And the winner is... the iPhone

A few weeks ago I asked the great blog reading public to vote on which mobile phone I should upgrade to, embedding a PollDaddy poll with a choice of five possible handsets and an 'Other' option (although this reportedly didn't work).

Well, the people have now spoken (results below) and 41.94% of them said those magic words 'Apple iPhone'. Not one to ignore the outcome of a democratic vote, I dutifully went out and purchased one :) After the obligatory tussle with Vodafone over getting them to give me my PAC in a timely fashion (isn't it time Ofcom knocked some heads together on this one?) I now have an operational iPhone and it's fair to say that a new love affair has begun.




As a contented owner of an iPod Touch I wasn't expecting to be blown away by the iPhone but I wasn't counting on Apple's attention to detail, for the iPhone is more than just an iPod Touch with voice calling bolted on. Below are five reasons why the iPhone edges it (no pun intended) over the iPod Touch.

1. Email - a wholly more satisfying email experience than my Blackberry, the iPhone offers seamless integration with the major third-party webmail clients (both Yahoo! Mail and Gmail worked right off the bat) and great handling of inline images and attachments (including PDFs and Word/Excel docs).

2. SMS - text messaging is an unexpected joy on the iPhone thanks to the excellent touch-screen QWERTY keyboard and the way in which it displays message threads as conversations (à la Facebook) - so simple yet so effective, it seems extraordinary that all mobile interfaces don't render SMS in this way.

3. Google Maps - it was during the demo of Google Maps that my jaw really hit the floor whilst watching the iPhone Guided Tour. The ability to key in two locations and get step-by-step illustrated directions between the two, including up-to-date traffic info, particularly rocked my world, as did typing in my postcode followed by the word 'pizza' and seeing 10 pins appear in the map :)

4. Speaker - ok, so it's not going to have Bang & Olufson worried, but it's the first iPod to have an integrated speaker and it performs pretty well for something so tiny. At a stroke it makes the iPod a much more social device (or anti-social depending on the context), enabling you to share a tune without also sharing earwax.

5. Headphones - the headphone's built-in microphone and remote control (one click to play/pause, two clicks to skip a track) is a mini design classic, laughing in the face of all those chunky remotes and cumbersome Bluetooth headsets.

My only gripe (along with every other iPhone owner) is the coverage and speed of the EDGE network. Any chance of a 3G upgrade in time for my 30th birthday Steve...?

Which mobile next? You decide...

One area of technology in which I've always been strangely retrograde is mobile phones. My first handset was a Nokia 5110, which I bought at university back in the late Nineties. My 'upgrade' path since then has been: Nokia 3210 (February 2000) > Nokia 8310 (July 2002) > Motorola V980 (May 2005) > Nokia 8310 (June 2005) > Sony Ericsson K750i (June 2006). My unfortunate one-month dalliance with Motorola in May 2005 is detailed here.

So, for the last 18 months I've been soldiering on with a chunky K750i with a broken joystick, waiting for my contract with Vodafone to run its course. As of this week, I'm a free man with a world of mobile possibilities open to me. And can I decide which handset to plump for? Hell, no. Which is where you come in. I've been wanting to try out PollDaddy for a while now and have decided to kill two birds with one blog post by inviting readers to vote on which mobile they think I should go for.

My top five priorities (which unfortunately aren't perhaps wholly compatible) are:

1. Battery life - all the functionality in the world isn't worth a mobile which dies when you need to make a phone call
2. Internet access - ubiquitous, uncapped and as fast as possible please
3. Size (esp. depth) - time to leave behind the "is that a K750i in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?" gags
4. Camera - not too fussed about megapixels, just one which isn't completely crap in low light conditions
   
5. Appearance - call me shallow, but having spent the last 18 months getting the mobile equivalent of the Hunchback of Notre Dame out of my pocket, I'm ready for something a little more svelte

Enough preamble, onto the vote. I've picked out five contenders with a free text option if you think I've overlooked my dream handset. Now get voting - my mobile future is in your hands...

Round-up of best made-for-iPhone web sites/apps

Whilst the iPhone and iPod Touch cope admirably with displaying regular websites, arguably leapfrogging Opera Mini (no mean feat) to provide the best small screen browsing experience to date, there's nevertheless a healthy appetite for sites and apps tailored specially for the iPhone / iPod Touch. Below is a round-up of fifteen of the best.

Remote Buddy AJAX Remote
http://www.iospirit.com/remotebuddy/ajaxremote/



This kind of has to be seen to be believed, transforming, as it does, your iPhone / iPod Touch into a fully featured virtual remote which which to control a bewildering array of your Mac's functions. Unlike the Roami (see below), the Remote Buddy doesn't just interface with iTunes but over 95 other applications including PowerPoint, Firefox, DVD Player, EyeTV and Joost, enabling you to operate presentations, watch video and live TV and take photos remotely using the iSight camera. Simply awesome. Available as a free 30-day trial. €19.99 to buy.

