Show Me Your Phone & I Will Tell You - Who You Are!

A survey of cellphone users in Australia, conducted by Panorama and released by Nielsen Media Research, has proved what pretty much everyone already knew: people are likely to base broad, stereotypical assumptions about you on your cellphone, just like they do with everything else you use and wear.

We're guessing this breaks down a bit differently in Aussieland, but here's how mobile users tend to associate down under:

• Nokia: Family-minded, middle aged managers, balance seekers, health conscious
• Motorola: Fashion conscious, under 24, fun seekers, individualistic
• Sony Ericsson: Ambitious young men, professionals, success driven, individualistic
• LG: Favorite of mums, stay-at-home parents, success driven, harmony seekers
• Samsung: Young women, career focused, success driven, fun seekers

The upshot of this research is that since most phone service providers rate the same, people are for the most part picking a carrier based on phone selection

This is not exact science, now all that's left is how to pigeon hole HTC and Palm users. :)

Deepfish - Enhanced Browsing For Your Mobile

Microsoft announced Deepfish this morning, a new mobile browsing technology from their labs group. It's a small, downloadable app for Windows smart phone users that presents Web content the same way you'd see it on your computer's Web browser. If you've seen the mobile version of Apple's Safari on the upcoming iPhone, you have an idea of how Deepfish works.

Deepfish is designed like an array of photo thumbnails. To zoom into a section you want to see in more detail, you just select it with a magnify box controlled by your phone's directional pad, or pointer. If you want to zoom back out, the original version of the page will still be loaded in your phone's memory cache--which should save a considerable amount of time (and data usage).
In our brief hands-on with it today, we noticed a few quirks. It's a little slow, mostly due to Microsoft re-routing each page through its servers for re-sizing. Also, it won't re-columnize the content like most mobile browsers do, requiring users to scroll back and forth to read anything wider than about a hundred pixels. We'll cut Microsoft some slack since it's a currently just a technology demo, but for regular use it's pretty cumbersome.

Deepfish is an important new development in mobile Web browsing. It's an exciting prospect for people who want to browse on their phones without having to remember mobile addresses, or rely on developers to create mobile versions of their site.

Deepfish is currently in private beta. Microsoft is limiting the amount of downloads to a "first come, first served" basis, so grab it here while you can.

Google Notebook - New Design

Google Notebook – a website and browser extension to take (single-user or collaborative) notes & copy stuff from the web while browsing – received a design overhaul. The site looks much more clear now, with individual elements separated into boxes, along with lots of round edges and shadows.

Here are some pictures: