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Another big bite out of the Nokia N97...

OK, so maybe Nokia is doomed. Techcrunch's MobileCrunch reviewer, Greg Kumparak, hates it, starting off:

"[The N97] does so many things, but does none of them anywhere near perfectly. For every aspect of the handset, there is at least one flaw that just wrecks it."

And concluding...

"I could go on and on about the N97 - but there’s no point, and no way to do so without seeming unnecessarily harsh. Nearly every element of the phone has one glaring fault that just kills it for me.

A nasty lag here, an odd interface choice there... even down to the media functionality. Nokia makes a valiant effort to cram everything into this phone, but doesn’t pull a damned thing off perfectly."

As with the Gizmodo review, Greg likes the camera a little, likes the overall feel of the handset itself, and likes some of the UI, like homepage widgets.

But he really doesn't like some of the less visible aesthetics, the hinge, the keboard, the application UI, the capacitive touch screen and the laggy, slow, square-peg-in-round-hole Symbian S60 v5 operating system (S60 was never designed for full touch screen handsets). In fact Kumparak goes further with the Symbian OS:

"S60 has seemed as if it was on its last limb for some time now; with other interfaces now swooping in for the kill, it’s really dragging down Nokia’s efforts. It may be one of the most popular platforms in the world, but that doesn’t mean its one of the best.

Sorry, S60 - it’s game over."

Overall, with the current competiton (no need to mention them again), the Nokia N97 is a swing and a miss.

Now, when I posted my thoughts on the Gizmodo review, @kwingerai replied to me on Twitter saying:

First off, it's always good to hear of a businesses going well and I'm sure Nokia will indeed sell a fair few of these phones. They've sold plenty of N-series phones and they're really not bad at all. Taking a line through the middle of the N97 reviews you could summise that "it's not bad either". "Average" might also fit.

But "not bad" and "average" is not what the N97 was designed to be. This is Nokia's brand new, flagship phone. It's their demonstration of every piece of technical knowledge, expertise and phone/UI design experience they have. Yet it's 2.5 years behind the original iPhone, 1 year behind the Google G1 (HTC Dream) and is now in competition with newer and vastly improved versions of both of those handsets. Plus, it costs AU$300-400 more. It needed to be much better than average. It needed to be outstanding, it needed to put Nokia back on the smartphone map - in a big way. But it doesn't.

Instead the N97 features old technology, some cheap materials, a slow, laggy and out of date UI, and a processor with performance that doesn't cut it in the phone itself, let alone against the competition.

This is why we've seen the doom-laden reviews and why phone fans such as myself are somewhat mystified, not to mention disappointed. If this really is Nokia's best effort, two years late, then they are in big, big trouble. The game has moved on and Nokia's competitors are disappearing into the distance.

[Mobilecrunch]

Alexander van Elsas' blog

If you enjoy reading the mix of topics on this blog, I suggest also subscribing to Alexander van Elsas' site for some truly excellent posts and perspectives on Web stuff, technology, social media, design and more.

I found it via a tweet from Brad hollingsworth @hollingsworth, who pointed out the great post on User Interfaces.

Social media at Dell, and why intranet managers should shout about their work

An interview on CIO Insight comes up with some good nuggets about getting social media buy-in among employees, namingly that you have to:

• have high-level engagement;
• do more than just roll out the tools - listen and act on employee feedback;
• demonstrate the successes; and
• promote the tools on the back of that support and your successes.

Engagement [with social media], [Dell CIO Robin]Johnson says, means publicly acknowledging contributions. “It’s worthy of my time to respond to blog posts and say, ‘That’s fantastic to see this being talked about,’” he explains. “That inspires people to use the tools.”

But responding involves more than just a virtual pat on the back. It also means listening, adopting the most promising ideas and relaying those decisions to the work force. “Adopting ideas gives people a feeling of validation that they can contribute and knock down barriers,” he says.

This is some good advice for social media, but it goes beyond that. Selling the successes, gaining executive support and garnering and acting on feedback from employees are all things that intranet managers should be doing anyway, but perhaps don't do often enough.

On a lack of selling and shouting about the successes, this might be because of an intranet manager's unwillingness to put their work "out there" for wider review, a personal preference simply to not shout about their work, or even a lack of confidence that they're actually doing good work.

On acting on suggestions of employees, sure, not all suggestions are feasible. In fact many suggestions may not fit with capabilities or strategy. But in closing the loop between employee suggestions and selling successes, it's valuable to listen as much as you can, ask questions as much as you can, and strive to develop a site or functionality that meets the needs of employees (and focus on needs, where clear problems have been identified).

