How To: Google Buzz from Windows Mobile and Android

Google’s Buzz is doing quite well so far, but in many ways it seems to have been rushed to market. It’s crazy that you can access a Google service from only a specific version of Android (2.X). While the iPhone has full support, if you own an Android 1.5 or 1.6 or a Windows Mobile phone you are out of luck. Well, that is until now…

Jay Glogovsky posted a link in a Google Buzz post that will actually allow you to use the service on platforms that are not currently supported.

I present the “Link of Golden Awesomeness”: https://m.google.com/app/buzz/#~buzz:view=nearby

So far I have tested this on Windows Mobile and Android 1.5 and it works well. For Windows Mobile it did not seem to work in the default browser; I was using Opera Mobile 10 beta 3 and it worked just fine. In Android I just used the default browser with no problem.

So, start buzzing from the road, even if you aren’t iPhoning it!

If you try this on another phone and it works let us know and we will mention it in this post.

How to Send Google Buzz Posts to Twitter

As I am sure you all know Google has just released their latest project into the wilds; Google Buzz.

Buzz looks to be an interesting service that is somewhere between facebook and twitter. Who knows if it will be the social network of the decade, but I’m jumping in to try it out.

One obvious thing that is missing is a way to post to twitter from Buzz. Well, you had to know someone would figure out how!

Here is the step-by-step on how to send Buzz posts to twitter:

1. Click the following link: http://reader2twitter.appspot.com/buzz
2. Connect it to your Twitter account using OAuth
3. Click this link again as the redirected page is not the correct one: http://reader2twitter.appspot.com/buzz
4. Add your Google Profile Number ID from the bottom of your profile
5. Make sure “Sync” is On and hit Submit
6. Done!!

In number 4 above you are shown your profile page, scroll to the bottom under “Profile URL” and select the link for “see other options” to show your Google Number ID. Paste the whole number in the box.

The service is powered by Pubsubhubbub and seems to work quite well.

My twitter account can be found here
My Google Buzz profile is here

Many thanks to George Millington for the link to Louis Gray’s post!!

Update: Either this service is choking on all the new content or has been shut down. I am not seeing any content getting to twitter now. Anyone else having success?

Update again: Looks like it is still working but is spotty. Let’s hope there is an official solution from Google sometime soon.

Mobile Wars: Mobile Market Place

It seems that every mobile operating system has its own Market Place. A short while ago, there was no on-device market place to download and purchase applications. (Yes, I know that some app portals did build a device client, but it was poorly implemented and never received any traction) But are all market places created equal? The answer is a flat out – NO.

Google’s market place is loaded with applications. In much the same way as Apple advertises, there is an app for that with Android.  Perhaps it’s not as full, but I never had a problem finding an app to do what I was looking for. Further, almost all the apps are free. Sure, free doesn’t help put food on the table for the developers family. It does appeal to my cheap side however. You may find an application here and there that charges, but overall that’s rare.

 

When you take a look at Microsoft’s market place for mobile, you’ll have a much harder time finding free applications. While I don’t mind paying for the right app, it’s also much harder to find the right app.  There are few applications available on Microsoft’s platform. In fact, the market place is lacking so much, that there is now a free alternative called OpnMarket – which has substantially more applications that Microsoft’s version.

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Mobile Wars: Managing Your Email On The Go

Email is one of the more popular features on today’s phones. If you’re not doing push email, then chances are you’re heavy into texting. Staying connecting with work, friends and family while on the go is what a lot of smartphone users are looking to do. When it comes to work, there is no question that Exchange is the dominate email server. And because of that, any serious mobile OS needs to have some sort of Exchange supported backed it.

There’s no question that Microsoft has spent a considerable amount of time building up the Exchange connectivity on their Windows Phone devices. From remote wipe of the phone, to looking up contacts in the Global Address Book, Windows Phones have just about everything you could ask for when it comes to messaging. The biggest feature that Microsoft has yet to add is support for multiple Exchange accounts.  Support for this is starting to show up in other platforms. Microsoft needs to keep their mobile messaging experience as the best on the block and the one to beat. If they want to stay in this game, of course.

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Mobile Wars: Platform Fragmentation

Platform fragmentation has long been an issue that Microsoft has struggled with. So many hardware partners, combined with a large number of network carrier partnership has made it difficult for Microsoft to provide patches and updates for Windows Mobile.

