My colleague from our web/mobile development team is Rebecca Pate, who is spending a week as our eyes and ears at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, where she is Techfortesco's intrepid reporter!
As a quick intro, my name is Becky Pate (@rpatey) and I am the Mobile Product Owner here at Tesco.com. Mainly, I am responsible for the ‘what’ for our mobile apps and sites that have launched over the past 12 months (all featured on Nick’s blog of course!). I work closely with the @ribot team on the design side, @nicklansley and @anexplodedview on the innovation and technology front and our development and test teams to get stuff out to customers and also help us review, improve and update our products. My role also requires me to keep close to customers and the technology to understand how we can improve the Tesco mobile experience.
So in a nutshell, that’s how I’ve ended up in Barcelona at Mobile World Congress and, given that I’ve be meaning to hijack Nick’s blog for a while, this seemed like the perfect opportunity!
With over 50,000 visitors, an exhibition space of 365 square metres of floor space (which is larger than 40 Tesco Extras put together!) and a 6am start to avoid the queues, it’s hard to know where to start.
The day started with 3D face animation, personal handwriting and gesture technology alongside 3D Smartphones and a touchable 3D display (a gecko ‘jumped’ out of the device and almost bit me!). I also saw an impressive app on a tablet device that sits in your car and enables you to start the car engine, change gear, adjust the temperature and everything else that your car would need to do, as well as syncing with your Smartphone to capture any disastrous images if ever you were stuck in a tricky situation!
Android Honeycomb on the Motorola Xoom and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, are also ones to watch - a camera on the device really makes a difference and they are so simple to use. HP’s webOS was really cool with its “touch-to-share” technology allowing users to share information such as URLs from Smartphone to tablet devices (if they have the same webOS account).
And so the world is "shifting from a battle of devices to a war of ecosystems”, as Stephen Elop stated in his keynote. It feels like the change had begun...
I’m looking forward to finding out more tomorrow.
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As this blog grows in readership - and because it carries the Tesco brand - I have had to become more careful about the sort of comments that are acceptable. The good news is that I'm a champion of free speech so please be as praising or as critical as you wish! The only comments I DON'T allow through are:
1. Comments which criticise an individual other than myself, or are critical of an organisation other than Tesco. This is simply because they cannot defend themselves so is unfair and possibly libellous. Comments about some aspect of Tesco being better/worse than another equivalent organisation are allowed as long as you start by saying "in my personal opinion.." or "I think that...". ... followed by a "...because.." and some reasoned argument.
2. Comments which are totally unrelated to the context of the original article. If I have written about a mobile app and you start complaining about the price of potatoes then your comment isn't going stay for long!
3. Advertising / web links / spam.
4. Insulting / obscene messages.
Ok, rules done - now it's your go: