I’ve seen some of the mobile technology related releases for CES, and I have to say that apart from one or two things, it is shaping up to be rather dull. There are probably going to be some nice things in other areas of the technology world, but for the areas that I cover I’m not all that excited. There is something nice coming on Monday though, so keep your eyes peeled…

While I am infinitely happy with my position with MobileBurn, and I whole heartedly believe that online/digital media is the way of the future, I have been thinking lately of branching out and attempting to secure some freelance print media work. I will be relocating to the US in about a year’s time to deepen my involvement with MB, but in the interim, I wouldn’t mind getting more experience in print as well. Supplementing my income a little would also be great.

Freelancing is something that appears quite daunting to me. It seems that it takes a lot of time and effort to break into the scene, and even when you do get contacts, it is a very competitive market. If I do go ahead with it, I will try to document my experiences networking and writing here, as both an outlet and in the hope that others might get some benefit out of it. I wonder whether having work published online holds much esteem with print editors; I believe I am a good writer, and my work on MobileBurn should be proof of this. Time will tell, I suppose.

In one of the most ridiculous news items I have read in a long time, Stuff is reporting that the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA), which oversees secondary and tertiary qualifications in the country, will be allowing SMS-style ‘TXT TLK’ in exams this year. I have written about my concerns over school age children using mobile phones here previously, and this just seems ludicrous to me.

While the NZQA is stating that it is strongly discouraging students to use the shorthand, and that in exams where requirements specifically state that candidates should demonstrate good language use, such as English, abbreviations would be penalized, I think it is terrible that ‘TXT TLK’ will be accepted at all.

We should be trying to teach students an appreciation of language, and the ability to write, spell, and speak with a high standard, not encouraging laziness and a complete butchery of the written word. I hope that the public makes a stand on this, and the NZQA realizes the stupidity of its ways.

Well, it finally happened. The chances of being burgled are fairly high these days, and let’s face it, I’ve had a pretty good run to not have been broken in to before. But last night it happened…

Gone is, well, pretty much everything electronic in my apartment. Not only have I lost home entertainment items like the Xbox 360, as well as my desktop computer (including two LCD monitors and scanner) and notebook computer, but also my external backup hard drives – meaning years and years of data is now gone. While this is a painful experience for anyone, it is even more so for someone like me who works from home. This has absolutely disabled me until I can get a new computer, and even then, the damage done from lost data cannot have a price put on it.

Gloves were used, so there are no fingerprints, and the chances of me getting anything back is slim to nothing. While I will not go into a deep, philosophical discussion about what it is that makes people behave in this manner, I will say that it is quite upsetting seeing how immoral humanity has become.

While I can spend time obsessing over the loss, the fact of the matter is that I am not hurt, and life will continue. The experience has shown me the good side of humanity as well, though, and I would like to extend the most heartfelt thank you to my friends, family, and girlfriend who have been incredibly supportive, and offered more help than I could ever hope for.

And on life goes…

An issue was raised with me the other day about mobile phones for users with special needs, such as people with vision problems, hearing problems, and other such challenges. James Kendrick touches on the subject a little, but the solutions that he found are a little, well, poor.

What I want to see is better integration into the phone’s firmware of tools to help disabled people. While this may not necessarily be practical for regular ‘dumb’ phones, I imagine it wouldn’t prove to be such a problem with smartphones.

Not knowing people that face these kind of challenges personally, I can only speculate what functions would make handsets more accessible to this demographic. I would assume that screen reader functionality would be a great place to start for those with failing vision, and conversely, having more pronounced visual indicators of what is going on with the device would help those with hearing impairments. Enlarged keypads would help greatly for many people, but this isn’t really practical to apply to all handsets – so what about a phone specifically designed for disabled individuals?

I wonder if it would be at all feasible for a large manufacturer to introduce a phone specifically designed to help those that have issues with today’s small and fiddly phones. Surly there would be a market for it, but I don’t know the economics of it all. At least for a start, though, I think manufacturers need to become more aware of this demographic, and I believe that the first company to realize this will get a lot of recognition for its efforts – and maybe even make some money along the way.

Note: I have tried to use language that won’t offend anyone, but if anything in this piece offends you, please contact me and I will amend it.

One of the hardest parts of my job is remembering model numbers of handsets. For a long time, confusing numbering has been the norm, but finally some of the marketing folk that work with handset manufacturers are waking up to the fact that model names, rather than numbers, are the way to go. Samsung are by far the worst when it comes to naming schemes, followed by Nokia, but the later has recently announced (in a very informal way) that it will be moving to a meaningful naming scheme.

Unlike Barry Allwood at MobileScraper (like the name), I think this is a great idea – with a caveat. Like Barry, I hate Motorola’s confusing naming. Why are vowels so bad, Motorola? What I do like, however, are names like LG’s Chocolate. Think about the auto industry, manufacturers do not name their vehicles with long, confusing numbers, but instead give them names that are memorable, which increases model awareness and encourages word of mouth marketing.

I don’t think a pure name based system is the answer, though; Too many names will get just as confusing as the numbers. What I would love to see is manufacturers using names for ranges of products, which are then broken down with short, easy to remember numbers. Samsung, which I previously called the worst offender, has actually begun introducing this method (though only on a very small range of handsets currently). Samsung has its ‘Ultra’ range, which is then broken down into numbers based on the thickness of the handset (Ultra 9.9, Ultra 6.9), and while I don’t particularly like the decimal point in there, I think this is the way of the future.

Imagine it, the Ford SMAD-1901 – pretty memorable…

The Be a Good Dad blog has made a very thoughtful response to my Cellphones and Children post, and in fact disagrees with me on one of the points I made.

