EirePreneur

Using Typepad for iPhone on Opera mini

Delighted to find that yet another 'for iphone' service works perfectly well on the Opera mini browser. I'm posting this with a Sony Ericsson P1i over wifi.

Screw wi-fi, HSDPA is on the way

At the start of the year I appealed to the mobile operators - "Give me a flat rate GPRS/3G plan, get a new customer". Mercifully it looks like Vodafone have seen the light and according to Adrian Weckler are even going one better -

Vodafone Ireland will launch new 1.2Mbs data card products for laptop users later this year. The technology, HSDPA (higher speed data packet access) is designed to give far faster internet access speeds than its current 3G datacards.

Wooohoooo! Unmetered 3.5G? If Vodafone don't gouge us in the pricing I could be retiring my wi-fi card for good. [Thanks Damien].

770 + N70 v UMPC

I can scarely believe that it's been nearly a year since I wondered if the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet might be the perfect device for my 'location independent lifestyle'. Now Bernard Tyers puts it back in my radar when he calls it the killer Fon device -

"This will be a killer device for Fon WiFi. Stick it in your back pocket and you have VOIP, web, mail, music, pictures, Internet radio, all in one."

With all the recent hullaballou over the 'Origami' UMPCs I'm tempted to wait and see whether the extra functionality is worth the extra size, weight and cost but I'm still thinking that a 770 in conjunction with an N70 would be the ideal package for me.

IM to RSS to Live Web with your mobile phone

Sabifoo makes IM to RSS publishing as easy as I can possibly imagine it. I created a test feed for Clohessey's bar in Limerick, added it to the Open Irish Directory and then published to it from my Nokia 6630 using Agile Messenger. Google Talk now communicates with Jabber which is what makes it all possible (though other IM protocols are also supported).

I inserted the test feed under Entertainment & Shopping -> Pubs & Restaurants -> Limerick -> Clohessey's -> Live Feed which is best browsed using an OPML+RSS reader like Taskable or OPod. I pretended it was last Saturday night just after the Munster rubgy game and sent an hypothetical message from the manager. I'll remove it shortly but I just wanted to demonstrate the possibilities for real-time 'broadcasts' by entertainment venues to their clientele. Of course text messaging (SMS) would be even easier than IM but we're still waiting on a SMS -> RSS gateway.

NOTE: I'm not sure how the caching works with Taskable and OPod but it can take some time after updating the OPML file before it appears in those browsers. So if at first you don't see anything please come back again :)

Niche blogging Mobile Digital TV

Last week I pointed to a story about a guy who's making huge money through a niche gadget blog and I asked - "Would it be an idea to setup a new blog for the next Nokia super-gadget the moment it's announced?"

Now I notice that David O'Neill has setup a new blog for Mobile Digital TV. What a terrific niche. I think he's onto a winner here. As David says himself, "I can see this market being huge in 3-5 years".

Agreed. Subscribed.

The future of OPML... take off the blinkers!

Some emails I got in reaction to Monday's post amounted to.... "WTF??". So let me explain futher...

First, in order to paint my view of the OPML-everywhere future allow me the indulgence of a neologism. I need it because the term "Reading List" limits our vision. I can understand why that's a useful term right now to communicate the idea of subscribable lists of text based RSS feeds but we need to quickly jump beyond the notion of text based subscriptions to see the extraordinary possibilities.

So, here it is..... a "Beed" is a "Bundle of Feeds".

A Beed is a dynamic OPML file, the same as a "Reading List", except in addition to text feeds it includes audio and video podcast feeds and any other file format supported by the RSS enclosure tag. In other words, a Beed is a Reading List, a Listening List, a Watching List, and all-in-all a sensory subscriptions list.

Second, as Russ Beattie is blue in the face from telling us - the mobile (cell) phone is the interconnected computer of the future. We're not yet there universally but'll we'll soon be at a stage where most mobiles come with all-you-can-eat 3G (or better) data plans.... and Bluetooth. Remember Bluetooth funtionality is popping up everywhere, including automobile dashboards. And next generation Bluetooth (or whatever it becomes) will of course support much higher bandwidths.

Third, there are now at least 4 different RSS aggregators that work on my aging Nokia 6630. Very soon we'll see the addition of enclosure reading (podcatching) and OPML browsing to give us a next generation Mobile Multimedia Aggregator. Or you might call it a Beed Reader.

