Tag Archives: mobile in moment

Upgrading Your Smartphone’s IQ

Chances are, if you are reading MMM, you are well past owning and using your first smartphone. And even if you aren’t there are some things that you’ve noticed about using that smartphone that aren’t all that… smart. For example, having to remember to turn off your phone in church is really something that mobiles should do already. But, because they don’t, we’re here to offer some ways in which you can add some intelligence to your smartphone.

For iPhone folks, if you’ve upgraded to iOS6 then you will want to utilize the Do Not Disturb setting for the time period that you are in service. Its not an automatic setting, but passable. For other iOS versions, you pretty much are on your own for turning it off when you are in meetings and such. Other options that you can take advantage of is that of using Notifications to let you know of updates from apps and services instead of using email for those. That way, you leverage the device’s ability to keep you informed, while not filling up your inbox.

For all you Android-toting folks, you will want to use apps like Tasker, Locale, or Sanity in order to create an auto-setting that would automatically stop all sounds, open your Bible app, open a notes app, etc. when you are in church/community gatherings or bible studies. Once you set this up, you will wonder why this isn’t normal. In the same way, you’ve got that notifications drawer at the top of your screen For recent Motorola Droid folks, you can use SmartActions to do the same thing.

BlackBerry users, there are several profile apps which do the auto-setting as described above. These rely usually on having the event in your calendar, and then the phone will adjust itself based on how you’ve programmed it. What’s really neat about the upcoming BlackBerry 10 platform (BB10) and associated devices, this kind of functionality will not just be there, but many of the social and communication apps/services, they’ll plug into the OS and be seamlessly viewable with a gesture.

For Windows Phone users, there’s not an application that does this (that I’ve seen). So like iPhone folks, your smartphone isn’t so smart in this instance. I’m hopeful that Windows Phone 8 will step up in this regard.

For folks like myself who use Nokia’s Symbian platform, the application Situations or (the old BetaLabs app) Bots I would recommend. Situations is like the Android apps in that you can setup situations in which your device adapts itself. Bots is an app that learns that you set your device to quiet/silent at certain times and will literally make your device start doing that itself – without your attention needed.

A device that adapts, or can be progammed to adjust itself to social contexts. Kind of neat when you put it together. And the best part, you end up not spending unnecessary time on your mobile when other situations warrant your attention.

What kind of things have you done to add some intelligence to your mobile? Or, is it smart enough as is.

Shifting Perspectives

mesh network graphic
Part of the challenge towards any paradigm shift is coming out of the mentality that the old perspective needs to dominate the newer application. Thing is, its hard to get out of such thoughts when we are so entrenched in what some sociologists would call our behaviorial plateaus – that state of development where we pretty much settle into whatever will become our norm. Even still, we oftentimes find ourselves challenged by another perspective, and from that, we should endeavor to press forward:

…Is it time for agencies to rewrite their manufacturing processes around the most responsive and data-rich medium?

Designing an identity around a logo is as strange a notion as building your house around a sink. It just doesn’t make much sense to allow one small part of a system to dictate the overall course. The same insight needs to be brought to marketing campaigns.

Many organizations have missed the boat by treating digital as an add-on to an advertising concept. But this is starting to change. Instead of trying to plug in a technology, or throw away the traditional part, we need to bake in digital from the very beginning. It might even be time to put digital at the core, and then work everything else around it…

Read the rest of Working Backwards from Digital at Ideas on Ideas

And it makes sense to most of us. If mobile has its own unique qualities and features, then it stands to make sense that mobile ministry would also foster some of the same. Shouldn’t it?

To that extent, I wonder if we are taking advantage of mobile by making downloadable applications, instead of a series of embedded services. Much of the Bible has been translated, and where there isn’t text, we plug into audio. That means more working together for a common access format… or even a common access browser. But, that means something different than the paradigm of the mainframe and punch-card that mobile apps seem stuck in (not needing to be poked that what I described is nothing more than an abstract client-network architecture). Screw another social service, or even the existing ones, where’s the church community of developers that builds the sharing API that turns our devices into a mobile mesh network?

When unique becomes common, mobile is no longer a layer, but a part of the DNA of how #mobmin is done
(@mobileminmag)

Shift your perspective… or rather, find that stream of life that’s not exactly like what media did previously. And create a new strand of the kind of DNA that makes sense when done with mobile or any other tech-bending perspective.