Be a Good Dad contends that SMS text messaging won’t ruin a child’s spelling and grammar skills, and will in actuality help them know when to write with slang and when to write formally. This is an interesting argument, and if a careful eye is placed on children, could indeed work. As a side note, Be a Good Dad seems like a very good blog for fathers to read, so be sure to check it out.

Someone should introduce Be a Good Dad to the Firefly and Migo handsets though, as well as other available handsets for kids, as they answer almost all the features the article requests in a handset for kids.

James Kendrick points me to an interesting article on CNET UK about the average age of children when they get a mobile phone. The article states that a recent study shows that the average age of a child is expected to drop to five years old this year – while five years old does surprise me, I thought I would weigh in with my opinion, and it is generally a positive one. I would like to say first, however, that I am not going to address the issue of phone radiation, as we could argue back and forth about that little issue all day.

If I remember correctly, I got my first phone at the age of eleven or twelve, which was quite young back then (I was the first kid I knew with a phone). Even ignoring my involvement in the industry, I have no problem with parents giving a phone to a child – with a few caveats. For a start, I do think that five is too young; sometime in the latter stages of Primary school (or elementary school, depending on where you are, between grades 5-7) would be more appropriate.

To be honest, I like the idea of companies making child friendly phones like the Firefly and LG’s Migo. I do not agree with giving a fully-fledged handset to a child, but I think that these very restricted handsets are a safe way to introduce a child to the responsibilities of owning a phone – including teaching them the associated costs of calling, and looking after the phone itself. These child-focused handsets also provide a form of peace of mind to parents, with children at an age where they start going out with friends and generally getting around a bit more on their own, as many have integrated GPS tracking capabilities and emergency buttons.

One thing I do dread though, which is something that the CNET article also touches on, is the way an SMS messaging capable handset could destroy a young person’s aptitude in spelling and grammar. I absolutely despise receiving a message coded in ‘TXT TLK,’ and with handsets including easy to use predictive text input methods these days, I really see no excuse for the laziness. This is one issue I don’t really know how to address, though it is one that the restricted kid-phones don’t have (as they cannot send text messages). Short of trying to instill a respect for good grammar and spelling in your children (which is probably a pipe dream), I don’t know how we can solve this one.

Like everything, there is good and bad points to giving a phone to a child. Overall, I’m on the positive side of the fence. I do not have children though, so my stance could completely turn around when I do.

Richard Querin, a long time member of my reading list, has made a very well thought out and constructive post in response to my post about the nature of blogging. Let me just say that said post was never meant to garner any attention, let alone such a lengthy and interesting response, which is something that continuously amazes me about blogging, and indeed life itself: a random thought that might pop into one person’s mind may affect another in more ways than initially anticipated.

Anyway, Richard makes some really interesting points (not just in this post, but all the time). The things that stand out to me are:

Don’t go searching for things to blog about, let them come to you

This is something I completely agree with. Forced blogging is not something I ever want to read. If you have to search out something to write about, then it isn’t worth writing. I would much prefer to read about someone’s comments on something they come across in day-to-day life, than about something a person is posting because they feel they need to update a blog. I don’t unsubscribe from people for lack of posting if they make me think when I read what they have to say.

Keep a private life

Indeed, a very important point. Richard says

If I need to relate my personal state of affairs about something on this blog then I would likely pass it through my standard question: “would I be ok with everyone I currently know reading this post?”

It is always important to think about how your words affect others, and this goes triple for such a public and easily accessible medium. While I do post about my personal life, I indeed run everything through the same kind of filter that Richard does.

Richard does not write about his work

This is something I don’t entirely agree with. Since my work is online for everyone to see anyway, blogging about my work life is something I don’t really hesitate in doing. The ‘About‘ page on MobileBurn links to this blog, and obviously I need to take the same precautions as anyone would have to take when speaking of their employment, but overall I’m pretty happy to speak about what is going on in that side of my life. I think of this blog as an extension to my paid work anyway, where I can write more personal opinions about the pieces I write for MobileBurn, though it is not necessarily an integral part of my work – and I am certainly not paid for the thoughts expressed here. What I do not do, however, is blog about people I meet or talk to in my work life – I have no permission to talk about those people, and respect their privacy. The same goes for blogging about my personal life.

In short, I feel happy expressing my thoughts about my day-to-day work life, but not about individual situations that may arise in an effort to respect other’s privacy.

Richard really does sum it up perfectly:

I’m not going to jeopardize other areas in my life for the sake of my blog. I want to be proud (or at least not ashamed) of what I write here.

Well said.

It is interesting to analyze how I go about blogging you know. For a long period now, I have had a complete writer’s block of sorts. Sure, I write my articles for MobileBurn, which I enjoy greatly, but I have been at a loss for anything to write about on a more personal note. It’s not that nothing has been happening to me, just that there is nothing that I have had the urge to blog.

Which brings me to looking back over the traffic and subscription numbers of the site over time, relative to the regularity of posts. It seems as though just as the blog is starting to get a little popular, I stop posting regularly, and obviously the numbers go back down again. This has revealed that there is a core base of subscribers that remain subscribed through the slow times though, which is nice, and I thank you.

In any event, I do not write this blog for the traffic. I write it as an outlet, and somewhere for me to express ideas and thoughts. I can say that I feel the block is lifting though, and there should be posts coming soon. A lot has been changing in my life – I’ve moved into a new apartment (a nice three bedroom place, very modern) among other things, so I guess I will be testing the theory that a change is as good as a holiday.