Molecularist

I really don’t like to review products unless I am really moved by them and feel that they serve as a great example of integrating into the mobile lifestyle.

ContaStick is one such app for Series 60 phones. It basically is a one-handed operated UI to access all your contacts to call, sms, email, or edit the contact. The app is smooth and quick, integrates without having to learn a new mode, and is easy to install. And it fits so well as another way folks can interact with their contact data.

I use it all the time now.

There were at least three gotchas for me, though.
1) I kinda had to teach myself to search using the first or last name. It’s way much faster, but you kinda need to keep thinking of the letter you want to follow in the UI. This is really an extra ‘good feature’.
2) It can be set up to have a quick start key press that would open the app from anywhere. Unfortunately, they chose only one combination – pencil key, joystick click. That so happens to be the way to copy text, so I had to disable it. This is an ‘oops, useless feature’. They should find other key combos.
3) It seems to re-index every so often, but I haven’t figured out the logic. But, sometimes it bothers me by re-indexing every time I open the app. But, hey, this is really the only thing that I can find wrong with this that mildly bugs me. And I’m picky!

Link: ContaStick.

ContaStick is a  a radical new Phone Book application which dramatically increases the ease and speed of selecting a contact from your address book.

This is done with just 3 or 4 movements of the joystick on average. And then it is just a matter of one more flick of the joystick and you are calling, texting or emailing them.

Don’t remember where I got this from, but it’s a straightforward analysis of something folks are starting to learn – it’s the collaborative effect and not the number of people involved that is the power of the Web today.

Link: Bubblegeneration – Evil Corporations Only.

your utility is bounded by the number of things (transactions, etc) you can do on the network

… that is really small, like a headset. And this is well thought out.

Yeah, I’ve seen these concepts a few times. Only thing, I think the tech and supporting software is finally getting to the point where we can actually build something like this. Hmm… what about like a Star Trek communicator badge?

Good to see the old Russ is still around and thinking (publicly). 😉

Link: Russell Beattie Notebook � Imagine A Voice Powered Mobile Phone….

This would be a pretty cool device, no? It’d be like the iPod Shuffle of mobile phones – as simple as it gets. In fact, that’s a cool idea! Imagine if instead of sitting on just one ear, you could attach another head phone to make a pair. Now you can listen to your music from home being streamed to your phone via a system like Orb.com, or use a system like Sprint’s new Sirius or Rhapsody streaming audio.