On getting executive support, this is one of the single most important factors for long-term success. Having an executive sponsor who "gets" the value of a well-designed and utilised intranet, is invaluable. But it can be difficult, especially if you're not listening and selling.

Really, this is all part and parcel of the same thing. Listening and identiying how the intranet can help solve business problems and then solving those problems, and then shouting about it, ultimately demonstrates the usefulness of the intranet. In turn this helps you get higher level support. And onwards and upwards the process goes.

Dell's example is great, British Airways is another that immediately springs to mind, along with several other Intranet Innovation Award winners from 2008 (demonstrating the work of intranet teams was also a significant factor in creating the Awards).

Meet needs, solve problems, shout about it, and all the time build up awareness, support and the business case for the intranet.

Read the full Dell-focused article over at CIO Insight. [via Toby Ward (@tobyward)]

SharePoint Roadmap for Collaboration - available now

Michael Sampson's (@collabguy) new book, SharePoint Roadmap for Collaboration, has been published and is available for order right now. You can even download the first chapter for free.

This is Michael's second SharePoint-focused book and in a chat last week he explained to that me it's quite a different beast from Seamless Teamwork. Needless to say, it's already getting great feedback:

• Craig from Australia ... "I'm on chapter 6 of SharePoint roadmap and have already been singing its praises around the office. It's refreshing to get some fantastic content on SharePoint from a non technical perspective."
• Paul from Australia ... "Your new book is awesome - better than your first." (@paulculmsee)
• Shanon from New Zealand ... "I am thoroughly enjoying your book .... I am highlighting like mad and the margins are heavy with notes and I hope that I can pass on some of the lessons I am learning."

Register to purchase your copy over at www.sharepointroadmap.com

(Arrington was right) Google announces Google Chrome - the Operating System

It's a big news day in the world of computer operating systems. From The Official Google Blog:

Today, we're announcing a new project that's a natural extension of Google Chrome — the Google Chrome Operating System. It's our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010.

Although Chrome the web browser has yet to make it officially to the Mac (and thus I've barely tried it apart from developer builds), this is interesting news, and the Web, blogosphere and Twittersphere is currently going crazy about it.

What's also interesting to look back on is Michael Arrington's statement from when the Chrome Browser was initially launched in September 2008, in a blog post called, "Meet Chrome, the Windows killer":

"Make no mistake. The cute comic book and the touchy-feely talk about user experience is little more than a coat of paint on top of a monumental hatred of Microsoft.... Chrome is nothing less than a full on desktop operating system that will compete head on with Windows."

Further news this week came in the shape of the latest TechCrunch Crunchpad prototype (right), which is looking very slick in its most recent incarnation, and which is a device designed to boot straight into a web browser.

This is undoubtedly going to be a key direction for internet-focused devices in the future, where the Web and the operating system become one.

[The Official Google Blog]

[Techcrunch: Meet Chrome, the Windows Killer]

[Techcrunch: Crunchpad Prototype coming this month]

[Ars Technica who scooped the story this morning]

Is Nokia doomed?

If you're coming late to the party, you really need to turn up with something special. Nokia, it seems, has dropped the ball in a big way with the new N97, the $1129 handset upon which it's staking its hand on in this round of the phone wars. The new flagship phone has received a pasting from Gizmodo:

The N97 is Nokia's attempt to stand tall in an unfamiliar, hostile world populated by the iPhone, Pre and Android the only way it knows how: by throwing the kitchen sink at them. If this is it, they're doomed.

Strong words, and slightly surprising that it's so bad, or maybe the bar has been raised so much that it would have been good - but about two years ago?

Reviewer Matt Buchanan highlights the woeful Symbian S60 Operating System, dodgy viewing angle, poor keyboard feedback, underwhelming screen, resistive touchscreen (old-fashioned compared to the capacative touch screens found in the Palm Pre, iPhone and Android phones), and an underpowered processor driving it all.

Positives included great overall feel, expandable storage, two-way FM transmitter, and an OK 5MP camera.

 Is this really the best Nokia can do? Their future in this segment doesn't look too good - and this is from a phone that's 30-40% more expensive to buy outright than its immediate competition.

Furthermore, since Gizmodo first posted their review yesterday, a company called Generator Research is predicting Nokia will crumble in the next few years and Apple will pass it in marketshare in just two years. Ouch.

Perhaps they should rethink their strategy about not using Android? And that massive N97 advert on Gizmodo (see right), has to hurt.

[Gizmodo]

Downloading the entire intranet to a phone?

That sounds like a crazy idea doesn't it: having the entire intranet available on your mobile device, even if you're not online, or in a mobile/3G/Wi-Fi reception area (like a plane at 35,000 feet).

