MobileViews Blog

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

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

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

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

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

Hi all,

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix took about 36 seconds to boot to the Ubuntu login screen on an Acer Aspire One netbook with 512MB RAM and a 8GB SSD. This time I recorded the boot time of Windows 7 Beta booting to the login screen on an Asus Eee PC 1000HA netbook with 1GB RAM and a 160GB hard drive. It took about 35 seconds.

Of course, Windows gets really busy after the login process with anti-spyware, anti-virus, and bunches of different app update background processes. So, it takes about another 30+ seconds to settle down.

My UNR Acer Aspire One boot time post over on MobileContentToday.com got a response from Chris. He tried it on a Acer Aspire One retrofitted with a 30GB hard drive. Unfortunately, it looks like the boot time is slow even switching from a Solid State Drive (what my Aspire One has) to an HD.

Hi Todd,
I’ve installed a 30Gb hard drive in my A110, so I installed 9.04 NBR last night and measured boot time to see if it was much faster. I measured from power on to when the desktop appears (auto login) and I got 65 seconds – with a further 5 for the wireless to connect. So that’s 70 total, then perhaps another 10 or more seconds to start Firefox – not great!

The distro is definitely the best I have tried yet though, in terms of hardware support. The right-hand memory card reader doesn’t work properly but the left-hand one is fine.

Chris.

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

Ran into a weird problem with Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix + Firefox 3 + Google Calendar. As you can see above, Google Calendar does not render if I use HTTPS (SSL for a secure connection) with the site. However, it renders fine if SSL encryption is NOT used (plain ol’ HTTP). I don’t see think on Firefox running on Fedora Linux, Windows XP/Vista/7, or Mac OS X when using HTTPS. Very odd…

The brief video above contains two iPhone/iPod touch screen double tap tips:

1. Double tap narrow hard to read text columns to automatically resize them to fill the screen in either portrait or landscape modes

2. Double tap the top of the web browser to automatically return to the top of a web page (assuming you have scrolled down the page)

Anyone who has ever used a notebook or netbook computer understands that battery charge percentage reporting is not even near an exact science. If your notebooks and netbooks are like the ones I’ve used over the years, you’ve probably found your notebook or netbook completely shuts down way before your battery charge gets to 0%. I’ve had some units that failed with a charge over 20% and power management set not to do anything at that relatively high level. So, imagine my surprise when my Acer Aspire One running Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix kept running about 20 minutes after the battery charge indicator hit 0% (see screenshot above).

I spent quite a bit of time learning about how UNR manages battery power on my Aspire One. And, I’ll be sharing that both here and over on MobileContentToday over the next few days.

I’m really enjoying using Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix (UNR) on my Acer Aspire One netbook (512MB system RAM, 8GB Solid State Drive). However, its boot time is not very impressive. Linpus Linux Lite (which came with the Aspire One) boots in under 20 seconds. UNR took a bit over 36 seconds just to get to the login screen. It takes another 20 seconds after login to see the graphical interface.

I installed the optional Atheros WiFi chipset update provided by Microsoft for Windows 7 Beta on my Asus Eee PC 1000HA netbook this morning. Unfortunately, after the installation and reboot, I was able to see but NOT connect to my wireless network. So, I used Windows 7’s System Restore to get me back to the pre-update state and was able to get online.

=======================
Microsoft driver update for Atheros AR5007EG Wireless Network Adapter
Download size: 1.3 MB

You may need to restart your computer for this update to take effect.
Update type: Optional

This driver was provided by Microsoft for support of Atheros AR5007EG Wireless Network Adapter

More information:
http://winqual.microsoft.com/support/?driverid=3846

Help and Support:
http://support.microsoft.com/select/?target=hub

Telephony Online notes…

AT&T doubling 3G capacity

This won’t mean anything to those of us with current generation devices that do not support HSPA+ (evolved HSPA) though. And, even if your does, my observation is that browser rendering speed on many (most?) mobile devices aren’t fast enough to take advantage of the existing HSPA bandwidth.

I spoke with AnchorFree CEO and Co-Founder David Gorodyansky about the firm’s free ad-support Virtual Private Network (service)…

Hotspot Shield

Clients software for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X are provided free to use with their VPN service. The service also works with an iPhone without requiring any software installation. The iPhone’s native VPN can be configured to work with the service.

I was very skeptical of the service before speaking with David. But, I developed a level of comfort after speaking with him and am running their software and using their service on my Asus Eee PC 1000HA netbook running Windows 7 Beta.

I’ll provide more details about some of the things I learned about the service over on my MobileContentToday blog on Monday morning.