Obscure, Useful Mobile Features

Sometime last week, while browsing Twitter, someone on my timeline remarked about the Nokia Asha 311 having USB On-the-Go functionality. For those who might not be familiar with the term, USB OTG enables a mobile device (like a phone) to be able to connect to USB memory keys, mice, keyboards, and other types of accessories, that are usually more common found connected to laptops and PCs. In the case of the Asha 311, such a feature has a second interesting benefit, two Asha 311 devices can be connected to each other via USB and then files would be transferred between them. Faster than Bluetooth, with some potential huge ramifications for folks that do SD card evangelism (for example, Kiosk Evangelism, Digital Bible Society, and others).

That seems to be a feature for mobiles that’s somewhat weird, and not always on the list of reasons why people would purchase a mobile. Still, its one of those features that when you do have it and use it, its pretty easy to see why it makes sense to have. Of course, that got me thinking of other features that mobiles have which might not get all of the greatest recognition, but might end up being useful in some isolated moments:

Many mobiles have the ability to listen to local FM radio stations when you have a wired headset plugged in
A few mobiles have the ability to transmit FM radio signals to other devices
Some mobiles have the ability to play music that’s stored on the device, or streamed, through the ear-speaker (not just the loudspeaker)
Some mobiles have the ability to use the LED for the camera as a flashlight/torch
Only two come to mind, but there have been mobile devices with a built-in projector
There was that sneaker company that had a mobile phone with a built-in solar panel for charging
And then there are watch phones – which are more than just a cellular-enabled calculator

What about obscure mobile features that you might have seen? Do any come to mind? Do you use any? Do you wish there was a feature your mobile had that it doesn’t?

[Slideshow] Disruption of Digital

Seems that more and more of mainstream media is seeing, acknowledging, and tracking the disruption of digital across web, mobile, and social networking. Business Insider has a slideshow on the topic:

The Disruption of Digital slideshow by Business Insider

Kind of lengthy, but worth taking a browse through. If you are looking at this outside the USA, what kinds of trends or items are you noticing?

Alone Together: A Review in Kindle Highlights

After what has seemed like months drawn out way too long, I have finally finished reading Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together. Weird how this book has taken so long for me to read. And at the same time, there was a lot to chew on in between reading sessions. Having the benefit of starting the read on my iPad and finishing on the Kindle Fire HD gave me a chance to compare the screens and ability to read (nearly even, KF-HD I could hold in the hand longer, the iPad was easier to navigate in terms of responsiveness when annotating). Still, I don’t think I can give good enough words to this. How about I just let some of the items that I’ve highlighted or noted speak towards this one:

If the problem is that too much technology has made us busy and anxious, the solution will be another technology that will organize, amuse, and relax us. Read more at location 449
Note: This is the teaching point. Silicon Valley and other creatives seem to be very deliberate in not saying this
Winston Churchill said, “We shape our buildings and then they shape us.”23 We make our technologies, and they, in turn, shape us. So, of every technology we must ask, Does it serve our human purposes?—a question that causes us to reconsider what these purposes are. Technologies, in every generation, present opportunities to reflect on our values and direction. Read more at location 609
children’s attachments speak not simply to what the robots offer but to what children are missing. Many children in this study seem to lack what they need most: parents who attend to them and a sense of being important. Children imagine sociable machines as substitutes for the people missing in their lives. When the machines fail, it is sometimes a moment to revisit past losses. What we ask of robots shows us what we need. Read more at location 1839
People talk about digital life as the “place for hope,” the place where something new will come to them. Read more at location 2988
Note: Honestly, I think this is the statement born from a generation that saw media as separate from interpersonal interactions. I don’t know that this idea of hope for a place is all that different from hope in a memory that performances, altars, and institutions aim to provide, or psychologically become
When online life becomes your game, there are new complications. If lonely, you can find continual connection. But this may leave you more isolated, without real people around you. So you may return to the Internet for another hit of what feels like connection. Again, the Shakespeare paraphrase comes to mind: we are “consumed with that which we were nourished by.” Read more at location 4353
a sixteen-year-old girl who tells me, “Technology is bad because people are not as strong as its pull.” Read more at location 4366
We have to love our technology enough to describe it accurately. And we have to love ourselves enough to confront technology’s true effects on us. These amended narratives are a kind of realtechnik. The realtechnik of connectivity culture is about possibilities and fulfillment, but it also about the problems and dislocations of the tethered self. Technology helps us manage life stresses but generates anxieties of its own. The two are often closely linked. Read more at location 4647
A sacred space is not a place to hide out. It is a place where we recognize ourselves and our commitments. Read more at location 5312

