Tag Archives: mobiles

OTG Mobile Tech Options

Mobile Office (Nokia N950 and N9, Amazon Kindle Fire HD w/stylus, and USB memory key

It only took a little more than half-a-decade for some pastors to realize that the tech in their hands enables them to have an office that can be nearly anywhere. But, knowing that you can get away from the office and be productive isn’t the same as knowing what options you have out there.

Over at Church Tech Today, two articles have gone up talking about mobile tech options for pastors. The first edition talked options for those in the Apple camp, the second talked options for those in the Android camp. Here’s a snippet of the latter:

If you add up all of these items, along with the tablet, you come to a cost of only $341.07. First off, that is less than half the cost of the iPad solution from last week and while it is smaller, this may be the exact pitch you need for your church. That also leaves a great budget to pay for a couple of years of 3G service so that you can email, check Facebook, and get online anywhere you want as well as many different applications from Google Play.

Its a solid enough list, and well enough to get started (whether you use online services to find the recommended accessories or not). For a bit of an appendix, I’d like to throw out there some additional options to consider whether you are a pastor, student, or just interested:

  • Carrying both a phone and a tablet might be a bit much, so the Galaxy Note 2 (or the first Galaxy Note if you can find one that’s not too well-used) would be a suitable option. Combine it with a prepaid MVNO (non-major phone carrier), and you score with a very versatile communications and productivity center; if the idea of a larger tablet is your thing, check out the Samsung Tab models and Asus FonePad and combine that SIM card with that
  • I’m always a fan of having external storage that serves for backup and additional materials; in this light the AirStash is an excellent choice for that kind of additional storage (add your own microSD memory card), with an ability to share content with others too
  • The Apple Wireless Bluetooth keyboard is impressive (am on my 2nd one), but I was also tipped to one from Microsoft, which turns on automatically when its pulled from its case (that’s also a tablet stand)
  • I don’t prefer to put a case on my device, instead I like the idea of making a custom skin using the SkinIt service; on my mobile I’ve got a QR code of my contact card alongside a personal logo. Easy branding exercise for any pastor, school, or ministry to do something like this that protects the device, will offering some piece of personal style to it

Personally, I keep things very minimal, even to the point of the software that I keep near my devices in order to be productive. What about you? What do you look for in your OTG (on-the-go) or mobile office solution? Or, if you are already in a good groove, what’s missing?

Unlocked Mobiles and Your Choice

Nokia Lumia 900 and iPhone 5 at Caribou Coffee
This past weekend, the USA mobile and technology community experienced something that doesn’t come around so often – the removable of rights, or as I’d argue, the perceived ability to make a choice towards what you can do with mobiles.

The short end of things is that starting Saturday, any mobile devices that you purchase cannot be unlocked unless the terms of the original sold contact are completed. Or, to quote the CTIA blog:

…That’s all that is happening here: consumers who pay the full price for a phone can take that phone to the carrier (or carriers) of their choice. However, if a carrier subsidized the price of the phone in exchange for the consumer’s agreement to use the phone on that carrier’s network, the consumer can only transfer the phone to a new carrier once the terms of the contract (or the carrier’s unlocking policy) have been satisfied…

Now, to clear up the confusion… because its gotten really long in the mouths of many folks talking about it.

When you purchase a mobile from your carrier, and sign a contract to do so, you are generally paying only a portion of the complete cost of the mobile device. The rest of the cost is spread out over the life of the contract. Yes, you don’t own the mobile when you purchase it on a contract, you lease it.

You have a choice to purchase a mobile outside of this contract-lease method. In this case, you would purchase the mobile, usually from the manufacturer, or another retailer. These mobiles are much more expensive – because the carrier is not subsidizing part of the cost of the device for you. And then after purchasing the device, you will have to find a plan (whether that’s pre or post-paid) that works with your mobile device. Now, you can choose to get on a contract, but generally, and I’m speaking only of USA carriers since this law is only in effect here, you can’t negotiate a contract. Its only with the carrier T-Mobile that you have the case where if you come with your own device that the cost for a contract plan is less than if you purchase both the device and contract from them.

The other aspect of this law happens to take effect when you decide that you want to sell a device. You see, many folks make the choice to sell their device to another company (like Amazon, Gazelle, etc.) before the contract is up, so that they can recoup some funds and then get something new. Thing is, the person purchasing the device would be breaking the law to unlock it so that they can use it. Ouch right? Well, it is for folks that like to purchase and release mobiles often. Essentially, these people would need to buy-out their contracts, then have the device unlocked by the carrier, then sell the device.

Almost makes it crazy to think of purchasing a mobile on contract now doesn’t it?

Look, I get it that it makes it a lot more difficult for some of you who are under a social and economic obligation to have the (near-)latest mobile device to have one. Getting an unlocked device from your carrier, and even opting into extending your contract to do so remains an option, just more expensive to pursue.

