Ever catch yourself keying a phone number from layout or gestural memory rather than numerical memory ? Cool. Bravo! to ATT and Mental Floss, for a peek into the 1960’s era user testing when phone designers were puzzling over how to redesign a ubiquitous tool… replacing the telephone dial with push-buttons. Turns out the winner, the 3X3+1 layout of the modern telephone was not the most efficient design, nor the closest to the existing pattern, but merely the mostly generally pleasing overall according to the folks on the other side of the glass.

More information and data are at (and via) Mental_Floss and Gizmodo.

Google has a short bit on it’s blog, priming the pump for some Android PR, maybe, but a nice summary of the next couple of years trajectory in mobile. Here’s a snip:

The phone that you have in your pocket, pack, or handbag is probably ten times more powerful than the PC you had on your desk only 8 or 9 years ago (assuming you even had a PC; most mobile users never have). It has a range of sensors that would do a martian lander proud: a clock, power sensor (how low is that battery?), thermometer (because batteries charge poorly at low temperatures), and light meter (to determine screen backlighting) on the more basic phones; a location sensor, accelerometer (detects vector and velocity of motion), and maybe even a compass on more advanced ones. And most importantly, it is by its very nature always connected.

Read the rest on the Google blog here. I posted on some of this not too long ago here.

Near Field Communication (NFC) adoption is accelerating, and ubiquity could be as little as 3-5 years off. ‘Smart Posters’ are now being tested globally and NFCs many other applications are in advanced tests as well.

According to Pinktentacle, SoftBank Mobile, NTT Data, and Hitachi are testing an integrated marketing program this month and next in one of Japan’s busiest shopping districts.

Throughout October, selected test participants will be able to receive and view digital content such as movie stills and trailers simply by holding their NFC-compatible phones (containing NFC-USIM cards) next to the smart posters. Along with the digital content, users also receive an access code that, when transferred to a compatible Hitachi HDTV at home, allows them to view a WALL-E trailer in high definition (via Hitachi’s content distribution service).

What is NFC ? It’s essentially a cross between Bluetooth and RFID for your portable device… that is, you don’t have to go through the painful exercise of ‘pairing’ your devices, and when enabled and ’swiped’, external sources can initiate personalized transactions with your device spontaneously.

It’s a foundational innovation that could bring personalized, integrated, relationship-building communications to a whole new level. There’s a lot to chew on in that idea…

If you’re not convinced, think about what Apple could do with NFC enabled iPods and how the iTunes experience could be initiated at any poster or physical point of presence…

With broadband wireless, and NFC enhancing the iTunes and iPod experience, Apple (or Zune, which has a deeper customer relationship model in the first place) the bus shelter becomes your record store… your video store… your Pandora… Your Netflix…

hold on tight, advertising and media delivery is about to change gears again.

For more about Near Field Communications technology, here’s a snip from Wikipedia on what other applications are being tested in NFC (not quote blocked to retain formatting):

–

NFC technology is currently mainly aimed at being used with mobile phones. There are three main use cases for NFC:

• card emulation: the NFC device behaves like an existing contactless card
• reader mode: the NFC device is active and read a passive RFID tag, for example for interactive advertising
• P2P mode: two NFC devices are communicating together and exchanging information.

Plenty of applications are possible, such as:

• Mobile ticketing in public transport — an extension of the existing contactless infrastructure.
• Mobile payment — the device acts as a debit/ credit payment card.
• Smart poster — the mobile phone is used to read RFID tags on outdoor billboards in order to get info on the move.
• Bluetooth pairing — in the future pairing of Bluetooth 2.1 devices with NFC support will be as easy as bringing them close together and accepting the pairing. The process of activating Bluetooth on both sides, searching, waiting, pairing and authorization will be replaced by a simple “touch” of the mobile phones.

Other applications in the future could include:

• Electronic ticketing — airline tickets, concert/event tickets, and others
• Electronic money
• Travel cards
• Identity documents
• Mobile commerce
• Electronic keys — car keys, house/office keys, hotel room keys, etc.

