Comment

Symplification obviously hasn't been updated for some time, and the way things are going it's likely that they're not going to be.

It's not just the "new" job (and sometimes World of Warcraft, hehehe) - it's also that since that new job started I've been using a blackberry (with an unlimited data plan), and that single device provides basically all of the functionality I need.

For example, I have an N80 - but as it's music playing capabilities were rendered useless by an ipod shuffle (which is about the same size as the adaptor it needed for me to plug proper headphones in - and has much better sound quality through my super.fi 5 pros), the only thing I use it for nowadays is to actually make phone calls. Yeah - not even SMS.

Indeed, assuming you have Gmail App (for email) and the newest version of velvetpuffin (for instant messaging - disclosure, I've acted for the owner of velvetpuffin before) I don't think there's actually any reason to have a smartphone - anything which has data (preferably 3G) and supports those applications will do! So - buying a phone will become something which is almost -completely- about how you feel about the device.

And this is from the perspective of someone who actually uses a smartphone as a smartphone... (which is a whole other reason to think that "smartphones" are a waste).

It is, of course, possible to argue that I've just lost the faith, and it's also perfectly accurate to point out that phones are branching out even more than ever before (GPS, for example) - but unfortunately I suspect that it's all about usability, and the swiss-army knife device is likely to be inferior to the "real deal" (e.g. look how the prices of standalone GPS devices have fallen, and think about how much easier it is to have a nice big screen when being directed; or consider something how the creative zen stone plus manages to have a screen and 2GB in a device basically same size as the shuffle).

So - bye for the moment, and thanks for all your clicks! I'm likely to create some other website soon, because that's kinda fun. Don't know what it'll be about though... hmm. I did recently buy a new camera...

[sorry about that - I was getting too many spam comments - send me email if you have something to say, and I'll update accordingly ^.^]

According to news.com.com (*koff koff horrible url*) the iPhone is going to be announced on the first day of WWDC.

Cool.

This means that Nokia (and the other usual suspects - Moto, SE, Samsung, etc.) still have more than 2 months left. For Nokia, by their usual standards, this means that if they are going to have a direct iPhone competitor (touchscreen etc.) it has to be announced within the next couple of days.

We don't think the announced yesterday Nokia 5700 (pictured above) is it, although we do admit to liking some of the new styling cues.

Quick! Touchscreen device with symbian, multi-touch (like this!) tech, blackberry connect, 3.5mm plug and the music quality of at least an ipod shuffle, and I'm sold (if I were planning on getting an iPhone, and the multi-touch actually works such that our concerns about painful interfaces are misplaced).

[via Engadget]

Futuremark very kindly let us know that they're currently running a comic strip competition, in conjunction with Alienware.

The prize is a pretty sweet notebook - with a 17" screen and powered by an Intel Core 2 processor (specific processor is not stated) together with an AMD Mobility Radeon X1800. Intel and AMD are working together! (*I keeeeeddd.*) I would love to have one to play WoW on. :D

Anyhow, the contest itself is pretty fun - you basically draw a mini comic strip (on anything) and if it's judged to be the "best/funniest" - then you win! [Strangely - only one entry per person, and not so strangely - you must be in the US/Canada/EU.] Unfortunately, like most contests of this sort, all rights in the contest entries accrue to Futuremark - and a little more unusually, even moral rights (e.g. the right to be identified as the author of the comic) are possibly assigned to Futuremark.

I don't quite know if I agree with this. While the practice is certainly widespread (check it out the terms and conditions the next time you enter any contest which involves you creating copyrightable work), and indeed might make the entire exercise commercially feasible (e.g. free sources of photos!), perhaps taking such a harsh approach isn't the best way. Taken to an extreme, the transfer of your rights means that you can't even display the comic you drew for the contest, because you no longer own the copyright. It's possible to argue that the copyrights were procured for a fee, and indeed if the person was actually compensated (i.e. was a contest winner) perhaps this would be true, but in this case ALL copyrights are assigned once the entry is submitted. Oh well. Just so long as the people drawing the comics are aware of this ;)

The other thing, which is not really as unusual, is that you provide personal information and "opt-in" to receive marketing. My friend, Wil Harris, wrote a little while back that Web 2.0 = loss of privacy. It's probably true, and the question is how much that really is worth. Having to reveal your information in a competition is probably less insidious - and Futuremark at least has a decent privacy policy. Just something else to take note of, generally...

