TheSmiling-Blog

Last weekend was just amazing, and the keyword is BarCamp Mainz (#bcmz).

It’s been my second BarCamp yet and I’m really impressed about what the orga team got going here. I guess the number of participants on Saturday was around 320 and still the location didn’ t seem to be very packed. It was the University of Mainz where the BarCamp took place so the rooms where also equipped with very good and new technology like beamers and microphones … I missed nothing.
Every BarCamp participant had his/her own WiFi access, the only annoying thing to mention is that you always had to re-login after your computer had been in StandyBy mode.

The main topics were technology, web and internet culture. To get a feeling about the BarCamp Mainz, just go here and check out the review page here.

Due to some stupid human action I don’t want to mention here in detail, the BarCamp Mainz page has moved from www.barcampmainz.de to www.barcamp-rheinmain.de.

I had a great time, got connected with new interesting people and awesome sessions … thank you for the BarCamp.

I’ve been using my HTC Magic from vodafone for approximately 8 month now and as time goes on I’m downloading more and more apps on to my phone.

The android market takes care of updates on all of your downloaded apps so it reminds you of new app versions every now and then. That’s definitely a very good thing, you don’t have to take care about checking for updates or anything, but:
I just counted my downloaded apps and I almost hit the 50 mark. Wow, 47 apps that I downloaded so far and that are still on my phone. Now, when the android market app tells me that there are new updates for some apps, there are always more than 6 apps to update at the same time.  Have you ever thought exactly about the update process?

1. Open the android market app with the list of updatable apps
2. click on the first app and (maybe) read the (hopefully) new description of the current changes
3. click “update” to update your app
4. click “OK” to the screen that tells you that this app version will replace the old version of this app (no shit Sherlock, it’s an UPDATE!)
5. click “install” to the screen that shows you the permissions this app needs
6. now this app will be downloaded an installed

… and that was only the first of at least 6 apps.

My first question is: Where is the “Update all” button?

Since the user has to give some apps the permission to access phone resources, the internet or whatever, we need a mechanism that can control this issue in  a convenient way. Here’s my idea: android tracks the history of the last permissions that the user already granted during the last install or update. As long as the permissions of this app don’t change, the app will update automatically as soon as I hit the “update all” button. Another alternative, or better, another feature beside an “update all” button would be the possibility to check several apps that I would like to update at once with a “update selected” button.

To sum it up:

• add an “update all” button
• add an “update selected” button with check-boxes for selecting apps
• keep track of already granted permissions of the last app install
• only ask user if permissions of an app have changed

These features should be possible, shouldn’t they?
Help me to enhance the mobile world and tell me about your ideas. Any comments appreciated.

Hi friends,

you might have read about the mobilers campagin to enhance mobile phones. Please help me and my team with our research and fill out the form behind the following link:

Mobilers Questionary (in german)

Thank you very much.

Yesterday we, and with “we” I mean the Samsung mobilers :) , had a great and interesting day at the Samsung headquarter.

Samsung mobilers … what’s that?

The mobilers are 3 groups, each of 6 persons with diverse backgrounds and interests, that were chosen from a pool of 230 interested parties for this promotion, who will dive into the mobile phone  scene to generate a lot of ideas concerning the improvement of mobile phones and mobile applications.

Every mobiler is equipped with a brand new Samsung Galaxy mobile phone with the android operating system. The idea behind all this is, that average consumers now can talk about their pain with mobile phones, say what is missing or could be done better, to improve mobile phones and help Samsung with the development.
The workshop included presentations about marketing, distribution and business model generation, and of course, a brief introduction to the android operating system on the Samsung Galaxy. We also had a great tour through the Samsung World Hall, the presentation room that shows almost the whole product range of Samsung … wow, did you know, that Samsung produces fridges, backing ovens and washing machines, ha, now I got you ;) Another interesting thing: “SAM SUNG” means “Three Stars”.

The mobilers promotion isn’t a small thing at all: The president of Samsung germany, Sunny Lee, had a few words for us and we are the first mobilers group that improves this promotion outside of asia … awesome!

As you know, I’m already an android user and also developer and I have the HTC Magic since the beginning of this year. I now have the chance to test the devices against each other and tell you about my experience. Just give me some time to get to know the Galaxy better, some buttons are placed at different locations and I have to set up the same applications that I have installed on my HTC. One thing that I can already tell: The display of the Galaxy is better. It’s brighter and the colors are more brilliant than on the HTC Magic.

If you’re interested in the mobilers activities, our twitter tag is #mobilers. As you can see, I came up with a new blog-category especially for the mobilers and will give you updates every now and then. By time, I will also need your help to get your opinion and needs in the mobile world. I hope that you can spare some time for me then to help me get my job done.

Finally I have a few pics for you of the Samsung World Hall with their products: