Utilize the hardware keyboard with MaePad 1.3 and Vim keybindings

Yesterday, MaePad 1.3 was released. Apart from updates to the Finnish translation and a new Hungarian translation, this release adds Vim-like keybindings to the UI, which allows you to be very productive when managing lots of checklists.

The enabler here is the hardware keyboard that allows for indirect multi-touch interaction with good, tactile, haptic feedback (something that no touchscreen to date can provide - you can't type "blindly" on any touchscreen).

Watch the demo video here:

The package is available as binary .deb from the MaePad homepage and the source is available in the Git repository (no package in Extras until Bug 9070 is fixed). Leave feedback in the forum thread, including ideas for additional shortcuts.

Multiplayer NumptyPhysics (on a MT table)

(Again, not really tablet-related, but multiplayer could be ported to tablets eventually. Feel free to skip :)

The multi-touch table version of Tim Edmonds' NumptyPhysics gained support for multi-player modes and multi-touch drawing, dragging and deleting in the last few weeks. You can watch the evaluation video here or below.

New features and play modes include:

• Multi-player cooperative (single token and goal)
• Multi-token single-goal versus game
• Multi-token multi-goal versus game
• Draw multiple strokes at the same time
• Move drawn items with two-finger-drag
• Delete drawn items with three-finger-tap

Lesson learned: You need to get the level design right.

Word count for "multi" in this post: 10.

gPodder 0.15.0 now in Maemo Extras

The latest release of gPodder, a podcast downloader for Maemo has been released today, and packages for it are already available in Maemo Extras for Chinook, Diablo and Fremantle Alpha (..but there is no Extras-Promoter for Fremantle yet?).

Highlights of this release:

• Download resuming between sessions
• Finger-friendly lists using libmokoui2
• Friendly folder and file names for downloaded files
• Finger gestures for the episode list

The finger gestures are very nice and can be used to show episode details or play back episodes. Enable the configuration option maemo_enable_gestures and then swipe left to display shownotes or swipe right over an episode to listen to it.

Get it from Maemo Extras.

Mobile Banking and Usability

We have all lived through an amazing journey to see how fast mobile phones have grown in popularity. Many reasons for this massive growth have been given, ranging from the communication needs to fashion-awareness. One of the reasons for this growth in my opinion is that phones are so easy to use. I know that some people will disagree with me, but fact is that the majority of people use phones without (ever) reverting to a manual, having to go on mobile phone usage training or requiring assistance from family or friend. (Very different to what we have got used to in the Personal Computer Space).

So why is it that phones are so easy to use?

Usability design and testing has around as a formal discipline for the best part of twenty years. Mobile phone manufacturers (all of them) take usability very serious. Every design and every model usually go through rigorous usability testing cycles. Results are fed back into the design and never will a phone be released without a green light from the usability guru's. Industry advances and standards have made big leaps in this space. Techniques like the Mobile Phone Usability Questionnaire (MPUQ), the Usability Checklist for Mobile phones and many others are utilised in the design of mobile phones

Just a thought: how frequently have your mobile banking application and solutions been tested (or designed) for usability? have you contracted a supplier with a track record and capability to build mobile banking solutions that are usable?

I believe that this is the single most important reason why mobile banking applications are not being used as extensively as they could/should be. Most mobile banking applications have not been designed with due insight in and proper application of mobile usability techniques.