I’ve been in a lot of meetings lately to discuss how our company should be moving forward on developing some very cool websites. We hired a great consulting team to help us understand new ways to do business on the net and we discussed not only the new types of technologies but how they can interact with one another and how people use the net.
Out of this I discovered some really cool technologies that I just had to play with in my spare time. There’s nothing like hands on and getting all the components working yourself to really understand what is going on under the hood. I just got my cellphone hooked up to the internet the other day, a Nokia 6265i, the one with the 2 megapixel camera. I thought it was a great phone before I started messing around with this new web stuff but now with all this new technology I thought I could make my phone sing and dance.
Google Mobile Maps was first on my list to try. I’ve been using Google Maps on the web since the beginning and now that I have a phone capable of handling it I thought it was something worth checking out. The Google Mobile Maps site has all the details including how to get this to work on your compatible phone including the URL to point your phone to and download the software. Unfortunately when I tried the download I got a “403 Forbidden Access” error every time. Bugger. I called Telus to help sort it out and hopefully within 4 days, so they say, I’ll have it working. I’m not going to hold my breath. On to the next bit of technology.
Flickr, the image sharing site, has software for your phone called Shozu that allows you to upload your images directly to your Flickr page or your blog. I discover that my phone isn’t yet compatible and their website allows you to send them your phone type and they’ll add it to their list for consideration. Never one to say die I select a phone type similar to mine and try to download the software. I receive a text message on my phone with the URL to point my phones browser to and try to connect. Same “403 Forbidden Access” message. You’d think someone would have written about this somewhere. Google, Technorati, Telus and Nokia websites have little to say if anything on the subject. I’ll guess I’ll have to wait for Telus to get back to me. Sigh.
While I was on a role trying to figure a way to upload my phone images to the internet I discovered I could send a multimedia message with an image attachment from my phone. Great, let’s see how far I can go with this I thought. If you’ve ever sent a text message from a phone you can appreciate that this isn’t as easy as typing a regular email on your PC and attaching something then sending it off. It takes the phone about a minute to send a 150k image file and that’s after 5 minutes getting the message ready to send. I sent the image to my regular email account and lo and behold I get a generic email from Telus saying that this is an MMS type email and to click here to download it. Following the link I get a message saying that “An internal error has occurred, the operation could not be completed” and a link that says “Click here to return to the application”. Following the link I get a Telus log in window asking me for my cell number and password. Password? What password? The window says “If you don’t know your password click here”. I click on the link and it now just asks me for my phone number. I type it in and it says it will send me a text message with my password. Two hours later I’m typing this and still no password. I guess I’ll get it in 4 days as well.
Despite the frustrations I’m sure the technology will be easier to use one day. One thing is for sure, your cell phone will become your digital assistant of the future. In the meantime I wait for my password.
