User Experience: Is the Mobile Industry Its Own Worst Enemy?

As a heavy data-using Vodafone customer of over 6 years with an average monthly bill around the £100 mark, imagine my surprise when my recent upgrade renewed my voice contract but dropped my data contract. And my even greater surprise on calling customer support at being offered a month’s free data usage so I could “try it out”.

Surely, as long as mobile operator’s continue to regard data as an exotic bolt-on, mainstream consumers are going to regard it in the same way.

Yet the Internet is actually at the hub of most consumers’ desktop experience and is certainly not an exotic bolt-on. Why then does my mobile phone company, which has invested billions in infrastructure, completely fail to realise that Internet access on my mobile phone should be a natural extension of my desktop Internet user experience?

By setting artificial boundaries around a particular segment of the Internet and dubbing it ‘Mobile Internet’, or ‘WAP’, or ‘Vodafone Live’, or any other one of dozens of marketing monikers, has the industry not artificially limited its own diversity of offerings? Isn’t it time to climb down off its high horse and come clean – we can access the Internet via a hand-held terminal – big deal! Price it sensibly, and the services, the content and the consumers will come naturally, driving organic growth in the process.

Unquestionably, the market for on-line data services is well established, but ridiculous barriers still exist to any content or service provider interested in extending its reach out to mobile users. The most obvious of these are the technical barriers raised by ad-hoc and proprietary platform and infrastructure implementations, as well as the fragmentation arising from competition within a nervous and volatile market.

But there is light at the end of the tunnel. The technical barriers are slowly lowering, whilst at the same time, friendly desktop faces such as Google and Yahoo are gently luring the tech-curious into experimental Internet access on their mobiles.

Clearly, selling consumers on the concept of using the Internet on their mobiles can be accelerated by aligning the mobile user experience more closely with the desktop one, in particular, by providing consumers with cross-platform content and services that are both useful and familiar. This is the basic foundation on which we have implemented RubberSquid.

RubberSquid neither started on the desktop and went mobile, nor vice versa. We built RubberSquid’s desktop and mobile “views” (we prefer that concept to “versions”) concurrently from the ground up, and in fact, we have a third , which is the set-top box view. Although mobile is key to our business model, it is vital that those customers who need it have the opportunity to become familiar with RubberSquid in their most comfortable environment, the desktop, and can migrate to mobile when they are ready.

Our experience has shown that delivering continuity of user experience across different platforms without resorting to a ‘lowest common denominator’ implementation has helped us to attract and retain users. But not without challenges on the way; challenges posed, ironically, by the very mobile industry ecosystem that so many of us increasingly rely on.

RubberSquid Awarded MEX Conference Scholarship

We’re really excited at having won an exhibition scholarship to MEX, the Mobile Experience conference in London which starts today, 27th May 2008.

The conference is organised around the MEX agenda, a 10 point Manifesto for enhancing the mobile experience, a subject we feel passionate about.

PMN which run MEX, “bring together 100 of the leading thinkers in mobile telecoms and challenge them to define the cutting edge of user experience through 2 days of learning, debate and networking.”

We are one of only three companies to have been awarded a scholarship, worth thousands of pounds, following a competition to grant innovative startups the chance to show off their products and services at the event.

A big thank you to PMN for giving us the opportunity to join the mobile industry elite at this prestigous event in London.

RubberSquid Helps Orchestra Keep Together

There are few lifestyles more chaotic than those of professional classical musicians. For the rank and file, there’s no 9 to 5 routine, no office, just a constant kaleidoscope of airports, hotels and concert halls. As a player, your mission is to turn up where you’re told, when you’re told and play sublimely.

But pity the poor souls who have to manage these itinerants. Orchestras range in size from about 40 players for a typical chamber orchestra, up to 100 or more for a symphony orchestra, and all require different levels of organising, reminding, cajoling and harassing. Players often come from many different countries and are very frequent travellers.

For most, email is a reasonably practical solution to keeping in touch, not only because of its cost effectiveness – orchestras often struggle to balance their books – but also thanks to its ubiquity. Email though has its drawbacks, especially for people with busy in-boxes: important emails can be mis-categorized as spam, misaddressed, lost or forgotten.

Wikis provide an alternative method for communicating with a group. Like email, a wiki can be ubiquitous so that anybody with a browser can access it, but, unlike email, wikis have the important advantage of being centralised information stores so that anybody needing to communicate with the group only need enter information as a web page; no need to worry about keeping email address lists up to date, etc.

