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March 28, 2005
Goodbye T-Mobile, Hello Cingular
I made the switch from T-Mobile to Cingular today. It was a breeze. Took about 5 minutes. I signed up for their all-you-can-eat data program since my new phone is an EDGE phone. Can't wait to check out Virgin Radio on a fast network. I drove back to the office after I left the Cingular store and within about 15 minutes got an SMS telling me that I was all switched over to Cingular andcouldnow make and receive calls on my old number. Nice. The only downside is that we don't get great reception in the office on Cingular. That problem, however can be solved with of these .
Posted by David Adams at 05:00 PM | Comments (2)
March 26, 2005
My New Phone - Nokia 3230
I ordered the newly announced Nokia 3230 from Plemix this week. They drop shipped it out of Hong Kong and I got it Thursday. This is a really cool phone. Here are it's features:
-Symbian OS 7.0 Series 60 Feature Pack 3
- Tri-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE
- 65k colors
- 1.3 Megapixel Camera
- Video recorder:
- mobile video recording and editing and sharing
- Video capture up to 1 hour
- Movie Director application
- Stereo FM radio, MP3 player, Visual radio
- Bluetooth
- Push-to-Talk
- Comes with 32Meg memory card. I upgraded to the 512M
Posted by David Adams at 01:20 PM | Comments (0)
March 25, 2005
T-Mobile Joins the Ranks of Carriers Who don't Get It.
I bought my Nokia 6600 from T-Mobile (for $399) because it is a smart phone and I wanted to run network enabled applications on it. I've been very happy since I bought it in July. However for the last few months, I've had some problems. I bought PicoBlogger and it wouldn't start up and the traffic app that Ryan wrote won't fetch data. I finally got through to T-Mobiles tier 3 support and discovered why; T-Mobile has disabled port 80 (the web) on their T-Zones service. If you have a network Midlet or Symbian app that you bought, you can't use it on T-Mobile anymore unless you sign up for their "Internet" service; which is $20.00 per month!!! So I'm sitting on about $50 worth of apps that I've downloaded for my $399 phone and they won't work on T-Mobile unless I spend another $20 a month. Apparently they want to make sure everyone signs up for their expensive Internet service instead of just T-Zones.
One thought is that they are doing this because the GPRS network is so overloaded that T-Mobile doesn't want to encourage data use on their network.
Probably one of my next posts will be titled "David Moves to Cingular". It's ridiculous to have to pay an extra $20.00 a month just to use a mobile blog app and check the local traffic on top of the $5.00 a month I pay for WAP access through T-Zones.
I you are an applications/game developer that makes networked apps/game, you just effectively lost 10% of the mobile market in the U.S.
Posted by David Adams at 05:14 PM | Comments (3)
March 24, 2005
Seattle Mobile
If you are in the seattle area, tonight is the March meeting of Seattle Mobile. This months topic is "CTIA Roundup". Come hear member's experiences/opinions of the CTIA convention in New Orleans as well as network with others working in Mobile Wireless in the Seattle area. Networking and beer starts at 6:30, discussion starts at 7:00
http://www.seattlemobile.org
Posted by David Adams at 03:32 PM | Comments (0)
March 23, 2005
Employee #3
It was brought to my attention that I neglected to post a photo of our newest developer, Ryan. Ryan started last Monday while we were in New Orleans. He is a great Java developer with a lot of experience with mobile services, J2ME, WAP, etc. I was lucky to be able to hire him.
Posted by David Adams at 02:29 PM | Comments (0)
First 50 Days
Today is the 50th official day of Mobile Research. A lot has happened in the last 50 days. Started, opened a bank account, got company checks, found office space, moved in, bought some computers, got our phones installed, hired two employees, got business cards, purchased 90+ mobile phones, bought office furniture, been to two trade shows, got business cards again, written a bunch of code and posted 46 blog entries.
By the end of the next 50 days, I hope to have a real income stream from the first service. We are on track for the product launch in April. We are being diligent to our dev process and project plan and we aren't going to try to launch this product until it is complete and of the quality that it needs to be. Having said that, we are in a rush to get it done.
Here's looking forward to the next 50 days.
