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Hej,
I flera år nu har jag levt med att personer på nätet (som jag aldrig har träffat) verkar veta vad jag skriver om på Facebook bl.a. Jag läser deras twittrar och bloggar och kan på så sätt spåra bakåt grejer som jag skrivit. Det hela är väldigt olustigt. Orsaken är troligtvis en grej som hände i ett slags "spel" på nätet 2005-2006. Vissa personer tog mig på lite för stort allvar och började vad jag gisssar snart påstå konstiga saker om mig som inte stämmer överens med verkligheten. Jag får känslan av att det finns ett ställe på nätet (som bara verkar växa och växa) där jag spelar någon slags huvudroll. Jag har frågat runt bland mina vänner men alla verkar helt ovetande. Det är som en stor svart låda för mig som det poppar ur grejer ifrån då och då. Det här är verkligen inte något jag bett om. Tvärtom. Jag har mått sjukt dåligt av det här i ett halvår nu. Det här jag skriver nu kanske verkar sinnessjukt och paranoidt. Men det är en risk som jag måste ta nu. Jag vill inget hellre än att detta tar slut. Det här håller på att knäcka mig totalt. Så om någon av mina vänner vet någonting om detta, så ber jag er att hjälpa mig. Vad är det för någonting? Hur kan jag stoppa det? Kan någon av er stoppa det åt mig? Jag har redan bett de här personerna i höstas att lägga ner vad det nu är men möttes av en oförstående sarkasm. Det här jag skriver nu är på fullaste allvar och helt ärligt. Som sagt, om någon känner till något av detta, så ber jag er att hjälpa mig. För jag mår sjukt dåligt av det här.

On the other side - The Flow

In my quest for finding a usage of a double sided mobile device I have tried to be as exhaustive as I can. I have put a flashlight on the backside. I have even put a mirror there for the vain mobile users. Here's my third attempt to fill that empty space. I've been thinking of the possible yins and yangs of a mobile device. My first thought was content/applications on one side and communication on the other. It may not be possible to separate those entities since they might overlap. Why not put the Flow there which I tried to describe in my previous post? It would be like a digital diary of your life. You can go back in history of your Flow as long as you would like to. From the days when you were a kid (if you wish) until now. You would also have the possibility to bookmark certain dates or events in your flow, so that you'll find them easier later on.

In some of my first posts, I was hallucinating about "context sensitive time navigators" and proposed the turntable. I don't know if that's the best way to navigate in the Flow. But since I came up with that idea then, I thought it would be nice to squeeze that one in as well. So, what you see below is the backside of your future mobile device. All events in the Flow go in the first tab, while the other tabs filter specific types of events. The Flow will not be bound to your mobile device since all handhelds will use fingerprint biometrics for authorization. That means you can access your Flow in any mobile device or computer. The Flow will be stored on the net somewhere, somehow. Hehe, when thinking about it, the Flow will be ridiculously long when you have turned 86... :-)

The Flow

The small pieces of updates sent to you from other people via services such as Twitter and Facebook "status updates" might be seen as nonsense and non-important information. Well, they may be that. They are the messages that are not worth to be sent via e-mail or instant messaging. But still, the messages are not meaningless. They can even be sort of addictive to read. Suddenly a friend or a person you met at a bus stop three years ago is telling the world what he/she is doing right now or what music he/she likes or whatever. And in a weird way it's interesting because you get that person in your mind's eye, which would not be the case otherwise. Flemming Funch writes about this phenomena in this blog post:

"But it keeps people on your radar screen. You don't have to respond, but you can, if something somehow rings a bell. It doesn't have to be your close friends either. It is surprisingly meaningful, even if it is people you've never met, but you have some kind of interest in what they're up to."

He continues:
"I watch a screen where a few dozen people say something once in a while, and I can say something too. Interestingly, they aren't all watching the same screen, as they have different groups of friends than I do, although they overlap. They aren't all there at the same time either, and they aren't all paying attention. But once in a while somebody feels like saying something. That will be something that relates to what's going on for them at the moment, and it will also be something they feel like saying into that fuzzy kind of space, usually without saying it to anybody in particular. They typically don't expect a response either. Other people do the same. Whether you directly comment on anything else or not, what you say will necessarily be colored a bit by what you see already on the screen."

