31/08/2008 by nicola.

It may or may not surprise some people to know that at the end of last year my mobile shortlist was a Blackberry Curve and the N82 and if the job that I was moving into involved me being more mobile, I would probably have gone with it. Sony Ericsson are also bringing out phones that I would happily buy but they keep bringing them out around 3/4months after I am in a position to purchase one.

I have a growing admiration for blackberry devices, even though some of the earlier models looked a little like toy calculators (actually so did some phones to be fair) and that ringtone that tells the entire train carriage you are a Blackberry owner. Patent ’stuff’ aside (and I have never read RIM commercial history in detail to be able to comment only that there have been cases filed by both them and others) they seemed to understand the life of a nomadic professional very well and they have got two areas right - email and mobile security and even though some of the earlier models were not very pretty - the QWERTY keyboard seems to be designed well to fit into a smaller design space (or form factor if being technically more precise).

Designing an application for a blackberry is probably beyond the scope of what I can achieve with mobsessed for now, due to needing more Java coding experience, but I think there is a lot of potential to design interesting apps for blackberries as they continue to add newer functions and features into their models. They also provide various models and services through Grameenphone, so potential options there for consumers with less resources. There is also a Blackberry developer challenge underway. For web related apps, as far as I understand you can use either the inbuilt or Opera Mini as web browsers on blackberries.

Re browsers, I have been participating a little in a conversation around browsers from Mark Oehlert’s e-Clippings blog, where he asks a very good question about standardization of browsers - is there data used in decision making around browser procurement or whether it is just based on perception. He also mentions that he works in an organisation which does not allow downloading of a Firefox or non-IE browser.

And as Jay Cross mentions in Mark’s followup post, the significance of politics in the decision making. I have personally experienced this having been in a position (don’t wish to say exactly where and what) where had considerable input and ownership into a process to procure two big web ‘things’ for an organisation and prior to tender, our shortlist did not contain a Microsoft product and I can remember the resulting discussions within IT as we looked to move forward with the process. It is complex. Personally speaking I neither love or hate Microsoft and/or love or hate Apple - I can find good and bad in both and I don’t wish to get into any conversation about this, ever, quite simply because I do not find it an interesting subject to discuss

Stephen Downes also mentioned this week, experiencing frustrations about trying to use Firefox (opensource) on an opensource OS. So it doesn’t sound like we are there yet with opensource browsers. What about mobile ? Webkit is an opensource application framework which allows browsers to be created, is supported on S60, iphones, and at least one blackberry device. Opera mini which has achieved an incredible feat of working on the number of models that it does, is not open source (some of their widget APIs are I think). There are various other browsers out there for mobiles including Skyfire (supports Flash 9, don’t think opensource) and Thunderhawk (also don’t think opensource)

Firefox mobile is in development but doesn’t seem to be quite there yet either in a test from We Deliver Elephants blog. Both browsers could potentially be ’sitting’ on proprietary OSs just as with opensource browsers on pcs. So is this a case of replicating a problem that existed with pc browsing - possibly except it is unlikely that your IT department is responsible for either your choice of mobile and/or what web browsers you choose to use on them.

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29/08/2008 by nicola.

Georgeous Parx (George Pop - RL), a Tourism Marketing Masters student from University of Surrey, will be presenting “Rural-urban Learning through Authenticity Symbiosis in Agritourism”, on Tuesday 2nd September, 2008, 12.00pm SLT (20.00pm UK) in the virtual congress area on Eduserv Island.

He will focus on Agritourism, analysing authenticity demand and supply, authenticity through complexity, learning free will interaction with mutual knowledge and expertise exchange.

Everyone welcome.

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Eduserv%20Island/154/31/32

George is a relative newcomer to Second Life but decided he wanted to have a go. He is also hoping to develop a shop in a virtual world such as Second Life. We have purchased an island at Surrey which is currently under development - hope to launch early autumn I think.

Going to give recording another go on Tuesday, hopefully will go to plan this time.

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26/08/2008 by nicola.