Posted by David Adams at 09:35 AM | Comments (0)
March 20, 2005
Yahoo is buying Flickr
Can't wait to see how they tie it in with Yahoo Mobile
http://blog.flickr.com/flickrblog/2005/03/yahoo_actually_.html
Posted by David Adams at 06:07 PM | Comments (0)
March 19, 2005
Currently Reading
I've added a sidebar to show what I am currently reading. I read lot of different books and thought this might be interesting to some. I'm always interested to see what others are reading. I thought about joining the Amazon associates program where I can get paid a percentage of books bought if refererred by my site, but after some searching around I found that my favorite local bookstore has an online site, so I am linking to them instead. Don't get me wrong,I love Amazon, but it would be for the worse if the only bookstores I was able to physically go into were Borders and Barnes & Noble. So if you don't support your local bookstore; support mine!
Posted by David Adams at 09:47 PM | Comments (2)
Flickr
I've started using Flickr to host my photos. I've been reluctant to use it thus far because it was easier to host them on my server. However, I found a slick Flickr uploader application for the Mac that makes it a snap. Now I just drag-n-drop my pics into the app and I'm done. All the benefits of Flickr with no hassle. Flickr made managing my New Orleans photos a breeze.
My Flickr address is http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidadams
Posted by David Adams at 12:39 PM | Comments (0)
March 18, 2005
Shots of New Orleans
These don't have anything to do with the startup or mobile, but I wanted to share some pics with friends. So click on the pick if you want to see what we were eatin' in New Orleans.
Posted by David Adams at 02:56 PM | Comments (0)
March 17, 2005
CTIA Wrap up
OK I'm ready to get out of New Orleans. Had a great show. Met a lot of great people and made some good contacts. It was good to see some people I haven't run into in a while. All-in-all a pretty good show. Did a lot of great research on potential customers and partners. The plenary sessions were a pretty big disappointment. A lot of big company VP's saying the same things they always say.
No big suprises or announcements. Mostly it just seems that the things that everyone has been talking about for the last few years are starting to happen. Convergence is happening and companies are making real products. From the sessions and news it is still pretty clear that North America is not living up to the potential of mobile and the carriers seem to be the problem from my prospective. It is real clear to me that we are going to need to be in the European and Asian markets as soon as we can get there. Just to be involved in the emerging technologies.
Frankly, there weren't that many new/cool devices out either. A lot of the same. However there are a LOT of new devices coming this year. We are going to have our work cut out for us.
So saying goodbye to New Orleans. It was great, but frankly 4 days is enough.
Posted by David Adams at 11:17 AM | Comments (0)
Motorola MPX
We got a close up of recently announced Motorola MPX by Rolando; the doorman at Le Pavillon Hotel. I was feeling pretty solid about my Nokia 6600 when he pulled out his MPX. This phone is not released yet. Seems someone from Motorola gave him the phone as a tip. I offered to buy it from him and he told me to get in line. =)
The MPX is a pretty slick phone. It has two way hinges so it will open horizontally for use as a PDA and vertically for use as a phone. Although, according to Rolando, it is very slow.
Specs at PhoneScoop
Thanks Rolando! Let let me know if you decide to ebay it.
Posted by David Adams at 08:20 AM | Comments (0)
March 15, 2005
Some Images of the Show
Posted by David Adams at 07:33 PM | Comments (0)
Nokia 6682
Nokia was demo'ing the new 6682 phone at the Nokia booth (complex). This is a very nice device. It is basically a cross between a 6620 and a 7610 in a very nice form factor. It has has the new Series 60 platform 3 OS and a really beauiful animated user interface. It also sports a 1.3 Megapixel camera that is turned on by sliding a back plate away from the camera lense. It's got digital zoom upto 6X. Nice not to have to hunt for the camera in a menu. It's got the standard Series 60 176x208 pixel screen but supports 256k colors. Supports 3GPP video capture and streaming, MP3 and AAC music playback. I think the Nokia guy told me it was stereo. It has 10M internal memory and comes with a 64M hot-swapable card. It also supports Java 3D, EDGE Class 10 up to 236 Kbps, Bluetooth, USB 2.0, WAP 2, MMS, and all the cool new Nokia stuff like LifeBlog,etc.
Due out Q2 2005
There is a full set of specs over at PhoneScoop.
