David Herrold

Disposable iPhone apps

Posted by Dave | Filed under Apple, Mobile, Software

I’ve recently noticed several conventions, festivals and movies spending their marketing dollars on iPhone development.  This is an interesting trend that we will see more of in the near future.

iPhone applications built for specific events have brief windows of time where their content is relevant and useful to the customer.  Syfy’s San Diego ComicCon (iTunes) and the Lollapalooza music festival (iTunes) apps contain extremely useful features for time sensitive events.  Schedules, maps, personalized calendars, photo galleries and photo sharing features are contained within these apps, making them very handy for a short period of time.

The ComicCon app was released July 12th, only 11 days before the convention; and the Lollapalooza app was released July 19th, only 20 days before the music festival.

At first, I thought this was a waste of advertising dollars. Why go to the trouble of building an iPhone application that would only be useful for a short period of time? That’s silly, isn’t it?

Well, not really.  There are three excellent reasons for these “disposable” iPhone apps.

1. Usage window

Pinch Media released a report earlier this year revealing statistics they collected from 30 million downloads at the iTunes App Store.  They discovered only 5% of apps were used 3 weeks after they were downloaded (slides 12 & 13). This timing seems like a good match for event marketing. Right?

2. Engagement

Smart phones make up only 12% of the phone market worldwide. However, that small percentage of users generates the majority of engagement in the mobile world.  They are constantly downloading mobile applications, surfing the mobile web, sending emails, snapping photos, recording video, etc.

iPhone users, in particular, are extremely engaged in the mobile experience.

3. Understanding your audience

What if you could discover information about your audience that helped make your product or event better the next time? Did your concert audience enjoy the venue?  What did your convention attendees think of the hotel or the food?  A mobile application can collect that feedback from your audience and help make your product better.

If you compare these to traditional advertising vehicles like TV, radio and newspapers you’ll see why iPhone apps look like a great option for event promotion.  You can build several iPhone apps for the cost of a single minute of TV advertising.  Also, traditional advertising platforms are typically a one-way communication to the audience, while mobile applications offer an easy dialog of feedback and communication.

I’m curious.  Have you or would you ever consider downloading a “disposable iPhone app” for a specific event?  Let me know in the comments.

Tags: applications, apps, Blackberry, iPhone, Mobile, Software

Google Doc your grocery list

Posted by Dave | Filed under Google, Mobile, Productivity

I discovered a great way to use Google Docs as a mobile grocery list last week.  All you need is a Gmail account and a mobile phone with WAP access.

Justine and I both have Gmail accounts, so that part was easy.  You simply create a document in Google Docs and share that document with your partner.  You can now update this document over and over for new lists whenever you need them (and even access the revision history to see what your shopping lists looked like last month).

You can now access that document on any mobile device in read-only format (presumably while you’re walking down the aisles in a grocery store).

So a simple phone call while I’m at work “Honey, I updated the list” is all I need to know exactly what she wants me to bring home from the grocery store.

I find technology fascinating when it intersects with everyday life to make things a bit easier.

Do you have any technology tricks like this?  Feel free to share them in the comments.

Tags: Blackberry, Google, iPhone, Mobile, Productivity

Mobile search

Posted by Dave | Filed under Apple, Hardware, Mobile, Software, Usability

We’ve gotten very good at finding what we’re looking for online. Ever since the early days of AltaVista, Lycos and DogPile we’ve become experts at finding Thai restaurants in Hoboken, NJ and singing telegrams in Anchorage, AK. Just type a few keywords into the search box and click the go button. Your best result will be on the first page, right? Pretty easy.

Fast forward to 2008 – and the proliferation of mobile phones, PDAs and palmtop computers that can access the web. Things become much more interesting.

There is an increased sense of immediacy based upon our physical location and actions. In the old world, we designed sites for users who were typically sitting at a desk with a keyboard and mouse. Today we design sites for people who are surfing the internet while walking the dog, boarding a plane, driving to work and cheering for the home team during the playoffs.  Mobile devices are with us all the time.

Good-bye keyboard.  Good-bye mouse.  We’ll miss you.

We are using our thumbs to type now. We are scrolling down our tiny screens with trackballs, slide-wheels and pencil-thin styli. We are clicking with phone keys, tiny buttons, pens and our fingers. We need results need to be simple, easy to read, accurate and light weight. And we need it now.

Mobile platforms need to distill web content down to the bare essentials, trimming away unnecessary page clutter while pushing relevant content to the top of the page.

John Markoff’s New York Times article sums this up more eloquently than I.

