Going Mobile...

I'm a 45 year old man, who enjoys gadgets (not just new technology, but gadgets in general). I do enjoy some old-school items, such as my watch, it's analog (I don't like digital watches), my mother explained to me one day that the nice thing about an analog watch is that you can easily see into the past and into the future, by just glancing at your wrist, it sort of stuck. My watch has gadget qualities, first it's made of titanium, so it's very light, it also has the ability for me to swap between time-zones with the push of a button (so no adjusting the analog watch and never getting the accuracy back).

But this isn't about what I think is my cool watch, it's about going mobile. I've taken the challenge (despite the fact that I like paper) to go mobile and paperless. This means loading word files, pdfs, etc... that I need to for work on my iPad, I'm using "Docs to Go" and Dropbox (a very cool and free tool) to share documents. What's great about Dropbox is that if I'm on my iPhone, Android Phone, BlackBerry or iPad I can access it (most of those devices are for development purposes only). What's a shame about Dropbox is that it seems that Apples tools don't support it (or at least they don't claim to), which is why I'm using Docs to Go (sorry Apple, you need to learn how to play better with others). I'm also playing games that I normally wouldn't play, again to see how they interact with the player, how they encourage you to play, to purchase, to build. I'm doing this so I can understand the mobile space better (you can't learn if you don't do). I also get my news and magazines via apps or Zinio (I like Zinio, I just wish they allowed you to email pages to yourself, there's no way to bookmark or print either, it's not the full magazine experience yet).

I've been asked to give a presentation at a trade show in Miami on mobile, mainly Kindle, iPhone, and Android. 15 years ago my boss went to a presentation at the National Press Club in Washington DC and was told that in order to understand the web better, meaning micro payments, subscription models, video, articles, images, etc... Go to a porn site. Well things have changed some, but not entirely, now if you want to understand micro payments, subscription models, video, articles, images, social networking, etc... you need to play games. Like the porn sites of old, don't go for the content, but go for the experience, analyze what's forcing you to come back to the game, what's making you upgrade or play, what's making you want to go social. Understanding these items will help you understand mobile apps and will keep people coming back to your apps.