Nowadays life is somewhat simpler. I wear a jacket and carry around an iPhone and a Palm Pre, one in each pocket. My music, photos, games and internet all fit into a single device that pretty much encompasses my personal life, while the other one holds everything I need for my work. Technology is moving from devices that perform a single function to those that are multi-purpose – after all, why buy, carry and maintain several devices when one will do the job?

Yesterday Apple announced the iPad, their new tablet computer. Designed to fill the gap between a smartphone and a laptop computer, their goal was to create a new device with a small set of core strengths. These start off with web browsing and email, but head into directions such as e-books, movies and other forms of entertainment. There’s even a productivity suite in the form of iWork, providing the capability to show and edit presentations, spreadsheets and documents.

There’s also been a lot of early criticism of the device, much as there was with the launch of the original iPhone. It doesn’t handle voice calls, it doesn’t support Flash, it doesn’t have a camera and it doesn’t support multitasking. While some of those are fair, it’s worth cutting beyond the surface and looking at the strategy behind the device and how it’s likely to evolve.

The easiest one is the comparison to e-book readers like the Amazon Kindle. The latest Kindle DX is priced at $489 and is arguably designed with a primary purpose of showing books. This means that if you want to carry around your book collection, the Kindle needs to be in your bag alongside your laptop and other gadgets. The iPad starts at just ten dollars more, and yet is in full colour. Amazon are already facing competition in the marketplace from a number of competing e-ink readers like the Nook from Barnes & Noble. There’s also a huge number that were announced at CES, all competing on just that single function. From a strategic point of view, it makes more sense to bundle books with other capabilities than it does to compete directly with an established device.

It’s not designed for use as a phone. The Kindle doesn’t support it, while it remains to be seen if the upcoming Android tablets will. Besides, anyone who remembers the Nokia N-gage will recall what it feels like to hold a generously proportioned device to your head. Yes, most of us have headsets these days, but it’s the feel of the thing. Besides, wouldn’t it be annoying if you’re in mid-flow typing out a blogpost or similar, when suddenly the application minimises just because someone’s calling you? There’s already talk of VOIP applications such as Skype making their way from the iPhone to the iPad, but I see this more as a mobile internet (like the Nokia Booklet 3G) than a mobile phone.

The lack of support for Adobe Flash may well be a problem to some. There are concerns that some Flash apps can be a resource hog (Zynga’s Farmville being a typical example of an app that grabs your browser and refuses to let go), while others may represent security risks (Twitter recently disabled some Flash widgets due to a security problem). Developers also now have a range of other creative elements such as Javascript, CSS and HTML5 in order to make websites more dynamic. Don’t forget, Apple also have their own video and audio codecs, and it’s possible that the iPad and iPhone will be used to drive support of these formats.

The inclusion of iWork for just under $10 doesn’t just offer a basic productivity suite, it also doubles up as a statement of intent to developers. By showing that the iPad can be used for business related tasks, developers are encouraged to consider what other work related apps would be suitable. The demo of Brushes at yesterday’s keynote really emphasised this direction of looking at how existing tasks could be redesigned to run on a tablet. I’m hoping for a lot of interesting software to come from this, from advanced blogging software to some creative design and project management tools. Pitched properly, this could become a strong collaborative tool and replace the netbook or laptop for small client meetings. Again, it makes strategic sense – Apple have obtained a chunk of consumer apps, but really want to stimulate growth in more business oriented directions.

Probably the biggest disappointment for mass media was the absence of an out-of-the-box newspaper or magazine subscription service to sit alongside iBooks. I’ve no doubt that it’ll happen – the New York Times demonstration shows as much – but I think they’ll have to work a touch harder to get a solution that works in an integrated way. There may well be demand for subscription based services, but publishing houses may well need to rally together in order to launch a service that consumers will buy in to. The presentation mechanism is mostly there – all that remains is delivery and pricing.