-end

The Aurora browser project at Mozilla suggests some really cool functionality and well thought through integrations. The future of Web browsing, potentially, or cloud computing certainly. That said, IMHO the navigation is more complex that it needs to be. Sometimes, I think, in the attempt to make things more intuitive, we actually achieve the opposite.

Aurora (Part 1) from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

After watching part one, I loved the Z-axis recency feature, but I couldn’t shake the metaphor of my Grandmother’s cluttered root cellar shelves.

Here’s Part two:

Aurora (Part 2) from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

Location aware services are pulled through really nicely, but the handheld really drives home that the implementation of the ‘frame’ is bugging me…

Part Three:

Aurora (Part 3) from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

Now, a mobile device that reads RFID, that is a huge link missing in today’s devices, very cool!

Part Four:

Aurora (Part 4) from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

Ok, is there any application where gestural interface isn’t cool ?

Tom Cruise Talks With His Hands in Minority Report

Interesting bits about the ownership of data, and how we share it.

Aurora is platform integration more than interface. A nice packaging of some aspects of the ‘Convergence’ we’ve been waiting on for 10 years and all really inspiring.. I only hope we start seeing demonstrations on how we can live and act anonymously in this world of tomorrow soon, as well.

Nice blend of still frames and animated UI, too…

WiredBlogs has a quick write-up with the OpenMoko gear.

Interestingly, I hadn’t heard much about the unique stylus, which Wired talks about here:

One of the coolest features of the device I played with is the stylus itself. It’s a four-function stylus — it has dual retractable tips, one’s a nylon nub for using the phone, and one is a ball-point pen. Shame on you if you accidentally get the two confused! Flip it around and it also functions as a laser pointer and a tiny flashlight. The fact that you need a stylus at all is a minus in my book, but the tiny screen and the absence of a physical keyboard make it a necessity.

If you havent been following along, some earlier blah-blah about Open Source Mobile Development and OpenMoko can be read here.

Brand Autopsy flagged an interesting [sic] article at USAToday about the iPhone launch, which has some data from market researcher Interpret.

excerpt:

Apple still faces challenges. The high cost of the two iPhone models — $499 and $599 — ranks as the No. 1 reason consumers interested in the device did not buy one, the survey says. Those consumers said they would pay an average of, at most, $180.

Owners said there’s room for improvement. At the top of their wish list: longer battery life, faster Internet speed and more internal memory. Other factors, including the lack of a physical keyboard, were well down on their lists.

The iPhone is extending Apple’s reach, the survey says. Three of 10 buyers were first-time Apple customers. For 40%, iPhone is their first iPod.

Apple could “change the physics in the phone market,” if it is as successful building loyalty to the iPhone as it has been in the music and computer markets, says Gene Munster, senior research analyst at Piper Jaffray.

Interpret’s survey also bodes well for AT&T. Half the buyers switched from another carrier. Of those, 35% paid an average $167 to break a contract. “We thought AT&T would be more of a barrier to entry,” says Munster.

Another boon for AT&T: IPhone owners surveyed expect to pay about $35 more in monthly service fees compared with their previous cellphones.

That’s not the first time someone was sure that iPhone would change the physics of the mobile market… Two outta’ three ain’t bad.

Back in April, I blogged about blowing up ‘business as usual’ and the Opensource Mobile Telephony initiative at OpenMoko…

Time marches on.

On July 9th, OpenMoko opened up to the public! Cleaner interface and a really nifty developers kit, and not a shabby handset besides at $300..

The NEO1973 Features:

• 2.8″ VGA TFT color display
• Touchscreen, usable with stylus or fingers
• 266MHz Samsung System on a Chip (SOC)
• USB 1.1, switchable between Client and Host (unpowered)
• Integrated AGPS
• 2.5G GSM – quad band, voice, CSD, GPRS
• Bluetooth 2.0
• Micro SD slot
• High Quality audio codec

A major differentiator and pivot is where iPhone does not have GPS which enables those vital location-aware services. How this will play out will be very interesting, especially now that the iPhone finally released.

