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October 27, 2005
Is that Canadian?
My blog is worth $9,032.64.
How much is your blog worth?
Too funny.
Posted by David Adams at 05:54 PM | Comments (2)
Mobile and Barcodes: Part 1.5
OK, as soon as I can frankenstein myself up a male-male pc connector to USB I can get the bar code scanner to work with my mac. This thing came with funny connectors so you have to buy their's if you want to use it with a Mac. $40? No way! Soldering iron and a couple of sacrificial keyboard dongles and I'm good. So hopefully I'll have some results this weekend.
Posted by David Adams at 05:51 PM | Comments (0)
October 24, 2005
Mobile and Barcodes: Part 1
I had a discussion today with someone from a local mobile content company about the possibilities of reading barcodes from a mobile display. We're not talking 2D QR codes here, I just mean reagular old barcodes. Is it possible to scan one from the display of a mobile device? Any one want to place a bet?
I played around with this a few years ago, but don't think the results represent todays phones, so I am going to load up a few different feature phones with a barcode today, hit em with a scanner and see what the results are.
Stayed tuned.
Posted by David Adams at 12:51 PM | Comments (4)
October 22, 2005
What do you do when you get burned out?
I've been working 90-100 hour weeks for the last 4 weeks. Last week it started to really wear me out. No energy and I could feel a cold coming on. I slept in on Wed. (I think) and worked from home. Took a couple of hot showers, a nap, and drank tea all day. Really worked. I got the rest I needed and still got a lot of work done.
Mentally, I just get a cup of coffee in me, read 2 chapters of any Tom Peters book and I'm focused and motivated, and my mind's going 100 MPH ( 160.93 KPH) again.
Right now I am working on marketing materials; and I REALLY need to be motivated to get that done.
Posted by David Adams at 03:09 PM | Comments (2)
October 16, 2005
Cingular 3G
It's leaked out of Cingular that they plan to start offering UMTS service in 18 markets across the US starting on November 1. No info yet on what devices they are going to launching the service with. It is entirely probable that they will start with a UMTS card first before they release any phones. This is still good news though as phones will be following soon I'm sure and I've got an EDGE device but I am really not getting EDGE speeds on it so I'm sure I'm not getting EDGE service.
We'll see what happens with Cingular and UMTS; those UMTS phones aren't cheap.
Posted by David Adams at 06:36 PM | Comments (0)
Buried
I know it's pretty common for bloggers to talk about how buried they are and it's effecting their ability to spend time writing; but man, I'm buried! Getting a lot done though so it's not too bad. The company is starting to crank up and the work load with it.
Since we launched the Mobile Device Database, we have been getting a lot of interest from smaller shops and mobile developers who need the information but don't need the scope (and price) of the entire database. So to answer that demand we have been working very hard on our Mobile Developer KnowledgeBase product. This is a dev site targeted at mobile developers that provides information on all the US devices in our database, and the ability to run reports and filter devices by almost any metric/data. Also we are going to be providing a known issues database where we will track known bugs and issues of the various phones; mostly Java and BREW to start.
We are hoping to launch the Devloper KnowledgeBase in the first week of November so we are really crunching on it. More here about the product as we get closer to launch.
Posted by David Adams at 11:23 AM | Comments (0)
October 04, 2005
Blue Book
We announced a new publication today called the Mobile Device Blue Book. It is essentially a listing of all available devices in the US market (on major carriers and the MVNOs), pricing, and features/functionality. We are tracking device availability on all the carriers and MVNOs daily along with their prices, and at the begining of the month we publish the list along with listings of all the devices by carrier, network, data bearer and features. The features we are tracking are Java (MIDP/CLDC version), BREW (Versions), WAP (Versions), Video support, Music support, Camera phones, Bluetooth, Screen dimensions/colors. We are also tracking the smartphones and their OS's.
This grew out of a lot of requests we have received for data about what devices are available on what carriers and what devices have been discontinued. Because we are tracking all the devices availability on all the carriers/MVNOs sites daily, we are also able to provide dates of availability and discontinuation.
The Blue Book is at this point 200+ pages of device info for what is going on with devices monthly.
We are also sending out a CD with the Blue Book that contains all the data and lists in tab delimited files so they can be imported into a spreadsheet.
Here is a link to the press release.
Mobile Device Blue Book Press Release
Posted by David Adams at 03:11 PM | Comments (0)
October 01, 2005
Back from CTIA IT Wireless Entertainment
This is the place where normally I would post about the show and what the big news was, who was doing what and what the suprises and let-downs of the show were. However, that seems to be what a lot of other people are doing and I agree with what FierceWireless has been printing all week in their coverage. Also Chetan Sharma has a good write up of the iHollywood Mobile Entertainment Forum as well as the CTIA show.
Also, I didn't get to take in much of the actual show. I was able to walk the floor exactly twice, and didn't sit in on one track. We had meetings scheduled almost all day everyday and spent the time in between meetings getting to the next meeting and trying to track down caffeine.
We did however have a great show. We met with a lot of great people and got a lot of great feedback on the product and our direction. It was also great to be able to put faces to the names of people who I have only spoken with on the phone or emailed, and a great opportunity to meet new people.
We decided not to put out the press release at the show. There was just too much other news coming out and I didn't want to compete for newscycles. So we are going to be releasing the press release on Monday morning. It's not a huge announcement, just another way we are selling the data and responding to requests that we receive.
Posted by David Adams at 10:52 AM | Comments (0)