In case you’ve not had time to follow the backchannel chatter, we’ve gathered some of the mobile user experience articles from the last few days that caught our eye. Here’s some quick recommending reading that describes our changing digital lifestyles, mobile trends, future tech considerations, and there’s even a good robot story thrown in for good measure.

If you’ve come across a great mobile user experience story in the last few days, let us know! Post it in comments or find me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/benson/

Trends

MWC’09 Trends by John Strand
http://www.mocom2020.com/2009/03/key-trends-mobile-word-congress/

Vision Mobile’s Mobile Megatrends 2009
http://www.visionmobile.com/blog/2009/02/mobile-megatrends-2009/

Design Exploration

New Tab Page: Proposed design principles and prototype (Mozilla Labs)
http://labs.mozilla.com/2009/03/new-tab-page-proposed-design-principles-and-prototype/

iPhone prototype caught on video
http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/10/iphone-prototype-caught-on-video

IPTV

The future of TV lies on the net
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7932278.stm

Digital Media newsletter (PDF)
http://www.digital-media.net.au/Common/ContentManagement/digital-media/newsletter/20090309.pdf

Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) is coming, cable companies better adopt to changing times
http://controlaltdelete.tv/2009/03/08/internet-protocol-tv-iptv-is-coming-cable-companies-better-adopt-to-changing-times/

ZillionTV
http://www.zilliontv.tv/

Mobile TV Popular In Korea, Not Making Any Money
http://www.youth-marketing-statistics.com/2008/12/mobile-tv-popular-in-korea-not-making.html

Emerging Technology

Charging mobile devices wirelessly: eZone by Qualcomm
http://www.mocom2020.com/2009/03/the-ease-of-charging-your-mobile-devices/

Wintek to supply touch panels for Apple netbook, says paper
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20090309PB204.html

Philips: OLED windows in a few years
http://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/philips-oled-windows-in-a-few-years-570698

Japanese gadget controls iPod in blink of an eye
http://www.physorg.com/news155728914.html

Robot Programmed to Love Goes too Far
http://www.muckflash.com/?p=200

Experimental Multitouch UI for Nokia S60
http://www.symbian-freak.com/news/009/03/experimental_multitouc_interface_for_5800.htm

Social Networking

Social Networking More Popular Than Email, More Profitable Than…Er…Um
http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20090309/social-networking-more-popular-than-e-mail-more-profitable-than-er-um/?mod=ATD_rss

When Everyone’s a Friend, Is Anything Private?
http://voices.allthingsd.com/20090309/when-everyone%E2%80%99s-a-friend-is-anything-private/

General News

Internet, Mobile Phones Named Most Important Inventions
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/business/08count.html?_r=1

Chinese political advisor urges innovation to tackle downturn, emphasis on creative
http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90776/90785/6608793.html

Charlie Rose: A conversation with Marissa Mayer, V.P. of Search Product and User Experience, Google
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10129

Recession Forcing Automakers To Think About Mobile
http://www.mobilemarketingwatch.com/recession-forcing-automakers-to-think-about-mobile/

Why we’ve reached the end of the camera megapixel race
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2009/03/why-weve-reached-the-end-of-the-camera-megapixel-race.ars

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Twitter is popular because it’s insanely simple — which means it’s easy to abuse. Here’s some etiquette that will make Twitter a less noisy, more relevant way to connect.

Five Guidelines for Twitter Etiquette

1// Replying is fine. In fact it’s an interesting way to discover people and ideas. Just remember your followers are only listening to half of your conversation. Fill your followers in on the topic at least. For example “@joetheplumber Haha, my cat does the same thing” is more usable information than just “@joetheplumber ha ha“.

People don’t follow everyone you’re talking to, so if you reply to someone in public, give everybody else some context. If it truly is worthy of a live reply, chances are your followers will want to see who you’re talking to. For more on relevant replies, see #2.

2// Twitter isn’t chat! I didn’t follow you so I could listen to you have a back and forth conversation with someone I don’t know. I followed you because you have interesting updates and bits to share. Learn the value of the direct message, d instead of the reply @. This especially applies to corporate Twitter accounts. The most common mistake is broadcasting the same announcement as a reply to individual users, seemingly forgetting that everybody else is seeing their redundancy.

