KeithAhern.com

‘Send to phone’ from Google Maps now in Australia

I have no idea when this started working in Australia - for the longest time it was only in the US.  

NOTE SAFARI USERS you need to do this from a google.com.au map NOT a google.com map.  Safari, at least for me, uses google.com when you use the Google search box.

If you do a google maps search, such as the one I did for the location of tonights curiously named ‘Swedish Beers’ mobile industry event and you pick the ’send’ option

Then choose the phone option and enter an Australian number, no need for the +61 prefix.

And the you get a SMS message like this:

Its nice to still get free SMS messages as some companies such as Twitter are going in the other direction.

The URL is for mobile but the iPhone is smart enough to intercept it and route it to the native app:

3 (Hutchison) users can now roam on Telstra NextG

From The Australian 3 (Hutchison Telecom) users can now roam on Telstra NextG.  That makes their current data card offer of 6G per month for $39 seem like excellent value.  Time to junk the landline? It would be great to wrap this into a good iPhone plan and pretty much achieve wireless broadband utopia, its just pity that the current iPhone as a modem solution is a hack, a worse than that - a hack apple pulled from the app store.  But there are free alternatives for liberated iPhones.

iPhone Apps: Web Apps vs. Native Apps - does it matter?

Its clear that some apps in the iPhone App Store are simple wrappers around existing iPhone web sites.  They are ‘appized’ just to get on the Apple store.  After initially being uncomfortable with that (”that’s not an app!”) I decided its doesn’t really matter – get your brand out there anyway you can – I think most consumers can’t tell the difference once they have an icon on the home screen.  

To paraphrase the duck test:  if a web app looks like an app and behaves like an app then it probably is an app.

How NOT to do an iPhone/Mobile Site - Jetstar.com for iPhone

Jetstar have an iPhone site that’s so bad its actually damaging to the mobile web.

Let’s have look at the site analysed under Safari’s network timeline.

So what’s wrong with this picture?

• 3 seconds page load time ! (over wifi)
• 105K page weight for very little information, it not clear what benefit the 83K of javascript provides. 
• HTML and css is not compressed (see the ‘!’ bubbles in the diagram) 
• Non-bundled JS and CSS files - multiple CSS and JS files slow down page loads

So its slow, inefficient and not exactly pretty.  What about the content? Well, its just about useless:

•  the ‘Sales fares’ and ‘Standard fares’ links are misleading - they link to pages with no information about fares!
• The pages above prompt the user to visit jetstar.com on your ‘computer browser’ - no link to jetstar.com which Mobile Safari is perfectly capable of rendering.
• There is a phone number to call to make bookings but its you can’t click it to make the iPhone call the number (The contact pages also lack click to call)
• The flight schedule page links to PDF files missing an opportunity to use the iPhone UI to drill down schedules through times, destinations, classes etc.
• No link to regular site - there’s no way to get to the regular non-crippled jetstar.com site where users may actually want to buy tickets.  

Sure - it ticks the box of ‘We have an iPhone site’ but it really is a lousy experience for customers.  Mobile phones - especially the iPhone are perfectly capable of providing a fast, secure airline information and booking site.

Keith’s Mobile Goodness Score: 2/10

It goes to show you really do need to employ mobile experts when you want to tap into the 3 billion mobile users out there.

Mobile Web Tips - Part 2 - Essential Tools

1. Safari browser developer menu (Safari’s Preferences > Advanced > show/hide the Develop menu). Network timeline is great to see how efficient your site is.
2. Firefox browser with the following plugins: user agent switcher - for testing mobile versions of sites, YSlow - optimizing sites Live http headers - inspect http traffic
3. Tcpmon - this proxy is small and simple, it’s great for snooping traffic when you need to figure out why a mobile phone is not doing what you want it to do.
4. DeviceAnywhere.com - this site provides remote access to real mobile phones. It’s a bit pricey and does not have Australian telcos but you can get free access to Nokia and Sony Ericsson phones. It’s invaluable for testing when you don’t have the real handset. I don’t use emulators.
5. Bluetooth modem software - debugging or reverse engineering on deck mobile services is very tricky on a mobile phone due to the lack of tools and the limited interface however if you configure your pc to use your phone as a modem and choose the on deck apn instead on the Internet apn you will get access to on deck services - and sophisticated debugging tools such as the ones on this list.

Emerging Trends in mobile handsets

I recently got to play with some handsets soon to be launched in the Australian market. I can not mention the manufacturers.

• FM Transmitters - not receivers.  Some of the consumer phones can transmit their music capability to FM frequencies meaning one less gadget for those without USB connectors in their cars.
• Shiny Black with sliver detailing - in what is surely a reference to the iPhone 2G a lot of phones are choosing the same colour combinations - making it harder than ever to tell the phones - especially candy bar phones apart.  Of course the apple has since introduced a white and silver version of the iPhone 3G.
• 8 Megapixel cameras - the race is on to provide a 10 megapixel camera in a phone.  Its purely for bragging rights as the quality with such a tiny lens will be mediocre.  Think of it as the hummer of cameras.
• Bluetooth, GPS, wifi are becoming standard on mid range handsets