The Third Place

Some months ago, I predicted an application that would merge all contact forms in one place. I was expecting Android to be the first one with something like this, but it was Nokia. I did not see that coming!

Ever since I got my first SonyEricsson mobile, I never gave Nokia a second look. The phones were ugly, with shity and slow software. SonyEricsson’s had (and still have) a great design, with a much more user friendly and intuitive software. Unfortunately, people where too hooked on Nokia (Microsoft style) to notice it, and never got to try it out.

Now… this is the first time I’m expecting something good out of Nokia, a mobile that actually fits all my demands (in no specific order):

• WLAN
• 5 Megapixel (the minimum to reach the old 35mm role’s quality) camera with video recording capability
• Bluetooth
• An OS that is a bit more open than most
• and of course, the killer contact list!

I’m sure that last feature will be copied and, hopefully, improved by others. Finally!

I don’t know the final price, but “they” are saying around $750. It is expensive but, after that, it can only come down…

With Android getting into cruise speed, it’s probably time to talk about an integration, or application, that does something I’ve been waiting for a long time. It’s actually very simple: full contact list integration.

So, what do I mean by this?

Day by day, our world is getting even more connected in each and every way, but our personal availability to connect is still limited. More, the “mobile internet” is already here: iPhone, netbooks, cheap mobile data plans, etc. Of course, not everyone wants to be available 24/7, but remember there’s always the off switch.

To put it short, I want, and predict, that the next generation of contact lists, most probably the mobile phone books, will also be instant messengers, with redundant contacts to the same person/object. It isn’t anything new, just the merging of two concepts. Pidgin is a very good example, where a single client program connects to a variety of services, providing an almost seamless instant messaging experience to the user. Now just imagine that it works in your own mobile, and integrates with it’s phone book. Bingo! You are now able to talk (or communicate) with any person in your contacts list, either they have a mobile phone or not! Another example is Jaiku’s S60 application, that integrates with Nokia’s mobile phone books.

Again, I know there are lots of programs that to a part of this, but I’m still waiting to see the full integration. No messy apps, just one contact list, with everything you need to communicate with another person.

And Android could well be the best candidate platform to do this…

It’s a sad day for UIQ…

UIQ has announced that it’ll lay off their employees, as SonyEricsson and Motorola are no longer developing mobile phones based on that interface (UIQ3).

Basically, since Nokia bought Symbian, and they want to push their own version of the user interface (S60), UIQ didn’t have other choice. I do know that it had a much better product than S60, and you can see their prototypes here. I daily use a SE P990i with UIQ3, and I’ve compared it with my sister N80’s S60, and it’s much faster, easy to use, intuitive and pretty.

You can read the original piece here (in swedish… bork, bork), or try the Google translated attempt here.