Facebook Connect on iPhone Stops Connecting; Connect’s Login UX Drops “Connecting” Language
If you haven’t noticed yet within your apps, the login screen for Facebook Connect has updated to feel more “iPhone friendly,” and Facebook has dropped this idea of “connecting” as a result.
Additionally, there are many cues in the new UX which assume an experienced Facebook user, which seems like a shift in Facebook’s approach for their API.
Facebook Connect side-by-side comparison
Notable changes include:
- Removed all “Connect” language in favor of “Login”
- Simplifies language overall, which assumes experienced user
- Title “Connect to Facebook to “Facebook Login”
- Removed description of what Facebook Connect is for
- Remove visual cue that helps users understand the purpose of the screen
- Removed Facebook terms/conditions fine print
- Removed “Cancel” button
- Asks for either your email or your phone number
- Increases size of user input fields
Apple Updates Apple Store App…Lets Store Customers Check-In
This new update allows Apple Store customers the ability to check in for reservations and request help within stores.
Link to Apple Store app: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/apple-store/id375380948?mt=8
Starbucks makes hire via iPhone app
Starbucks spokeswoman Stacey Krum writes: 
This was the first person that told us they found the job listing
through the myStarbucks iPhone app. Of course, there may be others but not that we’re aware. With an increasing number of people relying on their mobile phones for information, we thought it made sense to tap into a pool of potential employees directly. It’s a great way for us to reach out to job candidates who are already interested in Starbucks and we hope the popularity of the app will help us find the right people for our business.
Source: http://goo.gl/LD7k
Hiring an iPhone Developer? Read This First.
The Business Insider has posted an article titled How To Hire A Great iPhone Developer and it features a few quotes from our creative director, Ryan Unger. It’s a good read with some valuable insight, so feel free to give it a look.
Get Well Soon, iPhone 3G Network!
When I first got my iPhone some two years ago, I rarely experienced connectivity issues. In fact, I was pretty proud of the fact that my phone and data service were so consistent. Flash forward to today, and I’ve moved from Cleveland (population: 500,000) to Chicago (population: 2.9 million), and the number of iPhone users has increased many, many times over.
Increasingly, I can’t hold on to a call. No joke—I drop calls every single day. And 3G data service? At this point, I feel like I’ve won the lottery when I see that beautiful little 3G icon instead of the letter “E” at the top of my screen. The other day, a friend of mine received nine visual voicemails all at once…and they had been left by recipients four days prior!
Make no mistake. Despite these issues, I absolutely love my iPhone. And thankfully, a recent article over at the NY Times has shed some light on why these issues are occurring.
You can read the article here.
Clearly, no one could have predicted the success of the iPhone. With a little patience, it looks like all of these issues will be ultimately resolved.
Apple Leads Cell Phone Industry with 32% of the Total Industry Profit
Question: How does a newcomer introduce just one cell phone, and absolutely obliterate their competition with respect to profit?
Answer: They build an iPhone.
Top Cell Phone Manufacturers' Estimated Revenues Compared to Apple's
In the cell phone game, the Apple iPhone only accounts for 8% of the total industry revenue, but 32% of the total industry profit. How they managed this feat is quite simple. They pull in a 40% operating margin, in an industry that averages only 7.5%. The next most profitable company in the industry, RIM, only takes in 20.7% operating margin.
[ iSmashPhone.com ]
3 Rules for Keeping My iPhone Applications Organized
I can still remember the good ol’ days, when the iPhone had no downloadable content. You had one home screen with all of your Apple-bestowed icons in a single place–no organization skills required.
Those days are long gone, and with a slew of amazing iPhone apps comes a puzzling question: How does one best organize the plethora of applications downloaded to an iPhone? In the past, I’ve tried sorting my apps in a million different (and often bizarre) ways, and frequently found myself looking at friends’ phones, trying to figure out the logic they’d applied to their own apps.