Typically, Microsoft would release a patch or build of Windows Mobile to the hardware manufacturer.  Windows Mobile is never sold directly to the consumer. The hardware manufacturer always makes some tweaks for drivers or customizations for their devices and then makes it available to the networks.  Then, after some testing, it’s finally offered to the consumer. However, if either the carrier or the hardware manufacturer decides that the update is not significant enough, then the update doesn’t continue and the consumer loses out.

The end result of all this, is that some devices are upgraded to the latest version, while others are left behind. There’s no way for a customer that is experiencing a specific bug, to get that update if their carrier or the hardware manufacturer has decided that it’s just not significant enough to warrant releasing an update.

Google is heading down the same path. They don’t provide the OS directly to the consumer. With more and more manufacturers releasing Android devices, we are starting to see devices that get left behind and are not getting that update passed along to them.

I’ve been using the Telus version of the HTC Hero for a little while now. This device is running Android 1.5. Since the device was released, there has been 3 version of Android released – 1.6, 2.0, and now 2.1. The HTC Hero on Sprint has seen an upgrade, but not the Telus device. With a brand new device, it’s already old and outdated and can’t run some of the latest Google apps.

Both platforms are heading down the wrong path here and it’s only going to cause pain and confusion for customers. Certainly, there are difficulties with providing updates to the customer. Updates need to flow quickly from the top all the way down to the consumer without breaking hardware customizations, or network tweaks that have been done.

I have to give both platforms a fail in this category. I expect more from these guys, and the consumer deserves a better experience without feeling like they need to buy a new device every 6-10 months.

Mobile Wars: Microsoft and Google Face Off on the Mobile Front

Google’s Android has been grabbing a fair share of the market over the last year or so.  While it may have struggled a little out of the gate, Google has worked hard to improve the OS and bring it to a wider audience.

There’s no question that Microsoft’s Windows Mobile has declined over the same period of time. Lack of updates combined with a core OS that hasn’t changed in almost 5 years, has lead to a significant decline in consumers perception. Its been said that Microsoft is done in the mobile space and version 7 of Windows Mobile will be the final version. There’s no doubt in my mind that Microsoft is in this for the long haul. They haven’t come this far just to stumble and hand it all over to Google.  I expect we’ll see some significant changes from Microsoft before the year is done.

Over the next couple weeks I will be posting a number of articles that compare the two platforms in an effort to help shine a light on the strengths and differences between these two dominate players.

I know that there are other companies working hard in the mobile space like Apple, RIM, and Nokia.  This series of articles is aimed at comparing Google and Microsoft as I find these two platforms are very closely aligned. For a number of reasons that I won’t get into now, I feel that Apple, Rim and Nokia fall into a different category.

If you’re looking for ways to be informed when these articles are posted, you can follow us on Twitter, or grab our RSS feed.

Google Makes the Nexus Official

In case anyone missed the big news of the day yesterday; Google made the Nexus One phone official. The community collectively laughed off Google’s claim to call the phone part of a new category entitled “Super-Phone”.

So what makes the new Nexus One so special? Well, from what I say and heard, not a heck of a lot.  It’s another Android based handset. This one built by HTC and will be carried on the T-Mobile network or available unlocked directly from Google for use on any network. Perhaps the best features are the new voice dictation on any field on the device. The demo was short, but it appeared to work fairly nicely. Of course, this isn’t an unheard of feature. Dragon has been doing this on the iPhone for a couple months now. The other cool new feature is the noise cancellation. The Nexus One has two microphones – one on the bottom and the other on the back. When you’re talking, the microphone on the back will actively listen for sounds to cancel out.  Cool, but certainly it’s not “Super” phone material.

Many have jumped at buying the unlocked version directly from Google and are seeing overnight shipping. So there should be a lot more details and thoughts floating around over the next couple days.

Are you planning on spending the big bucks for one? For me, I’m going to hang onto my $550 bucks until I see a little more reason to get this device. Let us know your thoughts on the Nexus One or NO for short.