Those are only a few. You can check out the rest of my public notes and highlights over at the Amazon Kindle page for Alone Together. In terms of a recommendation, let’s just say that ministry leaders should have read this already if they haven’t; and parents with teens or young adult children need to read this with them and listen to one another in the responses.

Off to put these highlights and notes into my notebook. You never know when access might be taken away on these services.

Defending or Designing

I’m sitting at something of a crossroads when it comes to tech and ministry. At times, when looking at what many of us who speak online about it want, its comes across more like we are defending our stances, rather than showing folks how to design a faith that’s theirs. I don’t know even if I can point to specific examples, but, it just seems that way.

As I worked on a different paradigm of presenting the Mobile Ministry Methodology, I was challenged with this perspective. Here, I’m being asked to take something that’s been in my head and on these (uh) pages, and then translate it into something that would effectively transfer knowledge and change how the outputs of ministry projects are processed by all. You see, I could have done this the way previous MMM talks have gone – a mobile-driven, HTML-produced slideshow, with a story or three to knit what’s on the screen with the lesson meant to be learned. And that would work; but the challenge hasn’t been translating the information, its been changing the behavior. Outside of pulling an Elijah on some social network’s digital mountain, there’s not much we can do to change behavior… or is there?

A brother in the faith that I recently met teaches and speaks on the subject of apologetics. He and I have had several snippet conversations and we’ve had a general fun time in getting to know each other around this topic. Here’s the thing: we come to points of these conversations where we get from asking how people can or won’t defend values present in the Christian faith, to wondering what we individually, professionally, and vocationally, can do to empower others to think differently, and therefore shift their response to life and change their behaviors. I tell you, those discussions are always a caffene shot to the day.

So, I get this chance to share strategy and process, and what do I do? I design a flow to ignite design-centric thinking – not defend traditional means of going through a process, or collecting information, or even just presenting it. Will it be successful? I’m not sure. The proof in the pudding is whether the output of the product is reproducable, not simply something worth being defended.

Defining the Illusion of Tech’s Voice

Am writing this before Thanksgiving. Before folks have finished making plans for how to rotate family members for a place in line for Black Friday deals. And before folks have decided to think about how much time to dedicate to Monday’s lunch to parouse Amazon and other web stores for Cyber-Monday deals. I’m writing this specifically after entertaining two streams of conversation via Twitter which indirectly point to a statement about tech and how we live with it, that I’m not sure is all that healthy.

The first parts of this thought come from the convo had with Jason Caston. During a recent trip of his, he remarked on Twitter how he had LTE coverage for more than 80% of the trip. LTE is the next evolution of cellular (if we can be simple about it) networks. Essentially, its a re-done way of making airwaves more faster, more secure, and more efficient for carrying voice and data transmissions. Right now, Verizon Wireless is the leading mobile company deploying this tech -and mainly because their older CDMA network technologies do not scale profitably to newer devices and greater usage.

Jason’s point towards his liking of LTE is that it is a faster connection. It allows him to essentially connect and consume information faster. Being the introspective type, his comments got me down a line of thinking and tweeting if speedy connections are always needy connections? Or, if you will, just because we can connect faster, are we connecting deeper, fuller, or more healthy than we had been before. That was a point that was certainly much further out there than where Jason and I had been speaking, so I had to just leave it. But, I had the thought that I’d at least get it up here and process some more.