Ready to Give A (Mobile) Answer

N950 Showing arjw.v6

The conversations that lead to talking about MMM have interesting twists and turns. But, for all the paths traveled, there’s a constant with much of this – there’s always that question asked which seems to serve something as a test of intelligence, competence, or wisdom. Here’s some of the questions asked:

  • What kind of mobile do you have?
  • What’s the best mobile out there?
  • Do I have to get a smartphone?
  • What’s the best Bible app available?
  • Do you have ideas for a better case?
  • Why don’t you have [the device they have]?
  • Where do you see mobile going next?
  • Is there some way that I can track what my spouse/kids are doing on their mobile?
  • I didn’t know my mobile could do that; where could I find out more?
  • How long does it take to build a mobile app?
  • Why does it cost so much/take so long to build a mobile website/app?
  • Is there really a connection between what we do with God and what we do on a mobile?

Suffice to say, these are some of the ones that stick out, but not the complete list of questions. Could you imagine being in a posture to get these questions asked, let alone have an answer that satisfies? How do you respond in the presence of these questions? Or, what would your answers to some of these be?

Implications of Option B

Mobile phone on the table during a farmers meeting in Bwera, Uganda
Its been my experience that many who are coming around to this idea that mobile is pretty much it, find it hard to believe the place that communications takes over other physical and psychological needs. Then again, the research is out there, and it does make sense when you are able to break from your cultural norms and see what others value:

…He is trying to argue that the consequences of the 2nd Industrial Revolution, which bought to common people electricity and plumbing, was far more important than the computers and internet which the 3rd Industrial Revolution has brought us. (Gordon’s 1st Industrial revolution was steam and railroads.) As evidence of this claim he offers this hypothetical choice between option A and option B.

With option A you are allowed to keep 2002 electronic technology, including your Windows 98 laptop accessing Amazon, and you can keep running water and indoor toilets; but you can’t use anything invented since 2002. Option B is that you get everything invented in the past decade right up to Facebook, Twitter, and the iPad, but you have to give up running water and indoor toilets. You have to haul the water into your dwelling and carry out the waste. Even at 3am on a rainy night, your only toilet option is a wet and perhaps muddy walk to the outhouse. Which option do you choose?Gordon then goes on to say:

I have posed this imaginary choice to several audiences in speeches, and the usual reaction is a guffaw, a chuckle, because the preference for Option A is so obvious.But as I just recounted, Option A is not obvious at all.

The farmers in rural China have chosen cell phones and twitter over toilets and running water. To them, this is not a hypothetical choice at all, but a real one. and they have made their decision in massive numbers. Tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions, if not billions of people in the rest of Asia, Africa and South America have chosen Option B. You can go to almost any African village to see this. And it is not because they are too poor to afford a toilet. As you can see from these farmers’ homes in Yunnan, they definitely could have at least built an outhouse if they found it valuable. (I know they don’t have a toilet because I’ve stayed in many of their homes.) But instead they found the intangible benefits of connection to be greater than the physical comforts of running water.

Most of the poor of the world don’t have such access to resources as these Yunnan farmers, but even in their poorer environment they still choose to use their meager cash to purchase the benefits of the 3rd revolution over the benefits of the 2nd revolution. Connection before plumbing. It is an almost universal choice.

This choice may seem difficult for someone who has little experience in the developing world, but in the places were most of the world lives we can plainly see that the fruits of the 3rd generation of automation are at least as, and perhaps more, valuable than some fruits of the 2nd wave of industrialization.

Read the rest of The Post-Productive Economy at The Technium

Someone told me when I started MMM and they realized that I did nearly everything on my mobile that I was taking an extreme stance on getting to know this space. I’d argue that such a posture isn’t extreme at all, but in fact bends towards understanding the implications of these choices better than simply counting an observation and marking its characteristics versus what my culture determines as normal.

Are You Born Mobile; CES’s Question

From our friends over at Mobile Industry Review comes probably the best reason to be at CES and any other tech conference this year – phrased in the form of a question and a perspective:

Chances are, you aren’t. But, you community has members who are. So what are you going to do to enable them to live a mobile-encouraged live that looks like the Gospel?

Answering Questions on Mobile Ministry Trends

A little while ago, we were asked by Cybermissions to answer some questions for an upcoming class on mobile and tech they are leading soon. We thought it good not only to answer the questions, but to also do something that could be useful for the MMM audience.

The video is about 13 and a half minutes, and just runs through some thoughts on mobile, mobile ministry, and things upcoming. Listen closely, you will probably find something worth commenting about ;)

Remember the Purpose

Some weeks ago, probably a month ago now, I made a phone trade with a friend of mine. In the trade, I acquired the not-for-sale Nokia N950. I’ve been wanting to get an extended play with this device for sometime. Besides the user interface experience being like nothing else (except the for-sale N9 that’s hard to get my hands on as well), there are no other mobile devices out there with the pedigree of a Nokia and the openness of a full Linux distro (Maemo/MeeGo) under the hood. For a tinker-er like me, this is just like letting me loose in a candy story, when my teeth are coming in.