The downside is that wikis can be complex, and not everyone is compatible with challenging technology. And that’s where RubberSquid comes in.

RubberSquid offers all kinds of groups and teams a wiki that:

• is very simple to use;
• works on almost anything with a browser including mobile phones;
• is free to use on a desktop and very cheap on mobile devices.

RubberSquid is being used by several major European orchestras as a simple and convenient way of keeping in touch with widely dispersed players and other support staff. They have found that, for most people, RubberSquid is simple and quick to use on a PC, requiring only basic knowledge of browsers. Getting people to use RubberSquid on mobile phones has been a bit more of a struggle as many still believe they are charged by the minute (and through the nose) for an Internet connection on a mobile. Once over that fear, and set up with appropriate data tariffs, most find using RubberSquid on a mobile phone both simple and enjoyable.

But streamlining communication has not been the only positive outcome, some of the peripheral benefits have been surprising. Chasing down scores is an important part of many musicians’ lives, so having a RubberSquid channel for storing information about who’s got what score has saved valuable practice time, players simply type in some information about the score they’re looking for and RubberSquid’s AI assisted search locates the most likely entry.

But, of course it’s not only orchestras that can benefit from adopting RubberSquid. All kinds of groups and teams can reap benefits from this easy to use, cross-platform wiki, be they small companies, consultants, sports teams or social groups.

Whether you’re a musician or not, you can register for RubberSquid here (registration and use on a PC is free).

RubberSquid: Did You Know #3

You can now share RubberSquid channels via QR codes.

And, what is a QR Code?

Well, it’s a 2 dimensional barcode that can be scanned by some mobile phone cameras and translated into a website link or any other text.

Here’s the QR Code for the RubberSquid website home page. If your phone has a barcode scanner capability, it should be able to convert all the dots into our website address, http://www.rubbersquid.com:

QR Codes are already very popular in Japan where they appear in adverts in magazines and newspapers; readers simply point their mobile phone’s camera at the barcode and it converts the image into the wesite address for the product or service being advetised.

The big advantage of QR Codes is that they are easy to use and, most important for the user, free.

RubberSquid uses QR Codes in several ways:

• To provide a quick, easy and free way of getting a bookmark into the mobile phone’s browser. You can choose whether to include the account password in the link or not. Once scanned, the link allows you to sign into your account without having to type your mobile phone number and PIN.
• To share a channel. You can generate a QR Code that other users can scan to start sharing one of your channels. You’ll find this facility under the [Channel Link] >> [Share Channel] menu.

Register for RubberSquid here, or better still, use the QR Code and register on your mobile phone – registration is FREE

Team Collaboration the RubberSquid Wiki Way

If you run a SME, you’re probably:

• Too busy generating revenue to have the time to learn, setup and maintain a complex IT system;
• Frequently working closely with several realtively small ad-hoc teams, often on different projects;
• Cost conscious and careful where you spend your money.

If so, then a RubberSquid wiki can improve your efficiency and save your business time and money.

Top 5 Business Benefits of a RubberSquid Wiki

#1 Make Project Information More Accessible
RubberSquid allows project information to be assembled in one secure place and accessible by any team member wherever they are, using whatever device they choose. It’s like having private web space that only team members can read and contribute to.

#2 Centralise Team Communication
For most businesses, team collaboration involves email, lots of email. Reading, sorting, finding and replying to email is time consuming and there is always the risk that team members may miss or forget about an important message.
RubberSquid can be used as a communications hub; a private, centralised forum where team communications, and not only email ones, can be shared efficiently and clearly.

#3 Streamline Team Collaboration
Today’s project teams are often geographicaly dispersed and often in different timezones. RubberSquid is an access-controlled information repository that’s available over the Internet 24/7, so there’s less time wasted waiting for returned calls or information sent by email.

#4 Leverage Group Knowledge
Most domain specific knowledge is held in people’s heads: when the relevant person isn’t around, neither is the knowledge they possess. Team effectiveness is often compromised by the non availability of specific knowledge, knowledge that can be quickly and easily entered into a wiki such as RubberSquid.

#5 Mine for Information
Valuable information comes in many forms: telephone and face to face conversations, client and consumer interverviews, press releases and competitor information, etc. This information is usually “unstructured” (i.e. free form, natural language) and therefore difficult to store in such a way that it can be used later.
RubberSquid allows you to store all kinds of unstructured information and then to do information mining on it later by simply typing natural language questions such as “what are the main features of ABC’s widget?” or “what was that company that manufacturer blue and green plastic widgets?”. If anyone has enterd the information into it’s repository, RubberSquid will find it.