What appears to be the second pivot is third party developer support: Who will attract the most modders and garage-based software companies?

What’s clear is that while the closed gardens of mobile content may be opening, the traditional U.S. model of handset-manufacturers and carriers ‘knowing what’s best’ in functionality may finally be falling down as well… Enter: The Crowd.

So, thank heaven for small favors. OpenMoko and iPhone will be the biggest drivers of innovation in mobile for some time to come.

The Wireless Philadelphia Project aims to make the entire city a wireless hotspot. As part of any franchise agreement, the wiFi provider should make available a Wifi phone to anyone who wants one… Better yet, they should be FREE for low-income families… Free calls to anyone in the Philadelphia wiFi range.. Keep track of loved ones, etc.

While the social and PR windfall alone makes it worthwhile, I expect that it could even turn a profit with pre-call, post-call advertisements.

So, Ad supported, or gratis, the net is that you have any entire city ’subscribed’ to a potential content channel that happens to be pretty cool. Who would say no to a free phone?

Here’s how the T-Mobile service works, snipped from the New York Times.

Here’s the basic idea. If you’re willing to pay $10 a month on top of a regular T-Mobile voice plan, you get a special cellphone. When you’re out and about, it works like any other phone; calls eat up your monthly minutes as usual.

But when it’s in a Wi-Fi wireless Internet hot spot, this phone offers a huge bargain: all your calls are free. You use it and dial it the same as always — you still get call hold, caller ID, three-way calling and all the other features — but now your voice is carried by the Internet rather than the cellular airwaves.

These phones hand off your calls from Wi-Fi network to cell network seamlessly and automatically, without a single crackle or pop to punctuate the switch. As you walk out of a hot spot, fewer and fewer Wi-Fi signal bars appear on the screen, until — blink! — the T-Mobile network bars replace them. (The handoff as you move in the opposite direction, from the cell network into a hot spot, is also seamless, but takes slightly longer, about a minute.)

There’s more at the New York Times.

Potentially MAJOR development in the mobile space, threatening the ‘closed’ or ’semi-closed garden’ content model that telcos have so far enjoyed, this OpenMoko looks like it may have enough juice to catch on beyond the mobile-geek community. Lots of links and information can be found here. Time will tell how this stacks up with the iPhone, but they have to launch the sucker first, and it’s already delayed by several months.

Not to be discounted, the folks also know how to put together an effective presentation in powerpoint.

Here’s a link to their deck and some pretty massive market disruption… I get giddy just thinking about the upheavals… Verizon…Sprint…AT&T.. Kinda like… watching controlled demolitions in Vega$ !

Screenhead has an interesting collection of ‘unfilmable’ and difficult novels to put to film. Some neat ideas there, and a lively discussion follows – A bunch of works to add to my reading list.

A cool sad aerial view of a suburban housing development that was floating around reddit(?) this week.

Andrew Struthers made a web movie (get it?) about Spiders on drugs and it blew up on YouTube. A nearly hour-by-hour account of its rise in popularity and the attention it garnered him..He tells you all about it here.

Google Earth released version 4. Apparently anyone can now add 3-D models and contribute to the databse on the fly… I wonder how long before someone mashes this up with Linden Labs Second Life, or incorporates advertising ? If this were to take off, or be a vehicle for a user-generated geo-tagging database (think wikipedia), it could get past novelty trick to world-changer.. Here’s some details…

For $2500 bucks, you can now get yourself a Home Freeform Fabricator. Called the ‘Fab@Home’ project, It’s a device that will let you create 3D prototypes of anything you can imagine. Think of this in the context of the Desktop Printing revolution and you’ll be headed in the right direction… New Scientist covers it here. I’ll be writing more about this soon. It’s important.

And finally, CNNMoney has an article on how Apple kept nearly kept its iPhone secrets…

more later..