Posted by David Adams at 12:40 PM | Comments (0)
Day 2 CTIA
Had a great night last night. Met some great folks at the OpenWave party. By the time we go to the FierceWireless party it was pretty much over. Tried to get into the MTV party but by the time we arrived, we numbered about 10 and they wouldn't let us all in. Party looked pretty lame anyways. Went over to the International House hotel and had a couple of great bottles of champagne with some OpenWave folks.
Got the new cards fedex this morning. So we are off to the show. We've gotsome plenary sessions to attend and the other half of the floor show to see. Still haven't hit all the device manufacturers. I will try to get some pics of some of the new devices.
Here'sa pic from the Mobliss party at Pat O'Briens.
Mario from Dwango, and Trish and Rahul from The Platform
Posted by David Adams at 07:57 AM | Comments (0)
March 14, 2005
Gotta love FedEx
The company that printed our new cards and didn't have them by Friday (no names) FedEx'd our new cards so we should have them in the morning. One moreitemchecked off the list. Good thing too, because I have almost given away all the cards I brought with me.
Posted by David Adams at 06:44 PM | Comments (0)
Day One - CTIA
Great day today. We walked into the convention and smack into Sean P. Diddy Combs. That guy is really pretty short.
Walked the floor and checked out the new devices. There are some pretty cool new phones. DoCoMo has a big floor presence and are showing some amazing devices. They had a cool QR code display/demo. I guess iMode is really taking off in Europe.
Only did the show for half the day. The good tracks are all tomorrow. So we came back the hotel and worked the rest of the day. We're on our way out now to "Mother's" which is supposed to be a great local place to eat. Then on to the Fierce Wireless and OpenWave parties to meet some people.
Posted by David Adams at 06:39 PM | Comments (0)
March 13, 2005
Arrived New Orleans
We're here. Great flight out of Seattle. Not thrilled that SeaTac doesn't have free WiFi. Paying for it is like using a pay toilet. It would be great if they would figure that out sooner than later.
Got into Dallas early and our flight out was late. Charles mentioned that that always seems to happen at DFW. So I got a little work done and caught a haircut in the airport. That's something I meant to get done before we left. Check that off the list.
Into New Orleans, scary-as-hell ride from the airport in a cab with NO suspension at about 95 mph. Arrived at Le Pavillon Hotel and got a free upgrade to the Governors Suite. Nice! Can't beat that. Quick shower and we are off to a party at Pat O'Brians.
Check out the room. Sure beats the place I stayed last time I was at CTIA in New Orleans
Bonus: Someone in the hotel has their iTunes shared out on the hotel network and it has some great music. Right now I am listening to "Fire on the Bayou" by the Meters. One of the best New Orleans bands ever.
Posted by David Adams at 08:38 PM | Comments (0)
Up and gone
Up, packed, caffienated, and off to the airport with Charles. Got about 4 hours sleep. Didn't get much done on the web site and still have some other things to take care of. I can't send email from my laptop unless I am in the office; so that might be a problem on this trip. I guess I'll have to deal with this stuff on the fly.
The good news is that for some reason they put us in first class from Seattle to Dallas. That means I will actually be able to get some work done on the plane.
I'll be blogging some of the trip, but might have to store-it-and-post-it-later when I can't get on the net.
Off to the Big Easy.
Posted by David Adams at 06:40 AM | Comments (0)
March 12, 2005
This is Why I am not a Systems Administrator
I've been trying to get everything done by tommorow so I can leave for CTIA in New Orleans without having to worry about it later. Fat chance! I've spent all day trying to get our network working. I bought two different Netgear VPN boxes, and neither of them are working. After about 12 hours of fiddling, ROM upgrades, and tests, I am still at where I started this morning. On top of that, I have disassembled the entire network trying to get the VPN working so I could access our servers remotely/securely.
On top of the network problems, I've got a new employee starting Monday morning, I've got a bunch of other work to do, I need to write the copy for the new website and I leave for the airport in about 8 hours. Well, not every day is going to be a winner.
Posted by David Adams at 06:15 PM | Comments (0)
March 11, 2005
Hectic Week
WellI got back from San Francisco and am slammed trying to get everything checked off my list of things to do before we leave for New Orleans on Sunday. Had trip and met some great people at the Mobile Monday Meeting.
