Month: August 2009

T-Mobile Dash 3G: Continuing Impressions

2009-08-11 / spierzchala / 8 Comments

I’ve now had my T-Mobile Dash 3G for nearly a month, and I can say that it is a very useful little mobile computing platform for someone who doesn’t need all the power of an iPhone (and who doesn’t what to pay the AT&T tax on mobile computing). After a month of use and thought, I thought it was time to update my first impressions.

The Good

Active Sync works like a dream with our work Exchange 2007 Server
Evernote Mobile is great for collecting stuff and works flawlessly.
Skype Mobile over WiFi rocks, and will be very useful if I ever get to travel outside the US and Canada again.
Threaded SMS conversations remind me of the old Treo 600 I once had. It is a nice touch that the Blackberry really didn’t do well.

The Bad

I’m not always sure where I am in the interface. The Windows Mobile platform that the Dash 3G uses makes it darn difficult to figure out where you are and how to get to where you want. I sometimes find myself navigating through a number of layers to find out how to get back to certain apps.
Files? Where are my files? It shouldn’t be this hard to figure out where images/videos/audio files are stored by the default applications.
Camera can too easily be set to video mode, and it is not intuitive how to switch it back to camera-only mode.
Lack of native Google Mobile app for email. I loved the GMail app for Blackberry. The only option I appear to have on the Dash 3G / Windows Mobile platform is their native IMAP client which is a clunky hack, IMHO.
No intuitive way to sync Google and Active Sync calendar and contacts, a la Google Sync for the Blackberry.
No intuitive way to join PEAP WiFi networks. The wireless network at my office uses PEAP to authenticate, which Windows Mobile, despite being a Windows-like product, appears to have no clue about. I have helped at least one person setup their iPhone to join the PEAP network without difficulty.

The Ugly

Why can’t the Shortcut key launch any app, not just the ones Windows Mobile wants you to launch. Mobile IE sucks compared to SkyFire, but I can’t immediately start SkyFire without going through those nasty, non-intuitive Windows to find it.
Why is sending an MMS so hard? It isn’t clear if you are doing the right thing, and I’m never sure if the damn thing has worked properly. This is a key functionality that needs to be fixed, ASAP.
Why offer the option to check for Windows Mobile Updates if you can’t connect to the server?
And, despite trying to hide it, it is still Windows. Occasionally apps just crash without warning, especially if the device has been on for more than 3-4 days continuously. I only had to restart my Blackberry when installing some apps and updating the firmware/OS.

As a smartphone, it is a good starter phone.

However, I am having some pretty large pangs of envy and regret about the myTouch, with full knowledge that the Android OS is not yet ready for the modern office environment, i.e. no ability to Active Sync. If Android gets Active Sync capabilities anytime soon, I will truly regret my decision to go with the Dash 3G.

Ratings:

OS: 4/10 – Still Windows. Can we hack Android with Active Sync onto this platform?

Apps: 4/10 – Complex menus. Lack of an App Store location or interesting/goofy utilities. Lacking Google apps (Google Sync and an independent GMail app).

Hardware: 7/10 – No light for the camera, keyboard a little small for Jolly Green Giant Hands, proprietary HTC plugs for headsets and power

Call Quality: 8.5/10 – Some fade out in quality when switching from 3G to EDGE

Data Quality: 5/10 – Mostly because I paid for 3G and I’m getting EDGE/GPRS in the Boston ‘burbs. T-Mobile’s slow roll of their 3G infrastructure shows

The Loss of Blogging Voice, or Why I removed the Ads from my Blog

2009-08-11 / spierzchala / 0 Comments

I have had advertising on my blog for as long as I can remember. Except for the period of time when I hosted the site at WordPress.com, I have always had AdSense, Chitika, or some other ad services content being contextually presented to my visitors.

Frankly, I found having ads up on my site extremely hypocritical, as I do everything in my power to avoid seeing ads of any kind during my day-to-day Web use. My browsers have ad-blocking plugins, or pass through ad-blocking proxies to eliminate the content I see as intrusive and unwanted.

