I am suffering from geek envy. I have a Blackberry Pearl. I used to love it. I still love it to some degree although lately I am falling out of love with it.

Its great for reading my emails. It is good for texting. It takes OK photos. But its devoid of fun. Its a corporate device. It has very limited multimedia player functions. I can’t listen to podcasts on it. I can’t watch videos from YouTube on it. It has no instant messenger. I see my husband’s one-year old Nokia N95 which does all of these things and more, and I am suffering from geek envy.

He shows me videos of our son on his phone. He shows me nostalgic 80′s pop videos (sadly i remember dancing around my living room to Bros). He chats to me on instant messenger while he is on the move.

But I tell him, the N95 is not sleek and sophisticated like my piano black Pearl. It looks out of place in the office – it’s just a bit plastiky. Unfortunately this argument will seem redundant in a few months. The N96 (the upgrade from the N95) keeps Nokia’s technical lead but borrows some of the iPhone’s good looks.

Its already set mobi-geeks into quite a frenzy. And got the Mobile World Congress buzzing. This tiny box of tricks seems to support every current standard of communication, entertainment & media on the market today.

Clearly Nokia are trying to out iPhone the iPhone. The first thing they fixed is it’s appearance. I’m not complaining about the N95′s looks (well I am actually as its boxy and chunky) – on the other hand the N96 is a great deal prettier. It has an impressive 16GB internal memory – that’s the same as the current generation of iPhones, however unlike the iPhone it supports removable memory which effectively allows users to double their storage of music and movies. Check it out on YouTube.

It’s also got something called DVB-H – a standard that allows users to receive live television, I’m not convinced that anybody wll actually bother with this one.

As an earlier post on Lady Geek highlighted, most people use their mobile phones to stay in touch with family and friends while at work. Instead of letting work into their private life, people seem to bring their private life to work. Many of the problems people face at work are related to that they cannot express part of their personality at work and have to be someone they do not want to be. This is particularly an issue for women.

Blackberry needs to realise that the boundaries between home and work life are blurred. Women want a fluid device that is not just a ‘tool’ as many previous research studies claim. Women want technology to be fun. They want something that will make them smile, stay connected and that they can play with during meetings. Women don’t only want technology for the boardroom, they want technology to enhance their life. With the iphone and N96 as strong contenders for the female pound, Blackberry needs to take themselves a little less seriously.

Academic research has always assumed that mobile devices lead to an overflow from work into private life. In consequence life becomes more like work and is frenetically planned. However recent research by Professor Judy Wajcman and colleagues has shown that this is not the case. In this Australian study they explored how people use their mobile phones. What their found was astonishing: most people used their mobile phones to stay in touch with family and friends while at work. Instead of letting work into their private life, people seem to bring their private life to work. Many of the problems people face at work are related to that they cannot express part of their personality at work and have to be someone they do not want to be. This is particularly an issue for women. Technology – be it a mobile phone or Facebook – might change that and might make the boundaries between work and life more fluid.

From research we know that engineers and designers tend to use themselves as the ideal for which they create new technologies. That means that we often end up with technology that is designed by engineers and with engineers in mind. While a small proportion of technically-versed men (and women) might find this technology easy to use, most people probably won’t. My research on gender and technology has shown that women prefer to use technology that is intuitive to use and does not require you to study the manual for hours. In fact, many men would prefer this as well.

Creating technology that is more intuitive to use is an important step in making technology more accessible to all. While the graphical user interface and the mouse as input device was popularised in the 1990s, not much has changed since then. Until recently. Apple’s new iPhone and iPod touch use a multi-touch technology to make the technology more intuitive to navigate. And what could be more intuitive than using your fingers. Last week I attended a presentation by Steve Ballmer, Microsofts’ CEO. He presented a new piece of technology which included a multi-touch screen similar to the one of the iPhone. The Microsoft Surface is a table PC that is operated by touch alone. It syncs with other devices such as mobile phone and digital cameras through simply putting them on the surface. These new touch technologies make it more intuitive to operate technology. In fact they provide tools to integrate technology much more into everyday life. Then technology is no longer designed for engineers by engineers but by engineers for people.

http://www.microsoft.com/surface/

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070530-what-lurks-below-microsofts-surface-a-qa-with-microsoft.html

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/iphone-review.ars

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/The-iPod-meets-the-iPhone-a-review-of-the-iPod-touch.ars