Roami
http://spahk.com/



Nowhere near as sophisticated as the Remote Buddy AJAX Remote, but far simpler to operate as a result, Roami enables you to turn your iPhone/iPod Touch into a remote control for iTunes. A 3.6MB download to your Mac desktop provides you with a URL to type into your iPhone address bar which displays 'now playing' information and enables you to remotely select playlists, skip, pause and restart tracks, adjust the volume and toggle shuffle on and off. Free 14-day trial, $9.95 to buy.

BBC Podcasts
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/podcasts/directory/ip/



A personal favourite (disclaimer: I work at the BBC), this simple but slick beta app provides almost instantaneous access to the BBC's growing portfolio of podcasts, using progressive download to play the MP3s in Quicktime. The podcasts can be navigated by A-Z, genre or radio station (an option which beautifully showcases the new station logos). More on the BBC Radio Labs blog both here and here - see also below video.


BBC Podcasts (beta) on iPod Touch - demo from Dan Taylor on Vimeo.

JiWire Wi-Fi Finder
http://iphone.jiwire.com/



Anyone who's spent time wandering the streets of a major conurbation in a fruitless search for wireless internet access will appreciate the potential value of this little app which searches for details of nearby Wi-Fi access points against a city name or postal/zip code. It defaults to searching for free hotspots, although you can broaden the scope to include paid-for if needs be.

TextOnPhone
http://textonphone.com/



Never mind Amazon's Kindle, if you're wanting to read books on a mobile device then you could do a lot worse than TextOnPhone, which provide access to more than 20,000 titles, including classics such as Catcher in the Rye and Animal Farm. 'Turning the page' is as simple as tapping the screen and up to 50 pages can be downloaded for offline reading if you're planning to be without signal. It's also possible to create reading lists and add and share personal notes on any page.

TV Forecast
http://www.bigbucketblog.com/webtv/



A neat little app for keeping tabs on when your favourite TV shows are next being broadcast. The transmission times are for the US - frustrating if you're stuck with waiting for the programme to get an airing on UK TV, but a godsend if you're wondering when the torrent is likely to be available for download (I would imagine).

Tubes
http://mindtheapp.com/tubes/



At a glance status information on all the London Underground lines - like a pocket-sized version of those magnetic whiteboards you get by the ticket barriers. Designed by Utku Can - a 20 year old Computer Science student. Great URL too.

iPhit Fitness Tracking
http://www.i-fitnesscenter.com/iphone/iphit.php



Provides easy access to your Nike+ iPod running data (the main Nike+ website requires Flash, which iPhone Safari doesn't currently support). You will of course need a separate iPod nano to actually capture the data in the first place...

Twitter on Thincloud
http://twitter.thincloud.com/



Save yourself from the endless SMS messages with this big button app. Covers all the main functionality and nicely mimics the iPhone version of iTunes with four shortcuts along the foot of every page, providing one touch access to Recent Posts, Update Your Status, Direct Replies and Browse Friends.

WeatherBug
http://iphone.weatherbug.com/iphone/



Another app which appropriates the iTunes-style shortcuts along the foot of the page, although in this instance there are five on them (Conditions, Forecast, Radar, Camera and Weather). Conditions shows a simple thermometer and wind gauge; Forecast provides a six-day outlook; Radar shows an infrared satellite image of the continent; Camera shows a local webcam and Video plays the most recent (US) WeatherBug forecast in Quicktime.

Netvibes Mobile
http://iphone.netvibes.com/



Slick reversioning of the popular personalised startpage service, providing access to all the same modules, but arranged vertically to enable easy scrolling.

Yeah. No, Totally.
http://www.yeahnototally.com/iphone/



Another great URL and another neat site, 'Yeah. No, Totally.' provides quick access to a bunch of the web's most commonly used sites including Google, Wikipedia, Technorati, Flickr and BBC News (via its RSS feed). The only kicker for UK users is the US/SanFran focus, which renders the Shopping and Webcams section redundant.

Only2Clicks
http://www.only2clicks.com/iphone/



A visual bookmarking site with the aspiration (as the name suggests) 0f getting you to your desired destination in just two clicks. The site enables you to arrange your bookmarks by category (the defaults categories are Home, Shop and Social), displaying a cached thumbnail of each site. It's also possible to add search boxes for some of the web's main players.

Tomatometer
http://www.bigbucketblog.com/webtomatometer/



Stripped down window onto the Rotten Tomatoes movie reviews database, showing you a percentage score and top reviews for individual titles. Unfortunately search is the sole means of navigating the site so its only really useful if you know what film you're looking for.

iActu
http://www.widgetinfo.net/iphone/



Displays (half) the front page of six national newspapers (in the UK it's The Times, The Guardian, The Herald, The Telegraph, The Indie and The Current Bun) with a click-through to read the top headlines.

2007: the year of the widget?

