Email sent from a desk does not equal email sent from a mobile device.

When you send an SMS text or chat message people understand the casual, quick nature of the medium, and therefore expect a level of casualness when it comes to spelling full words (u versus you, ppl versus people) and forming complete thoughts and sentences. Just as spoken language is conversational, chat and SMS afford a certain level of laxness.

Email has evolved. There was a time when typing in all lowercase (hopefully you never typed in all caps) was normal enough for email. But since it has become the mainstay of corporate communication, it has dressed up accordingly. Although emoticons occasionally find their way into corporate emails, cute misspellings and abbreviations don’t.

New etiquette is needfully emerging. How do recipients know you’re sending an email from a device versus your desktop? When I’m writing a note via email from a mobile device, to a work colleague, must I type in complete thoughts and sentences? Must I capitalize and punctuate?

When I first saw Apple’s “Sent from my iPhone” default signature I thought it just let me show off my cool quotient with an iPhone reference. What they really did was create a disclaimer: forgive the typos and the informality.

(I thought about actually posting this from my phone, but blogging requires a certain level of formality that I wasn’t prepared to take on with a mobile device. That would be more appropriate for my microblog.)

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We like when the mainstream press highlights the right things. It’s a signal that the non-insiders might get a sense of the pains and frustrations felt in the mobile industry. Who else but Walt Mossberg could deliver it to the bad guys with WSJ credibility. Mossberg’s axis of evil includes Steve Jobs’ inked deal with “the devil,” (read the piece to see who that is), it includes 1970s-era AT&T, and the top US carriers whom he calls collectively the Soviet ministries.

My only suggestion for Mr. Mossberg is that he up the production value of his video studio. He speaks with the eloquence of someone who has a speech writer (presumably himself) but his close-up cam, with low quality video comes off a bit like a YouTube “video response.” But, hey, maybe that’s the best way to get heard these days.

Read or watch Mossberg’s Free My Phone rant at All Things D.

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Josh Ulm, Director of User Experience, Adobe spoke at the company’s annual MAX conference in Chicago.

I especially liked his before and after review of Yahoo! Go and Google Maps for mobile.

His comments on “Demonstrating the Brand” were right on — especially his point about the newish Yahoo! Go application. The user interface is a huge improvement over the previous Yahoo! WAP version, but even though the visual branding is much better aligned, the application falls short of the Yahoo! brand promise. Yahoo! is built on bringing me my content, and somehow the Yahoo! Go app manages to deliver merely generic content.

This point is one the mobile industry, and more specifically, the mobile user experience community is not focused enough on. Focusing on getting the usability and the interactions right is only part of the equation. Don’t lose sight of the content. Is it right? And is its delivery true to the brand.

Since a majority of Ulm’s thoughts are shared in Mobile Persuasion I’ve just focused on the highlights.

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The context versus consistency debate is not new, but it certainly doesn’t appear to be over. 37signals adds another argument to the context pile…

I read this interesting (short) article on 37signals.com concerning Apple’s placement of their new iTunes icon on the iPhone home screen. Given that the western world reads from left to right, users would expect this last icon to appear on the left side, right?… Not so says Apple, here’s why:

Read Context over Consistency at 37signals.com.

Although it’s something that the common person might not notice or ‘get’, it shows that the Apple UI folks are never asleep at the wheel and that they spend time thinking about the small details and their resulting implications. Don’t just do things automatically because tradition says we should or because the technology says it should be that way.

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Today at the EuroIA Summit, Barcelona, we will discuss insights from the Punchcut-funded mobile social networking study.

The poster lists the chief insights and provides a visualization of the users ages and their behaviors (text messaging, IM, email, photo sharing, blogging, commenting both using desktop apps and mobile devices).
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You’ve probably had this experience:

• You anticipate the arrival of a new device for weeks.
• You discuss it with your friends, read the reviews and the promised features.
• You listen to the hype; sometimes a believer, sometimes a skeptic.
• You try the device in the store. It’s got some nice features.
• You buy it.
• Your friends ask to play with it and strangers ask what it is.
• 1 week later the allure is gone. The experience has imperfections.
• 2 weeks later its weaknesses are clear. You don’t love it. There are a few cumbersome interactions and design flaws.

The iPhone stands out strongly as an exception. It definitely passes the 2 week test criteria: a) you love it more after 2 weeks than you did when you got it and b) you can’t remember life before it. (Okay, so I’m exaggerating that last point.)

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This iPhone tip goes out to those of you following the growing “Life Hacks” movement - gaining back precious minutes of your life through efficiency practices.

We’ve all been stuck in meetings that we wish we could get out of. Well, fortunately His Steveness has designed something handy into the iPhone which will help us reclaim our lives so we can get back to doing what we _really_ want to be doing. If you have the foresight, try this before attending your next meeting:From the main menu, select Clock then Timer. Use the wheel interface to set your interval (How much of this meeting are you willing to endure?), set your ringtone and hit “Start.”

Attend your meeting. Go ahead and shut your phone down (read as: Hit the hardware button on top right) and set it on the table next to your notebook, printouts, etc. and act as interested as you can in the meeting. Resist the urge to check the timer - don’t worry, it won’t let you down. When the timer reaches zero, it will wake up your iPhone and play the ringtone. To anyone glancing over at your iPhone, the combination of idle screen wallpaper and ringtone will look convincing, even to a fellow iPhone user.

Grab it shortly into the first ring, give it a quick glance, and apologize to those left in the room.. “Sorry, I gotta take this…”

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Carrier: AT&T (formerly Cingular)
Manufacturer: Samsung
Platform/OS: Windows Mobile 5

We can’t help the fact that mobile devices are often presented in retail environments with dummy mockups and fake printed screens. But, we can help the dialogue with a focus on the whole user experience and not merely a features and form factor breakdown.

The Blackjack is a conversation starter. It’s small, it’s capable and it’s good looking in a utilitarian kind of way. When people inevitably ask about it and I’m forced to explain my love/hate relationship with it.

For the good, the bad, the ugly, odd and puzzling keep reading after the bump. Continue Reading »