Then there was another convo happening with Donny. He’d asked if there would be any post about the Microsoft Surface here. I’d thought about it, and even after seeing a demo of the Surface RT at The Geek Fest, I figured that at some point that there would be some place in these bits and bytes for some words about it. But, also I had that fuller/deeper thought come in there as well. You see, the Surface is a fairly new product, and aside from the applications which are still coming out at a decent clip for it, there’s this question about talking about it here because it offers some relevant conversation piece here. Part of me (and Donny) would argue that there is a place for it. However, its not so different a product than the tablets that have come before it – even those from MS’s partners with previous versions of Windows before – that its got a place in the conversation of what happens at this intersection of faith and mobile technology.

Is the Surface relevant to those faith-based orgs who are still trying to get a handle on the tablet-oriented tech needs of their orgs? Yes. Is the Surface tablet an antidote to the BYOD-tainted usage of the iPad and Google Nexus tablets? Probably, and could merit some discussion towards those companies looking at it from that end (not as many on the faith-based side as you would think). Is the user experience of a touch-enabled Windows platform so different that it will change, literally shift the paradigm, of how folks who have used Logos/Olive Tree/eSword/etc. now use Bible software? Nope (as a matter of fact, that’s been my main beef with this genre of software for sometime). So what then does the Surface bring to the table in terms of a voice for those things faith and tech that are relevant enough to write on? I don’t know.

Deeper and fuller. That’s something that I keep getting back to when it comes to talking about this technology shift. Is it a shift because it has more colors, comes in a less expensive package, or because its open licensed? Or, is it a shift because of the way that it allows for us to go a bit deeper with each other than in times past?

Is tech the voice voice we use, or are our voices enabled because of what tech allows?

Being a Savvy Smartphone User

When you’ve decided to go the route of using a smartphone, you’ve acknowledged that you will sign up for a higher cost of living. Devices, plans, applications, and even accessories all become a part of the lifestyle of the smartphone user. But, if we were to pay some attention to that good word stewardship, we see at times that the higher costs we are seeing with smartphones can be avoided if we make some better decisions.

Over at ReadWrite, Tim McCormick has been doing a few articles on using a smartphone but taking a drastic and much different approach towards using it. He’s written two pieces looking at different aspects of using a smartphone.

Over the last six months, I’ve made an experiment of giving up my $90/month cellular + data plan, and exploring alternative ways to use my smartphone (iPhone) costing as little as $5/mo. The key point is that you don’t need a contract or a subscription to use a smartphone, contrary to just about everything you ever hear.

Read the rest of How to Drop Your Data Plan and Still Use Your Smartphone

…Intermittent connectivity helps to automatically counter one of the key behavioral problems with the Web and mobile tech: the so-called “buffet table problem.” That is, when you have seemingly infinite more options to explore, like an endless buffet table, you tend to keep foraging, hoping for better options; rather than stopping, sitting down, enjoying and digesting what you’ve already gathered. In combination with “save it for later” behaviors (see #6), not-always-on connections help you stop and absorb what you’ve already gathered…

Read the rest of What Life is Like for A Smartphone User Without A Data Plan

Earlier this year, I had some financial situations that took me not just offline, but also away from having a phone line for a while. Besides being an exercise in being a more savvy mobile user, I also was able to reclaim some of my sanity towards mobility. And then with resources such as PrePaid Phone News’s PrePaid Plans Guides, I was not only able to get back into being connected, but also drop my cost of owning and using a mobile by 50% each month.

I hear often at ministry events that the cost of smartphone ownership is a problem for many. Between unbearable data plans, or travel needs which don’t lend themselves to easy solutions, it can be pretty hard to see how mobile works in a cost/time/connectivity efficient manner. Then again, there’s a lot that we assume about owning a mobile that really isn’t true. Which, if we were to take heed towards, would make us a lot more savvy towards mobility than what we’ve done previously.