Business Orientated Features

1. Cross Platform: RubberSquid works on any device with a browser and an Internet connection: mobile phone, PDA, Blackberry, smartphone, iPhone, notebook, desktop, Mac, Windows, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Linux, etc. etc.
2. Easy to Use: You do not need a computer science degree to use RubberSquid. ANYONE can use it. Even my mother, and she’s over 70.
3. Privacy and Access Control: RubberSquid is private and secure. You have full control over who (if anyone) can view each of your channels. This means you can set up multiple channels for multiple projects and keep them all separate.
4. Data Security: Your information is valuable, so we provide a data backup function. This is a one click function that creates a single zip file containing all your text information in XML format together with all your attachment files, and downloads it to your computer. Its sister function allows you to upload a RubberSquid backup file so you never need worry about losing data.
5. Printing Memos: Sometimes, nothing beats having information on paper, so RubberSquid has a print function that filters out page menus, etc. to give a more professional result than a simple page dump.

Easy and Low Cost

Setting up a RubberSquid account is very simple and costs nothing – free – gratis – so why not give it a try?


Register for RubberSquid here, and see how RubberSquid can improve your team collaboration – registration is FREE

RubberSquid: Did You Know # 2

Did you know there’s a new memo printing function in RubberSquid? This has some major advantages when compared with printing memos using the browser’s internal print function:

• The memo is printed without the clutter of menus and other user interface pieces
• Attachments are printed in order at the end of the memo
• Your memo is printed without widgets such as phone number calling links, etc.

You can print a memo as follows:

1. Sign in to your RubberSquid account
2. Navigate to the memo you want printing
3. Select [Print Memo] from the [Memo Tools] menu
4. A new browser window will pop up as shown in the example below
5. Select the [Print Memo] option from the top

RubberSquid: the People’s Antidote to Wiki Chaos?

When we started out with RubberSquid’s distant ancestor (in 1997!), the term “wiki” usually drew blank looks. Even now, in the era of the Wikipedia (an uber-wiki amongst wikis), the generic wiki concept is at once both so simple and so novel that, for many, it’s difficult to grasp. In some respects, it’s similar to riding a bicycle: simple and natural for one who knows how, and a useful mode of transport – yet seemingly absurd to somebody who has never experienced it.

Wikipedia and its descendants aside, most of the wikis deployed today are on corporate intranets providing an invaluable way for teams to collaborate through pages of information delivered to conventional browsers.

But, left on their own, wikis can be chaotic beasts. In the enterprise environment, it is only the stakeholders’ vested interest in the information contained that tames the wiki’s natural instinct towards chaos. Given an infinite number of monkeys on typewriters, one of them will eventually type a “Midsummer Night’s Dream”, but give a finite number of anarchic employees a wiki and, pretty soon, information chaos prevails. It’s not so much that participants maliciously set out to damage the wiki, although there is always some risk of that, it’s more to do with the different approaches that people take to organising and presenting what is after all “their” information.

RubberSquid is a “wiki for the masses”. It is a wiki that anyone should be able to use in their everyday lives. It is also a wiki that needs to work on any device with a browser – not just the big friendly PC screen with its full keyboard and mouse. At heart, it’s a wiki that needs to tame and restrain itself from its natural tendancy towards chaos.

And how does it do this? Simply by keeping it simple.

Look at almost any other wiki and you’ll see an approach designed for enterprise PC users, one that does not migrate well to the mobile environment, and one that is not going to be embraced by the avarage consumer.

RubberSquid is different.

• It uses an easily understood information hierarchy: account >> channels >> memos >> attachments; a hierarchy that’s already familiar to any PC user, and one that migrates cleanly and clearly to mobile;
• It has a user interface that adapts itself according to which device you’re using: a simplified display with a slightly deeper hierarchy for mobile phones compared with a richer, shallower view on the desktop.
• It encapsulates all the operations (such as Edit, Rename, Delete, etc.) that users may want to perform on an entry into easily accessed menus instead of seemingly random pick-points in a page; menus that retain continuity across device types;
• It provides numerous ways for mobile users to get RubberSquid on their phones, ranging from QR Codes, through to email and SMS invitations;
• It allows users full control over who gets to see their information. A RubberSquid channel can be private or it can be shared with up to 120 other people. Also, channel owners can define privileges for each sharer of a channel, choosing whether a particular sharer is allowed to add memos for example.

