Tag Archives: experience

Day 2 with the Nexus One

by Serge Jespers on 10. Feb, 2010 in mobile

I promised to keep you up to date with how I get on with Google’s Nexus One. Today is actually already day three without using Apple’s phone and I’m still enjoying it. The only thing that I am really starting to miss is a decent mail client. This could potentially become a real problem.

The Nexus One has a decent mail client but it doesn’t support the certificates that our Exchange server uses. That means I have to rely on third party solutions and the only option available in the free Android Market is the Touchdown client. It works fine but the UI is just… well… let’s be kind and say that it doesn’t look that good. The mail client that I want to use (Moxier Mail) is not available as a free download and because there still is no official way to get paid apps in the Android Market in Belgium, I can’t buy it. I really dislike the UI on Touchdown… So much so that I find it horrible to use.

I really really hope I can solve this soon because I really need a decent Exchange client…

Other than that I am really happy with the Nexus One’s performance and its features. And having Flash in the Nexus One’s browser already changed the way I used the mobile web. Yesterday I heard about another act of violence/vandalism in Brussels and so I wanted to look up more info on the web. The article on the local news site I visited also had a video… Flash Video. I just hit the play button and watched the entire clip in the Nexus One. If I was still using Apple’s phone, I would have needed to take out my laptop to see the clip…

After watching that clip, I was curious to see how other Flash Video enabled sites would work. I opened up CNN.com, picked one of the news clips, hit play… and it immediately started playing. I also tried the BBC’s iPlayer and some other local news sites. They just worked… without the need for the publisher to republish their content in a different format. I just opened the browser, opened the exact same sites that I visit/use on my laptop and clicked “Play”. Now that’s a magical web experience!

Read full story • Comments { 18 }

The iPad’s browsing experience

by Serge Jespers on 29. Jan, 2010 in Industry

My fellow evangelist Lee Brimelow created an accurate view of  the browsing experience on Apple’s new iPad. Sometimes a picture does say more than a thousand words… Go check it out on Lee’s blog.

Read full story • Comments { 7 }

Why I think the Open Screen project matters…

by Serge Jespers on 12. Jun, 2008 in Industry, Rants

It’s all about user experience. I could just end this post right here because that’s what I think is the main reason the Open Screen project matters. The Flash platform has really revolutionized the user experience on the web and we have all gotten used to having this rich experience. With more and more devices being connected to the web, people expect these devices to have the same experience they are used to. Just the other day, I was witnessing a new high-end-phone user surfing the web. She could not understand why some parts of the sites she was browsing to, worked fine on a PC but not on that new, shiny and expensive high-end-phone. Things like little widgets on a page or even full sites would only show a little “missing plugin” icon. “That’s because this phone doesn’t have Flash”, I remember saying which she just couldn’t grasp.

We’ve all become accustomed to things just working without having to think about it and also to having rich interfaces on the web. We are used to seeing animated menus on DVD’s and are rapidly getting used to seeing interactive menus on Bluray discs. We’re used to animated rich menus on game consoles and its games. So why can’t we have this experience everywhere?

If I switch on my digital TV set-top box at home, it’s far from a rich ‘engaging’ user experience. The interface is dull and dead slow with no connectivity to online information and communities. I always think about what I could do with Flash to have a richer experience Flash only were available on this STB. The same thing goes for the menus in TV’s. How much more could you do if you could ask a Flash designer/developer to make the menu instead of having to write it in some obscure language that offers no richness whatsoever. How much more exciting would it be to control your TV/STB/PVR with a rich connected user interface that immediately gets online reviews, ratings and comments about the TV-shows you are programming?

This is why I think the Open Screen project matters. It’s not just about bringing Flash/AIR to mobile devices, I think it’s about bringing that rich experience that people are used to, everywhere.

Read full story • Comments { 10 }