If you are someone who travels beyond the shores of the USA, your first intent with a mobile should be to purchase it completely, and then keep your option of carrier open. Does this mean that using Verizon, Sprint, and other CDMA-based carriers decline in option? It does? These mobiles might offer you the best signal here, but unless you are purchasing their global models (models that are locked for VZW/Sprint in the USA but have a GSM radio that is unlocked for outside the States), then yes you are stuck.

You’ve always had a choice though. And this call by CTIA is in part going to make you a smarter consumer of mobile devices. Whether it works best for you or not will take a bit more homework and recommendations.

Wisely Stewarding the Mobile Web Experience

In the last post we talked about being engaged or enslaved to tech, here’s an example of taking control of your tech, using it wisely, and being quite productive with it:

…When you look at it from this perspective, it’s pretty easy to understand how always-connected handsets that provide a full-web experience are struggling to take off in emerging markets, and why Opera Mini has 46.3 Million users worldwide. Honestly, what good is a full-web experience when I can only open 10 full websites a month without going over my monthly allowance, and when I have to stare at my screen for 15 minutes before one page completely loads on my snail-speed connection?…

I can’t say enough about what Rita has done except to say that even here in the USA, we need to look harder at the solutions and opportunities we propose, and really meet where its appropriate use given the conditions, instead of reaching for something that isn’t a good – nor wallet-filling – experience.

Read the rest of Rita’s post at Symbian Guru and let us know some ways you’ve taken the bite out of the costs of your mobile use, while staying or increasing in productivity/ministry.

Mobile Evangelism Wiki

For those looking for a great source of information pertaining to mobile evangelism tools, trends, and websites, be sure to checkout the Mobile Evangelism Wiki.

Mobile Evangelism Wiki

Suffice to say, there’s a lot of information there, and a lot of information that’s not yet there. If you have contributions, be sure to get in Dave and Ed to be sure that you can get in there and contribute to this very solid resource.

MMM Mobile Experiment: Part Two

This is the meat of the MMM Mobile Experiment Report, and also where it makes the transition from being just a review of software and online services to one of looking beyond the offering to the ability that it lends. Here’s an outline of what is covered in this, Part Two, of the MMM Mobile Experiment Report:

  • Additional Setup Items
  • Day to Day Use
  • Immediate Challenges
  • Accessibility versus Versatility

Given the length of this, section of the report, it will be an extra day before publishing the third and final section. This report will also be made available as a singular download (debating on the format of that now). Enjoy Part Two, and please do not hesitate to give any comments to this or Part One.

Part Two:

Having set up the Mobile Web Server application on my device, and creating the Mobile Web Server website, I had to set up some initial pages so that in coming to the site, Mobile Ministry Magazine readers would be greeting with more than just a blank page. There are two parts to setting things up for day to day use; one part is on the mobile device and the other is through a browser (that can be on the mobile device or not; but most might choose not to go that route and just use a separate computer).

Setup on the Mobile Device

On the mobile device, one navigates to the Web Server application and is presented with a series of screens. First, you are asked to insert your user name and password that was set up on the MWS website. There are a few easy to figure out section of the application that is always shown when it is opened from here: Users, Status Message, Statistics, Access Log, Folders, and Settings.

The Users section was probably the one that I spent the most time with initially. There is a default Guest account where one can set Guest access to the MWS; and then from contacts in one’s address book, you can set specific users to have ability with a user name based on their name in your address book and a password that you have set for them. I quickly abandoned doing this for a lot of people and just settled on making sure that I had a user group for my family to special sections of the MWS site, and everyone else just got the Guest account.

Truth be told, I spent a lot of time looking at the Access Log. I wanted to see how many people were hitting the site, and it was kind of neat the first few days of the experiment. We averaged about 10 unique users per day and for the most part people did not have issues with logging in (user names are case-sensitive; found that out halfway through the project).

Setup through the Web Browser

There is a setup wizard that one has to access from a device that has a suitable web browser while the mobile web server (MWS) is running. On my end, I used my Nokia N800 Internet Tablet connected to a Wi-Fi hotspot at a local coffeehouse while the MWS was running on my N75.

Two parts of this allow you to set up things like the welcome screen, offline page and message, and get a badge that can be displayed on several websites. After this wizard, there is a control panel that keeps the latter items, and allows for presence updates on the status page. One can change the theme to several types; however they are nothing more than color and banner changes. Unless you want to dig in the mobile device and play, there is no way to create custom layouts or fiddle with the CSS for more customization.

From the web browser one is able to set all types of options and create content and points of contact.

  • Home
  • Blog
  • Camera
  • Gallery
  • Guestbook
  • Contact Me
  • Presence
  • Web Chat
  • Calendar
  • Messaging
  • Phone Log
  • Contacts

By default, guests only see the Home, Blog, Presence, and Contact Me sections. The Gallery has to be setup to either show (share) pictures that are shared from the phone’s internal memory, memory card, or both. I found that the Guestbook was a bit of a redundant feature, but it could prove beneficial in some applications. The Web Chat section is interesting as when someone starts a web chat, there is notification on the mobile device of the chat and then an IM-like interface is given. From there chat happens just as it would in any other chat room. The Calendar, Phone Log, and Contacts are pulled right from the mobile device and gives a browser-accessible means to see and edit content. I liked this feature, but wished that there was more granularities so that some users could see “Busy” instead of the specific event. Presence tells the state of the mobile phone such as how long it has been idle, battery life, and a status message. And finally Messaging allows one to send an email or SMS message directly to you as well as see all the SMS and MMS messages that are stored on your mobile device (Inbox and those sent).