Looking on, what can we expect to see in the iPad’s future? I think that sooner or later some camera management capability will arrive, either in the form of a clip-on camera or by using Bluetooth to pair with a camera and support direct image capture and manipulation. I think we’ll also see advanced collaboration tools to allow owners to cluster together and share content through simple gestures. I also think that iBooks may even open up as a self-publishing mechanism, allowing authors to produce their own books, guides and manuals for sale on the platform.

The HP Slate: Fresh interface needed?

The big losers out of this are the other tablet manufacturers. Google’s Android OS may provide great access to all of their services, but there’s still a gap when it comes to managing and providing access to a large amount of entertainment. That said, by licensing Android out to manufacturers, Google effectively minimises their own risk. Devices like the JooJoo now feel dead in the water, while the HP Slate may struggle due to the Windows 7 interface. Just like with Windows mobile phones, we may see the Slate emerge with an overlay interface to make it easy to use. Netbooks will still survive – as Steve Jobs said they’re just smaller, cheaper laptops.

The other big loser out of this is Adobe’s Flash technology. After being the mainstay of interactive and elegant applications on the Internet for a number of years and providing t he technology behind services like YouTube, it finally seems that the end may be approaching. Google are working on their own streaming video technology that will perform natively in the browser, while tools such as AJAX are encroaching on another front. Security conscious surfers and those with adblocking software routinely block Flash objects. It may well be in a few years time that Flash starts to fade from our screens in the same way that Real Media has.

iPhone: Complex kit

I’ve recently handled a number of queries from friends and family about problems with their iPhones. These issues can be as simple as the battery indicator not updating. They can also be as serious as the phone not waking out of standby to alert you of an incoming call, or refusing to charge or sync when docked. While some problems can be ignored, others can make the phone unusable.

The good news is that in all the cases I’ve seen, the iPhone has been easy to fix without any professional help or even opening the device.

Symptoms that I’ve seen include:

• Refusing to charge, either when docked for syncing or plugged directly into the mains
• Refusing to sync when docked
• Not updating battery/signal strength
• Apps not loading, or attempting to load then crashing
• Not receiving incoming calls
• Not receiving text messages, or the receipt being delayed

Notifications: They all add up

The reason for all these problems is usually straightforward. Almost all phones have two halves – a radio side which manages the network connection and a user interface side which controls how you interact with the phone. As smartphones become increasingly powerful, the software they run grows in complexity. They behave more like mini-computers than simple mobile phones, running a range of apps developed by third parties. They can accept incoming connections and push notifications. All of these require a slice of the phone’s limited resources to use

If a phone runs out of resources it might not be able to handle a request. This request might be an incoming call or message, a push notification, a charging signal or launching an app. You can try to free up resources by pausing the music player or closing some web pages. This isn’t always effective – you might be using an app that has a memory leak, meaning that resources are never freed up when the app is closed.

One advantage the iPhone 3GS has over the 3G and original iPhone is the internal memory available. The 3GS has 256MB of internal memory, compared to 128MB in the 3G and classic iPhone. As a result resource conflicts should in theory occur less often on the newer 3GS.

Power cycling: a hidden trick

The solution is probably what you’d expect if you were dealing with a regular computer – in most cases simply switching it off and on again will do the trick. There are two ways you can do this:

• Hold down the power/lock button for about 5 seconds. A “slide to power off” button should appear. Switch the phone off, then switch it back on once it has finished shutting down
• If the “slide to power off” button does not appear, hold down the power/lock button and the home button (the one with the square on it) together for about 10 seconds. The phone should shut down instantly. You can then use the power button to restart the phone normally.

There are also some steps that you can take in order to keep your phone running smoothly and should be part of your regular maintenance cycle.

• Restart the phone to clear out any memory leaks. You should look to do this at least once a month.
• Be ruthless about push notifications and deactivate the ones you don’t really need.
• Regularly clean out the emails you have stored on your phone, archiving them offline if you need to.
• Remove apps that you’re not using, or tried once but never re-used. You can keep them in iTunes in case you want to use them again.
• Track your app usage – if you continue having problems, it might be down to an app you commonly use. Try to narrow it down from your usage patterns and feedback the app has received on iTunes and elsewhere
• Try not to have too many web pages open – close down the ones you’re not using.