Still, I spent a long time thinking about ad-placement on my own blog, and what I could do to drive traffic to get revenue, from something I didn’t believe in myself.
Yes, my blog doesn’t get huge amounts of traffic. And yes, I have been paid out exactly four times by AdSense in the 5 years I have been blogging. In four years, I have made $400 from the ads on my site.

I find ads intrusive, invasive, repulsive, and, in many cases, extremely ugly. So why should visitors to my site have to suffer with them?

Effective Sunday, August 9 2009, the ad code, in all its various forms, has been eliminated from my site. My blog is now officially ad-free. And it will stay that way.
For me, ad-revenue is ineffective. It takes away from the true reason I started writing this blog: I have something to say. If I am always thinking “How will this play with the contextual ad providers?”, then I am not writing in my own voice. I am writing to meet the criteria of an algorithm that triggers on certain words and will provide advertising that might make me money.

By presenting ads to visitors, the same ads that I despise.

When you step back and think about your blog, consider the following.

Do you think about every word in your posts, considering its effect on your SEO?
Do you change your site design often to try and discover the optimal ad layout?
Is ad revenue more important than your reputation as a blogger?
Do you always think about branding in terms of dollars instead of in terms of authority and reputation?

Blogging is not about the money. And while I read Darren Rowse and other pro-blogging advocates, I also realize that they’re focus is on quality content for an appreciative audience.

I feel that ad revenues can lead to the loss of your blogging voice. And my voice and reputation are what are most vital to me, not dollars from ugly ads.

Web Performance: On the edge of performance

2009-08-10 / spierzchala / 0 Comments

A decade of working in the Web performance industry can leave one with the idea that no matter how good a site is, there is always the opportunity to be better, be faster. However, I am beginning to believe, just from my personal experience on the Internet, that speed has reached its peak with the current technologies we have.

This does not bode well for an Internet that is shifting more directly to true read/write, data/interaction heavy Web sites. This needs to have home broadband that is not only fast, but which has equality for inbound and outbound connection speeds.

But will faster home broadband really make that much of a difference? Or will faster networks just show that even with the best connectivity to the Internet money can buy, Web sites are actually hurting themselves with poor design and inefficient data interaction designs?

For companies on the edge of Web performance, who are trying to push their ability to improve the customer experience as hard as possible, who are moving hard and fast to the read/write web, here are some ways you can ensure that you can still deliver the customer experience your visitors expect.

Confirm your customers’ bandwidth

This is pretty easy. Most reasonably powerful Web analytics tools can confirm this for you, breaking it down by dialup, and high broadband type. It’s a great way to ensure that your preconceptions about how your customers interact with your Web site meets the reality of their world.

It is also a way to see just how unbalanced your customers’ inbound and outbound connection speeds. If it is clear that traffic is coming from connection types or broadband providers that are heavily weighted towards download, then optimization exercises cannot ignore the effect of data uploads on the customer experience.

Design for customers’ bandwidth

Now that you’ve confirmed the structure of your customers’ bandwidth, ensure that your site and data interaction design are designed with this in mind. Data that uses a number of inefficient data calls behind the scenes in order to be more AJAXy may hurt itself when it tries to make those calls over a network that’s optimized for download and not upload.

Measure from the customer perspective

Web performance measurement has been around a long time. But understanding how the site performs from the perspective of true (not simulated) customer connectivity, right where they live and work, will highlight how your optimizations may or may not be working as expected.

Measurements from high-throughput, high-quality datacenter connections give you some insight into performance under the best possible circumstances. Measure from the customer’s desktop, and even the most thoughtfully planned optimization efforts may have been like attacking a mammoth with a closed safety pin: ineffective and it annoys the mammoth [to paraphrase Hugh Macleod].

As well as synthetic measurements, measure performance right from within the browser. Understanding how long it takes pages to render, how long it takes to show content above the fold, and to gather discrete times on complex Flash and AJAX events within the page will give you even more control over finding those things you can fix.

Takeaway

In the end, even assuming your customers have the best connectivity, and you have taken all the necessary precautions to get Web performance right, don’t assume that the technology can save you from bad design and slow applications.
Be constantly vigilant. And measure everything.

Do you need a smartphone?

