"mobile devices" entries

Mobile interfaces: Mistakes to avoid and trends to watch

"Designing Mobile Interfaces" co-author Steven Hoober on common UI mistakes.

In this interview, “Designing Mobile Interfaces” co-author Steven Hoober discusses common mobile interface mistakes, and he offers his thoughts on the latest mobile device trends — including why the addition of gestures and sensors isn’t wholly positive.

NYT Web Piece on Mobile Outperforming Web Demonstrates Own Conclusion

NYTimes.com has a piece from Wednesday about several popular mobile apps that are better than their "parent" websites (using Zillow and Yelp as examples). What struck me when I first opened the page on my laptop after following a link to it on Twitter was how the NYTimes.com web experience stacks up to their own mobile app. Many critics of…

Mobile phones and smartphones are not the same thing

Comparing a basic mobile phone to a spiffy new smartphone is like comparing a circa-1993 desktop computer to a Macbook Pro. They're related in a basic sense, but the discrepancies are immense. Arthur Attwell, co-founder and CEO of Electric Book Works, expands on the divide between mobile phones and smartphones in an interview.

O'Reilly iPhone App Tips and Tricks

As Andrew has discussed in some detail recently on this blog, O'Reilly has started publishing many books as iPhone/iPod Touch apps. Over the past couple of months, we've received a considerable amount of feedback from customers who have purchased the apps.To address some of the most common questions we get, I recently added a page on oreilly.com. I cover three…

CrunchPad Tablet Prototype Coming Together

The low-cost tablet project ("CrunchPad") from TechCrunch is nearing the working-prototype stage: This launch prototype is another significant step forward from the last prototype. The screen is now flush with the case and we've decreased the overall thickness to about 18 mm. The case will be aluminum, which is more expensive than plastic but is sturdier and lets us shave…

Apple is Now a Phone Company

Apple reported stunning results for the last quarter, and it has clearly become a dominant phone company in a very short space of time. John Gruber from Daring Fireball has the real punchline, but his analysis of the results is excellent reading as a whole: The entire iPhone platform is only 15 months old. The cheapest model still costs…

Report: No Kindle Launch in UK This Year

Europe's complicated mobile landscape will prevent the Kindle from launching in the UK this year, reports The BookSeller: In an interview with The Bookseller, Brian McBride, managing director of Amazon in the UK, said it was not yet clear when the Kindle would launch in the country … "In Europe it is a minefield as there are so many…

Open Question: All-in-One Devices or Single Use E-Readers?

When it comes to reading digital books, do you prefer a dedicated device (e.g. the Kindle) or an all-in-one gadget (e.g. the iPhone)? Please share your thoughts.

Moving Ebooks into Mobility Culture

Sherman Young writes about how ebooks should be seen in the context of mobile platforms and as part of mobility culture. From M/C Journal: Instead of seeking to make an e-book culture a replacement for print culture, effectively placing the reading of books in a silo separated from other day-to-day activities, it might be better to situate e-books within a…

Open Question: Do You Read Books on a Cell Phone?

I've run into a number of people who say they've read ebooks for years on their mobile phones. I'm curious to see how prevalent this is within the TOC Community.