A hardcore wiki purist might argue that RubberSquid is not really a true wiki precisely because it curbs the wiki’s instinct towards information chaos. We don’t think it’s really worth debating. RubberSquid provides wiki functions to all kinds of consumers and prosumers ranging from individual contractors, to small companies, to families – all of whom need to share information without it being public, and all of whom need the ability to access their information when they’re away from their PC.

RubberSquid does what it says on the tin, and that’s why RubberSquid really is the people’s wiki.

Register for RubberSquid here, and see how a wiki can work for you – registration is FREE

RubberSquid: Did You Know # 1

Did you know that RubberSquid re-scales your images BEFORE it sends them to your phone so that they arrive faster and cost less than sending the original big version?

If you’re looking at a picture on your phone or PDA, you can still download the original image data by selecting the menu item [Get Full Size]. RubberSquid even tells you the actual size of the original image so you know what to expect.

Don’t forget that you can upload images as attachments to your memos by logging into your account on a PC.

Uploading images is a great way to get your favourite snaps into RubberSquid and even share them with your nearest and dearest - no one else can see them, so they can be as intimate as you like ;) Or maybe you just want to upload images of your favourite celebs or soccer team.

Technical Bulletin #1: Hilarous Post on “Mobile Marketing Magazine”

Laugh? I nearly had therapy.

Back in July ‘07 Vodafone UK implemented the Novarra transcoder. One of the functions of this transcoder is to replace the user-agent string in every HTTP request with a generic “Mozilla…” one.

Ok, so what?

Well, we, and a very large number of other mobile-savvy web players, use the user-agent information to tell our servers what type of device our customer is using so that we can deliver an appropriately optimised version of our pages: small-footprint, easily navigated XHTML-MP to phones, full blown HTML with Javascript to desktops, etc.

By stripping the user-agent from the originator’s request and replacing it with the generic signature used by desktop browsers, our servers were fooled into thinking that everyone coming in via the Vodafone mobile pipe was on a desktop – exactly what Vodafone and Novarra intended.

And why did they hatch such a cunning plan? Probably because Vodafone UK sees the prospect of millions of customers visiting free desktop orientated sites on mobile phones as a way to drive data revenues – a vision with a blind spot: most desktop sites don’t scale well visually or technically to resource constrained mobile devices leading to very poor user experiences.

Not only that; operators cream off generous chunks of the earnings that third-party mobile-aware sites make from selling subscriptions and content such as ringtones and wallpapers, so by making it difficult for these services to operate as autonomous mobile-aware sites, Vodefone is damaging its own revenues.

And now? Well, we took a number of steps to protect our users and overcome this somewhat cavalier attitude to unilaterally redefining how the web works, including: (i) we gave desktop users the ability to switch manually between “desktop” and “PDA” views; and (ii) with support from bigger guns than us at Bango, we had ourselves whitelisted so that the Novarra transcoder passes our traffic through unmolested.

And why am I ranting on about this now, 10 months after the event?

Well, it was this interview with Novarra in “Mobile Marketing Magazine” which reignited my indignation – have a read, then note the volume of comments at the end!

We particularly enjoyed the reference to domains ending in .WAP as being passed through unchanged by the Novarra transcoder, a TLD that doesn’t even exist!

Priceless!

Register for RubberSquid here, it’s the only personal wiki that works on almost any device, and registration is FREE

RubberSquid Goes Dogging

One of the most satisfying aspects of running RubberSquid is that occasionally you get to hear about some really off-beat uses for the service that we never even thought of when we were creating it.

Don’t get me wrong, we NEVER access anything on RubberSquid without first being invited, and we would certainly never write about anything here without running it past the originator first.

Fortunately, those who enjoy dogging aren’t shy. And it’s dogging that wins this month’s accolade as “most original use of RubberSquid”.

Ok, doggers are by nature:

1. Mobile – that is, they engage in their activities away from home – often, a long way from home;
2. Community orientated – well it just doesn’t count as dogging if you’re on your own;
3. Internet and mobile savvy – because the word often gets around through forums and SMS

So where does RubberSquid come in? (!)

Well, it allows people to set up secure and confidential groups on the Internet that they can access via mobile phones or PCs. Using RubberSquid, doggers can more easily communicate while on the move, making it much easier to share insider information and … well … various other things connected with the noble art of dogging. Apparently.

Interested in how RubberSquid can benefit your group? Register for RubberSquid FREE here.