Siri is purported to change everything. Even challenge Google. And I believe so myself.

Question is, why just on mobile? Can Siri not change everything everywhere - desktops, laptops, even servers? 

Word processors, might become obsolete in their current forms very soon. Soon, many people might need a keyboard. Mice are dead already.

Application developers need to keep a close eye on this. This can be a truly disruptive technology.

My Samsung Captivate is hands down the best phone I’ve ever owned; this, when I have owned and switched between 4 phones in the last 3 years, two of which have been android. This phone is a part of the Galaxy S series and is made for AT&T by Samsung. All phones of the Galaxy S series sport the same hardware and their design and buttons are the only two places where they differ from each other.

It might not have the most impressive hardware around today, but I love it because of the freedom it gives me with an Android OS. Android being open source and fully open to customization, you can find several ROMs (analogous to a Linux distro) for an android phone that can give you complete control on every feature imaginable. Given the popularity the Galaxy S series enjoys internationally, there is a huge selection of ROMs available at your disposal. In fact, there are so many of them, that you can literally switch out to a new one every day and still have options available after a month! And mind you, this number excludes stock ROMs developed by Samsung. 

But of course, when you are willing to install a new ROM every day, you must accept the fact that you might end up bricking the phone. So it’s a serious advantage that the Galaxy S series has a very robust bootloader and is almost unbrickable. It also helps that fellow enthusiasts on the internet are always ready to help you out with ways you can fix the OS and get going again. For a guy like me who likes to experiment with his phone, this matters a lot. Needless to mention, great backup apps like Titanium Backup Pro and having your contacts synchronized with your Google account allow you to quickly restore your stuff after a fresh ROM installation.

But these features are just the tip of the iceberg, if you want to know more on this amazing phone, stay posted for “Captivate – The immortal android – Part II”.

A news report quotes Twitter CEO Dick Costolo “A native photosharing experience will be rolled out to 100% users over the next couple of weeks”.

This entails into user not having to leave the Twitter website to view pictures or videos. For app developers, they do not have to worry about integrating the images/videos in their app to some third party service to show them on Twitter timelines.

Twitter has partnered with Photobucket to bring this service on board. Photos and videos posted by users would be wearing a badge ‘Powered by Photobucket’.

This news also rebounds that Twitter would float most popular videos and images in a dedicated section on their website. With the wild guesses on, it means the API from Twitter could be made available that provides all the Latest/Top Tweeted/Most Retweeted/Most Favorite pictures and videos.

What all of these means to different stakeholders?

Developers could see this as an opportunity of topping up their apps with host of new features…

Rich and substance-full content browsing for users with the help of top viewed pictures/videos/tweets…

For mobile users, I think the experience would pretty much be the same. Its just that instead of a link now they might see a thumbnail of the content. Its all same after tapping that thumbnail…a full screen display of the media content.

Some questions…

What it means for services like Twitpic, Yfrog, Lockers etc who provides these libraries to developers…Are they somewhat out of business?

If the images are tagged with “Powered by Photobucket” badge, who owns the copyright to the image? Twitter, Photobucket….User?

Would Twitter provide a separate sharing link to images or videos posted OR users just can do away with the link to that Tweet?

Should existing apps change their service and switch to the default ones…soon to be released by Twitter?

Please do share your bit in the comments section on what you think about this new service. What could be some new interesting cool features to top up the host twitter apps?

Please share…

BTW:

Link to Twitter's blog post

Here is the official video from Twitter for the introduction of this new service

The iPhone user experience is all about not just touch but multiple touch. When designing user experiences for the iDevices, try not to use buttons.

There are many gestures that a designer can use to replace buttons and thereby make the experience of using the iphone more realistic and interesting.

I am a big fan of the swipe gesture. The use of the swipe gesture for navigation is one that can replace the button in many cases. A swipe can take you to different parts of the application without the use of the button.

There can be uses of the swipe gesture in scenarios like the log in screen where one might think replacing the button might be too hard. Why not just swipe to login? It just makes lifer a little bit more interesting.

Then you have the multiple touch gestures like pinch and multi finger swipes, amongst others. These gestures can be used in innovative ways to provide a sense of realism and even awe. A pinch can be used to, say delete a data entity (think deleting a message in email). A multi finger vertical swipe might lead to opening up a detail view of a data set.

