Thought Garage

There has been a lot of fuss about new Mobile Payment solutions and many unsuccessful attempts to get a pie of normal payment solutions. Many have built solutions and applications that need special software to be installed on mobiles and some applications are just waiting for mobiles go internet.

I have been insisting that mobile solutions first must capitalize on the current infrastructure like SMS to make advances in to Mobile applications, in this case mobile Payments rather than targetting for 2 years down the line handsets and usage patterns.

Here is one solution that does exactly that. Simple Mobile Payment solution using SMS.

FEED by Feedtribes is a hot new mobile cash service currently being trialled in Boulder, CO, and in San Francisco.

FEED was initially developed to provide high school and college students with a cool way to pay their favorite retailers while keeping a handle on their finances. “FEED is a prepaid account that is linked to your cell phone. To make a purchase, simply text message your PIN number to the FEED 5-digit short code. A few seconds later you will receive a unique 4-digit numeric transaction code and your up-to-the-second account balance. Simply give the transaction code to the retailer who enters the code and the amount of sale into their POS terminal. The terminal authorizes the transaction against your account and returns an approval code to the POS, which prints a receipt. It’s that simple!”

Source: FEED: The cool new way to pay? at New Ideas In Mobile

(Screenshot of the TED Video)

Why do people succeed? Because they’re smart? Or lucky? How about: Neither. Richard St. John compacts seven years of research on successful people into an unmissable 3-minute slideshow on the real secrets of success (Hint: passion, persistence, and pushy mothers help). Richard St. John is author of Stupid, Ugly, Unlucky and RICH: What really leads to success — and it’s not smarts, looks, or luck. He’s also founder of the communications agency, The St John Group. (Recorded February 2005 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 3:40)

Link to Richard St. John on TED Talks

There  was a mad rush to build Feature RICH applications. And then there was ‘Less is More’ conundrum that everybody has been touting about.  And if you just read it the way many people understand it and wondering what is better for your product, then for sure we are all missing the point. Joel reveals the mystery.

Devotees of simplicity will bring up 37signals and the Apple iPod as anecdotal proof that Simple Sells. I would argue that in both these cases, success is a result of a combination of things: building an audience, evangelism, clean and spare design, emotional appeal, aesthetics, fast response time, direct and instant user feedback, program models which correspond to the user model resulting in high usability, and putting the user in control, all of which are features of one sort, in the sense that they are benefits that customers like and pay for, but none of which can really be described as “simplicity.”

Source: Simplicity – Joel on Software

So ‘Less’ in ‘Less is More’ does not exactly mean Startups/Developers/Designers have ‘Less’ to do. Infact, you got to do a lot more design to do things that looks so ’Less’ and Usable. Its called ‘Elegance’. And designing a elegant interface is nothing but ‘less’ work.

An elegant solution is one in which the optimal outcome is achieved with the minimal expenditure of effort and expense. Elegant solutions embrace an overarching philosophy of doing far more with much less. (Source: ChangeThis Manifesto :: Elegant Solutions: Breakthrough Thinking the Toyota Way).

Not in any sense, lack of some thing needed is ‘Elegant’. And, some times it doesn’t make any sense to have less when ‘More’ is actually elegant. Neither 37 Signals nor Joel’s blog have blog posts categorized. That is pretty inconvenient for readers and yet a clever decision by design for the 37 Signals  and Joel. If you are a regular reader, it might not matter. But for folks like me, who get to read blogs once in a while, categorised posts will save my time. Otherwise, Whether I like it or not, I end up reading every post on their blog. Some times end up reading posts that are totally irrelevant and useless.

Many must have watched movies on Google Videos or YouTube, which are infact illegally copied clips from TV or CD or DVD.  But now you can watch and download movie clips and full length movies from Google Videos while keeping your head high.

BODVOD Networks announced the availability of feature films and other content on Google Video. BODVOD’s content is presented under the name Saavn and available at http://www.video.google.com/saavn.

The launch includes full-length movies available for immediate download representing some of the biggest recent Bollywood hits plus exclusive promotional videos, music clips, trailers, and more.

Source: Bollywood set to scale new heights in US, Canada – India News

Very interesting Cellular Life Styles, that are adding real value to People around the world in quite unexpected ways.

Shared Phone Use

Much of the growth in the telecommunications industry is coming from emerging markets – places like India and Africa and for many new consumers their first mobile phone experience is a shared one. This essay uses the term sharing in the sense of primary usage orientated around borrowing and lending rather than ‘let me show you the photos I took at last night’s party’. Mobile phone sharing is not just limited to personal use – from the streets of Cairo to Kampala kiosks are springing up with little more than a mobile phone and a sign advertising call rates. What happens when people share an object that is inherently designed for personal use? And based on how and why people share in what ways can devices and services be redesigned to optimise the shared user experiences? Indeed, should they be re-designed?

A summary of this essay appears here and a presentation that compliments this essay entitled Shared Phone Practices: Exploratory Field Research from Uganda and Beyond can be downloaded from the resesarch dot Nokia dot com site here [7MB, PowerPoint]. In time, related posts on Power Up: Street Charging Services in Kampala, Rural Charging Services, Community Address Books & Call Logs and the Village Phone, Uganda will be listed here.

Source: Jan Chipchase – Future PerfectShared Mobile Phone Practices