Stephane Gauvin

Nexus one in Canada. It works. Very well thank you

It's been less than 48 hours. My mobile life was lived on an humble but reliable, extremely well designed, but somewhat archaic Nokia 6301. I loved the form factor (small candy bar). I loved the pragmatic layout one could achieve. I loved the affordable data plans offered to a so-called "feature phone". Gmail, Google maps, Opera mini for just a few $ per month. But it took 20 seconds to get from zero to Gmail's first page. Probably as long for a map. No Gps. Eyes straining on a QVGA screen. WiFi capabilities restricted to UMA...

My wife has an iPhone (no link needed here) and is very happy with it. Several years ago I talked to audiences saying that this phone would revolutionize the mobile industry. Yes, but not for me. The iPhone is locked -- I spend months abroad and cannot fathom the idea of roaming. It is extremely expensive (easy to run bills in excess of $1,000 per month without any video or heavy mapping). It is uncouth to ask your foreign partners to call long distance if they want to reach you. So I had to have an unlocked phone. Jailbreaking an iPhone is not fun. Plus, there is the battery issue. you can't swap batteries in an iPhone (I carried 2 spares for my N6301). And the screen has too few pixels. So I wasn't frustrated nor jealous of iPhone users. Great device, just not for me. (Berries are worse on the run; Nokia's N900 is just too large. Might as well carry a laptop.)

Just so I make it clear: for me the Nexus One has four definite advantages making it the dominant choice:

1) it is available unlocked. Telephony works on any GSM network. Data on any GPRS/EDGE and most non Canadian 3G. EDGE is good enough for me -- I do not care about video streaming.

2) it runs on 480x800 pixels. That is roughly five times as many pixels as my N6301's QVGA and twice as much as the iPhone's 480x320 screen. Reading a pdf file that was not formatted for a mobile is not easy, but feasible on a WVGA screen. Hell, this was the laptop's screen not so long ago. Reading on an iPhone is ridiculous. Impossible on a feature phone.

3) batteries can be replaced on the fly. This may sound trivial, but power is a major issue for the smarter phones. Not so much the CPU, mind you, but those 400,000 pixels or so are a major drain. The usual home-work-home routine is not a problem, but the occasional out-of-town activity requires more care, and the transcontinental journey means that you must use your phone sparingly, until you get to your room. No music/podcast, no catching up on reading, no planning of your trip, no editing of your expense records. Spare(s) are a dealbreaker for me. I used to carry up to three on some occasions (i.e. a week's autonomy)

4) it is reasonably small. Very thin, it disappears in your shirt, pant or vest's pocket.

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You'll read excellent reviews all over the Internet, so let me share just a few (initial) thoughts

A) Form factor is above expectation. I dreaded replacing my N6301 with a "puck-like" device. The small candy bar shape of feature phones is great for texting. Easy to keep in your hand when you walk (typical scenario -- I send an SMS and walk phone in hand wating for the reply). The larger iPhone is too conspicuous for my tastes. Same with the Nexus one. But the feel of the casing and the way the edges are rounded makes this transition less annoying than expected. Plus, the Nexus one feels a tiny bit slimmer than the iPhone (11.8mm vs 12.mm -- I guess I am like the proverbial princess and the pea :)

B) I walk from home to the office. It takes the better part of an hour, during which I like to listen to podcasts (CBC's Ideas, TVO's Search Engine, UChannel, and so on). I would carry and iPod, synced to my podcast's base. BeyondPod on Nexus One is arguably a better solution. I've subscribed to a few sources and automated the downloading process (at night, when the phone is recharging and can connect to a WiFi access point). Which means one less gizmo to carry.

C) I've read negative reviews wrt the Nexus One's trackball. Well, I like it. How else to move the cursor to fix a typo (most people seem to have to backspace all the way) or click on a tiny link? You may try to use your finger to relocate the cursor, but my fingers are too clumsy. Plus, the trackball glows to provide a visual cue for notifications. Very useful as I often miss the audio signal.

D) Entreprise-grade security for WiFi access. I can connect at the office, meaning that my data usage on the phone network is quite light.

E) Great push and sync. GMail pushed eMail. Notifications can be audio, visual or both. Same for calendar; same for Facebook. Out of the box, took less than a minute to set up. If I sit at my desktop, like now, mails are notified just as fast on either device. The best thing is that messages read on the computer will deactivate the notification on the phone. Again, may sound trivial and obvious, but most devices I know will keep notifying you until you activate the application.