I wish I could summarize this in some kind of a definition. I guess that will take a while. For now I call this phenomena "The Flow".

Micro-blogging

Our brains seem to become more and more connected. This is of course a good thing. What would the world be like if there was no international net open for all? Pretty boring. Blogs have given us the opportunity to read about other people's ideas, knowledge and lives. Using instant messaging and social networks, we get increasingly bombarded with information sent by other people. Facebook introduced a new type of communication a couple of years ago - the "status update". Probably it was just a fun thing created by the Facebook developers. Short, sometimes meaningless sentences like "Jim is watching TV" pop up in the never ending history of Facebook events. The idea was adopted later by Twitter, and really took off. By answering the question "What are you doing?" in 140 characters or less, you can send your friends updates ("Tweets"). Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, SMS and RSS. Anyone with a cell phone can send and receive updates any time, anywhere. Users can send messages as text, video or audio. Other sites such as "Jaiku" and "Yammer" have taken the idea even further. They all go in the category "Micro-blogging" and are now used by millions of people.

Double sided mobile device - Yin and Yang

In a series of posts I have argued that it is a waste of space to use just one side of a mobile device. By thinking out load I have tried to find possible usages of such a device. You know that Apple's IPhone has a touch screen to interact with the device. Why not put a touch screen on the other side as well? Why would you do that you might think? Why would you not? I bet there are lots of situations where a double sided device would be more practical, more intuitive and easier to use. As a hypothesis, would it make sense to split up the most common usages and put them on each side? Like the Yin and Yang of a mobile device. I can think of several possible Yins and Yangs of a mobile device. Here are some of them:

• Yin - Content and applications. Yang - Communication.
• Yin - Geography. Location services, GPS, Navigation. Yang - The rest.
• Yin - Media and gaming. Yang - The rest.
• Yin - Health meters (such as pulse, blood pressure) Yang - The rest.
• Yin - Authentication. Fingerprint sensors. Security. Yang - The rest.
• Yin - Practical functions such as a flashlight or a mirror. Yang - The rest.

The question is: Is the single sided mobile device sufficient for all of the examples above? Is it more logical, more intuitive to use only one side? Are two sides only confusing for the user? I don't know since I haven't used a double sided one. An interesting aspect is if the two sides could be able to communicate with each other. How would that work? To be Xhausted...

Authentication - OpenID

For those who haven't heard of OpenID, it is an open, decentralized user identification standard, allowing users to log onto many services with the same digital identity. OpenID authentication is used and provided by several large websites. Organizations like Google, IBM, Microsoft, Myspace, Orange, Verisign and Yahoo act as providers. Authentication can be made through normal passwords, but also with smartcards or fingerprint biometrics. It seems very promising. I tried to find out if there are any mobile phone vendors out there that support fingerprint authentication using the OpenID standard. I couldn't find any. I think it would be awesome to just press your finger on the sensor of a mobile device, and *swoosh* - you're online, ready for e-mailing, chatting, using banking services, online purchasing , blogging or whatever you do on the net that requires a login procedure. No need for user names, passwords or certificates. Just a fingerprint recognition and all service providers know that you is you and nobody else. I'm sure that this idea is in the makings somewhere. It cannot be that far away that this could be available to everyone. I mean, the Asians use fingerprint biometrics for online banking already. Hope that they also hop on the Open ID train.

On the other side - A flashlight

Imagine you're sitting on your sofa watching a good movie a late Friday night. Then suddenly, a "click". Everything turns dark. Your TV, your room, and all the street lights outside. It's a major power outage. You can't see anything really. Luckily you have your mobile device in your pocket as usual. You slide up the backside face of the mobile device and turn on the built-in flashlight. Your room lits up, and you can navigate in your apartment.
In an earlier post, I argued that it was a pity that the IPhone only uses half the space available. One side is full of goodies, while the other side is just an empty space of plastic - useless. So, since the backside of the IPhone gives no value at all to the user, then anything that adds value would be infinitely better (mathematically speaking, that is). Your mobile device is a thing you carry with you all day long. Why not put as many usages as possible to it since it's available all the time? Maybe it would feel kind of dorky to have a built-in flashlight in your mobile device. But I think you'd appreciate it in the scenario described above. In an other post, I came up with the idea of having a built-in recordable mirror on the backside. I guess that would attract the vain mobile users of the world. But what do I know, I'm just thinking out loud.