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If the future is all about touchscreen interfaces, then performance of the screen in registering where it's been touched is pretty important. International design firm Moto ran a robotic finger test on 6 leading touchscreen smart phones to see how well they registered a robot's loving touch. Some of the phones did remarkably poorly, like the BlackBerry Storm and the Motorola Droid. The iPhone, Google Nexus One and HTC Droid Eris all did quite well. Check out the video below to see the tests and marvel at the apparent differences between touchscreens and their performances. Sponsor Robot Touchscreen Analysis from MOTO Development Group on Vimeo . As Sadat Karim writes on Neowin , "Hope is not lost though, as Moto Labs concludes that they do expect these problems to be remedied in the future as touchscreens mature and gain further traction in the industry. Commitment and competition will ultimately deliver seamless touch experiences for all consumers over time, since phone makers are continuously perfecting their products." To see touchscreen hardware nerds duke it out over the test, check out the Moto Labs blog . How about you, readers? Have you felt the difference in performance across some of these handsets? See also: User Interfaces Rapidly Adjusting to Information Overload Discuss
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Test Shows: iPhone Touchscreen Still the Best
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Portland, Oregon mobile service provider Urban Airship announced today that it now offers push notifications as a service - with a multi-media payload. The white label technology, called AirMail , sends users of iPhone, BlackBerry and soon Android phones a push notification that when clicked launches not just an app, but specific content like images, videos or text inside that app. Developers who put the AirMail library into their apps will also receive full analytics showing how many recipients opened the messages, how long they spent viewing the content and more. AirMail is available only as a developer preview today but a preview video can be viewed below. Sponsor The downside to using services like UrbanAirship is always dependence on 3rd party service providers. This newest feature is probably the startup's most intimate integration yet from a technology perspective, but development required is non-trivial and the resulting functionality is likely to be a real boon to publishers. If you've got multi-media in an iPhone app, this is a way for it to reach out and grab (with push) your users and keep them engaged. Discuss
Originally posted here:
Mobile Media Gets Pushy: Push Notifications With a Media Payload
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Urban Airship , a Portland, Oregon based iPhone "push notifications as a service" company, announced this morning that it now offers push notifications for BlackBerry applications and will soon offer Android push as well. "We are going to see at least four, and potentially five, extremely relevant platforms for mobile applications in the near future," the company said, "and we intend to provide the push messaging and content delivery infrastructure for all of them." If you've seen push notifications from Gowalla (a great use case, by the way), Tap Tap Revenge, Yowza or Urban Rivals, then you've seen Urban Airship's service on the front end. On the back end, the company is developing push and in-app purchase infrastructure for numerous apps and devices, including the forthcoming iPad. Sponsor Airship developer Michael Richardson put the company's cross-platform efforts into context for us this morning: We want to make it extremely simple for mobile publishers to communicate in a real-time fashion with their users. The mobile phone is the perfect channel for that and we want to provide the ability to reach any user, any time, immediately, without the high cost or difficult implementation of SMS. Bringing that paradigm to BlackBerry and Android will open up big new markets for the company and easy new functionality for developers. The company is offering BlackBerry push right now by integrating with BlackBerry's own API. Android push will be handled end to end by Airship and isn't ready yet. "We'll handle the details of managing the persistent socket connections from the device and sending the notifications as needed along that connection," the company says. That's easier said than done. Richardson: "We're taking it slow to make sure that we do it right." The downside to using a service like this of course is that it's a form of reliance on a small outside service provider. Quite a few companies have been willing to forgo building this kind of tech in-house to date, though. Urban Airship reports that it delivered 100 million push notifications in its first 6 months and 60 million more in just 4 weeks after that. Into mobile? Check out the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit 2010 . Discuss
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Urban Airship Now Offering Push Notifications for Your Mobile Apps Beyond the iPhone
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The Blackberry just doesn't seem to have the luster it once did. Today, it had another nationwide outage. According to Data Outage News: "A number of users are reporting and an escalated RIM tech support call has confirmed data issues affecting WiFi devices NOT connected to a WiFi network. The outage is sporadic and issues are confirmed on at least on Verizon and T-Mobile on both US east and west coasts. Again, if you are connected to WiFi, you likely won't notice any problems until you are out of WiFi range. This is not affecting ALL WiFi users, the reports are sporadic, but across all carriers, BIS and BES included." Sponsor What's going in with the Blackberry? Once the enterprise stalwart, it is now looking like a struggling behemoth. Its interface almost seems antiquated. An analyst group is now saying the iPhone is expected to beat out the Blackberry in 2011 for the number one spot. And now we have another outage. Twitter users are all over today's outage. Some people are saying their service has been out since the morning. There have been some reports that the outage is international in scope. The last Blackberry outage came in December . Reported outages also came in 2007 and 2008. Blackberry has been facing a lot of of market pressure. The iPhone, the Android and the upcoming Windows Phone 7 Series all present challenges to the Blackberry. A report by Trefis shows the iPhone beating out the Blackberry by 2011. The iPhone's surge into the business community is a major reason for it overtaking the Blackberry. A Trefi analyst write in Forbes : We expect Apple's market share to overtake that of RIM by 2011, and for Apple and RIM to have 11% and 8% market share, respectively, by the end of Trefis forecast period. We believe sales of the iPhone will eventually outpace BlackBerry sales for the following reasons: 1. Apple's ecosystem of consumer products (Macs, iPad, Apple TV) and services (iTunes, iPhone apps) make the iPhone a more attractive phone for many consumers compared to the BlackBerry 2. End of AT&T exclusivity will give Apple's iPhone wider distribution in the US (comparable to BlackBerry distribution) 3. iPhone is making inroads with business customers that have traditionally preferred the BlackBerry Discuss
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Another Nationwide Outage For The Blackberry
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SXSW Interactive is just around the corner, so it's time to make your party plans for Austin, Texas! ReadWriteWeb's SXSW party - in partnership with PBS, NPR, and others - is happening on Sunday, March 14, from 9pm at KLRU's legendary Austin City Limits Studio. There will be shuttles to and from the Austin Hilton. We invite you to enjoy some tex-mex, margaritas and live music with us! Also you'll network with the smart, cool people attending SXSW from ReadWriteWeb, PBS, NPR, Frontline, ITVS and Futurestates. This event is free to attend for all SXSW Interactive or Film badge holders. You can register your interest at the event Facebook page . Sponsor Who's Playing Nicole Atkins & The Black Sea Band of Skulls SXSW attendees, calendar this event and let everyone know you are coming on Facebook and on Plancast . When, Where and How to Get There When: Sunday, March 14, 2010 at 9:00pm until Monday, March 15, 2010 at 1:00am Where: SXSW, Austin City Limits @ KLRU Studios Shuttle buses will run throughout the night between the Austin Hilton (5th street entrance) and KLRU. Discuss
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ReadWriteWeb Co-Hosting SXSW Party With PBS, NPR & Others
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