F) The motion sensor can be used to silence ringtones during a meeting or at night. Place the phone face down on the desk and an app will shut-out the audio. Which brings me to my first gripe.

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G) I haven't figured out, yet, if or how one can set profiles. I was used to Nokia's "normal", "meeting", "silent", etc. profiles. Very useful because you could change several settings at once and more importantly, set an expiration time. It quickly became some kind of an habit for me to set the meeting profile at the start of a meeting, for the duration of the meeting, which meant that it was easy to program an alert at the end of a meeting so we'd all realize that time was up; or more importantly, that I would not forget to turn the ringer back on at the end of the meeting.

H) I often miss the reliability of a phone hardware keypad with T9 predictions. I work in French Canada, where we use a qwerty layout and often correspond in English. The Nexus one, if configured to French language, uses the azerty layout. To make a long story short, I was probably a more efficient typist on my N6301 than on the Nexus one. There is probably a learning curve here. I'll eventually update. I see no real solution as I would no go for a slider (too thick) nor a split face with small screen/small keyboard combo.

I) the voice search command pops out of nowhere from time to time. I'd like to completely disable this feature that I am very unlikely to use. I wonder if there is a hidden (to me) trigger or if this is a bug. I'd guess the first, but since the system appears to lag (unfrequently), it could well be a bug.

J) and could someone explain to me what was the idea behind the "Amazon MP3" application, that one cannot disable unless one wants to root the OS? I would have understood that Android's marketplace promote this aggressively, but an embedded store like this looks like a very lame iStore to me. No mr. Google, I will not purchase the latest hit from Amazon, and if I did, it would not be from a mobile.

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For a little while I felt anxious, after purchasing "by mistake" (I was, after all, just testing the bidders in preparation for my "real" bidding :). Reviews on the N1 are, how to put it, disconcerting. Most dedicated sites would write that this is the "best android handset by a mile" but not a "game changer", and that one would go iPhone if embedded in Apple's echo system and N1 if embedded in Google's. And I could not not notice the dismal sales figures (80 000 sets during the first month vs 1M for the iPhone). And the complaints about multitouch and 3G, and the fact that the 3G antenna might not work here nor there...

This device does its thing with minimal effort, if by "thing" we mean calls, mails, SMS. And it can do much more and this requires some trial and error.

All in all, I am extremely satisfied with this device.

Mon expérience Facebook

Surprenant tout de même. J'ai longtemps dit que je ne comprenais pas Facebook. Et maintenant je compte "tout" y faire.

Je voulais dire que je ne comprenais pas (et j'ai encore de la difficulté à comprendre) ce que les gens y font présentement. Histoire de génération, de situation personnelle et de personalité.

Mais j'ai aussi observé, comme tous, l'évolution absolument remarquable de cette plateforme qui est en passe de devenir la première destination www. Déjà Facebook est pratiquement ex-aequo avec Yahoo! et se rapproche de Google qui domine.

Mais 350 millions d'utilisateurs ne m'auraient pas tenté de laisser la blog conventionnel, le micro-blog et les réseaux tout-de-même-un-peu-sérieux comme linkedIn. Ou pire encore, de fragmenter l'intégration de mes interactions courriel.

Mais il y a d'importants signes précurseurs de consolidation.

Facebook Connect

Juste histoire de mémoire -- 60 millions d'utilisateurs selon le Washington Post; MySpace adopte Facebook connect (!!!); Yahoo! adopte Facebook Connect.

Facebook Connect a été lancé il y a à peine 1 an, jour pour jour. Au même moment que Google. Or vous connaissez quelqu'un qui utilise google connect (ou google social).

Facebook connect c'est le début de la possibilité d'avoir un identifiant authentique parce que, pour le moment du moins, les utilisateurs de Facebook ont un incitatif à utiliser leur véritable identité. L'expérience facebook n'est pas la même si vous utilisez un ou plusieurs pseudonymes, ce qui était pourtant la modalité dominante il y a quelques mois...

Facebook connect est un signe énorme. D'abord d'une grosse bagarre remportée par la plateforme qui a le vent dans les voiles. Mais surtout parce que ça pourrait accélérer la consolidation du web. Un connecteur unique va faire en sorte que bien des gens vont se demander pourquoi utiliser des tas d'identifiants/mots de passe. Puis pourquoi utiliser des tas de services tout court.

