Protos

@mobiface.com there is a nice post on an extra *interface* gyroscopic feature:

It moves as you tilt  ^^ – there is also a link to additonal photos of the cool Japanese water concept phone. Its it pop – surely but nice never the less.

The SCH B500 does not simply bank on the credit of having a 7.7 megapixel camera either; its a DMB phone so it can recieve and allow the user to view satellite TV as well. Since the phone can take such high resolution pictures, the user is bound to run out of storage space sooner or later, a problem easily solved by getting T-flash (trans flash) memory cards which the phone supports. The pictures can then be later seen on a TV screen thanks to the TV out function of the SCH B500.

More @ phoneyworld.com

http://www.shotcode.com/#start

The circular sequence of black and white blocks represents a url, any url you want, for example to your products website or a point of sale. The ShotCode reader understands this code and connects the end users mobile phone to your location in three clicks or less! Billions of ShotCodes can be created, enough for all your campaigns and them some!

This is the concept! hyperlinks for your phone anywhere – WITHOUT TYPING! The Key Stokes pr. sec to type in a hyperlink on a small form factor design is horrible – but this way you just have the phone translate a circular barcode and then voila!: “you’re automatically connected” – Assuming that you have GPRS and all that.

They have a nice video and also an application for trying it out if you want to use it privately that is.

Actually I like the Shortcodes way more than the wussy Yellow arrow (http://yellowarrow.net/index2.php).Shortcodes are simply smarter and made with so many business applications. Ok Yellow arrow is a community for half-creatives whom can splurge into technology and be attention whores on a flash site *ok doing it a bit much maybe – just dam tired of these half wits pushing locationbased blogging like its the cure for cancer…*

Other more social applications includes:

• http://streethive.com/
• http://www.rabble.com/
• http://socialight.com/
• http://www.dodgeball.com/

Any way – my money is on shotcode.com/ – it might only be infrastructure but the only RISK I see is getting the app on the phones etc. They have a great concept.

itworldcanada.com has an intresting article on the uses of RFID in meeting new tracing requirements made by main stream consumers.

“At the federal level, the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada agency recently released a policy framework outlining the direction of regulation over the next five years, stating the goal is to make 80 per cent of all food products traceable by 2008.”

The thing is consumers want more information about the origins of the food they eat, and that means that you have to accommodate more accurate tracing of goods in your value chain. If that is to be done by using RFID or similar – that’s a lot of tags!:

“We looked at the processes and realized every single commodity, every supply chain, had its own definition of traceability and [implementation mechanisms]. So when you get to [the] retail level, it can potentially become a nightmare,” Sherwood says. “You would have to support 15-20 ways to track products: beef one way, pork another, chicken yet another, and so on. The retailer would [face] a complete mess of information requirements and systems.”

Barcodes probably can’t do the trick – actually they could turn out to be even more expensive than RFID due to the scanning process.

I think this is great! I would love to be able to take my handheld and point at a steak to see if its Argentinean and whether the poor cow had been given penicillin.

@anzlab.com they have a brilliant way to use the mobiles camera capabilities.

A posted picture spawns the opportunity to have another picture and another and another… creating a tree structure generated by the users.

Why is it always Asia that has all the new brilliant ideas?

Phoneyworld has the story of how NTT DoCoMo and Mitsubishi have changed the keypad of a main consumer smart-phone.

The short conclusion is that since the new mobiles have so many functions it makes no sense to force a standard keypad to serve as input for all types of applications. Therefore they employ a touch screen, but not for the actual display – the touch screen is used where we would normally find buttons. This allows for the Interaction Designers to have pixel control of the area reserved for button!

An excerpt:

“In this case the display is standard, whereas the keypad is a touchscreen. The main objective of this exercise is that modern cell phones with their multiple features have become too complicated. There are a lot of people out there who would love to have these functions and dont mind paying for them but the user interface is getting too complicated for them to adjust. This technology simplifies things a lot. Depending on the main menu, the keypad shows only the associated keys. The phone would thus have literally two displays, one which acts as only the output while the other one (the keypad) can take the input and display keys depending upon the requirement. There are 3 fixed buttons though, these are shortcuts for immediately accessing the keypad (the numeric keys get displayed on the input screen), for going back and forward.”

Only downsides I can think of is the lack of tactile feedback and the fact that the cognitive strain might increase slightly while learning that the interface is application dependant.

In general I think this is a very smart move – I would prefer that type of Interface over the keypad any day – but hey! I use the Qtek S100 with Windows mobile – so I already do =)