One neat feature that is present throughout is the fact that all contacts that appear in various applications such as Calendar and Messaging are linked to their contact card. This contact card shows the last call as well as links to the address book entry. Simple, but really neat.

From registration to setting up the welcome page and basic access rights it took about 30 minutes to get rolling. After that it was just a matter of running the MWS on my device and engaging with people as they visited MMM Mobile.

Day to Day Use

The Mobile Web Server is pretty much a set it and forget it type of application. I let it run most of the day, taking it down in the AM in order to use my mobile device as a modem for my Internet Tablet and desktop. During this time, I updated the status message to point visitors to the MMM Jaiku channel. In pointing people to the MMM Jaiku channel, it was my hope to engage the usual readers of MMM, and the new visitors of the breadth of content related to Mobile Ministry Magazine, as well as engage in some discussions across a social network in a slightly different function than what is normally done in blog-driven websites.

On the downside of the day to day use, the MWS was an inconvenience in terms of the other connectivity that I aspire to have on my mobile device. Usually, I run the Emoze email client and the Jaiku Mobile client. Because of the MWS, I was not able to run these and have a long functioning device. Either the MWS would take over the connections, or the applications would consume too much memory and cause one or all of them to shut down. During the experiment, I only suffered one total device crash, but this was an instance where the hardware specifications of my N75 (which has about 15MB of memory free for running programs at boot) was at the very bottom of what is needed to run the MWS.

Because of this limitation, I was not able to use programs such as widgets to keep me abreast of what was going on at the MWS without opening the application. That being said, it was quite nice to have the server running and not have to think about it unless I needed some kind of functionality that was a bit more than normal.

A small note: the Nokia N75 is a 3G phone, meaning that it has the ability to use a high speed data network called HSDPA. Because of the specifications of this network, the device is able to use applications that connect to the Internet at the same time as using voice functions. While running the MWS, there was no drop off in voice quality or phone functions except for occasional slowness for MMS message processing.

Immediate Challenges

While there were those hardware challenges, the large and more pertinent challenges to using the MWS was trying to keep the same kind of communicative presence that had been done at Mobile Ministry Magazine. Essentially, opportunities to post to the blog, upload pictures, and engage the reading community were all things that seemed a lot easier when connectivity was spread across devices instead of being centered on one device.

For example, whenever I needed to use the web browser on the N75, I had to shut down the MWS because the two applications were too large to run at the same time. This meant that I would have to create a status message saying that the server was down and point people to the MMM Jaiku channel; then initiate a discussion at the MMM Jaiku channel; and then I would be able to continue with using the web browser. Certainly, having a device with later hardware (more memory and processor speed) would have been great here.

Another issue that I found was that in order to publish to the blog, I needed some type of dual connection. Using the MWS made situations of traveling to WI-Fi hotspots a bit of an adventure as now instead of using them just as a rest place, I wanted to be strategic in making sure that I could create a conversation piece around the use of the technology. It was not until later in the experiment that I realized that there would be times that I would be able to use the web browser on the N75 in order to populate the blog. This stretched the mobile device, but creating a blog post where I was able to live blog a sermon and have my notes created on the N75 instantly appear online was quite exciting (mental note: taking a T9 typing class before doing this should be a prerequisite).

Accessibility versus Versatility

This challenge of balancing multiple devices, multiple input methods, and then just the plan fact that a web server can really go with you anytime makes one feel more accessible than ever. The granular level of being able to assign contacts or groups of contacts to various parts of one’s mobile device presents a solution that is present already in some enterprise applications such as SharePoint and even commercial ones like Movable Type. But those are PC-focused solutions. Nothing wrong with that, but as mobile devices become more versatile, one should not just assume, but see that a lot more of what we do can be driven from a mobile platform.

The Mobile Web Server is an answer to a question that is not yet asked so loudly yet though. Its not so much an issue of how does one stay accessible, as many connected devices open to you; but it allows you to determine how you want people to connect to you based on the social network that you have built – your phone book. This is more powerful and empowering when combined with a communications strategy and a personality that invites people to want to connect to you. That being said, its not accessibility that is the focus of using the MWS, its versatility. Versatility meaning that you are empowered to take your social network with you, and how they connect to you is determined by you, not by the service that you subscribe to.

This is if you where using the software and service makes a change from being just a piece of software or just another online service. It would be easy to just put the MWS into one of those categories and then judge it based on its benchmarks; but there is nothing to just it against. Nokia’s Mobile Web Server is a canvas that if given the network and the hardware (and economies) becomes a canvas that enable the kind of personal computing that was dreamed about in the 1950s when the foundations of the Internet began, and now realized with the fast and (nearly) open wireless networks that most of the world has access to.