I have started to think about this area a bit more recently, which is very inconvenient when my brain should be thinking deep and meaningful python and java thoughts but…

Via experientia.com an excellent article from Adam Greenfield which analyses differences between location and context, with resulting interaction design based on this understanding of environment, the devices used within it and the interactions between a human, devices and the environment itself.

He refers back to his previous post defining

“a mobile device’s capabilities and available interface modalities at any given moment are largely if not entirely determined by the other networked objects around it…..the device is of almost no importance in and of itself, that its importance to the person using it lies in the fact that it’s a convenient aperture to the open services available in the environment, locally as well as globally.”

I believe this is related to the extended mind concept too. I recently read the Andy Clark and David Chalmers extended mind essay which looks at the extension of cognitive processes into the environment and how the mind could exist in an external environment. The Guardian has also recently asked if an iPod is part of the mind.

I don’t think it is but then at the moment I have a very limited understanding of how the mind works. I read the extended mind essay as the mind literally extended into the environment, not into a device as such. There are comparisons between an advanced GPS enabled mobile device such as a smartphone and a notebook with information written in which can be accessed, but is it the connectivity / interaction / relationship between the device and the environment which is actually where the processes are ‘ignited’; i.e when you listen to the radio and a song comes on which invokes a good / bad memory, it is not the physical radio which is connected to your mind, it is just the enabler ?

So if you have a smartphone which can access information whilst you are mobile, wandering around an environment such as a city, with the variety of connections that will soon be available through GPS, Wifi, possibly SMS, I think it would be the combination of - how you are feeling whilst you are freely wandering around, any sounds, sights, smells or something you can touch etc that might be affecting your memory and then with a possible connection to a specific activity/interaction such as RFID / NFC sending information on an exhibition / museum to your phone through a networked tag in the environment, which could all be part of an extended mind, not just the device which could be in your hand, on your wrist, around your neck, on your clothing ?

Maybe…

Forgot to mention, Digital Encounters is another good read around this topic.

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19/08/2008 by nicola.

Do you use nothing but the phone and SMS? They’re my top 2 uses, maybe camera and clock+ringtone for my preferred alarm noise of choice too. Confession anyway - I hastily flung together a list of my top 10 mobile apps for learning, which upon thinking about, some are just related to personal organisation whilst I’m working in learning technology and would probably be using if I wasn’t, as well. So below is my list with proper explanations and some other ideas too.

See Ignatia’s great learning list and also Clark Quinn’s Top 10 mobile from earlier this year. If you have never visited Jane’s amazing site of top tools for learning technology, its worth a look - it has saved me - I don’t know how many hours - but a lot !

So, this is the challenge, if you work or interested and blogging about mobile technology and haven’t already done this - out your apps, if you don’t want to blog them, you can contribute them anonymously via C4LPT tools..

My top 10
Utterz - voice blogging on the go with publishing options on the spot.

Screenshot - taking still screenshots from a s60 phone, using one of the phone cameras - I use it to show shots for experimenting and for showing how to do things. There are others available for windows mobile devices and others

Find.mobi - brilliant mobile search. Provides web and mobile web-friendly page searches (Mobile web friendly pages = less time to download and display properly on your mobile device). To find flight status, select Travel from the tag cloud below the search box, then select Flight Status - you will then see various options - if you are a frequent traveller or organising conferences / events, this is such a useful mobile tool.

Other mobile search tools incl Yahoo Go, Google mobile, Kooaba also have a brilliant visual search/image recognition tool

Mobile flickr - upload photos quickly

Nokia Maps used this in Switzerland last week, it told me I was in Germany and France before I knew I was and scarily quickly finding you via GPS. I use it all the time. I think some phones are now coming bundled with Europe maps or similar / Google Mobile maps is good too (I like both equally at the moment). UPDATE - just saw a post today that can now purchase and use Lonely Planet guides from Guides-Extras menu directly within Nokia maps app.

Fring - Skype,AIM,GoogleTalk,MSN,SIP - see contacts all in one place and who is online, with options to chat/call/send files. Skype now appearing on more phones, you can Skype chat out okish from Fring, haven’t tried Skype calling (for VOIP anything charges, check operator package). I used this quite a bit when Surrey email crashed and I was more mobile for a few days, it was great. However, Twitter / Jaiku would still also be as useful and as quick !

