Mobile Web 2.0 (Discuss!) (part 2)

location based services

Well Mobile Monday has been and gone... I did sit on the panel and we did discuss Mobile Web 2.0. In the second part of this Mobile Web 2.0 discussion I'm going to just make a few points that I think got lost in the discussions on the panel and give a bit of reasoning behind them.
As I said before I believe in mobi-web 2.0 which is new innovative mobile solutions that break through the boundaries of the mobile issues such as multiple operating systems, multiple devices, languages etc. I also have a strong belief in MobileWeb 2.0 the extension of web 2.0 to mobile devices. By this I mean mobile wiki's, blogging via mobile, rss to mobile, podcasts bi directionally (creation and listening to). Some of these things are already here and only today I heard that SocialText launched Miki, a mobile wiki solution. A fantastic example of mobile wiki's working in the browser.
I think there is a lot more that needs to be done for mobi-web 2.0 to take off completely. The biggest barriers to entry are the disparities of the OS and the lack of developer-> network provider and developer->device manufacturer input. In many ways this is a shame and I have a feeling that this is beginning to change. (or at least I hope it will).
With new versions of the Windows Mobile operating system and the new Symbian 9 operating system hopefully platform changes won't happen too often so then they will be stable. Browsers... well those should work to web standards... (if only...) and I guess us developers just have to test with all browser types the same as we do when we create any other web application.
Those location based services, low level date information etc all need nicely bundling into api's for the dev to access... now that would create interesting applications... a new phase of mobile development and encourage people to use data services. (are you hearing this network service providers!) Therefore by helping and providing as much useful data as you can would be a help to the applications developers and the network operators to some degree.
Mobile payment systems... well... we have issues of trust there... people like to trust things, and they don't necessarily trust their mobile all the time... now the question there is what exactly can be done to combat this and I guess really what needs to happen is transparency of what is going on would be a good start.... prove the level of trust.
Context awareness within applications on the go is important and should never be discounted in conversations on mobi-web 2.0. If you don't have the users attention then you don't want to be doing payments for example... and you really shouldn't be texting whilst driving... so... when all these new services to mobiles come about... how do we ensure the context awareness? Is it a low level thing or is it a software application... it's an interesting debate and a subject that needs to be looked into in more detail.
Something else that I would love people to consider is that mobi-web 2.0 isdata transfer via the internet but not using web pages... for example device hosted client interfaces with data transfer via the web to online or server hosted content... data down and data up... This is a very business orientated approach to mobile data transfers and still uses the backbone of the web. It is still sharing data between points, the difference is it may not always be visible on the web. How does this fit with most peoples views on mobile web 2.0.
The way I see it, no one considers this as mobile web 2.0. This has been about for a while and it is getting bigger, better, faster and cheaper as devices get more powerful. It also allows for the use of gdi graphics on devices and more with some of the latest devices. Again constraints here are the data transfer costs, but with Wifi becoming more accessible and Wi-Max coming in (all be it slowly and cautiously (and rightly so!)). I am looking forward to this always connected environment and I see this creating some of tomorrow's "killer apps" so to speak.
Battery life on devices bothers me at the moment. With all these devices getting more powerful whilst we are all on the move and with GPS in phones by the end of the year, how are we going to manage to keep the battery life in a usable state for long periods of time. (fuel cells?!) Maybe someone needs to consider this. Developers try to code to use as little processing power and memory as they can so that they preserve battery life as much as possible but yet add GPS and you reduce the battery life as this is a power hungry piece of equipment... then add wifi, GPRS, Bluetooth, Wi-Max and whatever else you can think of... and we have an issue... what are the priorities here?
I hope this leaves you all with something to think about.
posted on Wednesday, April 05, 2006 10:01 AM
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# re: Mobile Web 2.0 (Discuss!) (part 2) 4/5/2006 12:37 PM Mike Dimmick
"With new versions of the Windows Mobile operating system and the new Symbian 9 operating system hopefully platform changes won't happen too often so then they will be stable." A likely story :-) I think there's already a Windows Mobile 5.0 SE planned, and IIRC Mike Hall said something recently about announcements regarding the next version of CE and/or Windows Mobile at the main MEDC this year. PIE on Windows Mobile 5.0 has only just about reached HTML/CSS rendering parity with IE6 - how long do you think it'll take before we get close to IE7 or Firefox levels?
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