La puissance de la plateforme

Outre la pression du nombre (j'en reparlerai) et celle de la facilité (on Facebooque en moins de 2) il y a la puissance de la plateforme. On peut créer des listes, des groupes et des pages, on peut cibler des contenus à tous, a des groupes, à des sous-ensembles disjoints (un billet sera vu par tous les étudiants du cours de eMarketing, mais pas ceux des années précédentes) ou à des individus particuliers. On peut gérer les notifications pour qu'elles soient acheminées par courrier ou SMS. Sur pratiquement tout ou sur absolument rien.

L'éventail des possibilités est remarquable. Complexe et souvent mal foutu et avec des choses qui énervent ou effraient ou déroutent. Mais vraiment remarquable.

Il y a Wave à l'horizon. Mais voilà. À l'horizon. Alors que Facebook est ici, maintenant.

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Mais il y a aussi des doutes. L'éthos Facebook, c'est la camaraderie. Je me suis fait dire par pratiquement tous que quand on va sur Facebook, c'est pour se détendre, pas pour travailler.

Pas si sûr. Déjà, en quelques jours, parti de rien, Facebook est devenu utile pour favoriser le travail avec mes étudiants.

Alors voilà. Mes billets publics seront écrits à partir de Facebook et visibles sur "mon site web" dans la colonne de droite. Certains seront poussés sur Twitter. Je vais inviter mes contacts professionnels à se connecter via Facebook (progressivement, pour pouvoir les intégrer dans des listes de contact.).

Je ne comprends pas vraiment ce que les gens font sur Facebook, mais je parie comprendre ce qu'ils y feront.

Seeing red because of Orange

I just cannot believe it. Orange, a large French mobile operator, is advertising its "Internet Everywhere" (3g USB modem) with "reasonable" rates that are not available once you connect.

I spend quite some time in Europe every year. Locating Internet cafes or hotspots that actually work is no fun so I was very pleased when 3G USB modems were aggressively promoted by various operators. So far the best deal that I know of is in Italy where iWind offers 50 hours, unlimited bandwith, for just 9 euros (must be used within a month).

Last Spring, Orange offered prepaid rates that were much higher, but still quite reasonable. You could get as much as 12 hours for 35 euros. While these rates are still advertised today (see here; archived copy here). I've purchased a stick last week and when I connect all I can find are 1h passes for 8 euros of 1+1 for 10 euros. Notice that the limited time offer (24h for 10 euros, valid for a single day) is expired since last March.

I've waited half an hour in an Orange shop. Nobody knows where I can buy a 12h/35 euros pass. It is impossible to find a way to get in touch with customer service online -- you need to subscript to a monthly plan to have the privilege of sending a webform. A salesperson at the FNAC, a large and well respected department store for books, CDs, DVDs and consumer electronics, seemed to know about this bait and switch but added that there is little we can do. Little we can do!! Am I dreaming of there would obvious cause for  a class action if not immediate action taken by the regulators if such practice were happening in Canada?

I have never seen such abysmal marketing by a large scale organization. 

On the positive side, Orange's network does deliver Internet everywhere. If only they could get their act together...

Let's get the ball rolling

I am working with Yan Cimon and Serge Kablan on a research project about Internet accessibility. By this we do not mean having some sort of connection to a network. We are looking at ways that would improve... cognitive access to what many of us take for granted.

As you may know, Internet usage statistics show that 70-80% of the population has access to the Internet or has used it in some way. This is much less than for TV where penetration is almost universal. And in fact, 70% could be too generous an estimate. Sources such as Pew and the Internet report that roughly half of the population is either a non or an occasional user.

These figures are somewhat similar to what is reported by the literacy studies which conclude that close to half the population does not have the cognitive skills that are required to function properly in our information age.

In the physical world, we do not tell people with limited mobility (ex: in a wheelchair) that they should try harder in order to climb stairs -- we build access ramps.

How do we break barriers in a digital world? Our first intuition is that the mobile phone is a key device, because it can blend voice interaction with other forms of representation -- if someone can verbalize his/her needs, it should be reasonable to expect that a smart phone can input voice and output a richer, yet easy to use, content such as videos, schematics, "augmented text", texts aimed at third parties etc.

Our first step is to look at what is currently being done, either by hardware/software manufacturer (Yan), or by the civil society (governments, NGO, etc.) (myself). Serge will review the informed consent issue.