More innovative uses of the whole touch and multi touch gestures can be thought of. Give it a serious thought the next time you are designing an iApp. Your users might get positively surprised.

As we promised, we’re revealing who has won the iPad2 right this instant. Before we actually reveal who won though, we’d just like to thank everyone for participating in this contest & appreciate you stopping by our booth at CTIA.

We received a little over a thousand entries. It took us a while to look over each one making sure the rules were followed. Of those hundreds of submissions, we randomly selected one winner.

We’re now delighted to announce the lucky one!

And the winner is: Earl Epstein

Congratulations! Earl, A brand spanking new iPad2 will be shipped to you shortly.

Thank you all for taking part in this competition!
 

Last week @ CTIA many attendees & exhibitors participated in “Win an iPad2 contest @ InfoBeans booth”. I hope it was a good show for you and your business.

Thanks for overwhelming response for this contest & trying your luck to win iPad TOO!!..

Although most of the contest entries have already been compiled,  we are still consolidating all entries so that everyone has equal opportunity of being a winner of iPad2. Once all entries have been fully verified we will officially announce our winners, we expect within the next couple of days… probably coming Friday.

Thank you for your patience and your participation in iPad2 contest @ CTIA. Contest results will be announced on website & the winner will be notified by email too.

Good luck everyone!
 

The International CTIA wireless show is the premier wireless event representing a $1 trillion global marketplace that brings together wireless and converged communications, wireless broadband, mobile web.

This years event is organized at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida, USA, from March 22 - March 24.

InfoBeans System is exhibiting in booth #3191 at the International CTIA Wireless 2011 conference.

Check out some pictures of our exhibit and team InfoBeans at the event.

Information about an end user’s environment and preferences to improve the quality of interaction with that end user forms the basis of Context Aware Computing.

Three important aspects of context are:

• Where you are
• Who you are with
• What resources are nearby

Context-aware in contrast with Location-aware includes nearby people, devices, lighting, noise level, network availability and even the social situation like whether you are with your family or a friend.

Consumers today go to an app and search for restaurants nearby or by cuisine and price. A context-aware device would have a similar feature that would know what restaurants you have picked in the past, if you liked the food and then make suggestions for restaurants nearby based on those preferences. Additionally, it would be integrated into maps and other programs on the device.

Context-aware computing is intended to revolutionize how we interact with our devices. Future devices will learn about you, your location, where you are going to, know what you want and would also know your likes and dislikes.

Researchers have been working for more than two decades on making computers be more in tune with their users.  That means computers would sense and react to the environment around them. Done right, such devices would be so in sync with their owners that the former will feel like a natural extension of the latter.

Making this possible on PCs has proved to be challenging, however, the rise of smartphones and GPS-powered personal devices could change that.

The next step is smarter sensors. Today, while smartphones come equipped with accelerometers and digital compasses, the data gathered from these sensors is used only for extremely basic applications.

Overall, context-aware devices will have to use a combination of “hard-sensing,” or raw physical data about a user (such as where you are), and “soft-sensing” information about the user, such as preferences and social networks, to anticipate needs and make recommendations. This creates the cognitive framework for managing context. On the hardware side, context-aware computing will call for extremely energy-efficient sensors and devices. There is a need to keep the sensory aspects on them up and running at all times and do it at minimum power.

So far, context-aware computing hasn’t found commercial success. But as phones get smarter and tablets become popular, users will have a device where apps disappear and become part of the gadget’s intelligence.
 

Apple announced their Q1 2011 (the one that ended December 25, 2010) results this past week, and the pick of the lot is the iPad! Even to their surprise the iPad sold a record 7.33 million units…I repeat... 7.33 mmmillion units!

Apple has performed exceptionally well this season for the iPhone as well.

Despite of the antenna-gate glitches and white iPhone in a black hole, the company sold 16.24 million iPhones in the quarter. That is a new company record representing 86% unit growth over the year-ago-quarter.

But the cherry of the lot is the iPad, they sold record 7.33 million units that is over 3 million more than what Apple achieved last quarter. It’s phenomenal! In simple terms it's the introduction of a real tablet to the industry.

