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Stephen Ross Scott.com™
Untangling the Interweb...
Web Geek™, Senior Manager, Digital @RMIT, a social media maven, Google-aholic, simplicity, UX and customer experience advocate, and a bit of a Star Wars nut. Hit my Google + profile below for more info. Kthnxbai! 
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Why Mobile Apps Must Die. Yes Really...
I use multiple mobile devices on Apple & Android, and believe really strongly in a fair and balanced approach for customer experience. Why? Because we have evolved (partially) from the design for one browser mentality, and why would we waste time going back to that awful closed thinking?
Mobile is at a huge evolutionary step, and in all aspects of life we have to deal with other fanboys such as the iMyopia possee. Depsite the huge growth of Android and the benefits of HTML 5. Both of which I do admit are more attractive because they are open to me, but in honesty, neither platforms are perfect.
Only web apps can bring the balance that is needed and ease the development issues for cross platforms, and dammit as a customer and being involved in mobile development, choice is bloody important!
Would you open a shoe shop and offer only one shoe, in one size?
I'm trying to bring the choice wherever I can, and from a work perspective was very proud that my team & I were able to offer this to our customers this year with RMIT University's first HTML5 mobile web app.
So where do we all go from here? Enter Scott Jenson, an ex Apple, and Google employee and mobile developer and strategist. A great talk and worth watching for his valuable and knowledgable insights in to the clutter of apps surrounding us, and I thnk only backs up what I and others have been saying which is...'choice'. Bring it!
The Future of Mobile is Multi-Platform; Australia catching up to the Android invasion.
via 3rdsense.com
Android handsets now account for 30% of Australian smart phone sales to iPhone’s 40%. (IDC survey) So the divide is becoming less and less, and competition is a very good thing for consumers and customers. The screen shot above shows the dual options business are now taking as having iPhone only options, is beginning to offer a kind of 'older generation/not quite getting the mobile space' attitude.
Still, as I posted the other day, many businesses will choose to be i-Myopic for some time, but glad to see 'choice' finally becoming statistically a major factor.
Choice being a point I've stood firm on personally from my own preference, ( I see iTunes as a giant venus fly trap for consumers) but for some time also from a commercial perspective I wanted to ensure RMIT's brand was not able not fall in to the Apple only trap. (Or any other sole mobile vendor for that matter)
I wrote back in Aug 2009;
RMIT is keen to offer an experience that’s open to all, and not locked in to just one platform, device or provider.
Choice never goes out of fashion, and it still holds true today. So nice to see this article on the future of mobile being multi-platform which warms my mobile heart.
RMIT University is refreshing, mobile and open...
I rarely ever talk about my work here on this site, but we've undertaken some major work recently that I think is worth sharing.
It's been three years since we took a redesign at RMIT, and in this case, we've only taken a refresh rather than a full redesign so far. Simply put, most web sites these days are incredibly hard work to change. As businesses realise the importance of digital media, every step becomes more careful, more planned, more throrough and more and more stakeholders are involved.
Talking with colleagues in the education and other sectors at several social media conferences recently, it's became clear that finally (finally!) over the last few years business have realised how crictical your brand and digital presence is across your site, partners sites, social and mobile.
So with that in mind it was rewarding we could finaly make some of those changes recently. And with a successful site refresh done in recent weeks, a very successful mobile site for our Open Day today (see below), and an amazingly successful Open Day offline and online campiagn I'm very proud of all of the work we have done in the organisation. Only possible thanks to some very hard work, lots of debate and a large amount of people who have worked with us on all these projects and helped make them a reality.
Now the really hard work begins : )
Squeezing, tilting, pinching and flicking...aka developing an app for the iPhone/iPad/iPod touch.
I've always enjoyed designing mobile web sites. They're relatively easy to build given their need for simplicity, clarity, and the ability you get to truly focus hard on the customers experience of using it. If you think about it, nowadays your customers can not only watch and listen, but squeeze, tilt, pinch, and flick your site or application.
That's pretty interactive, and recently I had the pleasure of doing all these things for a site, in working with two incredibly talented guys; Christopher Cheong & Vincent Truong when we pulled together a marketing app for the iPhone. Credit where due, Christopher and Vincent did all the really hard work, I just got to design, and get to tweak and play with all their excellent code : )
Built for RMIT University's Open Day, this relatively one day use app was RMIT's first, and I'm eternally grateful for those two for helping us get this live, and all that I learned from them. Not only great developers but multi skilled, (Chris also lectures in several subjects at RMIT) and damn nice guys to boot. They put up with me and did so with a smile, despite my endless requests, so I'm looking forward to doing more with them in the near future.
If your not coming to our Open Day it's a little hard to appreciate what this will do on the day, but I'd love to hear any comments, good or bad so we can learn for future apps.
(And yes Android lovers like me, you are not forgotten, and I have already heard you on our RMIT social networks, but we need more Android developers out there! In the meantime, most functions on the app will also be available across the www.rmit.edu.au/mobile web site on Open Day.)
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