Wak Oentoenk

Wow, what an interesting day this was in the mobile and web world:--Apple hinted that it will allow third party developers to add applications to the iPhone, potentially overcoming one of the device's biggest shortcomings (link).--Google announced Gears, an open source project to enable web apps to work offline -- injecting Google into the growing effort to make PC operating systems irrelevant, and linking Google with Adobe (link).--Livescribe previewed its pen computing device, the latest in a...

Ten years from now, Nokia's going to be the subject of an interesting business case study. It'll either be the stirring story of a company at the height of its power that had the courage to challenge its deepest beliefs. Or it'll be the cautionary tale of a company that had it all and blew it.Nokia says it's planning for what comes after the mobile phone.I've heard this from Nokia before, but I always used to think it was posturing. Companies say that sort of thing all the time -- "we're looking...

There's a splendid article in MIT's Technology Review on The Secret of Apple Design. It confirms a lot of what I've always thought about Apple's industrial design prowess but couldn't put into words.The article argues that Steve Jobs improved Apple's industrial design not because he's a great designer, but because he protects the work of the company's designers from being watered down by committees and compromises.In the article, former Apple design director Bob Brunner (himself a fantastic designer)...

Reuters published an article saying that navigation features are the hot new data function on mobile phones. News.com picked it up, and by now I'm sure it's all over the Internet.Which is fine, and very exciting. But I keep remembering all the other things that were supposed to be the hot new data functions on mobile phones. Remember mobile video? Wasn't that the cool new thing just a couple of months ago? And e-mail? And MMS? And PIM? And WAP? And so on?And despite all that effort and...