It’s worth pointing out that these aren’t faults with the iPhone. The issues it faces are the same as with any other complex computing device that runs third-party apps. Recognising it as such, instead of the more simplistic mobile phones we’ve grown up with, helps to shape how we keep the device running smoothly. Just like with a computer, persistent problems may be an indication of needing to restore the phone from a backup or even reformat it completely to factory defaults. You may have a hardware fault, in which case it’s well worth going back to either the store you bought it from or your local Apple store. Hopefully though, these tips above will help you in being able to eliminate most of the common problems.

Ever heard of the phrase “end-to-end”? It’s what service providers use when trying to test out new products that they’re looking to bring to market. They test out every step of the process, be it order fulfilment, streaming entertainment or real-time data services. Part of that process is about catching the weakpoints and improving them, but it’s also about ensuring that adequate customer support mechanisms are there in order to catch things when they go wrong. Your perfectly designed product may start to fall apart when unexpected system behaviour creeps in, especially if the interactions between systems are complex and non-trivial. It’s therefore surprising when a firm seems to have dropped on this.

It became inevitable that Google would release the Nexus One once the period of “dogfooding” was completed. I’ve heard it more eloquently put as “drinking one’s own champagne”, but the process is the same. It may have been that this was little more than a holiday gift to its employees, as there’s little time to test anything between it starting on 12th December and going on sale on 5th January, especially with Christmas in the middle.

On paper the Nexus One has all the makings of a great phone. An OLED touchscreen, noise cancelling microphone and full speech-to-text tick a fair few boxes, along with a 3D capable display and turn by turn navigation. There is the glaring omission of multitouch and the limitation of only 512MB being made available for app storage, but on the whole it’s a solid package. Where things start to come unstuck is in the overall “service wrap”, or how you’re looked after as a customer once you have it.

As Google is selling the phone directly to customers, the margin of responsibility has become blurred. Early indications are that Google, htc (the manufacturer) and T-Mobile aren’t clear on the structure of this relationship themselves, with customers being the ones losing out, both with reception issues and ordering/storefront problems. Unsurprisingly there’s been a bit of a backlash from this, with some consumers feeling bitter about forking out $530 for a device that costs $174 to make.

Google are learning the hard way just what it means to have your name on the hardware, and how having integrated support for that hardware is important.It’s for this reason, above the technical considerations, why going for an iPhone or Palm Pre may be a more sensible choice at present. The bleeding edge is exactly that, with various improvements required before that edge becomes dulled. That said, there’s no reason why this is a bad thing for Google, Apple, or the smartphone market in general.

The competition between Google, Apple, Palm and RIM is certainly a good thing for the smartphone marketplace, and for consumers in general. With it quality should go up, while the price of this advanced technology should go down. Firms like Motorola who plan to use Andriod for all their future devices may feel threatened by Google’s stance. This may provide Microsoft with an opportunity to move back into the game when it releases Windows Mobile 7 later this year.

A gap is also emerging between smartphones such as Apple, Palm and Andriod, and those made by other firms such as Nokia, Samsung and LG. While the low-tech and low end area of the market can be a legitimate place to target, it’s usually where handset margins are squeezed. Traditional phone manufacturers need to be wary about being squeezed into this space by newcomers dominating the smartphone end. Richard Scoble probably has the right idea when he says that there is more likely to be competition between the web-friendly smartphone sector and the boxed-in group in the middle of the market. These phones with Facebook and Twitter apps “built-in” are likely to be squeezed out of the market as smartphones move to the middle-range.

One particular emerging service is open authentication. Groups such as the OpenID Foundation have emerged in order to promote a common set of standards for developers to use, while several decentralised OpenID providers have sprung up. In essence it all sounds like a good thing, with a site visitor benefiting by being able to use an existing username and password combination. The developer also wins by only having to use a set of freely available modules in order to support authentication instead of designing it themselves from scratch. Everything sounds perfect, right?