If you stumble across this post and want to steer us towards some source or idea, feel free to leave a comment or drop a line (here)

Des leaders qui s'ignorent

Nous avons eu honte il y a quelque jours, en entendant que près de la moitié des québécois sont incapables de fonctionner convenablement dans la société de l'information. On parle ici des niveaux 1 et 2 de la compétence en littératie. Un mot inusité qui veut dire, la facilité de comprendre les mots écrits.

Vous avez peut-être lu/entendu des commentaires à ce sujet. En général on blame le système d'éducation. Souvent on ajoute des commentaires sur le style de vie. Nulle part on semble s'intéresser à ce qui se passe ailleurs. Or la vérité est que le Canada, et le Québec en particulier, sont dans le peloton de tête.

Oui, il est tragique qu'un grand nombre de nos concitoyens se sentent dépassés. Mais il me semble tout aussi important de réaliser que nous vivons dans une des sociétés les plus performantes sur le plan de la littératie et des compétences scolaires. (encore faut-il savoir que la distribution des compétences n'est pas aussi homogène qu'on pourrait le souhaiter, mais bon)

La publicité rend fade?

Plusieurs échanges intéressants lors de notre dernier cours sur le marketing responsable (où il a été question d'externalités et de biens publics, de même que de l'effet de la publicité).

En particulier, une étudiante qui dit que la publicité doit véhiculer les valeurs de l'entreprise.

Ce qui a déclenché un réflexe en moi: non, la publicité doit véhiculer les valeurs des gens qui sont ciblés. Puis un sentiment de trouble parce que je n'ai pas articulé correctement ma pensée. Ce que je vais tenter de faire sommairement ici.

1) Je sais parfaitement d'où vient mon réflexe: le marketing n'est pas de la "vente". Le marketing c'est une discipline qui consiste à identifier des besoins chez des gens, puis à développer une solution, la communiquer, la distribuer, etc. Ce ne sont pas les valeurs de l'entreprise qui comptent, mais celles de mes clients.

Cette position n'a rien de l'abnégation. Elle s'inspire simplement du fait qu'il est très difficile de changer les gens. Lorsque l'on veut changer les gens, on parle d'éducation, de propagande, d'endoctrinement... de marketing social :)

2) La question devient plus claire si on pose le problème différemment. On imagine mal, dans le Québec d'aujourd'hui, une chaîne d'alimentation faire de la publicité en développant le thème de la religion, ou de faire allusion à des questions d'ordre moral. Même une entreprise qui serait détenue par des intérêts religieux fera mieux de s'abstenir, pour ne pas risquer de s'aliéner.

3) La position soulevée en classe et, je pense, largement partagée, s'appuie en fait sur une logique différente. Il s'agit d'afficher des valeurs que le marché partage. Deux ou trois choses à noter ici:

3.1 Une entreprise peut être détenue par des intérêts qui ont certaines valeurs (ex: fonds de placement éthique) et qui vont, évidemment, communiquer ces valeurs pour que le clients potentiels sachent que leurs intérêts convergent.

3.2 Certaines entreprises, ayons encore en tête les fonds éthiques, affichent leurs valeurs parce qu'elles ne font pas du marketing, mais de l'ingénierie sociale.

3.3 Attention, je ne dis pas qu'une enterprise doit dire qu'elle croit en telle ou telle valeur alors que ce n'est pas le cas. On parlerait alors de fraude (intellectuelle ou économique, selon le cas), de greenwash, etc. 

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Par hasard j'écoutais quelques heures plus tard la conférence que donnait Kenmeth White, l'éditeur en chef de MacLean's (un influent magazine canadien) au "Dalton Camp lectures". Un podcast de l'excellente série Ideas de la CBC.

White parlait de l'histoire de l'industrie de la presse écrite. Il explique qu'au début du 20ième siècle, cette industrie qui était à l'époque aussi stimulante que l'Internet d'aujourd'hui, a vu son modèle d'affaire basculer. Les revenus publicitaires qui représentaient 10-15% des revenus des journaux ont augmenté rapidement, atteignant souvent 80% de l'emsemble des revenus. White dit que la publicité a transformé la presse écrite. Cette presse qui était une presse d'opinion au 19ième siècle, est devenue une presse "fade", parce que les annonceurs veulent un environnement sécuritaire pour supporter leur message. Il ajoute que les valeurs des journalistes ont changé pour s'adapter à cette nouvelle réalité économique. Sans trop comprendre pourquoi, on s'est mis à faire l'éloge de l'objectivité.

