One point that was reiterated by Cameron Moll in his book Mobile Web Design was that it is important not to treat the mobile device as a miniature PC and therefore treat it as an extension of such. He states:

” Perhaps the most common blunder committed by newcommers to mobile development is to replicate the PC web experience. This blunder might be referred to as “PC nearsightedness”, wherein a developer’s interpretation of web content is limited to that which is most familar and closest within view: The desktop PC”

I believe that this can also be applied to people who are wanting to gain mobile access to their back-office applications. There is a view that in order to be truly mobile you need to have the whole application with you on your mobile device. Slavishly following this will not give you productivity gains of being mobile. You must concentrate on the process that you want to deliver and then only deliver what is required to achieve that process. Otherwise you might as well lug round a laptop and enjoy all the constraints that brings with it…

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I received this morning my copy of Mobile Web Design by Cameron Moll. Having flicked through it I am looking forward to having a proper read when I am on a flight to Edinburgh tomorrow.
While there are many books on the subject of UI design there are relatively few on the designing for a mobile interface. I guess that is because there are so many different UIs to work towards based on the different operating systems, device and whether you have an installed client or use the browser.

Here we are just beginning to put together our own standards to use for the work we do for our clients based on a few years of customer projects and this has to take into account the relative capabilities of the various browsers available from the basic BlackBerry browser to Safari on the iPhone. Once there is something more meaningful I will post some details of what we have found.

The other interesting thing about the Moll book was that initially it was available as a PDF only version but you can now get a print version from the print on demand specialists Lulu.  I was impressed with the quality achieved for such a low print run (i.e. one copy) while still keeping a relatively low price. I’m not sure that I really have a novel in me but if I did this is perhaps the way to get it published.

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We are getting close to the launch date of the next version of the AppSwing Enterprise Suite which includes support for our new tool: AppSwing Design Studio. This will allow suitably trained partners to create mobile applications from Windows and Java applications for any mobile device. The short video below shows how simple the process can be. You can also see a full screen version of the video here.

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If you are looking for statistics on mobile uptake worldwide then this is the site for you: MobileActive.org. According to their website that are “a global network of people (and their tools, projects, and resources) focused on the use of mobile phones in civil society”. Makes for interesting reading particularly when comparing take up between countries.

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We have added a mobile working simulator to the website that allows you to get a feel of what an AppSwing solution would look like on a mobile device, in this case Windows Mobile. While there is no data saved it does show the sort of process that is being adopted. You can run this either from a desktop browser by Clicking here or directly on your mobile device by going to http://www.appswing.com/downloads/simulator/mintro.htm

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Presented a couple of times at yesterdays Thames Valley Innovation Conference on topics close to my heart. Firstly on the Knowledge Transfer Partnership project we carried out in collaboration with the University of Reading. This was well received and made a bit of a star of Dan, who did the work on the project. The second presentation, on R&D in a small organisation, was the very last of the day and by this time many of the delegates had gone home and so didn’t get the audience it deserved! However, you can see the presentation below (produced in OpenOffice - simply click on the slide to move to the next one) or download a copy here.

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Here at AppSwing we pride ourselves on being completely device agnostic supporting any device that has a browser and some form of connection. Clearly it is also important to demonstrate this support and so this week we took the opportunity to test with an Apple iPhone and iPod Touch. While both devices worked out of the box the interface design for the on-device apps is very different to what is currently available on other devices. Therefore, we are currently looking to produce an Apple iPhone demonstration to show how you can access your back-office applications. I expect this to be online by the end of the month so watch this space for details and be one of the first to get your applications running on the iPhone.

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I attended Call Centre Expo last week in order to check out the sector for opportunities for our AppSwing Integration Platform. There was a real mix of exhibitors there from countries highlighting their call centres and the costs that could be saved by outsourcing to companies offering to record calls and manage the process. However, the interest for AppSwing was those that were offering front office systems and need to get access to their back office applications through a standard connector. It was a good source of information and helped me shape my pitch during the day as I got more and more information. A couple of people pointed out that what I was offering sounded similar to the Microsoft Customer Care Framework. I can see why but on closer inspection they seem to be complementary.

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