I have been playing around with Jolicloud lately on a Eeepc 1008HA netbook…

What is it ? A cool new OS for your netbook… It is basically Ubuntu netbook edition with some changes (added some Prism launcher) and with the addition of a social layer. Definitively an attempt towards the “internet as an operating system” (like Chrome OS). To benefit from all nice Jolicloud features you need an account in the cloud on my.jolicloud.com (I have 10 invitations,…).

An app store. Jolicloud brings the well known concept of app store (known from Apple or Android) to the desktop/netbook. Once you log in from your netbook you can access the app store with different categories. All applications are available within a click to download and install. Really neat.

Social Yeap, you can create your own social network and add friends to your profile. You can see then what applications they have installed. Not much friends out there using Jolicloud so I could not test that in depth.

What could be done more ? While I am looking forward to try out Chrome OS, I believe this is definitively a step towards a computer that gets usable by everyone. I would still remove some icons and features (system, management,…) that should be visible only to administrator (if there is one). Also it should be plug-gable on existing social network (I am fed up to build my network every time). It does not seem to handle multiple users…

Installation. I put an image on an USB key and run the installation from there (needed to change some settings in the Bios). Easy but should be even easier for the mass market.

What else ? The Dropbox application is available in the app store, and I definitively love it!!! I installed the application, enters my username/password and here we go, all my files were available to me on the netbook. Awesome!

Still need to find out how to develop new application,…

Read more on CNET: Preview of Jolicloud: The social Netbook OS

From the descriptions of most of them [read: applications], I’d say there’s a ton of unmitigated crud flowing into the App Store right now. You don’t read about it because the iPhone is all shiny and new, but with all those apps arriving daily the quality has to be really varied. Really, really varied. And with a few of the App developers making BANK to the tun of a quarter million in like two months, it’s just going to get worse. The sort of press those successes generate may not be good for Apple at all in the long run, as it appears the land-rush is on, and the scammers, spammers and other dregs of online society are closing in fast and I have serious doubts if the iTunes Store is really made to keep up.

+10. Exactly what I thought… to which I would add two things:

• On the down side,… from what I have seen, a good number of the app could also be done as mobile web application and not stand alone application. It would not require the developer to pay the SDK license and more importantly, when done it right, they would reach then all smartphone (ie. mobile phone with a recent/decent browser) and not only the iPhone.
• On the bright side,… I like the way my iPhone tells me when an app needs to be updated. This is made easy by the fact that it is centralized (and closed) but I guess it would be possible to integrate this feature on others platforms.

A new Podcasting application has been refused entry into the App Store because it “duplicates the functionality of the Podcast section of iTunes,” [...] The new application called Podcaster would allow users to download podcasts on their iPhone and listen to them at their leisure. The app also streams podcasts so you could listen to your favorite show anywhere you have an Internet or data connection.

This is what can happen when using/developing on close plateform… they decide! That sucks because this app was doing exactly what I was looking for. I’d love to hear podcast in the train but currently I do have to synch with my computer through a cable. I’d love to do it over the air without connecting to my computer.

From Wikipedia:

Applications that developers create will be sold exclusively through the iTunes Store on Mac and Windows, or on the App Store on the iPhone and iPod touch. [...] To run applications on the iPhone, the application needs to be signed with a certificate assigned by Apple after the developer has developed the software through the $99/year developer package and official iPhone SDK.

Good point for Dave Winer (Why iPhone is an ureliable platform):

I wouldn’t invest in or develop an iPhone app because Apple could decide not to approve it, and if they don’t approve it you can’t sell it. You can’t even give it away. You don’t find out if you’ve been approved until the last step, after you’ve fully invested, so you could lose, totally, if Apple says no.

Another dark side of Apple’s app store… as far as I can tell I have not found one application that could not be done on another device.

Via Stef’s quepasa. See also: stevenf.com and App Store: I’m out.

I am still using my Nokia N95 as my main phone for three main reasons:

• I have not yet found the time to synch my agenda/contacts with Outlook (for some reason my iPhone is not recognised by iTunes on my laptop)
• Lack of connectivity while traveling. I use my laptop in the train to work and I like to be connected at the same time (through Bluetooth with my N95 as a 3G modem). I am not quite sure but my understanding is that I will not be able to do that with the iPhone.
• Battery life sucks… we have heard lot of complaints about Nokia’s battery, but the iPhone one is worse than any other one

There are more and more iPhone/mobile dedicated website which makes the browsing experience on a mobile device really pleasant. Being able to browse normal website is nice (especially with the zoom in-out feature) but not perfect.

To complete the iPhone experience I should try to use it as my main phone and actually use all the phone features… will come back once this is done :-)

Related: What I’ve Missed About the S60 Experience

Parlons Foot sur ton iPhone (fr)

Use Firefox, install the User-Agent extension and set up a iPhone User-agent with this value (Thanks Matt):

Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/1A543a Safari/419.3

You will then be able to see that:

… which in that case we will all agree does not help much :-)

Additional interesting link regarding User-Agent: whatsmyuseragent.com

Like always Apple’s new product get a lot of press and a lot of traction (with a musical, but yes it blends).

Even though it has a full capabilities browser (ie. a browser that can read any webpage, like most “smart”-phone), it still needs a special “web” development to the point that Apple releases some guidelines. As Russell says:

No matter how great a mobile device’s power is and how much resolution it has, we still have to keep the thing in our POCKETS, use it with our FINGERS, and see it with our EYES. This means that there are physical restraints on mobile applications – both normal and web based – which apply no matter what. This is actually why I think the iPhone is so wonderful since it finally proves the point once and for all: Mobile is different.

iPhone might help mobile web development, that’s for the good. For the bad, it would be nice to use standard technology. Apple seems to have created its own subset of CSS to handle graphics on the iPhone.

Interesting reading:
Russell Beattie: i-Dot Thoughts
Vision Mobile: How iPhone is impacting the mobile industry