After some careful consideration, I’ve finally settled on my favorite way to sort iPhone app icons. Of course, these methods are purely based on my personal taste and strange sense of “logic,” so take this post with a grain of salt. That said, without further delay, my 3 Rules for Keeping My iPhone Applications Organized:
My iPhone's Home Screen
1. I am an Apple purist at heart, and in a nod to the 1st gen iPhone, I keep the original twelve iPhone icons on my home screen (note: these are in addition to the four app icons found on the dock at the bottom of the screen). These icons are: Messages, Calendar, Photos, Camera, YouTube, Stocks, Maps, Weather, Notes, Clock, Calculator, and Settings. The reason for doing this is two-fold. First, I find that through years of using my iPhone, I’ve genuinely memorized the location of these twelve apps. Clicking on them is second nature to me. The second reason I like this organization scheme is that having twelve home screen icons on your phone leaves a nice empty row between the upper twelve app icons and the home row. I find this aesthetically pleasing–to me, it beats having a home screen crammed to the brim with icons.
2. Apple has provided us with five more application icons since the first gen iPhone. These icons are: App Store, Compass, Contacts, iTunes, and Voice Memos. Based on my logic in Rule #1, one could reasonably argue that these Apple-given icons should be on the home screen of the phone (they are Apple-bestowed, of course). This would be a fair argument, except that there’s no way to fit them all on the home screen. For this reason, I opt to treat these five application icons the same as I do any other downloaded iPhone apps. Doing this still supports Rule #1, which aims to keep my iPhone home screen organized and uncluttered as it was in its first release.
3. Finally, the piece de resistance. For ALL application icons not located on the initial home screen of my iPhone, I simply arrange them alphabetically on secondary home screen pages. This way, I don’t have to wonder where an app should be located and any hesitation I have to download millions of apps is squashed. I’ve tried all sorts of ways to sort my downloaded apps, but nothing is as fool-proof and easy to remember as this method. My experiments with attempting to sort apps based on categories like “utility” or “games” have always ended up failing. Alphabetizing is simple through and through.
…Phew. I hope this makes some semblance of sense! Do you have a better method of organizing your iPhone icons? If you do, feel free to share with me. I’d love to hear your thoughts as I continue in my quest to find true iPhone nirvana.
A Secondary Screen on My iPhone
The 5 Commandments of Mobile Web Design
A one-size-fits-all approach to solving problems rarely seems to work in the real world, and the mobile Web is no different.
Up to this point, most mobile sites have been developed by re-hashing traditional Web content and squeezing it onto the small screen—an unfortunate “Mini-Me” approach to mobile Web design. The result? While the traditional Web becomes more useful and creative every day, the significance of the mobile Web has largely stalled. The mobile Web has yet to realize its awesome potential, and the problem isn’t a technology issue like you may be already thinking. The problem is design, or rather, a lack thereof, within the mobile medium.
1. The Mobile Web is Not the Little Sister of the Traditional Web.
What makes a mobile site so different?
It’s not the screen size—it’s the intent of the user. Very often, traditional Web users browse the Web for entertainment or to kill time. Even when traditional users need to perform work-related tasks, they are easily sidetracked by Twitter, YouTube, or any of the thousands of social networking sites.
Mobile users, on the other hand, typically browse the mobile Web when they are in need of specific information. These experiences tend to be much shorter than they are on the traditional Web, and users rarely browse for entertainment purposes. Let’s just be honest with ourselves—if a user could be in front of a computer, that’s where he or she would be.
Suppose that you were offered a chance to view a new Red Hot Chili Peppers music video on your phone. Would you actually navigate to the video and watch it, when you could just as easily view it on a speedy home computer? Re-purposing traditional Web content and stuffing it into a mobile browser is a recipe for disaster. Instead, it’s time to look at the mobile Web as a uniquely distinctive medium.
2. Give People What They Want, When They Want It.
All mobile Web users across the globe want the same thing: the ability, at any time, to easily access any information.
What this means for mobile Web designers and developers, is that first and foremost, we need to approach mobile Web sites as an information-architecture problem, and NOT as a technology problem. Mobile Web sites should be formatted in a way that allows users to easily navigate and make decisions. Users don’t want to dig through the clutter of a traditional Web site to find the tiny link they were looking for.
Companies that merely ensure their existing Web site is viewable on mobile phones, have, for the most part, wasted their time and money. This is primarily because this type of mobile Web site will likely be hard to navigate through, or be terrible looking. All too often, users get frustrated when they can’t find the content they are looking for. This fact is exactly why wireless carrier “decks” exist.