Puis il ajoutera quelques minutes plus tard que l'Internet ressemble à la presse militante. Et que le taux de participation aux élections a remonté depuis les dix dernières années....

Premier extrait audio (2 minutes) où White parle de la transformation des journaux: en flux, à télécharger

Second extrait (40 secondes) où White parle de la participation au scrutin: en flux, à télécharger

Matériel du cours de marketing responsable (MRK6017)

Juste un mot pour relayer vers le blog du cours de marketing responsable. Ce cours est offert aux étudiants gradués de la Faculté d'administration de l'Université Laval.

Swine flu -- there is at least one good thing about it...

We are in the midst of an information storm about an apprehended flu pandemic. Data clearly shows a spike starting 4-5 days ago, in the news as well as in the blogs, where the number of indexed documents referring to flu, of any kind, shows a ten to hundred--fold increase. That is not surprising, would you think. But what is, at least to me, is that Google trends' special flu microsite shows absolutely no sign of increasing activity.

This is odd -- I would have bet the house that people are searching [flu] is near record numbers. In fact, I've added [flu] to the list of concepts I track precisely in order to examine the lead-lag in search vs visibility (i.e. do people search for complements of information on what has recently become visible, or does search signal interest which is a precursor of visibility?).

Unfortunately, "search for search" is much more difficult than searching for visibility. Looking at Yahoo! Buzz, I see that swine flu was the top search during the past hour. Looking at Google trends, the current spike is obvious.

So, yes, people do search for complements of information, like crazy. And this is certainly a case of reactive search (i.e. a news report has initiated the process). The next question is why is this surge not showing on the flu microsite? Is it sophisticated enough to distinguish between search terms revealing actual infections (such as [I am sick with the flu]) and queries motivated by curiosity?

One plausible answer is that the flu microsite is updated once a week and that the spike will show up at the next update. If this were the case, then we will have to reconsider the punch line that Google trends provides a two-week lead in the number of flu cases reported by the CDC. What was "white magic" (as in white hat hackers -- the use of the "infinite power of IT" to do good) would take a blow as the number of search would just be "experiential coincidence". (i.e. people search for flu just because they anticipate getting sick, just as people would be more likely to search for [sunburns] during the summer ; people search for carribean beaches *before* they go on holidays, and so on). 

So I am eagerly anticipating the microsite updates as I am curious to see how sophisticated this search analysis is. And if it turns out that it is, I will then worry that this information is proprietary. And if it isn't, I will be disappointed by the limited wisdom of the crowds... So it is win-win :)

Wikia search is closing

In my previous post I reported that the open-search index Wikia had stopped working. Earlier today I stumbled across this blog entry from Jimmy Wales, yes -- Wikipedia's founder. Wales says that his foundation has stopped funding Wikia Search.

Search.wikia.com is still live, but likely to become useless in a short while.

This is very unfortunate as we need diversity in indexing if webometrics (the science of analyzing the web corpus) is to prosper. With Wikia going under, and Cuil looking as if it might (according to Alexa, traffic has all but vanished), triangulation becomes more difficult.

Is there such a thing as Spring fever for search engines?

On April 1st, Alexa has changed its search logic moving from documents to site-level searching. Probably a good thing actually.

Since April 4th I am losing Nutch (Wikia's open index). First problem occurred in March when open-index.visvo.com vanished. And now search.isc.org has become silent. This index was very small in comparison to the field leaders, but did provide some useful validity check (if two leading indexes give radically different counts, even an imprecise third party will help singling out extreme errors)

And now Sphere is changing its search tool. It is no longer possible to discriminate between news items and blogs. And more importantly, it is no longer possible to perform quoted searches.

A quoted search is when multiple items are enclosed between quotes. Sometimes called a phrase. As you may guess, there are relatively few news/blog items about the Canadian Green Party leader, Elizabeth May. Google reports 11 blog and 3 news items. But that is if you search for ["Elizabeth May"]. Remove the quotes and you jump to 17k blog and 10k+ news items, about an assortment of Elizabeths but mostly about things that happen in May or things that *may* happen. The ability to perform quoted search of people's names is crucial if you want relevant results.

I can only hope that Sphere will restore its quoted search capability (I would guess that the current situation is just an oversight). Here again, not because the world relies on Sphere to get news about various topics, but because sites like theirs are becoming more and more important as validation tools.

[EDIT]

Typing [Elizabeth+May] will (apparently) yield the desired result.