5 Things About Mobile from Forbes

Its always helpful when thinking about mobile to consider that there’s more than just the technology or the communications medium as key to understanding it and making it work. Forbes has taken note of this with a recent article looking at five points about the future of mobile that could easily be termed five points about the present of mobile. Here are the points:

Understand the person not the technology
Your phone is more important than your tablet
Small businesses should not get their heads turned
Large businesses need a targeted mobile strategy
The rise of face-to-face

Read the entire article – 5 Things You Should Know About the Future of Mobile – which includes explanations on these points, at Forbes

Forbes is a business-oriented magazine. MMM is a faith-oriented one. Could you see these points in a similar, but differently worded, light.

Understand the person and their spirit (orientation, maturity, strengths, weaknesses, etc.) – see 1 Cor 2:6 – 3:23
Your communication is more important than your display – Matt 15:1-20
Producers and creators should not turn their heads – Habakkuk 2:18-20
Leaders and organizations need a specific strategy infused with God’s wisdom and direction – 2 Chronicles 2-6:11
All actions should encourage one to be face-to-face with God often – Joshua 1:8

I don’t think that its all that hard to see how God wants to direct us in this space. At the same time, we have to have to understand that mobile, whether we are talking devices, services, or the overall experience, is merely a channel, the character of the community leading into mobile needs to be consistent with what people will recognize not just as mobile, but also as a witness of the gospel (John 17:20-26). The teachings of the past is the lesson of both the present and the future.

Why Its Not About Mobile

Found an excellent article in the education space the other week that really broke through the rhetoric that we often hear in this space when it comes to tools and traditions – that its the tools and traditions, not the products of these that need the people to utilize (or not use) them that makes change happen. I found this article about as life-giving as any others we’ve linked to here, and I think that when we get out of our lenses of preferred devices, services, or even behaviors, that we really can start to see that its not about mobile, but about the kind of life that mobile and other media technologies can enable when led by the Spirit and a good dose of innovation:

…This week, I’m helping host EdTechTeacher’s iPad Summit, what we believe is the first national gathering of educators pioneering the use of iPads and tablets in schools and classrooms. As I think about facilitating the event, I keep coming back to the idea that this event for iPad users can’t be about iPads. My own koan for the week is this:

If you meet an iPad on the way, smash it.

If this event becomes a meeting about how we got rid of power cords or extended battery life or solved workflow challenges or found some neat apps, then we fail. The iPad summit is not about the iPad.

The way we are seeking is one where we prepare young people for a life of civic commitment, of self-reflection, and of meaningful work and contributions to community. The way is about unlocking student talent, compassion, and humanity. If the iPad distracts us from defining the way, then we have to smash it…

Read the rest of Why Its Not About the iPad at Edudemic

Learning w/o Help

Earlier this week, we asked the question of where you might be framing what you learn life from. And here at the end of the week, we find that given enough time and curiosity, that what you learn doesn’t just have to be about what surprises yourself, but also those around you who might have felt they should be your teachers as well:

…We left the boxes in the village. Closed. Taped shut. No instruction, no human being. I thought, the kids will play with the boxes! Within four minutes, one kid not only opened the box, but found the on/off switch. He’d never seen an on/off switch. He powered it up. Within five days, they were using 47 apps per child per day. Within two weeks, they were singing ABC songs [in English] in the village. And within five months, they had hacked Android. Some idiot in our organization or in the Media Lab had disabled the camera! And they figured out it had a camera, and they hacked Android…

Read the rest of Given Tablets but No Teachers, Ethiopian Children Teach Themselves at MIT Technology Review (via Dvice and Gizmodo)

Personally speaking, I like to experiment on my own. I know how that comes across in groups where credentials and such merit the starting point for discussions. But when we consider the reach and opportunity not only of the technology, but also of people who might be more entranced with their thoughts of social/spiritual good, than any other kinds of implications, there’s a lot that’s possible that we rarely scratch the surface of. We know that experiments like this have been done before (similar results), and even that parents can attest to just leaving a kid in the room, and magically learning of a tool, and later of context, happens.