3. Build Unique Mobile Content, or Don’t Bother Building Anything at All.
Mobile is a unique medium and it should be designed with this idea in mind. If you are not willing to rewrite, modify, or create custom mobile content, then don’t bother creating a mobile site in the first place.
This point is best illustrated by an example:
A university could easily mobilize its existing Web content to create a mobile Web site, but do freshman really need to be able to schedule classes from their phone when they are lost in the Quad? The answer should be, obviously, no.
Wouldn’t the university mobile site be more effective if it was limited to custom information that is relevant for on-the-go students—such as mobile maps, a one-click phone number directory and faculty office hours? The answer is yes.
4. Make It Useable. Make It Useable. Make It Useable.
Mobile Web sites MUST always work on every phone. Period.
What this means is that mobile Web designers need to consider multiple screen sizes, as well as multiple technologies. A mobile Web site should dynamically transcode content such as forms, images, videos, ringtones and layouts, so that any user, with any phone, can enjoy a seamless browsing experience. Users should never have to tell a mobile site what kind of phone they have—it should already know.
Consider that for the traditional Web, designers and developers need to account for differences between Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, Opera, screen sizes, color depth, Flash versions, and more. Why would mobile be any different?
5. Don’t Forget About Design. Seriously.
Mobile Web surfers are still consumers, and consumers are deeply impacted by design. Don’t believe this? Allow us to introduce you to a fine company called Apple.
Because the concern at the forefront of people’s minds has been technology, brands and agencies often neglect the importance of design in the mobile space. It is almost assumed that because the mobile Web has to work on every mobile device, it can’t also look great. We couldn’t disagree with this mindset more.
When a mobile marketing firm approaches a mobile Web design project, it should design a series of visual layouts for a client that illustrate how the mobile site will look on a variety of different devices. For example, our firm refines a selected visual design concept into a WML layout (old school WAP 1.0), an XHTML-MP (WAP 2.0) layout at several different screen sizes, and (when possible) an iPhone-specific layout. The goal here is to ensure that no matter what phone is viewing the content, it will look its absolute best.
In Summary:
1. Think about the mobile Web in a new way. Get creative.
2. Clear and concise information-architecture specific to mobile is an absolute must.
3. Create compelling mobile content or don’t bother at all.
4. Mobile sites have to work—always. No ifs, ands, or buts.
5. It’s called mobile Web DESIGN. Not mobile Web cram-it-on-the-screen.
About Punchkick Interactive
Punchkick Interactive is America’s first design firm to focus exclusively on full-service mobile marketing. The firm specializes in creating text-message campaigns, mobile games, Flash Lite content, branded mobile Web sites, custom BREW and Java ME applications, iPhone apps, mobile media distribution systems, Bluetooth proximity marketing campaigns, and more. For additional information about mobile marketing visit http://www.punchkickinteractive.com or call (800) 549-4104.
50 Useful iPhone Tips for Librarians and Researchers
College@Home created a list of 50 useful iPhone tips for librarians and researchers, and it actually brought up a few points directly related to mobile marketing…
2. Creating a texting service for patron questions. Giving patrons the option of texting in their questions to the library can make it easy for those who prefer to avoid telephone conversations the ability to get quick and easy answers to simple questions, and if librarians within your library are using iPhones they can respond to questions in between checking in or shelving materials and other tasks.
5. Check how your site looks on an iPhone. Many sites don’t quite translate well to mobile devices like the iPhone. Check how your library’s webpage looks by using an online tool like iPhoney or by checking it yourself on an iPhone.
7. Optimize your site for mobile devices. If you’ve checked out how your site looks on an iPhone and the result is not so great, consider creating a special page for mobile users to access your site. Many libraries are already doing so to maximize the usability of their webpages by patrons.
18. Track requests. You can use your iPhone as an easy way to alert patrons that their requests have arrived whether by phone, email or text and you can record and keep track of these requests as well.
23. Create content that’s easy to browse over an iPhone. If you’ve decided to develop a version of your site that’s more easily compatible with mobile phones, consider scaling it down the the basics. Simple search tools and information will be easiest to browse on the go.
The Rather Difficult Font Game
I just stumbled across a great game on ilovetypography.com called The Rather Difficult Font Game. If you’re a fellow typophile, you should check it out. And, should you have the hardware, there is also an iPhone version to play with as well.