[and I didn't post the previous story!~ must have left some setting changed accidentally. I'll leave it on though, just for fun..]

... and Interdigital wins.

Nokia's press release on the issue is rather gung-ho, and quotes a Nokia Vice-President saying that "This case demonstrates that legal disputes are sometimes necessary in order to lower unrealistic demands," but we're not so sure why this is the case.

It might be that InterDigital was asking for much more previously, but the payment of USD 253 million (due today) is almost exactly what two separate tribunals awarded to Interdigital. As previously stated, this is not altogether surprising, as even at that stage two independent third parties had decided in favour of InterDigital.

What's worrying is the bland assertion in Interdigital's press release that "Nokia's sales of 3G products after April 26, 2006 will be unlicensed."

To what extent, and of what nature these licences are is not known (at least to me), but given that 3G is apparently the future, if critical patents are involved this simply bodes well for InterDigital investors.

Nokia's share price seems unaffected; on the NYSE the stock is up 0.31%.

DigiTimes reports that Microsoft wants to see Windows Mobile smart-phones on the market for under $300, to boost the company's share of the mobile-device operating system market. ODM handset makers are not optimistic about accomplishing this anytime soon.

The Register also suspects that this will be hard: "The difficulty is the inherent cost of feature-rich phones, and the need to get the sales volumes that will allow the economies of scale necessary to get the price down without sacrificing too many features. Nokia can do it, but it's questionable whether the much smaller Taiwanese firms, with far weaker brand recognition, can do so."

We're not quite sure why Microsoft really cares about the specific figures of their market share. Sure - Nokia has the lead - but the fact that Palm recently chose Windows Mobile rather than Symbian should have helped Microsoft focus a little - upon making Windows Mobile the only choice for all high-end smartphones; trying to increase volumes instead makes it seem as though they want more revenue from the product, (we wonder how much of that $300 dollars is taken up by the windows mobile operating system itself) or that they have self-esteem issues.

Maybe the revenue reason is the correct one, what with the losses from each Xbox 360 sold. They're probably regretting not selling the Xboxes on eBay - or maybe they are, which is why retail shops seem to be dry.

[via All About Symbian]

So - del.icio.us has been bought by Yahoo, (yahoo blog / del.icio.us blog), and everyone has an opinion on tagging.

We'll just reference Stephen Green (who is nice and concise) - Let's say we have a system where people manually assign keywords to documents (tagging) and let's also say that people can run queries against this index of keywords. You can think of such a query as an attempt by the searcher to assign keywords to a document that he or she would like to get in response to the query. The problem is that the person who originally assigned a tag to the document and the searcher who "assigned a tag" to the document are going to be inconsistent, so the searcher won't pick quite the same tag.

This is true. However, it also misses the point. No one ever said that tagging was the answer for search engines (it's clearly not), or that it was superior to keyword searching within documents. However - pictures (what flickr uses tags for) are not documents, and neither are links (what del.icio.us uses tags for).

When considering links and pictures, tagging, and being able to search those tags, is alot more useful than having no tagging. Links and pictures include some metadata, but usually not nearly enough to find a particular one in a pile.

Even if people are internally inconsistent, having the ability to search for a particular photo by inputting something (dimly remembered text) is better than being forced to search by scrolling by date. That's why we think all photo albums should support tags.

Indeed, we think that in the future, certain tags should be added automatically. For pictures, having EXIF data include things like geographical location (by GPS or from cell networks) would be nice.

[Image Credit: Om Malik]