I've spent absolutely toomuch time trying to get payroll on track. My original plan was to use QuickBooks' payroll service. Quick, cheap and it plugs right into your QuickBooks; Unless... you have the Macintosh version. None of the payroll services work with Mac. So on to Plan B.
So I called up ADP, which I've used in the past and got an account set up. Took a while since Ihadn't received all my Labor and Industries paperwork yet. Yuck.
Anyways we are set to go now, cut the second payroll this week. Did the first one manually without deductions so those are getting made up in the second round.
Starting to feel like a realcompany.
Now back to that list...
Posted by David Adams at 11:40 AM | Comments (0)
March 07, 2005
Something is Rotten in Belgium
This isn't necissarily about "mobile" but it affects everyone in the industry.
http://wiki.ffii.org/Cons050307En
Posted by David Adams at 05:32 PM | Comments (0)
San Francisco
I'm in San Francisco just for 2 days to hit the Game Developers Conference (big mobile track this year) as well as coincedentaly hit the Mobile Monday meeting which is tonight.
In my never-ending quest to find great coffees shops with free wifi, i've wandered into the awesome "Cafe de la Presse" near Union Square. So a couple of hours work on the pending web site then I'm off to get a beer somewhere and onto Mobile Monday.
I'd forgotten how great San Francisco is. I could live here easily. It is sunny and 65° today. It's a nice change from Seattle's sunny and 45 °
Posted by David Adams at 04:46 PM | Comments (0)
March 04, 2005
Wagon! gets into Mobile Game Business
Actually that is Yahoo! who is getting into the mobile game business. They might want to speak with the people over at Tegic (AOL Mobile) about getting "Yahoo" bumped up the match list in their T9 predictive text software. Otherwise whoever owns wap.wagon.com is going to see a lot of mobile traffic.
Anyways, this means more competition for the mobile gaming space. That's always a good thing in my book.
Posted by David Adams at 11:40 AM | Comments (0)
March 02, 2005
Metacool
For anyone involved with a startup or bringing new products/services to life, you should read Diego Rodriguez's blog Metacool
Posted by David Adams at 06:10 PM | Comments (1)
The Upside of a Startup
It's nice to be able to work from anywhere. The great side of being in startup is that the signal to noise ratio is really high. Not a lot of B.S. meetings that just eat up a lot of time. Since we aren't tied down to being in the office (and we get antsy after a few hours coding), and since we have laptops with WiFi, and mobile phones, we can work from just about anywhere where we can get on the Internet. So to break the monotony of the office we work out of our favorite coffee shops quite a bit. Today we spent the morning at Top Pot Doughnuts. If you live in Seattle and haven't been to Top Pot, do yourself a favor. They have the best Doughnuts you've ever had. It's on Fifth downtown under the monorail.
Posted by David Adams at 04:37 PM | Comments (1)
March 01, 2005
Up to Our Ears in Dried Cranberries, Smoked Salmon, and Russian Tea Cakes
Our landlords sent us a gift basket to welcome Mobile Research to the building. That was so nice of them.
Posted by David Adams at 04:36 PM | Comments (1)
Three New Nokia Phones Announced
Nokia announced three new phones in their "classic" category today: the Nokia 6021, 6030 and the 6230i. These are all Series 40 phones but have some nice features compared to older series 40 phones.
The Nokia 6021 is a pretty standard series 40 candybar, but with the addition of EGPRS, bluetooth and Push-to-talk. This is also a triband phone. It is due for release second quarter of this year.
The Nokia 6030 is a pretty basic series 40 gprs phone, just with a new form factor.
The Nokia 6230i is the really cool one of the bunch. This triband GPRS/EDGE/MSCSD phone has some super nice features; especially for a series 40 phone. First off the high resolution display is 208 x 208 pixels. That is huge. It also sports a STEREO music player that supports MP3/AAC/M4A. The 6230i is also a camera phone that has a 1.3 megapixel cam, with 3X digital zoom. It also has some very nice features like bluetooth, Push-to-talk, an xHTML/HTML browser, video player. The 6230i is slated for release second quarter of this year.
Here is the announcement:
http://www.nokia.com/nokia/0,1522,,00.html?orig=/march2005/announcement
Posted by David Adams at 11:38 AM | Comments (4)