I have always been a great fan of the Blackberry from RIM with its mobile email and its full QWERTY keyboard but it was always so bulky. So when I got the chance to upgrade to the sleek and slim Blackberry Pearl I thought it was worth a go. I read some great reviews of the product too. But the slim style comes at a price – a new style QWERTY keyboard with two alpha letters on each key instead of one. But for me in terms of usability it’s a disaster.

Christian Kreutz pulls together 4 examples of highly creative use of mobile phones in Africa in News Reporting, Financing, Health Care and Trading showing that necessity really is the mother of invention!

A fascinating research report (April 2006) by Hans Geser of Zurich University on the use of mobile phones by pre-teens suggesting that they make a bigger impact on behaviour than previously thought and some surprising male-female usage differences.

In a competitive and crowded market for mobile devices and collaboration software a trap for new entrants is to try to do all things well: this goes against the timeless design principle of cohesion.

Always-on mobile devices need supporting etiquette. A few years back The Economist ran a short article “Think before you talk” on how Ideo (the designers behind the Palm Pilot and Microsoft Mouse) developed 5 prototype “social mobiles”.....

For the mobile industry, waiting for people to use the net via their phone has been like waiting for a bus that never comes. That’s according to Dan Simmons reporting for BBC Click Online (15 Sept 2006).

I am the proud owner of a 3G mobile smartphone which does everything imaginable except make good phone calls.

CIO Briefing (August 17) reports that road warriors prefer smartphones over laptops and PDAs, but is this really true or just a bit of spin? Reach your own conclusions!

In any communication using intrusive communications technologies such as mobile phones, SMS, VoiP and IM there are actually 4 different parties who each have rights (and obligations). In this article I suggest a structure for a “Polite Intrusive Technologies Etiquette” .

What Can You Learn from a Cell Phone? Almost Anything!

One of the realities of working in todays Virtually Networked Teams is that team members can use mobile phones to keep in constant touch with team-mates. Marc Prensky argues that this is only the start of what you can do with a mobile phone.