During this time, I’ve been going back and forth between the N950 and my N8. Back and forth between MeeGo and Symbian. Learning a bit of what Nokia understood, and a bit more of what some developers/service providers have felt. There’s been something of an enjoyment when it came to setting up multiple Google accounts (without needing Exchange ActiveSync to get my calendars), Dropbox, Evernote, and several other services. There’s been some mild frustrations as in when I unintentionally duplicated the contacts on both devices because I made edits on both and it didn’t reconcile properly. And there’s been some joy moments like in finding a drawing app that felt a lot like when I used Adobe Ideas on the iPad (simple, zooming, and easy to push wherever). Its been enlightening, and aside from the old battery, useful.

That said, the other night, when I should have been getting some sleep before a few meetings the next day, I was captured into reading Chasing the Cicada over at Metal Floss. It reads like a spy/crime novel, but is mainly about the depths of the Internet that we usually don’t see. Per my usual when a rabbit hole like that reveals itself, I start searching out things that stuck out in the article, one of which being the Tor Project. I’d forgotten about the Tor Project. At one point I was even looking at the Android port of aspects of the Tor Project called Orbot (really, if you use Android, this is a no-brainer direction you should take your platform usage). It then hit me to connect with some friends and rekindle the conversation about the N950 and making something useful out of this “dead platform” for a few ministry efforts.

It was at that point that I remembered why I had the N950 to begin with.

You see, I’d wanted the N950 not for myself, but because it would position my use of mobile into a few directed areas:

  • 1st, I’d be using a platform that would be getting attention for a specific mobile ministry project (or two)
  • 2nd, I’d be working with others who not only knew the platform better, but could expand my knowledge of specific mobile ministry applications that don’t usually get the light of day
  • 3rd, there would again be this experimental aspect to MMM – that kind of thing excites me and keeps me going in this space when times like the holidays roll around and everything slows down

In a real sense, I had to re-own the fact that to have the N950 in my possession could not be about my enjoying a new platform or having a new phone to play with, but it was to reignite the reasons why MMM is directed the way that it is – to ask questions, present approaches, and experiment around those ideas and activities that happen at the intersection of faith and mobile technology. Nothing about keeping this mobile in my hands, double-tapping the screen just to wake it up, pushed that purpose forward. If its in my hand, it has to be pushing this faith forward, and I already had the opportunity, I just needed to be kicked in the pants.

We sometimes get lost in the course of getting something new, or finding out that what we have in our hands is a lot more impressive than we thought. That same night that I realized this, I talked to a guy who had the new Google Nexus 4 for just about a week, but uses it no differently than a feature phone. I asked him of all of the unique features of the Nexus 4 and how he planned on using them and his reply was more like “I didn’t plan on doing that” rather than “let me explore how that feature could enhance how I view and do mobile.” To his credit, he also did remark that he’d not considered mobile on the kind of level towards the questions that I asked either. I know that I think a bit deeper about these things than some other folks.

Still, mobile is a very present avenue for all of us to take note as to the mission that we have in front of us. For some, the mobile is a siren call towards the kinds of security that you must keep up for those whom you are connected to. For some, mobile is a call to accountability in media, as well as relationships. And for others still, mobile is a beacon that there’s potential for something more than just reaching out and touching someone – even if all we needed to do at all is just touch them I get it. And I hope that you do as well.

So the kick happened. And I’m waiting to hear from a few folks who have a similar idea about the N950 and a few directions that we can take things. I remember the reason that I’ve got this device in hand. And I hope that you remember the reason why you have one in yours. Remember the purpose… then walk in it.

[App Request] Mien/Yao Bible

Image: Palm Tungsten T5 showing Palm Bible+

It has been a while since getting a request here for the availability of a Bible in a specific language or on a specific mobile platform (I think the last one was Telugu for feature phones), but that’s just the thing that happened a week ago. A reader who had combed through the listings on our Bible Apps page didn’t find what they were looking for, and asked if we could help in finding (or lead to the development of) a Mien/Yao Bible.

Unfortunately, the two sites that the requester pointed us to in terms of resources (Site 1, Site 2) have some issues either with their content sources, or with the character encodings. This isn’t an unfamiliar issue when it comes to mobile-friendly biblical data sources.

The other issue that presents itself with this request the the platform choice. As we’ve talked about before, its not about the sales that you pay attention to when it comes to mobiles, but what it is that people have in their hands. The two largest owned mobile platforms (at least from a smartphone perspective) are Android and Symbian. Its for these two platforms that a Mien/Yao Bible is being asked for.

So here’s the request (and possibly the challenge): to those of you whom are developers looking to scratch and itch or sharpen your skills, the Mien/Yao audience need a Bible for Android and Symbian devices. Are you up for it? Or, if you are a content provider, and have already started making available content for the Mien/Yao audience, would you be willing to make it available offline and in the .SIS/.SISX and .APK formats for this audience?