Nokia mobile Web Server & extensions - starting to play with but finding useful, can blog, upload, IM, chat and manage a mobile site from the phone (have to pay data fees for transfer, according to your operator package).

Adobe mobile pdf reader - mostly using for work files and articles I’ve bookmarked on del.icio.us which can be read on the go.

Mobiseer - mobile bookmarking, tagging, sharing pages. Don’t find it easy to bookmark pages whilst on mobile though. Currently using this whilst mobile delicious - which found out last week, is being developed . I can currently use delicious via my webkit browser when using an N82, can edit, share, delete bookmarks but can’t bookmark pages. Can’t wait for mobile delicious - oh and a mashup with find.mobi so you could get delicious for mobile friendly pages would be awesome.

OperaMini browser - free download and works on loads of phones/devices - I also use it as a backup for any browsers I have on an older phone which for whatever reason may format pages strangely (hasn’t happened with webkit but earlier browsers on older phones). I think Opera are likely to be the first to bring out a voice-friendly browser too - they appear to be leading the way with voice at the moment. Another cool browser in beta at the moment is Skyfire.

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09/08/2008 by nicola.

Being freed from regular time constraints…getting round to reading some of the stuff have bookmarked

Collaborating with Surfaces sphere , Concept browsers of the future from Mozilla Labs, Eco phones, 100 days in China as a mobile nomad, an invitation to collaborate on understanding Islam through virtual worlds, thoughts on blogging in Iran blogging within HE, in Iran, an award winning Palestinian journalist arriving back and facing Israeli soldiers, Eight stages of social development, Enabling Personal Mobile Applications through Semantic Web Services, Nokia’s semantic applications toolkit, Adobe Mobile Demos, Digital Activism in action, online village volunteering education ideas in the Nabuur neighbourhoods, transforming a waste heap into a farm in Kenya.

A whole bunch of stuff on mobility - Michiel de Lange’s research writing, about mobility and nomadic projects, 2 posts on MAMK re the recent Economist mobility special report and Jan Chipchase digital nomad experiment, an article about IP mobility and the idea of seamless roaming, as opposed to connecting the dots (this article was written in 2003 but some of these issues still unresolved); and finally a green paper from the European Commission about migration, mobility and opportunities for EU education systems

Finally, a interesting discussion on which words to put as hyperlink text (it appears that even in 2008, those with different levels of web experience have different opinions) and 20 strategies to defeat the urge to do useless tasks.

Before I forget…

Carpentry videos - tried one with 3 mobile phones at 3 different angles showing various drilling ‘actions’ when making a DVD cabinet. The angles were fine and it all looked ok, but was unable to get a decent volume for both voice whilst drill was on and whilst talking ‘inside’ half a cabinet (if that makes sense) without a microphone and can’t think of a way in which to record with a separate microphone. If you hold one of the phones or even one phone close enough to get the ideal volume, then you can’t get the right angle for showing hands using a tool - it is too close. The plan was to use mobile phone for quick informal learning ‘pieces’ which this would not achieve, so putting videos on hold indefinitely for now.

Second Life presentation - a few weeks ago temporarily put some info up about a presentation from a student at Surrey who did a presentation of her machine ethics dissertation, in Second Life - to cut a long story short, we don’t have video / machinima footage due to total lack of notice and total lack of ever trying before on my part with a laptop that doesn’t have capability to do both Rather than put up bits and pieces which have since removed (e.g. the text chat with context of Anna answering the questions in Second Life is interesting but without real context), Anna VartapetianceSalmasi or Dr Lee Gillam - hopefully both, should be presenting this again at the Immersive Worlds workshop in Coventry in October and there is a possibility that Anna will be repeating the presentation in Second Life later this month.

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05/08/2008 by nicola.

I’ve tried uploading a version (not very much different to yesterday’s) to Voxeo and testing through Skype but I keep getting “an internal error has occurred”. The voicexml appears to be valid. The xhtml is valid, I’m still not 100% sure about the JavaScript. You can’t check the whole thing on the regular w3 validators. I am too tired to process any more code tonight.

