The PhoneBoy Blog

Share on Ovi and Share Online Not As Good At Sharing

05 Oct 2008

While I was at a kid birthday party today, I took a video and wanted to share it with the people whose kid I was taking a video of. I figured I could email the video. Fat chance. Comcast puked it up saying it was too big.

Fair enough, Share on Ovi to the rescue! Or so I thought. Because I don’t necessarily want everyone to see this video, I used Share Online 3.0 to upload the media from my phone to my private channel. I then went to the website to see if I could share it:

Now, I don’t want to share the channel because this is a private channel for a reason. However, I know it’s possible to share to a specific email address because I saw the option on the mobile site!

So, what do I do? Clicking on Share This Channel actually shares the item, not the channel:

That works. Why is this not clear on the desktop web UI when it is crystal clear on the mobile web UI?

That’s rant #1. Now for Share Online 3.0, which also fails the sharing test. Consider that I go into Share Online to look at the recent stuff I posted on Share on Ovi (e.g. Ovi > my latest uploads):

I select the photo I want to share:

I then click on the Send link button, select Via message (to send as a text message), and then I see the URL that’s given:

Guess what? That URL can’t be viewed by anyone but me. It’s a private URL. Unless I remember to edit the aboev URL before sending it, people aren’t going to be able to view this link that I’m about to send them. That is a major usability failure in my book.

I want to be clear here, I use these service all the time. I think they’re pretty good, despite the flaws. However, these errors are the kinds of things that turn most normal users off of using a service. As Nokia strengthens it’s push into consumer services, these are the kinds of things that need to be gotten right.

Disclaimer: Until Nokia spins off its Security Appliances business, they still pay me. Obviously, this is my opinion, not theirs.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Nokia Launches Global Ovi Site
• Share on Ovi upgrades
• Why I Use Share on Ovi
• Prettier, more useful – Share on Ovi
• Unified login for Nokia services on the way, Nokia Account site goes live
• Nokia demonstrates Ovi updates
• Share on Ovi Failing the Video Upload Test