload that, tag me in this… Add me, add me, ADD ME!”

Our entire lives are now, slowly but surely, online… and will remain so should we so wish, forever.

(Apocalyptic terminator-esque wars withstanding)

Our kin will be able to find and see everything… Family trees (post early 21st century) will be easier to seek out…

Finding out who Mummy used to date before she met Daddy will be there, right there, in the depths of your Mum’s ‘mini-feed’!

So, what of our children?

Growing up and having such easy access to their parent’s loves, lives, histories, past relationships, photos, activities…

It kinda puts the whole “Hey Ma! What did you do in the war?!” question on its head. More like: “Hey Ma, why didn’t you keep a blog?”

Home videos, once the luxury of a rich relative, are now ubiquitous with the advent of the camera phone: I mean; a phone without a camera? An absurd thought… You’ve all got them. I think you’d be hard pressed to find someone who doesn’t have a camera on their phone, (by all means, let me know if you are one of these people!).

Of whom of you there that have children already, how many of them have mobile phones? What would you say is the acceptable age of getting ‘my first phone’?

(There’s got to be a Fisher Price toy in there somewhere)

Will our children be on Facebook? Doubtful say some – “Surely facebook won’t be cool enough and the kids of tomorrow will be using the next big thing…” is something that has been said to me before. Well - irrespective of your POV on that question…

Some parents are already setting up new blog accounts for their newborns. They’re chronicling everything from the first photo in the womb to little one’s first steps and first words.

How will our children cope with this new way of keeping personal history?

Answer: They just WILL.

Having never known any different…

However, one does wonder, in the years to come when the newborns of the late noughties find their way into school, will a new elite group be the rage in the playground? The Facebook Kids — whose parents embraced this new digital wave completely, and used it to track the entirety of their youngling’s lives to date…

And when the time comes, will these ‘Blog-Babies’ be given the logins to their blog like some twisted digital version of the keys to their first car? Or the first $100 from their lifelong trust fund? Of course, but only when they come of age… so to speak.

Could the parents become precious over this personal history?

“My child ruined/deleted his blog” is a Jerry Springer/Jeremy Kyle show waiting to happen…

So why am I talking about this here? Here at SMS Text News. Where’s the mobile angle?

These digital worlds are converging. We all know it. We can all see it. And judging by the results from Ewan’s recent reader survey – there are some very powerful people that read this site.

Not only powerful people but also intelligent people; people with something to say.

Dear SMS Text News reader, I know this is a lot to think over, but I am genuinely interested…

What are your thoughts?

For me the adventure is amazing, but it’s the destination which holds such interest.

This week, Whatley’s having a look at the Mobile Web, the ‘m.’ solution and web to mobile rendering engines.

Ok – on the back of yesterday’s announcement of the new Mobile Pownce (http://m.pownce.com) site, I thought I’d tackle a subject this week that I (along with quite a few others I suspect) have quite strong opinions on:

The Mobile Web aka The Mobile Internet aka WAP aka the Internet, made Mobile.*

*Delete where applicable or just insert your naming convention of choice.
(We’ll come back to this one later).

Having had a rather long (read: head-bangingly frustrating) conversation with someone yesterday about how… ‘all mobile sites will become irrelevant within 12 months as the Operators all follow Vodafone’s lead, and introduce rendering engines [like Novarra], which will offer up the full internet experience to the end user’*… I thought now would be a good time to have a rant which has been boiling away inside of me since my days at Mippin.

*My reaction at this point, in case you’re interested was to walk away, screaming.

This issue is something that I absolutely, 100%, fundamentally disagree with. People (normobs — normal mobile users) do not want the internet on their mobile. They think they do.

But they don’t.

What they want is the information from the internet, optimised and perfectly formatted for their handset. They would never tell you this, because, as I said, they just don’t know.

Compressing banner ads and re-sizing images to give an out-of-context and screwed up version of the website the user is trying to view is SUCH a poor experience it’s not even worth talking about, especially when others have already hit the nail on the head so perfectly -– read more about the Vodafone contoversy in-depth here.

It’s an old story back from September but it is still relevant as shown when it came up at the recent Future of Mobile event.

To quote from Mobile Internet site creators, Wapple who, at the event, commented:

“Vodafone (and other operators) are taking a best guess at websites and dumbing them down to the lowest common denominator to fit mobile screens. They do not understand that mobile users want to interact with information in entirely different ways than they would for web.”

YES. YES. YES. The mobile internet user is, by definition, a completely different mental model to that of an internet user. The same applies to TV and Mobile TV, (which I have equally strong opinions on).

Moving on…

I am a huge evangelist of the ‘m. solution’, that is: Educating end users to drop the ‘www’ and simply insert an ‘m’ into your phone’s browser will take you to the mobile version of the site you are looking for.

Facebook has done a shed load of ground work in this area by introducing m.facebook.com to the masses. To my mind, the ‘m.’ is slowly becoming the de facto mobile website standard.