In terms of saving something as a favourite, via a cookie downloaded to the device, it appears to depend on different devices and manufacturers, session cookies appear to work across all, but persistent cookies may disappear once phone is switched off.

In theory, it should be possible to create a series of voicexml forms referenced in an xhtml+voice page which allow someone to choose what type of web coding template they would like to receive and then when the final form is submitted, a mouseclick or spoken event should send a message to the server to deliver back the output of those choices.

Its similar in principle to any type of online shopping. Once you have completed payment an invoice is generated - either on the final ‘thank you’ page or a ‘confirmation that it has been emailed to you’ page. As with a milkshake order, it should be possible to return a receipt of your order as a text file after you have completed the order, so sending a text file back to the user with an xhtml, RSS, php or whatever type of coding template inside it, which can be then saved to the phone or device should be no different.

A guess of how to do it would be to put templates in a mysql database then add php to the original xhtml+voice page to tell the server to fetch the template and include it in an email/SMS back to the customer. I know php has code for email options and for attaching files, I just don’t know exactly how to do it myself…yet - anyone else out there using or developing an ecommerce site tried ?

If this is all possible, it also means that someone who wanted a template might not have to actually go online at all, they could just make a phone call, make their choice and receive the template back - i.e. they would be calling (just like telebanking). Hopefully….

Will return to this later - am SO not on track to complete everything by September (maybe end of) but its still been very useful exercise, uncovering increasingly complex layers of coding, media and to some extent - architecture, now starting to make some connections between some of these too.

There is definitely potential to create pages of code against the 5 original strands (sms,multimodal,standalone vs mobile web/widget, pc vs web, mobile opensource vs mobile proprietary) it is possible to create both stand alone and web applications to do this, will compare and review their efficiency against the other strands in terms of device independence in the final stages of this project. Will also compare and review as to what this could mean for any mobile learning development and if it is worthwhile being deployed.

Anyway, my online persona is going to have a break for a few days, not sure what the offline one is going to be doing yet

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05/08/2008 by nicola.

First unfinished attempt which have not either validated or checked via Voxeo. Please feel free to copy / download (will need to select page and source to view code….once I have finished version will upload as a text file)
Would also recommend waiting until have a finished attempt that is assuming anyone out there would actually want a copy of either finished or unfinished It will hopefully provide at least half an idea. The milkshake one is more complicated in that you need branching immediately upon answering the first question. I guess it is unlikely that if you had such a wide choice of flavours that you would just tell an online form that you wanted one flavour only.

Is based around this text from post yesterday.

It is quite similar to a familiar Xhtml page except that it has slightly different DOCTYPE and namespaces to be declared. Another difference is use of time - which you can declare in seconds or milliseconds, you also should provide script so that the browser reading it, knows that you’re finished / stops listening. You also use scripting (JavaScript) to manage events such as prompts, speech input and branching etc I’m not entirely sure I’ve got my “elements by ID” in the right sequence to fit with the branching at the moment, but will inspect in more detail tomorrow

You can put the voicexml directly into the Xhtml coding or reference it as an external voicexml file (based on everything I’ve understood so far, external is better because you can reuse it, even within the same document). You set up grammar files to help with understanding i.e. a file will include typical words that you might expect to hear in response to a prompt/question.

Tomorrow’s task is to reference this unfinished version against the W3 guidelines Then put together an aural stylesheet. Another option is to record the prompts and save as audio files which you can then reference within the forms, so might do this too.

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04/08/2008 by nicola.

Mentioned this on the original post about this mini-project

“…multimodal web & messaging only, so I understand it as….a future extension of mobile web and learning - giving people choice over how they interact and use information and for the purposes of this little project, looking at voice-text only. A multimodal browser will allow multiple types of input or output using a range of options - keyboard, touch, voice etc I will be looking at Xhtml + Voicexml (x+v) markup languages”

Have deliberately not done much with due to other more intense programming bits but thought it was about time to post something. Prior to May, had not attempted to write/code anything related to voice before, although wrote an audio stylesheet about 2 /3 years ago.

