See into S60

May 21, 2007 Convergence and Integration Posted by Dameon Welch-Abernathy at 11:01 AM | Categories: Commentary

While I was out today with my kids, I had my Nokia N95 with me and I was listening to tunes on my recently acquired iPod Shuffle. While I could have easily used my Nokia N95 to listen to music--in fact I had used it earlier in the day to listen to podcasts--the iPod was simply a better choice. The reason is quite simple: it integrates very easily into iTunes, my "hub" for all the music I own. The moment I plug my iPod in, it syncs with my MacBook. A couple of clicks refreshes the iPod with music. A few minutes later, it's ready to go. Out of the box, anyway, the Nokia N95 doesn't integrate with iTunes.

On the picture side of the house, the Nokia N95 integrates with my online presence very well. I can easily take pictures and within moments, upload them to either my my Vox site. I could also upload them to Flickr, but I am not a huge Flickr fan. I can do this with the other Nseries devices as well. When I want to take all the pictures off the phone, I plug the phone into my Mac and iPhono comes up, offering to suck down all the pictures from the phone. A few clicks and several minutes later, it's done. No muss, no fuss.

The Boo Hoo For You campaign by Symbian shows, mobile phones are very integrated into people's lives into Japan--moreso than the two examples I discuss above. It's clear that effective convergence in a device is going to require a lot of partnering along with a lot of different parties in order to achieve anything close to that.

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I agree 100%. Convergence is growing in maturity, but the key isn't how many things can this device do, the key is how EASILY can it do them. Simplexity is one of my new favorite words. It needs to be dead simple to complete a complex task.

Uploading pictures to an online site. Previously, you took them, figured out how to get them onto your computer, and then attempted to figure out how to get them to your service of choice. Now, you click 2x and BAM!

well thank goodness i'm windows and using windows media player. it will synch that n95 with my music library. lolz!

Windows Media support is nice, but it addresses a minority share of the market. Like it or not, iPod + iTunes is the dominant player. It's not as if Nokia hasn't tried to integrate with iTunes before as there is such a utility for the Nokia N91. There are also third-party utilities that do it with varying degrees of success.

Anyway, that's beside the point. The point I am making is that convergence needs to make things easier and a lot of help is needed to get there.

I am using my N95 to sync automatically with iTunes. There are a couple of applications that help you do it, and they are described in these two articles at Mac.sis.

I think it's unlikely that Apple will open up iTunes, but it is likely that a third party app will make it just as easy.

Currently, the company I am working for have such an application.

Firstly there is a Windows application that can automatically fill an N95 with automatically generated instant playlists from within either iTunes or Windows Media Player.

Secondly, we also have a small application for N95 itself that can build instant playlists and help you browse your collection via recommendations. You can see a quick video of how it works on our site: http://thefilter.com/Help_Mobile_Tutorial.aspx

You can download both of our products for free from http://www.thefilter.com

Dameon you brought up a very good point about help and partnering. With my N95, blogging to Vox is a blast thanks to the Vox integration on the device. I was posting to Vox at 10x the frequency of my other blog based on Movable Type.

So I think convergence is technology on the device plus support and partnership with content and service providers. A well-executed integration with the partners result in the ease of use for end-users.

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