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I remember not too long ago arguing that the iPhone was nothing to be too excited about. It is a mobile phone that plays music and does email and web. The new UI would be nice and work as usually better than most non Apple tools, but the battery life, the missing UMTS ability and other yet to be discovered first mover disadvantages would compensate for that. A 29th generation Nokia mobile phone would not easily be replaced just because the new kid on the block (blog?) has a direct access option for the iTunes music store. In addition in Switzerland there is still no such thing as an iPhone, so there is no provider to offer a relevant mobile subscription that would allow for a proper use of one of the many options to “make your own”.

This thought, said and believed, my good old iPod classic died on me and left me without the option of portable music. Probably out of curiosity for the multi touch interface and still thrilled by the looks of the iPhone I went for an iPod Touch over the holidays…

Out-of-the-box the 16GB iPod Touch is a nice little evolution of the successful iPod series with a nice touch of iPhone feeling. It works as seemlessly as you expect and it does a pretty good job in being an iPod as well as a little internet browser machine. The Safari implementation is really stunning. I’ve owned an Apple Message Pad (MP120), numerous browser enabled Nokia and SonyEricsson phones, a few Compaq iPaqs and two Windows Mobile phones and yet have never seen such a useful implementation of an internet client on a rather constrained platform. Not only browsing the web but also filling in forms, navigating tabs, creating and using bookmarks: Works. And works well.

But then I started missing the “enable disk use” option to copy files onto the iPod, I thought about freeing my Gmail from the browser and wondered a little about the Google Maps abilities inside the mobile Safari browser. So a little Googeling here and there and a few “tricks” later, the BSD subsystem of the iPod Touch was freed and turned the little friend into an mega mobile, ultra usable communications companion (MMUUCC). After ‘jailbreaking” and applications enabling the iPod I have Google Maps and Mobile Mail like on the iPhone, I have an SSH client and server (!) including a Unix shell in my pocket and a whole lot more I still need to discover. You get a package manager that you can browse through and pick the applications and updates you want to install. And with tools like “customize” you can tweak the behavior of your friend in a way appropriate for your needs (re-aranging icons etc.)

In an environment with lots of free to use WLAN hotspots, this completely replaces my need for most of the off-duty laptop usecases. In fact, most of this post was multi touched…

The same will of course also work with the iPhone, in fact some of the relevant applications are available on the iPhone out-of-the-box. However, the simplicity of the Touch (no GSM/EDGE, no Bluetooth, no camera) remains one of the big plusses, besides the even thinner form factor and for me most importaint: battery life. I’m assuming that without the additional chips the battery of the Touch will last longer than the iPhone’s. If you have details on this, I’d be happy to read about it in a comment.

I tried to upload some pictures of the area I’m currently visiting to Flickr, but I was told that my content was being inconsistent with the religious, cultural, political and moral values of the United Arab Emirates.

I guess there would still be value for this product I just came across which seems to be the next must have: The Eye-Fi Card is a wireless memory card that automatically uploads pictures from your digital camera to your PC or Mac. And outside the UAE it would even add them to your favorite photo sharing, printing, blogging or social networking site.

Jeff Potts, our ECM Practice lead was chosen Community contributor of the month.

Jeff has been a valuable contributor to the forums and the developer site wiki, and has also reported product issues in the Alfresco JIRA. However, what sets Jeff apart is the educational and insightful material he posts on his personal web site, ecmarchitect.com.

Go check out Jeff’s website. It will allow you to jump-start the learning process of Alfresco. He has lot’s of tutorials on advanced work flows, web scripts, implementing custom behaviors, working with custom content types and developing custom actions. All typical customizations with lots of links to code and supporting resources, all based on real-world examples and leveraging Jeff’s consulting experience.

Are you next to be contributor of the month (or to join Optaros to get the opportunity to)? ;)

In a recent press release IDC states that the

IT market has been reshaped by a handful of key disruptions – online delivery, community-based development, solution-oriented packaging, and emerging markets.” These disruptions, which started at the margins, gained momentum in 2007 with the rise of everything-as-a-service, Web 2.0 applications, open development communities, “free IT” funding models, and the emergence of non-traditional competitors like Google, YouTube, and Facebook. These developments set the stage for what IDC believes will become the Post-Disruption Marketplace.

This said, they predict (among others):

* Market Leaders Embrace Online Delivery Models. The IT industry’s market leaders will dramatically increase the migration of core offerings – applications, business intelligence, servers, storage, imaging, printing, etc. – to online delivery models as a key method for profitably serving high-growth markets, particularly SMBs.

* “Web Gadgets” Will Further Extend the Internet. Following in the footsteps of Apple’s iTouch and Amazon’s Kindle, a new class of devices will fill the gap between notebook PCs and smartphones. These will radically change the online marketplace, including fueling the acceleration of location-based services.

* Mobile Networks Will Open Up. Faced with mounting pressure from Web gadgets and open development efforts such as Google’s Android and the Open Handset Alliance, mobile network operators will begrudgingly begin to open up their networks to any device and any application.

* Software Will Emerge to Tame Social Networking’s “Cacophony of the Crowds.” The sudden expansion of social networking will lead to a tsunami of unstructured data. This will lead to the emergence of “Eureka 2.0″ software that combines text analytics, sentiment extraction, and related technologies to distill the “wisdom of crowds.”

What took them so long to figure that out?