Now, let me finally give you a solid example of how we'll use Beeds in the near future....


My Morning Commute Beed.

It's the morning of January 24th 2008 and nearly time to head to work. While I'm finishing off my bowl of cornflakes my mobile phone is busily polling my RSS feeds, giving priority to the feeds in the Morning Commute Beed I setup recently, because it knows I'll be needing it in a few minutes.

Ok, I'm off... lock the door behind me and sit into my car. Right away my mobile pairs with the dashboard console over Bluetooth and the digital display shows all new item titles in my Morning Commute Beed. Because it's January the Beed currently includes a local weather reports feed. Once March arrives my Beed Reader will automatically remove that feed but right now its the first thing I check every morning before turning the ignition key. The dash LCD rolls a 10 second weather conditions movie. No ice.... nice!

Next I hit play on the radio console and instantly my audio podcasts start playing back over the car speakers. My phone is my media center. I'm half way through An tImeall when a new RSS item from my Traffic Alerts feed comes in and pops up on the LCD. It's a map indicating trouble ahead.... I'd better re-route. My Traffic Alerts feed changes according to my situation. If I stayed the night in the city it would know I have a different route to work. That's the beauty of Beeds (remember... Reading Lists on steroids) - the list of feeds automatically changes according to my preferences. Dynamic OPML.

I arrive outside the office, park my car and enter the building. The second I get within range of my office PC my mobile pairs with it over bluetooth and switches my Beed Reader to my Work Beed. Right away new items from that Beed start filling the PC screen. Agenda items, new rssmail, missed calls, canteen menu, company announcements, etc, etc.

The possibilities are truly endless. Information feeds are all around us and will go everywhere with us on our mobile Beed Readers. The business opportunities are equally numerous. Just use your imagination!

This was the first in an ongoing series on the future of OPML. To be continued....

The best mobile web browser yet

I have to agree with Russell Beattie - Opera Mini is certainly the best mobile web browser yet. It seems to be compatible with just about every mobile phone from the last few years and its working beautifully on my Nokia 6630. I've set a number of RTE's Aertel pages as homepage bookmarks and because of whatever snazzy compression they're doing on the proxy it only takes 5kb to access the TV listings. As Beattie observes -

"I expect huge things from this - it could even become its own platform. I bet you could easily base a new web-based business around this browser, it’s that good."

Absolutely. I'm already dreaming up business plans based around the simple (but incredibly powerful) idea of 100% of the Irish population having access to the web as opposed to the current 40% (or thereabouts). Therefore I'd love to know how Mini works on a range of phones. If you try it out please let me know what phone you have and how well it works.

RSS to IM on mobiles via Google Talk

Now that Google Talk has connected to the public XMPP network I can use JabRSS to monitor RSS feeds via Agile Messenger on my Nokia 6630. Nice :)

What Nooked should do next....

.... is offer an email/SMS gateway to their RSS generation services and market them beyond their current market of marketeers.

I'd imagine that their strategic partner FreeRange Communications. are surely taking the logical next step beyond a Java based RSS reader (FreeNews) by adding seamless OPML browsing support. It might even look something like OPod. Now, just imagine if Nooked offered -

• RSS generation services to local community groups, school, clubs, etc, who could post to their feeds via simple email or text message, and...
• A free white labelled version of an OPML-browserized FreeNews v2.0 with default OPML node set to the Open Irish Directory (for instance).
  

Then we'd finally have a way for every social group in the country to easily publish and consume highly relevant local information to and from the internet.

Catching up with Tom Raftery's podcasts this weekend it was clear in his interview with Nooked CEO Fergus Burns that Nooked see big opportunities in the mobile market. But Fergus feels that there's currently an OPML consumption problem and thinks that IE7 might solve it. I'd suggest that his strategic partners Freerange Inc. could easily solve it and blow the market wide open. The ghost of WAP could be banished forever.

Vodafone Radio DJ to bring down data prices?

After Vodafone launches Radio DJ in Ireland how will they continue to justify their outlandish data charges? I had to go online while on-the-road in Carrigaline yesterday and was delighted with the speed of my six bars 3G connection but only did the bare minimum of email and browsing. Don't they realize that if I didn't feel I was getting screwed they'd actually earn much more from me? I personally wouldn't need Wifi if I had blanket 3G coverage at a reasonable price point. Yes, this is my second Vodafone rant in ten day but its so frustrating I need to let off steam...