Because we know what a creative bunch Nature Network readers and contributors are, we thought we’d offer you the chance to influence the tools that we develop in the future.
We now have a dedicated Product Manager for Mobile Technologies (that’s phones – iPhones and Android – as well as mobile devices such as the iPad) and Euan is currently collecting feedback on what you would like to see us develop for these devices.
What could Nature Publishing Group be doing on mobile to make your life as a scientist easier / provide you with a bit of a distraction?
We’re interested in the sorts of things that you might find compelling as a scientist or even just as somebody interested in science. This could be something around content, a research tool, a game, something that encourages and enables citizen science…
We’d also like to hear if there are any features of mobile devices that you think are particularly interesting in a scientific context.
The ideas can be as blue sky as you like, though ideas that could be implemented in the short – mid term are very welcome. Please note, we can’t promise to create apps for all the suggestions made and if we do use or adapt your suggestion, we aren’t offering any financial reward.
So please put your thinking caps on and post your suggestions below – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
Are new developments going to be prioritized over fixing all the outstanding issues with MT4 and the new site format that are still quite vexing to many users?
Hi Jenny,
Absolutely not. The mobile developments are a separate, parallel project with different resources so any work on them will not take effort away from the development team continuing to work on Network.
See also my earlier update about what’s happening next with the MT4 problems.
I can’t stress enough how sympathetic I am about the outstanding issues – I use the site every day too and know how important it is to get these things fixed. It’s precisely because we value the opinions and feedback of everyone in the community on what we get wrong, that we’ve asked for your input upfront about the mobile apps.
I’d be satisfied (for now) simply with an app that serves up the existing content of NN in a mobile app. For example, one of our local newspaper sites has done that, and it’s far easier to use than trying to read the mobile version of the site in a web browser.
I’ll second Ken’s comment. Other than that, the only things I can think of would be an app for conferences, with the schedule, a way of keeping track of tweets etc. but that would be part of something bigger. Would be useful, though.
See also my earlier update about what’s happening next with the MT4 problems.
um… “nothing”?
If we can have a log finding app, not very handy in many calculators, will be helpful for many calculations.
Or an app which has values of various physical and chemical constants like Gravitational constant G, g for Earth, Planck’s constant h. Concisely presented formulae can be handy as well.
An app for biologists can be something where we can store lab chemical recipes to make stock solutions, like what amount of X, Y and Z to be added in what temperature conditions to generate Stock A.
A small periodic table app will be handy as well, giving info on known isotopes, atomic no., atomic mass, natural state form.
I think asking for these many at one time will be enough, lets see how it goes in few months time.
I’m not really bothered about mobile apps for NN, although I’m waiting expectantly for the Nature app for Android. I’d rather have the website format elegantly to the mobile format, maybe by detecting the user agent. I know WordPress does this, Stuff and Nonsense for example is a pleasure to read on a mobile. Are those mobile themes something MT4 can do?
Shubhashish, I believe there are already quite a few apps (both iPhone and Android) that do this, GIYF. Not sure what you mean by "log finding".
Do you plan to provide such an app for webOS?
@Nicholas Yes I guess, me being a Nokia app user, I missed those. By log, I meant logarithm, sometimes we have exponential/binomial equations to solve, and numbers come up for which I need a log or antilog.
Internet is surely there, but to have it on mobile will be cool.
@Shubhashish I assumed you had Android or iPhone, sorry. Plenty of scientific calculators for those two, but I don’t know anything about Nokias.
Thanks for all the suggestions. @Nico, about MT4 creating mobile themes, that’s certainly something we can look into. I’m also agreed that having a more user-friendly version of NN on our phones would be nice.
@Bob – would you like to elaborate more about the kind of things you’d like to see in a conference app? Feel free to email me or post more details here.