As you’ve probably guessed, there is a fly in the ointment. That fly is the relentless barrage of security nightmares that we face every time we switch our computer on and connect with the outside world. Everything from phishers to keyloggers are out there to try and find a chink in our virtual armour or our achilles heel. All of them lie in wait, hoping for a whiff of a password or a hint of a credit card number that they can then trade in underground markets. Don’t think that videogames are immune from this as well – indications are that credentials for World of Warcraft accounts can sell for up to twice as much as a set of credit card details.

Of course, the next step is to look at where your open authentication might be used. A collection of social networking sites might not be that big a deal – both Facebook and Twitter are setting themselves up as identity providers. At the moment, all that you’d be likely to lose is your reputation if someone managed to gain access to your Twitter account, particularly if you have a large number of followers. If it becomes possible to access your web-based email through the same service then suddenly all the other websites you use with a “forgotten your password?” function suddenly become vulnerable as well. This might expose things like names and addresses of friends and family members, which other online communities you visit and how you access them, and so on.

Paranoid yet? Potentially you should be, but that doesn’t mean that a solution can’t be implemented. Two-factor authentication has been kicking around for years, with reliance on something you know (a password) combined with something you have (a fingerprint, a retina scan or a key-ring with a digital display that changes every minute) in order to get around keyloggers and phishers sniffing your credentials out of the ether. Trouble is, fingerprint and retinal scanners are expensive, while it’s difficult to make a case for sending out tokens and dongles when a firm is effectively supplying a free service to customers.

There is another option. With the mobile phone becoming an increasing necessity in our lives, it’s becoming safer to assume that anyone using popular online services has one. As a result a number of free apps have emerged in order to support two-factor authentication, most notably from Blizzard Entertainment and Verisign. With these, the only cost is in developing the app itself before uploading it to the handset supplier app stores.

Twitter has also been moving towards OAuth as a way for granting applications access to a user’s account. The trouble with such techniques though is that they still fall back on the standard username and password, except that the user is logging in to Twitter directly instead of the website requesting access. It also grants access permanently until removed, meaning that the third party now has continual access to your details instead of the time required to support the transaction. For occasions where regular access is not required, the use of OAuth tokens is not suitable. That doesn’t mean that OAuth should be scrapped entirely – for apps that regularly need access to our individual identity data, a periodic refresh mechanism is fine. Sitting it alongside a solution that works for those one-off moments, or even to approve regular-access apps/OAuth tokens, would be a good move.

But why bother going to all this expense? At the end of the day, it’s about two things: the damage that someone misusing your credentials can cause, and the amount of time it’ll take to fix them again. Having to fix either of them is unappealing, yet whenever we use open authentication we run the risk of this happening. It’s crucial that this problem is addressed as part of the move towards identification services in order to maintain confidence in the social networking infrastructure as it moves to support them. Without it, all it takes is a couple of large scale compromising incidents for growth in the medium to stall.

As always, comments are welcome. If I’m wide of the mark or spot on, feel free to add your thoughts.

It was with some nervousness that I reached the Apple Store in Regent Street, London. I’d heard a lot about the place from Stephen Fry’s twitterings about the place, and was hoping to find someone on-hand to take me through the various machines on offer. I’d been willing to give Apple another chance after I started using an iPhone in the middle of last year – a phone that I’m incredibly pleased with and find an absolute joy to use. I’ve tried many Nokias, Motorolas, Samsungs, Sony Ericssons and so on but find the little touchscreen device the best one I’ve ever used. I guess that my expectations had been set high from that – after all, if a firm can get something so right on a phone, surely they can manage something as simple as a retail experience?

Well, in a word, no.

The first thing that struck me was the layout of the place. On each side of a central staircase were rows of high wooden tables, each laden with Apple kit tethered so as to prevent it escaping out of the front door. Next to each item was a small card informing you of the name of the item you were looking at and how much it would cost to walk away with one, but little else besides. The biggest problem though was being able to actually use one of the machines. Although there were banks and banks of them, every single one was in use. And the users didn’t appear to be ones considering a future purchase, as almost all of them seemed to be plugged into Facebook. I briefly thought about the potential chaos that could be made from the tactical installation of keylogging software, but quickly dismissed it as I attempted to gain the attention of a turquoise clad expert to show me the ins and outs of Mac OS X. Alas, a couple of attempts to engage one of the Apple sales team resulted in abject failure. Crestfallen, I beat a hasty retreat to a nearby Starbucks where I discussed with those with me about the state of retail today. Needless to say, it’s unlikely I’ll be purchasing a Macbook this year.

