Category: Mobile

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Reinventing the blog, part 2: The challenges, the opportunies

After the initial dissection of the most innovative and well designed blogs, it's time to go behind the scenes. We've seen how some of these blogs look like, but there's even more value in understanding why they look like they do. Every good user experience analysis needs to have a clear overview of the goals and good insight into the problems of the situation, and I will try to outline these by using my blog as an example. A lot can be deducted by monitoring the basic Google Analytics reports.

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written 13:42 CET on chronolog
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Reinventing the blog, part 1: Dissecting the most innovative and best-designed blogs

The blog is getting mature. Ever since Gawker did its eccentric redesign a few years ago, we've seen a lot of other blog (networks) doing similar things, trying to reinvent how the blog should look like in 2013. After the initial hiccup, Gawker managed to fortify its position and attract new users, showing others that people do like to see different things, things that are imitating the experience of reading electronic magazines on mobile devices. Today, there are many great cases of how a modern blog should feel, and since I'm thinking about doing something similar myself (it's been almost 4 years since I did this!), I decided to dissect a few of the most innovative ones, hoping to get a picture of what works and what not. Here are my picks of the most creative and best designed (mainstream) blogs on the Web, those that are standing out from the crowd and are unique in what they offer to their readers.

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written 16:23 CET on chronolog
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I believe Firefox OS may be on to something

A few days ago, during the Mobile World Congress, Firefox announced its mobile OS, which will be available soon. Teaming up with 18 carriers and 4 announced manufacturers (plus Sony), the release was probably bigger than expected. A few high-profile web services, including AirBnb, Disney, Facebook, SoundCloud and Twitter, also joined the hype by including their apps to the new marketplace. Analysts quickly put down their bets, some supporting the effort, while others denying the possibility of its success. One of the most fascinating things about the new OS is that it's going to be entirely web based, the operating system itself, the apps, everything. Unlocking the power of the web, as they put it. And to be honest, I can buy that.

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written 23:27 CET on chronolog
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Sempl 14 key takeaways: top trends in (digital) marketing

The 14th media trends seminar Sempl took place last week in Portorož. This year, I had an opportunity to attend the conference, since Neolab provided the official Twitter wall. And I was glad I could, because Sempl proved itself as an event worth visiting, packed with high profile speakers and marketers not only from Slovenia, but from the entire region. Most lectures were very interesting, and the fascinating fact is that they all went into the same direction. It seems mobile, social and local are so mainstream, they are not even put into the spotlight anymore. But here are the things that were.

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written 8:35 CET on chronolog
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Discover what's happening in Ljubljana in real-time

I've always been a big fan of the power of the crowds. When a mass of people can achieve much more than a few skilled individuals can. And ever since we've started playing with Twitter's API, I've been think about the possibilities of this magnificent data source. Besides Twenity, we've done a few other Twitter mashups like Twitter walls, but this wasn't enough. We wanted something more - geolocation. Displaying information on a map in real-time. But since there aren't that many tweets equipped with GPS coordinates, we needed to include other services for more diversity as well. Which we did, and Ljubljana Realtime, a social event discovery application, was born.

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written 14:37 CET on chronolog
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Did Apple and Samsung just pull the greatest trick in the mobile universe?

The verdict is finally in. Samsung has lost the lawsuit against Apple, which means the court decided they were copying iPhone's design and user experience. The decisions seems legit, specially if you saw the internal document from Samsung, a case study comparing and improving the Galaxy's user interface based on iOS's. On the other hand, it's hard to say if the decision is morally right and what it means for the mobile industry. Software patents are a problem and some companies like Google have already made a stance agains them (even though they've supposedly acquired Motorola because of them). But could all of this be just a marketing trick? Where Apple and Samsung set out to dominate the mobile industry?

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written 9:09 CET on chronolog
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On iPhone, toys, the enterprise and of course, Windows 8

Flashback 5 years ago. In 2007, Apple introduced the iPhone, the original model, which had no 3G support and cost more than any other mobile phone. At that time, Nokia dominated the market, with almost 40% market share, and Samsung was gaining ground on Motorola, both owning around 15% of the industry sales. Funny, how things change in so little time, but what's even funnier, is how the competition reacted to the iPhone. Some of you may remember how Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's CEO, laughed at the iPhone, saying that it's pretty much an expensive toy that would never penetrate the enterprise. History proved him wrong, and we can only guess if this was one of the most bitter predictions he ever made.

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written 8:34 CET on chronolog
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