Get in touch with us and we’ll help coordinate the efforts in making this happen.

TEDx Video: Why Kenyans Do It Better

This was forwarded to us and asked if it is an example of who and how people and groups associated with mobile ministry (#mobmin) should approach the context of their activities. Much like Alex Oswald, there is a surprise to some at the level (and simplicity) of how mobile is being used in daily affairs.

A (Small) Critique
Despite what’s talked about on the video, an acknowledgment solutions that are obvious and should be applied in better economies, nothing much is being said about the strategies that went creating and implementing them. Solutions like these talk very much towards being associated towards mobile as living with people, not just pushing a platform or a message. Unfortunately, there’s too much of a reluctance, even with those of us who work within this mobile ministry space, to be so invested into using the technology/communications, that we can see where this makes sense in our spheres. In an observed sense, people want to develop towards the mobile audience, but not be the mobile audience they are developing for. We see after another’s implementation that its obvious, but don’t live with it close enough to discover our own.

For as long as this person was in mobile, to be surprised at M-Pesa said a lot about a general blindness to the Mobile past than about opportunities not seen. 10 yrs ago there were 1 billion mobile phone users, we were looking at the second generation of smartphones from Nokia, Palm, and a few others, seeing the fall of the PDA genre coming to pass, and some of the first positive steps in mobile web areas. Weird to me that he was surprised if that’s when he started.

Still, this is good for the mobile ministry space as many haven’t heard about what he’s seen, or might be working on similar and need the encouragement. When in and around mobile, you’ve got to keep your eyes open not just to what you want to see, but also what others have seen.

The Pressure of Immediacy; A Smarter Smartphone

Yoda Phone, via Engadget

If there’s anything that mobile has revealed, its that we all enjoy getting information and being involved with something or someone at the point of thought. Perhaps part of that speaks to a stroking of our ego (if the message is coming near me, then I am important and valued enough to receive it). But, we also end up walking this line where at some point that all of these streams don’t just consume us, but change us in ways that we’d not figured before.

Two articles in the past week speak to this change, and the challenge that we all end up having at some point because of the persuasivness of mobile. The first worth taking into your contempletive moments comes from James Whately – The Pressure of Immediacy:

…These two notes are what, to my mind at least, drive the ill-perceived pressure of immediacy. As in, just because we can look up just about anything on the glass screens in our pockets doesn’t necessarily mean that we should. The pressure to know something immediately is balderdash. It is fallacy, claptrap, and poppycock. It is a make-believe blanket of self-made suffocation that we have placed upon our own social and professional situations that really has no need to exist at all…

The second comes from Brian Feld – My Smartphone Is No Longer Working for Me:

I spent two weeks without my iPhone. I was completely off the grid for the first week but then spent the second week online, on my MacBook Air and Kindle, but no iPhone. I got home on Sunday and have had my iPhone turned on the past few days. I’ve used it as a phone, but I’ve largely stayed off of the web, email, and twitter with it. Instead, I’m only done this when I’m in front of my computer. I played around a little with the new Gmail iPhone app (which I like) but I’ve been limiting my email to “intentional time” – early in the morning, late at night, and when I have catch up time in between things…

In both of these pieces you see a resetting of expectations towards mobile and connected technologies. These are the kinds of things that should and shouldn’t have to happen though. I don’t think one needs a period of fasting from social networks in order to maintain a healthy perspective of them – I think that the engagement towards social media starts before you even get onto the service with the question “what kind of time/value will I assign to these kinds of connections, and is it worth what I’m assigning to it?”

I do think that we need smarter settings and tools within mobile devices in order to better utilize the attention spans we do have. I’ve spoken before about using Situations and similar apps on my Nokia N8 to turn the mobile off, ignore calls w/a friendly auto-message, etc. so that I can concentrate my eyes and ears on who/what’s near me, rather than what’s on the screen. Similar applications are available for Android and Blackberry devices (I’ve not seen similar for Windows Phone; to do apps like this on iOS you need to jailbreak your device). I also believe that at the network level, more intelligence needs to be added into services so that smarter actions can happen. I once wrote on what this could look like, and still wait for something like it to show up – but not be tied to a provider when it does (Google Now does something like this).

At the end of the day, what we do with this technology speaks to our value judgments. If we value time on the screen, that’s where we’d spend the time. If we value time face-to-face, then that’s where we spend our time. As ministries also walk this line into creating applications and services that make sense in the context of using mobile, we also have the responsibility that we are not designing away the ability for people to make intelligent and life-giving decisions about how this tech is being used. True, there’s something immediate about getting to someone your content that has a note of the saving grace of God; but its also important that they rely on God once they’ve gotten that message, not the beep of your application, calling them to a screen that they might not be strong enough to turn away from.