“The small screen forces you to be even more ruthless and focus on usability almost like a haiku,” said Barney Pell, Powerset’s founder and chief executive. “That’s what happens with design for the small screen. You have to think about what the most important thing the user is doing is.”

There are currently only a few methods of searching the web on a mobile device (although, there SHOULD be more, in my opinion*.)

The first method is the one we’re most familiar with.  We type search terms into a little box and hit submit for results. As long as the web server produces valid XHTML and mobile friendly CSS, most phones will display results without too much trouble. Many mobile sites that offer search, offer this method.

Another method uses SMS and allows users to search via text message instead of using web forms. This can be a faster way of getting results in some cases if you have little or no access to a strong mobile signal for WAP searches. Depending upon your carrier’s packages, SMS can also be used without a data plan (which is usually much cheaper than a full data plan).

A good example of this is Google’s SMS service. If you happen to have a text message plan for your mobile device, try this. Send a text message to 466453 (GOOGLE) with the message of “pizza and [your zipcode]“. You should get a text message back from Google with 3-4 of the highest ranking listings along with click-to-call links to contact the restaurant.

You can also send links to your users within the text message. A good example of this is our own classified ad platform on the Houston Chronicle’s mobile site. For another interesting test, try sending a text message to 24766 (CHRON) with a message of “ford mustang”. You will get a text message back informing you how many results this search produced and a link to the mobile search results (if you have a WAP access).

This is pretty useful, but still not perfect.

Within the last year location-based services have grown quickly in popularity. Mobile platforms like Brightkite, Google Maps and Fire Eagle are gaining ground with many mobile users. Using a mobile device’s internal GPS (or triangulation from cell towers if your device doesn’t have a GPS), the device determines your location and allows you to simply search for the word “pizza” to produce local results for you (since it already knows your location).

We will begin to see more of these services over the next few years. However, I think we can do even better than that.

As I’ve said in the past, our mobile phones are audio devices first and foremost. Let’s put that audio technology to good use.

* Allow me to speak “Find Starbucks” into my phone to trigger a Google Maps search or speak “Browse CNN” to auto-dial a browser bookmark. Surfing the internet hands-free might be extremely useful if I were driving a car, walking the dog or even peddling a bicycle.

With devices like Apple’s iPhone and Google’s upcoming Android platform the possibilities are nearly endless.

Let’s push the limits.

————————

Some resources that can help you get started with mobile web development:

Dev.Mobi – A website dedicated to mobile web development
Blue Flavor’s web development guide is a good start – and they’re nice folks too.
Mobile Web Development – by Nirav Mehta a more in-depth look at mobile development
Mobile Web Design – by Cameron Moll – a great introduction to the mobile web

Tags: Google, iPhone, Mobile, search, sms

Mobile sites: a few of my favorites

Posted by Dave | Filed under Mobile, Technology, Usability, Web design

Mobile LinkedIn is fantastic.

I just noticed today that LinkedIn (my work-related social networking site of choice) has launched an amazing mobile site. It feels nearly as robust as their full-featured site for searching and sending invitations.

I’m always shocked at how some mobile sites can tailor their user experience to give the perception of full functionality (even if that’s not the case).

Google and Yahoo offer many of their mobile applications & searches (calendar, maps, docs, email, etc). Mobile Google Maps has been the most impressive of the lot, in my opinion.

Bank of America allows you to check balances, pay bills, transfer money, etc. with your mobile browser.

Netflix allows you to search for movies and add them to your queue. This seems exceptionally handy if you are chatting with friends and someone mentions a movie you should see. You can immediately add it to your queue while you’re thinking of it.

I would be remiss if I didn’t pimp our very own mobile.chron.com in this blog post. I think we do a decent job of presenting diverse content (weather, news, sports, obituaries, etc) content in a very small space.

Mobile news sites such as the New York Times, CNN, Chicago Tribune, etc. offer some great mobile news user interfaces.

One of my favorite search tools is called Wapepedia. It is a simple mobile interface for Wikipedia.

You can find a lot more great mobile sites at cantoni.mobi.

Do you have any favorite mobile sites you find yourself using on a regular basis?

Tags: Blackberry, iPhone, linkedin, Mobile, Treo, WAP, wireless

Mobile presentation for BarCampNOLA

Posted by Dave | Filed under Design, Mobile, Usability

I put together a mobile presentation for BarCamp NOLA this weekend. Since I’ve been working on our mobile platform recently I’ve been taking some notes and reading about the industry’s best practices with WAP and mobile technology in general.

Let me know what you think.

- Dave

Tags: Blackberry, iPhone, Mobile, Treo, WAP, wireless