Widgets, gadgets, call them what you will - mini modular applications are starting to look suspiciously like the next big thing, not only on the desktop and the web but also increasingly on mobile devices. The inaugural Widgets Live! conference in San Francisco was a sell out earlier this month and attracted sponsorship from four of the biggest players in online media (Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and AOL). The W3C has released a draft standards doc. Widgets have even spawned their own 'pedia' (widgipeida) - an intriguing new barometer of online buzz (e.g. Lostpedia, Wookiepedia).

So why now? Konfabulator first launched over three years ago and its been a good eighteen months since Apple released Dashboard as part of Mac OS X Tiger. Below are half a dozen key factors that have contributed to the breakthrough of the widget.

1.) Increased broadband penetration

A large proportion of widgets rely on an always-on broadband connection to drip-feed dynamic content to them. Increased broadband penetration means more people capable of running widgets. Higher spec computers and the development of operating systems which cope better with running multiple applications simultaneously have also helped cultivate a more widget-friendly environment. Like the personalised homepage (see earlier post), the widget has come of age thanks to technology finally catching up with the ambition. What was the Active Desktop (bundled with Windows Desktop Update way back in 1997) if not a widget engine let down by immature technology?

2.) The widespread adoption of AJAX

Thanks to AJAX, web widgets now behave more like desktop applications. They are more responsive, they can be dragged and dropped and they update dynamically, without the need for endless page refreshes.

3.) The arrival of the big boys

Apple's integration of Dashboard into Tiger in April 2005 and Yahoo!'s purchase of Konfabulator a few months later (in July 05) undoubtedly represent a key turning point in the history of the desktop widget, not least because Yahoo! opted to make its newly acquired widget engine available for free. On the web, it was the arrival of Google and Microsoft to the widget party which really got things moving.

4.) The emergence of converged widget engines

A few weeks back Fox Interactive Media unveiled SpringWidgets - the first widget engine to work on both webtop and desktop - and Windows Vista is due to offer native support of Microsoft Gadgets (currently only available via Windows Live) via its sidebar. Converged widget engines will undoubtedly prove to be a shot in the arm for the fledgling widget economy.

5.) The maturing of mobile internet

The next frontier of widget development is the mobile platform which has been opened up by the flood of Java-enabled colour screen handsets and the movement towards tolerable internet access speeds on handheld devices. WidSets in one of the first products to the market in this space and a it's pretty good first stab. Once flat-rate data tariffs become the norm this area looks set to explode.

6.) Small is the new big

A more fundamental reason why widgets are starting to take off is the broader shift towards smaller, more rapidly developed applications and increasing hybridisation by means of mash-ups and APIs. One only need compare the protracted product development cycle of Microsoft Office (gap between releases: 4 years) with the iterative development of Google Docs and Spreadsheets to see where things are headed. Widgets fit perfectly into this new landscape of smaller, simpler, connected apps.

To round off, here's a list of some of the key products in the world of widgets:

Desktop widgets
Apple Dashboard (Mac)
AveDesk (PC)
Brass (PC)
DesktopX (PC)
Google Desktop Gadgets (PC)
Kapsules (PC - currently offline)
Klipfolio (PC)
Samurize (PC)
Yahoo! Widgets (née Konfabulator) (Mac & PC)

Web widgets
Bitty Browser
Google Web Gadgets
Opera Widgets
Snipperoo
WidgetBox

Converged widgets (desktop and web)
Microsoft Gadgets
SpringWidgets

Mobile widgets
bluepulse
mobidgets (currently in private alpha)
WidSets

Convergence: not all it's cracked up to be

I inadvertently joined the growing legions of 3G mobile phone owners last week when I called up Vodafone to request my PAC number (to facilitate a move to Orange and their similarly hued Wednesdays) and was talked into staying put with a free handset upgrade and £10 off my monthly bill (sucker!). Interestingly, at no point during my protracted conversation with the sales rep about the handset's technical spec did he mention that it was 3G (perhaps its company policy to talk content not technology after the WAP fiasco...?)

So, what do I make of my new phone? (a Motorola v980). Well, it's certainly not love at first sight. The friendly sales rep was somewhat economical with the truth when it came to relaying the dimensions of the handset and I'm resigned to a few 'is that a 3G handset in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?' comments over the coming weeks.

Of course, it's what's inside that counts and I could easily overlook a chunky exterior if the features pushed my buttons. Unfortunately, it's decidedly underwhelming in almost all departments. The cameras, the integrated MP3 player and the interface all left me disappointed.

Maybe its because, in my mind, I'm comparing a multi-function device to successful single-function devices. Should I be surprised that the integrated MP3 player isn't a patch on my iPod mini or that the interface lacks the simplicity of the early Nokias or that the images produced by the VGA camera sent me running, weeping, back into the arms of my Pentax Optio S4? Probably not.

Industry pundits have been predicting the triumph of the converged device for as long as I can remember, but until the caliber of the individual components increases significantly I, for one, would much rather take 3 devices into the office...