2009-08-07 / spierzchala / 0 Comments

In the rush to the mobile computing era, what is often lost by advocates of this technology are the actual needs of the modern mobile consumer. Do most users need to have a handheld computer with them at all times? Is that what they desire? What does the market say?

In March 2009, 23% of mobile phone sales in the US were smartphones. Yet this is where all the energy of tech writers and analysts is focused. What about the 77% of the market that uses what would be considered dumb-phones? Is there nothing interesting going on in this market?

Smartphone market share is growing, and quickly. But, if you step back and ask yourself what you want from your phone, your decision to buy a smartphone may start to slip a bit.

Go through a checklist of must haves before making a phone decision.

Do you need to check your email all the time?
Do you need access to social-networking sites?
Do you need access to your calendar?
Do you crave shiny new apps that entertain you?
Will this device be a single mobile computing/communication/entertainment device?
Do you need to make calls?
Do you need to take pictures?
Do you need to send SMS messages?

Advocates of smartphones will tell me that it is the fastest growing market share in the mobile phone market. Great.

But does the latest and greatest smartphone serve the needs that I have (or you have, or your mom has, or your sister has) for mobile communication?

I am an advocate for smartphones. I have one and I use it. I find that it serves the needs I have everyday. But I am not a phone-user. I am a data-user and a messaging-user. I have a massive phone plan, but unless I am travelling, I make very few calls (more due to my personality than anything, I suppose).

So I ask readers: do you carry more than one phone? Do you have a smartphone and a standard mobile phone? And if you do, why?

Is your smartphone a ball and chain for work, and when you aren’t working, you carry something that works for you? Do you have one plan for data and one for calling or messaging?

And if you have had a smartphone, have you found it a good thing? Or have you wished you could go back to something simpler?

Web Performance: How long can you ignore the money?

2009-08-03 / spierzchala / 1 Comment

Web performance is everywhere. People intuitively understand that when a site is slow, something’s wrong. Web performance breeds anecdotal tales of lost carts, broken catalogs, and searches gone wrong. Web performance can get you name in lights, but not in the way you or your company would like.

It’s a mistake to consider Web performance a technology problem. Web performance is really a business problem that has a technological solution.
Business problems have solutions that any mid-level executive can understand. A site that can’t handle the amount of traffic coming in requires tuning and optimization, not the firing of the current VP of Operations and a new marketing strategy.

Can you imagine the fate of the junior executive who suggested that a new marketing strategy was the solution to brick-and-mortar stores that are too small and crowded to handle the number of prospective customers (or former prospective customers) coming in the door?

Every Web performance event costs a company money, in the present and in the future. So when someone presents your company with the reality of your current Web performance, what is your response?

Some simple ideas for living with the reality that Web performance hurts business.

Be able to explain the issue to everyone in the company and to customers who ask. Gory details and technical mumbo-jumbo make people feel like there is something being hidden from them. Tell the truth, but make it clear what happened.
Do not blame anyone in public. A great way to look bad to everyone is to say that someone else caused the problem. Guess what? All that the people who visited your site during the problem will remember is that your site had the problem. Save frank discussions for behind closed doors.
Be able to explain to the company what the business cost was. While everyone is pointing fingers inside your company, remind them that the outage cost them $XX/minute. Of course, you can only tell them that if you know what that number is. Then gently remind everyone that this is what it cost the whole company.
Take real action. I don’t mean things like “We will be conducting an internal review of our processes to ensure that this is not repeated”. I mean things like listening and understanding what technology or business process failed and got you into this position in the first place. Was it someone just hitting the wrong switch? Or was it a culture of denial that did not allow the reality of Web performance to filter up to levels where real change could be implemented?
Demand quantitative proof that this will never happen again. Load test. Monitor. Measure. Correlate data from multiple sources. Decide how Web performance information will be communicated inside your company. Make the data available so people can ask questions. Be prepared to defend your decisions with real information.

The most successful Web companies have done thing very well. It is the core of their success and it is what makes them ruthlessly strive for Web performance excellence.

These companies understood that in order to succeed they needed to create a culture where business performance and Web performance are the same thing.