More on haptics for phones and gestural interfaces: "The truth is, haptic sensing is actually a sort of interesting concept for interface design. As phones get smaller and smaller, and there's less and less room for buttons on their screens, a motion-sensitive phone could offer some intriguing ways to manipulate data. If you've got a big list of phone numbers, you could tip the phone forwards and backwards as a way of scrolling through a long list, and shake it once quickly to select one. Indeed, several interface designers have played around with these concepts. What's neat about haptic interfaces is that they turn data into something physical -- as if the lists of phone numbers on your phone were a long list of beads you could roll back and forth."

Isn't there a room for even simpler stuff? I mean, why do devices with stylus uniformly have interfaces which require you to stab small areas of a small screen with a small pointer? Why not have them use long, sweeping strokes of a stylus, mimicking the way we write with pen and paper?

On handset user interaces: " One of the most frequent complaints of content and application developers is that there are so few chances for their product to be featured on a handset portal's 'landing page'."

I think one of the issues here is that lots of people have gone to the mobile world from the web world, and carried with them assumptions about interface design which no longer hold; for instance, the importance of being on the very front-most toppest page, as a means of driving traffic. This assumption was in turn carried onto the web from print without completely holding; for an example, consider how prominent free-text search changes the way that visitors navigate through your site, or how users ignore navigation tools anyway.

In fact, the challenge with mobile is to provide a structure which works in several different contexts (on the move and in a rush, sitting around browsing, attempting to carry out a specific task, etc.) to provide access to several different types of service (voice calls, data storage, photography, internet access, gaming, etc.), in a way that can be shaped to suit the needs of individual users.

The idea that it's all about shovelling brands as high up the menu hierarchy as possible in order to get recognition, because recognition builds traffic (and traffic *must* be a good thing) just isn't true, and services which respect this by being unobtrusive and polite will be the ones that win out.

Mizuko Ito on cameraphone adoption and usage:

• "Most photos taken by the camera phone are not sent or shown to others, but are captured more as a personal visual archive."
• "One type of visual capture for personal use is visual note taking.": I find myself doing this a lot - snapping posters, products or news stories that I know I want to remember later.
• "...an emergent practice of visually archiving an individual’s everyday life. These photos are not posed or staged, or particularly well-framed our thought out. Rather, they are snapped casually, with the intention of possibly looking at them a little later, recording a momentary slice of a viewpoint on everyday life. "
• "...sharing photos feels more “intrusive” than email, and tend to feel more narcissistic"

Mobilegirl on running your own business: "There is no bedtime. There is no routine. There is only your own style."

+1

This is one of the things that only struck me after a year or so of doing FP, and whilst it sounds liberating it's not without its downside. When I first met up with friends and told them I was now working for myself, the typical reaction was nudge-nudge-wink-wink "so you can take time off whenever you like, then?". Which of course you can... but with the constant nagging fear that you're missing something Of Utmost Importance by doing so.

I find this fear - which multiplied tenfold when we first started hiring employees - to be a massive motivating factor, and at the same time the thing that stops me drawing a clear line between work and play (keeping me blogging, say, on a Saturday afternoon when I should be spending a bit of time with my nearest and dearest...)

Which is not to say there's no upside... so when, for instance, we were introduced to Scrum by the guys we were working for at the BBC last year, I was able to read it, be completely convinced, and then start to adopt it within FP. That kind of freedom - to play with how you do the work you do, to try things out and to accept them or reject them as you see fit - is utterly fantastic.

The Finnish infatuation with the telephone: "Firstly, the Finnish infatuation with the telephone is no new phenomenon, no mere byproduct of Nokia's dramatic rise to prominence. Finns have been crazy about phones from practically the first moment they could get their hands on them."