While the mechanics are undoubtedly different, and you very likely wouldn't need the entire intranet on your phone, this O-Reilly interview concerns a developer who has ported all of Wikipedia to the iPhone. It provides food for thought if you're charged with providing detailed knowledge bases and information resources to mobile operatives and employees:

Think about Wikipedia, what some consider the most complete general survey of human knowledge we have at the moment. Now imagine squeezing it down to fit comfortably on an 8GB iPhone. Sound daunting? Well, that's just what Patrick Collison's Encylopedia iPhone application does.

In making Wikipedia fit on the 8GB phone, and robust enough to use, Collison stripped out anything and everything that would derail the application from its ambition:

"It's around 12 or 13 gigabytes uncompressed. The very first thing we do is it comes in this very verbose XML format. We have our own custom format that just includes the bare minimum amount of metadata. And then compacts it in this fairly space efficient binary way. We manage to strip out 20 or 30 percent of the content just by doing that.

Then we apply bzip compression... we also remove some of the content from the applications, the kind of stuff that's not particularly useful on the phone. We strip out the links, for example, to the article in other languages because those links don't work in an offline application. We don't have the other languages. We add links to pictures because we're not storing the pictures. We strip out references because I'm assuming you're not too interested in analyzing the minutia of the references when you're using the phone, and that kind of stuff. And so that, again, saved us another 20 to 30 percent or so.

And really, that's it. I mean what ends up being transferred to the phone is just this huge two gigabyte bzip2 encoded text file that we then index in various ways to allow it to selectively decompress various chunks when a user wants to load an article."

This is clever, and there's definitely some potential uses for such a process in the corporate environment - that's if intranets on mobile devices ever really take off.

Encylopedia - Wikipedia on the iPhone $12.99 by Steam Heavy Industries (iTunes link)

[O'Reilly Radar]

4 easy steps to kill an intranet

Jane McConnell has a sad story of how one organisation killed their intranet in four quick steps:

1. Remove or redeploy the intranet team, and put external communications in charge.
2. Stop training authors.
3. Turn the home page into a flashy news tool with lots of fancy widgets.
4. Remove all user feedback mechanisms from the home page.

"This is real - I did not invent it!" says Jane. Unfortunately I can absolutely believe it. I've heard recently of organisations that think they've done it all and dissolve their very successful intranet team, and where internal communications has been handed to IT as Comms is cut altogether (and IT really didn't want the job).

It's clear to me that if there's a sound and clear business strategy that's working, it's usually supported by effective internal information management, internal communication, a "can do" IT team working with you and a well-utilised intranet (or intranets) and more.

But you can have a great intranet and all of those things without there being a great business strategy up top, and this is a dangerous situation for an intranet team to be in. One where senior management, or those going through a spreadsheet looking for assets and teams to cut and save money, have no idea of the value of a good intranet and thus cut the team and destroy the site, or render it completely impotent.

Months or years later the pendulum swings back and someone says, "We really need to fix the intranet you know, it could be very useful!"

Creating an intranet brand

TabCorp intranet manager and Sydney ILF member, Peter Richards (@peter_richards) has started a blog post series on 5 tips to create a successful intranet. His first post is on giving the intranet a strong brand:

There always seems to be a debate on whether to give the Intranet a name or not. From my experience I think it is essential that the Intranet has a name and an individual design that differentiates it from any other company website or information sources. The name along with the design become your Intranet Brand.

I agree with Peter, I think the intranet brand needs to be strong, to differentiate from the main corporate website, differentiate its content and encapsulate the essence of a purpose built, employee-focused site. There's some good and far-ranging thoughts on whether this will always be the case, but for now it's sound sense.

Also see Starting to define an intranet brand by James and the excellent "Boris the intranet" case study from City of Casey in Victoria.

Should you get an iPhone 3GS?

On Saturday my girlfriend, long-suffering her Sony M600i, bought a brand new, very shiny and black iPhone 3GS 16GB (on the aforementioned Vodafone $69 1GB plan). She loves it, and is super-pleased to have ditched the old Sony, which looks like a relic in comparison.

The decision to get a 3GS becomes less clear if you've already got an iPhone. In a good review, TechCrunch's #1 Apple fan MG Siegler (@parislemon) says the decision really isn't all that simple for the 3G version, but if you have a 2G (which I do) you should take the plunge. Hmmmmm... Read his full review here.

One thing we do benefit from here in Australia is the fact that the iPhone 3GS (and 3G) is already available on three networks - Telstra, Vodafone and Optus - and will soon be available on the "3" network (who may yet have the best plans, although their 3G coverage is strictly for metro areas). In Siegler's review, AT&T, a company pretty much hated in the US, is the only provider and this affects the decision, while in the UK it's limited to O2 which is pretty good.