3// Don’t hog the screen space. When you tweet every 3 to 5 minutes you selfishly fill up your follower’s Twitter window, burying their other friends’ messages. Uncool. (This is the reason I don’t follow Robert Scoble @scobleizer anymore. His tech geek powers were overcome by his Monterey weather updates.)

4// Finally, filter yourself. Leave the text unsent for a second. If it still sounds clever, witty or smart it’s probably good enough for your public time line.

5// Saying “good night Twitter” at the end of your day is kind of cute, but it’s mostly just sad. Sad and weird.

A few Twitter resources: For help with managing Twitter followers, try FriendOrFollow. For a great desktop Twitter client, check out TweetDeck.

You can follow @joepemberton on Twitter.

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File under: Ways social media is changing advertising for the better.

In the past I’ve expressed my distaste for FaceBook’s advertising approach. They used to run ads in-line with the “news feed” and it was designed to look in every way like content generated by a friend. Tricking me, if only for a moment, into thinking a friend recommended some product or movie tarnished my trust for FaceBook.

Well, now I feel it’s only right to come out on record and applaud FaceBook for their recent move, which presents ads with better transparency — like ads. But they go a step further into actually being helpful (to themselves and to users) by letting users identify whether the ad aligns with their interests.

This is an instance of how user choice in advertising (or even just perceived user choice) can create affinity for the advertiser and for the property hosting the ads. It’s the win-win-win that all ad people aim for.

It’s pretty clear FaceBook is trying everything with their advertising approach, as they haven’t stopped the ads-in-your-news-feed entirely. I do hope the new model works for them, because if it does it is better for everybody.

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MEX CONFERENCE, LONDON — The second session of the first day of the MEX conference examined the evolution of community services and social networking in the mobile environment. This session was in a panel format, meaning that following the speaker, discussion took place among subject matter “experts” invited to weigh in on the topic. I was fortunate to be one of the members of this panel, along with Frederick Ghahramani of AirG, Neil Cox of the CMO Council and Antonio Vince Staybil of GoFresh and itsmy.com.

Although only a very small percentage of Vodafone’s subscribers use its mobile internet and content services, Al pointed out that that represents about 4 million users. He expects these numbers to grow as the range of content offered on the mobile internet grows and becomes easier to access via mobile devices.

Al was candid in his talk about the challenges Vodafone has faced in translating a community experience from one context, that of the fixed or PC-based internet, to mobile. He astutely reasoned that a literal translation won’t be succesful and that only those aspects of the PC experience that are meaningful in the mobile context should constitute the mobile experience.

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1// Adobe is reporting that Flash Lite will now support video.

2// Wired has posted their interview with John Maeda, who spoke at the TED Conference in Monterey, CA this week. When probed on his favorite manmade designs, he offered this:

“I like stuff designed by dead people. The old designers. They always got it right because they didn’t have to grow up with computers. All of the people that made the spoon and the dishes and the vacuum cleaner didn’t have microprocessors and stuff. You could do a good design back then.

I think if you’re a young designer now, you’ve got the internet and you’ve got screens all over the place — it’s awful hard. Technology is just so powerful now. You can do so much with so little. You can shove it into the size of a quarter. For designers to design great objects where technology is concerned, that’s hard.”

Too true. (Thanks Nancy.)

3// Last weeks’ Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, yielded some interesting discussion, like the keynote on networked mobile gaming.

4// File under: alternate desktop metaphors. Check out “BumpTop,” a desktop UI paradigm that uses physical behavior to aid organization of files. Whether or not the desktop metaphor is appropriate to mobile UI, could this type of physics and motion apply to mobile touch screens using a finger tip or thumb as the stylus?

5// Opera Mini. At most it looks like a strike against the operator content foothold. At the least it may be a reason not to have to buy a smartphone. (Thanks Christian.)

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We’re constantly anticipating ways consumers engage in mobile usage. One area I’m intrigued with is mobile gaming — why and when people play them. With a few exceptions, mobile gaming is limited to single player puzzle games and stripped-down versions of best selling PC/console games. So, if you’re a hardcore gamer (as opposed to a casual one) you’re likely not that enthralled by Bejeweled, Sudoku or Tower Bloxx. My brother, a long time World of Warcraft (WoW) addict, actually laughed at me when I showed him Civilization III for mobile (which I thought was a pretty cool port of the desktop version).
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