It’s been an amazing ride for iPads or the real tablet as you may like to call.

I read a CES 2011 coverage in an economic daily which quoted “They should have called it the Consumer iPad Show.”

There were 2,700 booths and 140,000 attendees this year at the CES. But Apple’s iPad was everywhere. There were accessories spanning from iPad cases, iPad holders, iPad keyboards, iPad chargers, iPad alarm clock to 85 other iPad clones!

So to sum it up…it’s been pretty much about the iPad (and to a thin margin – iPad clones) all this time.

Apple for sure has a sheer lead in this marathon being an early player in the race and defining the path for others to follow. The likes of Androids, Blackberry Playbooks and HP webOSs are trying hard. And would need to pull up their socks whole lot to come up to what Apple has achieved so far with the iPad.

It would be interesting to see this battle through. The signs say the future is bright for tablets…bright and how!

What it means to Businesses is there is a huge huge market for your apps!

Apple announced it has sold more than 160 million devices powered by the iOS mobile operating system. Talking of just the iPad, in its first three quarters of availability, the iPad has already topped 15 million in sales.

This leads to another interesting thought whether to build the native apps or web apps…well I will soon follow up with a post that would help you decide what works for you! Meanwhile you can refer this blog post OR this slide deck by Siddharth posted 2 years ago... early player :)

If this kicks you with an app idea, we would be more than happy to nourish your idea and help you take it to the App Store!


Drop us a line at ipad@infobeans.com or call us at 888 4INFOBEANS
 
PS: some references and nice reads

Apple Q1 2011 results

iPad design ideas
 

For majority of commuters, their day starts when they hop on to a train or bus and start reading. Some would like reading books and others would take an update on what’s going around, so they read newspaper.

Sounds like history?? Well if not already, then it wouldn’t take longer to change the scenario...

A whole bunch of eReaders are already around and some will hit the market in next couple of years which is going to change the way we read and interact with contents. As we change the way we are reading today, publishers will have to think about newer ways to present the contents and make sure that they do not get pushed out of business.

Gadgets...

Samsung is in the market with Android 2.2 Froyo based Galaxy Tab while Motorola and Toshiba have just introduced Android Honeycomb based Xoom and Next-Gen tab respectively at CSE 2011. While talking about these smart devices I don’t want to miss out the RIM based Playbook but unfortunately they are still trying to fix Playbook’s battery issue.

Amazon Kindle has maintained the lead while competing with its e-ink based eRreaders i.e. Sony reader and Noble Nook.

Above all, Apple has taken a clear lead among all its competitors by selling roughly 10 Million iPads. Apple is expected to do better in current year, when it is targeting to reach 65 Million marks for iPad devices during 2011.

All these devices are not just the eReaders but they function like eReaders and open up the opportunity of presenting the same data differently or even think about new type of data. 

Challenges...

Battery life and weight continue to be one of the deciding factors for anyone who is buying a gadget for reading. This is where e-ink technology comes in picture and takes a leap from battery life’s point of view. Some e-ink based readers like Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook and Sony Reader would continue to remain the fist choice for people who like reading book & novels more then blogs & dynamic contents.

Some devices have the challenge of not being so useful in the dark and the other once are not good in bright light. Keeping these constraints in mind I believe, all above mentioned gadgets are very good candidates for becoming preferred eReader while they experiment on the presentation layers.

Ease of Publication and Distribution...

Printing and distributing physical media have always been one of the significant costs and publishers have worked for decades to optimize the cost involved. Now with the new age media they have the tool they have been waiting for (I guess)...

Best part about new media (Web and eReaders both) is that you can build a distribution system once and then keep the operational cost down for a while.

Opportunities..

This media is opening new doors to the publishers where they can

• engage the consumer
• advertise differently to generate more revenues
• include images and slideshows for rich interface
• include audio visual contents along with a magazine or newsletter
• create magazine stores 

Manufacturers will keep developing better hardware and better software support. They will all keep on optimizing the battery performance to enable longer battery life and reduce the weight. This process would also lead to more and more devices and more and more users in the market.

Some of the coolest version of print magazines are already available on different platforms and others are following. Sounds like exciting times are here; look forward to the positive change.