My other experience with Apple this week was about the iPhone 3.0 software update that’s due to hit our phones sometime in the Summer. While I’m really glad about the inclusion of new features such as Bluetooth Stereo (finally my Motorola S705 has a purpose again) and MMS, I’m a bit concerned about the new micropayments system that’s being brought in. This new system basically means that applications will be able to allow you to make purchases from within the application. There’s a couple of uses for this, from an episodic game that allows you to buy more levels or content online, through to games like The Sims that could provide you with an in-game catalogue of items that you could pick up for a few pence. It also means that developers could release one version of a game for both trial/demo and full versions, with the user making a micropayment in order to enable the full game. But, like with anything else that requires me to fork out cash, I’ve got some concerns about the approach. I’m wondering how easy or hard it would be for an application to spoof an iTunes login page and harvest your details as well as taking a payment for the content you wish to unlock. More than that though, I’m wondering how it’ll impact the shopping experience. Currently I know how much I’ll pay for an app, as it’s all done up front. The nightmare scenario I can see coming is an app that costs a tiny amount to buy, but has some astronomical micropayment costs associated with it. In this regard, the costs need to be clearly presented up-front on the iTunes store, or it’ll be a riskier business for consumers. All that said, it may be that this can be used for subscription based services as well. If it can, this paves the way for MMOs to finally make their way onto the platform.

In both tales today, there’s a common theme: Retail is Detail. It’s an old adage that I picked up when working at an electrical goods retailer when I was young. and it’s still valid today. And although the giants of Cupertino may produce some absolutely fantastic kit, if they can’t get people to sell it then it’s a wasted effort. In the current climate, being able to convert visitors to your stores into sales is absolutely crucial. And while having an open door policy may get people in the door, it’s meaningless if all you’re doing is taking them to Facebook instead of the till.

Nokia N-Gage: Clunky

A long while back I was asked on my thoughts around gaming on the mobile phone. At the time I replied that there was no simple answer, that there were a number of scenarios that made being able to design strategies and methods for achieving success in these markets very difficult. Problems ranging from device compatibility through to user experience all contributed to make the platform unappealing. Compared to the familiar and well-used processes used to support traditional video games, the mobile phone was treated as a niche platform. A couple of attempts were made to crack the mechanism – Nokia’s N-Gage phones were one such example – but ultimately they failed to gain a foothold in the marketplace due to only offering a limited range of games. So what’s changed since then? In a word, everything.

Apple's App Store

Back in July 2008, Apple launched their App Store, offering 500 applications that customers could download direct to their iPhone. In the weekend since it was launched over 10 million applications were downloaded, with those chosen being a mix of free and paid content. Since then, estimates have put the amount of revenue the App Store at $1 billion with Apple keeping 30% and passing the rest on to developers. Fast forward to late January and Apple are now saying that there’s been 500 million downloads from a catalogue that’s expanded to 15,000 applications. By far the largest category of applications on the App Store is games, although it’s impossible to quantify how many of those are ‘limited feature’ free versions in order to tempt players into forking out for the full blown version. Suffice it to say, games have been a huge success on the iPhone. It’s no wonder that traditional games developers are taking a keen interest in the platform for future titles. Not only that, but Microsoft, Palm, RIM’s Blackberry, Google’s Android, Samsung and Nokia are all working on having their own app store catering for paid applications shortly. It’s unclear if any of these other stores Will be as successful, as Apple already has a billing relationship with their customers via iTunes and used their close relationship with the existing OS X developer community to ensure a selection of applications was available at launch.