Yes there are the guys from dotmobi (*wave*) who are doing a great job (in partnership with the W3C) in introducing Best Practices for Mobile Websites and anyone developing a mobile site right now would be foolish to not look at how these guys can help - but tell me this:
On a mobile phone, what is easier to type, remember and use?
http://m.yahoo.com or http://www.yahoo.mobi?

Now, putting all that aside and going back to my opening paragraph…

Just what is the correct naming convention for what this thing is that we are accessing through our mobile browsers?

Does it depend on what we’re accessing?

‘WAP’, for me, is a meaningless acronym which brings back memories of green and black screens on phones like the Nokia 7110. But still the word is bandied about within boardrooms as if it’s still cutting edge technology.

“We need a WAP site!”
- “No. We don’t. We need a Mobile Website.”

‘WAP’, for me, is defined by the precursor wap. i.e.: wap.yahoo.com – there’s a WAP site for you. Two colours, basic text with a couple of links and that’s about it. WAP, for me, is the mobile equivalent of ‘Web 1.0’.

Internet made Mobile? See Vodafone’s poor attempts.

Failing that; for a meaningful attempt at taking internet content and making it mobile, try Mippin.

The Mobile Web? That’s where it’s at. Stick an ‘m’ in instead of the WAP or the W3 and see what you get.

If WAP is Web 1.0, then the Mobile Web is, to me, Web 2.0.

What say you?

This week Whatley’s looking at firmware and comparing the two giants, Nokia and Apple…

- - - -

Two weeks ago, after writing my review/rant about the N81 8GB, Stefan Constantinescu (of IntoMobile fame) left a comment:

“With the new N95 firmware out that breathes new life into the device I too can’t understand why anyone would want the N81.”

Fantastic point Stefan, the new N95 firmware does INDEED breathe new life into the N95 and anyone that comes anywhere near me with their pre-V20 firmware will get it upgraded in a flash.

What a great move by Nokia… That is, of course, if Nokia actually bothered to TELL ANYONE ABOUT IT!

Yeah yeah yeah, so Nokia told a few bloggers and released a techie press release (maybe). But fundamentally – WHO is actually going to benefit?

Ok – so as an old friend used to say – let’s do a quick fag-packet analysis:

I reckon, best guess, maybe… 5% (and that’s being EXTREMELY generous) of all N95 owners are aware that they can update the firmware (or ‘software’ as a normob may refer to it as) on their handset maybe?

Of that 5%, how many actually are going to know/check that there is a new firmware available.

You could probably argue yourself up to quite a high figure, what with the ‘firmware aware’ having a higher propensity to be techies/mobile geeks… But still.

Of THAT percentage, how many N95ers are going to risk upgrading their firmware, having had their fingers burnt in the past trying to upgrade a previous handset?

Or, what about those of us who have no intention of going anywhere near the Nokia Software Updater (NSU) after having heard such horror stories about ‘bricked’ handsets and ‘nudged USB cables’?

Right – ok – how many hands are left up? Not many.

And even you brave few who are left standing still aren’t guaranteed a new piece of firmware… because guess what?! Computer says no.

(Or in this case: Your Operator/Carrier – see some of the comments from last week’s article as a case in point).

Moving on from this – let’s take a look at the iPhone model.

The sync cradle becomes (as I heard recently) the centre of gravity for the user. They charge it, sync it and, above all, update it from one place.

The user is told, at point of sale, ‘plug this into your PC/Mac and register online’. That is the first thing the user does and immediately the user-behaviour has changed. Or has it?

How many iPhone users out there own (or have owned) an iPod? A fair few? Ok so how many of those users already associate having an Apple product that must be plugged/synced up to their Mac to optimise usage? Again – I’d bet a reasonable amount.

Apple have been very clever in a) Tapping into that pre-defined user behaviour and b) Educating the new user on how to get the most from their iPhone.

Nokia, to me at least, have a lot of catching up to do in this department. My N95 is a phone that happens to play music. The iPhone is sold as an iPod that happens to make calls.

This one simple, strategic change has resulted in a paradigm shift in how the end user benefits from updates ‘back at base’.

To put it simply: Push instead of pull.

When updating the firmware on a handset, Apple have it nailed.

Nokia we love you but, to reach the masses, you have a lot of catching up to do.

[ A wardrobe malfunction, that is, I was on a plane for hours on end, prevented me from publishing this at the appointed hour - Ewan. Now, over to Whatley...]

I woke up on Monday morning with the intention of writing this week’s ‘Whatley on Wednesday’ piece about firmware and firmware upgrades.
Recently a fellow Mobile Geek of London was exclaiming to me that “Nokia Rule for doing this [latest release of their firmware – V20]!”

I disagreed. The idea is great, but the application and execution leaves a lot to be desired.

We argued… and then decided it didn’t matter and discussed something else, (like whose round it was next). I left the pub with every intention to write this argument up (or at least my side of it) and post it right here for your reading (dis)pleasure. Delete where applicable.

That was until, just as I was leaving the house, I heard the latest single from UK indie group Scouting for Girls, ‘Elvis ain’t dead’. And, as with every song that you hear just before you leave the house in the morning, it became stuck in my head.

By the time I made it to the train station I had hummed the bloody thing to death and had decided that I needed this track N