That’s one of those paradigms that we are not usually wanting to consider, especially here in this faith space. Can a person, if just exposed to the Bible, learn all that is needed for them to live well? If I were to listen to one of the many stories from an old friend, I’d hear again how daily exposure to the Scriptures related complex ideas such as salvation, hell, and restoration. We have Paul’s words which demonstrate that there’s a purpose and office for the teacher (Romans 10:15), and also John’s which indicates that the best teacher is already with us (1 John 2:20-27). Such an experiment can affirm the ability to learn, but deny the (ego) attitude of the teacher.

We are left then with several questions, none of which have easy answers. Can a group of people, given only the utensils to learn and share with one another, teach themselves not only how to use the tools, but also maintain it and turn it into an indispensable aspect of their culture? Or, does the introduction and use of this tech just make as another control point for the learning and culture models that we already have in place?

If we can hack a tool, can learning also be hacked? And if so, what could its aims be if learning happened without the help of a teacher?

Learning Life From…

When talking to a friend about a new computer for one of his kids, I stumbled upon an analogy that I think really fits how we need to consider the choices around computing that we need to take these days:

…which version of the Internet do you want your son to learn life from Google’s (we will index/organize everything, monetize your connection to it w/o necessarily giving you back the money) or MS’s (3 screens and a cloud, we make money when you purchase from us or our approved partners, your limits on creation is what you can build w/our tools/methods)

I mean these as blanket statements, but these are also the lenses at which we have in front of us. Let’s expand on that a bit more.

When I was coming up into computing, I had to learn DOS in order to wrangle Windows 3.1 into subjection; I had to learn what and how MacOS and Windows were and weren’t compatible with one another, and the tedious nature of making sure that I didn’t lose anything in the process; I had to learn how to design with tables, and then relearn how to design websites without them; and so on. Today, the question of learning life can start from the Internet. And if you do so, then there are many competing voices, and a few loud ones in which we need to consider if they are suitable teachers for whatever comes next:

If your lens of the Internet is that you mostly interact with it through Facebook, then can you speak to what happens outside of that network, what happens if/when that point of connection is no longer available, the reliability of security controls, and the value of reading and understanding terms of service agreements?
If your lens of the Internet is that you only use Google to search for content, can you speak to what other search engines can/do uncover that Google doesn’t (for whatever reason), what happens when Google’s results are limited to you because of regional, commercial, or governmental interests, the positives and negatives of a single-sign-on system across multiple devices and what kinds of data is collected, analyzed, and monetized through those connections?
If your lens of the Internet comes first through Microsoft products such as SharePoint, Internet Explorer, Windows Phone, or XBox, then you can speak to other ecosystems that combine hardware, software, and subscription services; what does it mean to have an open programming environment; do you understand how past market and governmental systems shaped the current software or services’ functions, and what freedoms does your region or the terms of service allow in that?
If your lens of the Internet comes through Apple, how do you convey design and aesthetics when it isn’t within Apple’s style-guide or an approved developer’s highlighted application; how do you discuss the impact of logistics and planning on the final product (do you recognize how much Apple does here), and there’s that terms of service again – what are your rights as prescribed by a document you can’t append?

There are other companies with which we’d have to consider their lens as well – Samsung, Amazon, Logos, LifeChurch.TV, etc. – all of whom have differing viewpoints as to how Internet, mobile and other media are best used to forward their aims, and to help enable (or disable) yours. Are you ready to learn from life this way, or is there another solution on tap?

Mobile Ministry Magazine

Asking questions, presenting approaches, and experiments at the intersection of faith and mobile

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