Trying to think this along the lines of:

1. Should it be a mobile web page with a basic form ? This would not appear to be what xhtml+voice forms have already been designed for (e.g. examples so far seem to be things like using a form to find something or order pizza etc), but was wondering whether you could create a basic mobile web page, with options when selected by voice input would return a web page template as a file, to the user either via SMS or the web. If you’re going to be online anyway, would using voice add any value in terms of speeding up the process, so you could edit / create mobile web pages on the go ? Hmmm, not sure, but having both a visual and voice form would make it more accessible.

2.If not a whole mobile web page, could it be a regular web page with voice annotated ‘elements’ on the page that could produce a similar result ? Would it be better than a mobile web form ? Don’t know yet until try.

3. Due to limits of connectivity / bandwidth / cost / time, would it be more useful just to provide a standalone mobile voice application that could produce a set of templates and is it possible ? Could any files or the code be generated by a form similar to the above to generate either a voice or text SMS? (As above, re using voiceSMS - from an accessibility point of view - is better to have both a text and voice option?) Also don’t know yet until try. (Will return to this in a future post).

Will not be starting with an example of a mobile-friendly web page just yet because as per mobile web experimenting, haven’t done that yet - however will be bringing into this project later on.

In order to accept user input i.e. someone saying something, this is coded on a web page in a similar way to inputting text, using a form. So just as each text box would appear on a page, there can be an equivalent set of code to allow for speech. The examples provided by others would be things like - ordering food or drink, so if you were using your mobile phone and wanted to quickly order something like a milkshake (why you would be ordering one via the web, but off the top of my head…) your order would be a set of speech ‘events’.

So, am wandering around in Bournemouth, UK, its a lovely sunny day and I want a milkshake - so decide to order from Shakeaway (if you are ever in Bournemouth….) so a form would include questions like

Would you like a milkshake with:
Chocolate bar
Cake
Biscuits
Cereal
etc

Would you like anything else with it?
(note - if it was Shakeaway then a mobile web form would be totally inappropriate because there are hundreds of combinations)
Strawberry
Cherry
Lime
Kiwi
Melon
etc

Dairy or alternative?
Dairy
Soya

Any extras?
No thanks
Extra icecream
bran
protein
etc

Finished?
Yes
No

Would you like to save this as a favourite?
Yes
No

All of the above could also branch out - imagine if you were standing at the counter and being asked what you wanted, with lots of choices to look at, you might need several decisions or you might have a favourite - mine is chocolate & cherry with soya - so on the form I would be saying chocolate then selecting cherry then soya, no thanks then yes to finish. However if you would like anything else (question 2) you could potentially have additional sub branches e.g. 2a being lists of chocolate bars, 2b being cake options etc etc, depending on how many flavours you wanted.

In voicexml forms, each question would be treated as its own ‘block’ so you would need to add in extra code to tell the form to go to other blocks. No idea exactly at this point how to code the cookie bit (i.e. would you like to save as a favourite, am assuming that you can save cookies on a form on mobile device in same way as pc, but haven’t looked into as yet), but it would be useful seeing as you are using a phone and want to save time being online.

What does this look like in voicexml?
Will try and post tomorrow. Am hoping that same principle of menu items would apply for this project i.e.
What kind of page do you want to create?
xhtml
RSS
php
etc

Then a branch if selected Xhtml:
What type of Xhtml?
Strict
Transitional
etc

or if selected RSS -
Is this for a podcast?
Yes
No

(If select yes, this would be telling the server that you want RSS 2.0 and automatically bring in a template with itunes, encl and other media-specific tags)

This is about as far as I have got in terms of thinking it through. There are a whole bunch of resources available and I spent (productively going round in circles) several hours trying to work out how it was possible to test anything without having access to your own voice server. I have signed up to Voxeo because you can test anything you create using Skype which sounds useful. You can also enable voice if you download Opera browser (Voice is not on Opera mini yet.)

Refs and sources for this post on delicious with voicexml tag

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