Experimenting with Something New

I’ve been using a mobile device of one kind or another since around 1994 or so. From Palm and Handspring, to Pocket PC and Windows Mobiles, to today’s Windows Phones. It wasn’t until Microsoft released their Windows Mobile Smartphone based OS that I really found something that I connected with. While I enjoyed using the different versions of the OS and the ever changing technology there was something about the touch screen devices that just didn’t work for me. I often felt that touch the screen was slower and more cumbersome than using a non-touch device. Windows Mobile Smartphone / Standard devices excelled in one-handed operation. There was no fiddling around with a stylus to tap around the screen in the same fashion as Pocket PC / Professional based devices.

I still use Professional for work and supporting customers, but my primary device, day in and day out, over the last 5 years has been a non-touch Windows Mobile Standard based smartphone. That was the case up to this past weekend when I added a new device to my collection.

After picking up a HTC Hero smartphone running Google’s Android operating system, I finally realized what was missing from my touch experience over the years – finger friendly interface. Everything I have done on this device has been very easy to do without a stylus. It’s still early but, for one-handed operation on a touch screen device, the HTC Hero running Google’s Android is the first device I have used that could be as easy to operate as a Windows Mobile Standard device.

The bottom line is this – Mobile Jaw will have a lot more Android content to come. It looks like this device will be my primary device for the foreseeable future.

The Dominant Mobile OS in 3 Years Will Be…

Every now and then a new forecast will be released that claims some sort of radical change in the overall market share of product X will occur in the next 3, 4, or 5 years. The latest Gartner study fits perfectly into that template. Gartner is saying that Google’s Android OS will rocket to second place among the mobile operating systems by 2012, behind Symbian. It sounds shocking and almost scary for those that make their living off Apple or Windows phones.

What I don’t like about these predictions is simple – no one can see the future.  In the tech industry, every time there’s a major challenge produced, the analysts come out with these wild predictions about how the world will change because of this new challenge. For the most part, it never happens. There are some times when it does come true, but that’s so rare. I can recall when IBM launched OS 2.1, the analysts predicted that it would capture some ridiculous share of the market in the next 2 years.  They had pages and pages of reasons why this was going to be the case.  I think we all know how that turned out. This is just one example.  Tech history is littered with failed predictions.

So will Google manage to move all the way to second place in 3 short years? If the competition doesn’t change and role with the tide, then sure.  But I really don’t see Palm, Apple, Microsoft, and RIM sitting still over the next few years.  Right now, in the mobile space, you need to be moving forward at a aggressive pace or risk being left behind.  Microsoft was caught taking a nap recently and are already reacting and pumping things up to the level where is should have been. A couple years ago, Palm was caught napping and came very close to losing everything.  They’ve finally started to turn things around and with any luck they could have some serious market share in a couple years.

Apple and Google are here to stay.  And for that matter, so is Microsoft, RIM, and Symbian. All of these guys will have a significant share of the market in 3 years time. I’m not so sure about Palm and Linux but that’s a rant for another day.  Unfortunately, these forward looking statements are not about to go away.  The public and the press need to remember that the future has not been decided yet and that anything can happen.

(source = PPCGeeks)

Google Reader on a Windows Phone

When it comes to using Google Reader on a Windows Mobile phone you do have some options.

For those that don’t know; Google Reader is an RSS reader so that you can keep up with your favourites sites and blogs without having to open each one individually. It is a fantastic service, especially when time is slightly crunched. One of the best things about it is that when you read an article from any computer or platform it will show as “read” in all others. If you used a regular RSS reader you most likely will have to manually mark messages read on other platforms to keep them up to date.

Mobile Internet Explorer version
In Windows Mobile you can view a simple version of Google Reader by opening Mobile Internet Explorer and typing the address reader.google.com. You will want to go to the desktop version first and add the sites you want to follow, but once that is done you will see any updates to the site in Google Reader on whichever device you are on.

iPhone version in a Windows Phone
The Windows Mobile version does the trick and is certainly quick but if you want to have a slightly more robust mobile experience you can use the iPhone version of the Google Reader. It will not work in Mobile Internet Explorer but will work in Opera Mobile or iris Browser. Simply type in the address www.google.com/reader/i/

Speeed Reader
Another option is to use an RSS reader. Speeed Reader is actually built specifically for Google Reader and is nice and quick to use. It will show your folders; open a folder and you will see the specific sites listed with the number of new articles showing. Nothing overly fancy, it just works nicely.

If you have any questions or other options please feel free to comment. We want to hear from you.

Btw, be sure to add MobileJaw.com to your reader profile!

I’m at work right now, but I will add some screen caps later.

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