That’s not to say that the Cupertino crew have had things all their own way – commentators feel that being reliably able to search for games or get auto-recommended a list of titles to try would be a huge welcome, as would being able to look for top rated games in particular genres.  The shop storefronts also feel a little static, with little scope for uploading a youtube video of the app running or audio commentary from the developer. That said, there’s also the question of what the App Store as a concept will introduce for desktop software. For desktop videogames at least, an online shop has been kicking around for some time, either in the form of Steam or Direct2Drive. With all of this laid out in front of them, surely it must represent some kind of Golden Age for developers and publishers to connect smoothly with customers? Well, not quite.

The trouble with developing videogames is that they cost money. In the case of PC and console videogames it can be a as much as $30 million, while customers are increasingly concerned about the value they get from the games they buy. Conventional industry wisdom states that for a game with top flight production values, a publisher will need to shift about 1 to 2 million units in order to break even, due to the complexity of the latest consoles and the relative cost of developing for them. Compare that with the iPhone, where a nine year-old can write code that will run on the platform. But a shallower platform, where users are becoming accustomed to a low price-point in games brings it’s own problems, and although indie developers can crank out a game relatively easily, they find they have to keep producing rapidly in order to sustain that income. There are already development tools that can make the process a little more streamlined, but largely speaking it’s still a new area. Even then, there’s always the complication about developing a game for all of the emerging app stores – which ones you pick, how you spread development, what maximum technology level you develop for. It’s always a risk that you’ll start developing for a platform that falls out of favour, leaving you with a game but no market to sell it to.

Aurora Feint: Asynchronous

So, is there an alternative? Well, it just so happens that there might be. One relatively unexplored area of videogame development on the mobile platform is the MMO. Currently, there are some tentative steps into this area through titles such as Aurora Feint, but these tend to be asynchronous experiences where the player can chat with others using an IRC style interface and use ghosting (competing against another player’s saved session) in order to provide the multiplayer experience. Parallel Kingdom allows players to play alongside each other using GPS, but relies on a solid data connection to maintain gameplay continuity. In a realm where data connections aren’t always present, it’s important to either allow action to take place at a slower place so that every player gets a chance to take part in the action, or allow portions of the game to be carried out offline. Luckily, the concept of turn-based games has been around for a fair while, with their ‘tick’ based variants such as OGame being particularly suited for massively multiplayer gaming. From there, it’s a matter of developing a sequence of game mechanics and content, as well as the clients that run on the various mobile devices that are available. The wonderful thing about developing the infrastructure in the first place is that it can be recycled – the same mechanisms could be used to facilitate a football team management game as much as one revolving around tribal warfare.

There are, of course, some sticking points. How do you get people to pay for the thing? Traditionally web or browser-based MMOs have relied upon advertising for funding, while client-server variants have used either a subscription based mechanism or a microtransaction system where in-game items are sold for real currency. Either are possible with a mobile-based MMO, with transactions being possible in real-time via Premium SMS, or by charging an in-game allowance using facilities such as PayPal. There’s enough flexibility to even employ different charging approaches for different games released.

But what about that niggling doubt about developing mobile clients for all those different devices? Well, recently I had the luck of catching up with Paul Golding, who is somewhat of an expert in the field of mobile web technologies. It may be that one option is to open up the infrastructure and allow users, fans and so on to develop their own clients. Provide a standard interface for players to get a feel for the game and perhaps a client or two for a couple of major platforms, but otherwise keep it open and allow others to generate their own frontends to the game.  After all, players are already tweaking their games to create custom interfaces, so why not go the whole hog and allow them to create the client? It mimics the approach of Twitter, a fully web-based app that took off once others started developing clients and offshoot services to integrate with it. By allowing others to hook into the game’s exposed services, you increase the potential to promote it purely by word of mouth as well as avoiding funding development for a multitude of clients. And as long as you keep getting subscriptions, transactions or advertising eyeballs, you only stand to make more from your original concept.

So, while mobile gaming has come a long way already, we’re still only at the first step. By intertwining the data connection and payment relationship already in most mobile phones with compelling games that hook into a player’s other social services, it’s possible to really move forward. This amalgam of old and new ideas might just do the trick.