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February 1, 2007
Mobile Internet - the web's third coming?
I was at a roundtable hosted by Yell.com the other day; the topic of discussion – alongside chocolate digestives and strong coffee – was the future of the mobile internet, gloriously christened Web 3.0. Alright, one thing's for dang sure, it's not going anywhere if you're going to give it a moniker like that; it'll suffer from fear of underachievement for the rest of its life, I reckon.
In the end, the talk focused quite a bit on money; how are we ever going to get a mobile internet people want to use if it isn't cheaper and the pricing more transparent? Most attendees also agreed that location-based services and search offer some of the best opportunities for the mobile web to differentiate itself and really take root in people's lives. For content providers then there is the potential to move from being a third tier company to a web giant; nobody predicted the massive success of Amazon, Flickr et al in the fixed web world, for example.
But most also agreed that currently it is a nightmare designing applications that run on the mobile web because of the varying specs of handsets, although not much was said about what dotMobi and the W3C are trying to do to address these standardisation issues. There is hope though…despite all the barriers to surfing on our mobiles, some users are still prepared to do it; just imagine what it could be like if price and usability were no longer problems.
It is indeed tricky to create applications that run on all mobile devices - unless you're using tools and a platform that abstract the task of writing direct markup and instead allow users to focus on the vision then trust the delivery to the platform.
I think plenty of people get all in a muddle when it comes to deliverring to mobile devices because they tend to use non-dynamic, or mainly static methods. This simply doesn't work, because no matter how hard you try there's going to a handset out there that barks at your code, no matter how vaild it is.
Our solution has been to create a platform that, through extensive device profiling, adjusts a site for the visiting handset. I'm not talking about the myth of repurposing web sites - I'm still regarding mobile sites as sites built with mobile devices in mind, but our system does allow for a site builder to focus on the vision of their site and our technology looks after all the content repurposing, layout issues, browser quirks (read: bugs) and browser capabilities. The result is a site optimised in real-time to any device.
Posted by :Rich Holdsworth | February 26, 2007 4:23 PM
The concept of Mobile Search is certainly good, and could bring visibility to many applications on handsets. However, the mobile Internet suffers from the PC-like experience. Whatever you name it (e.g. Web 2.0, Web 3.0, WAP, XHTML), browsing as we know it in the PC world is not a popular thing on mobile phones.
Back when WAP was introduced, the measure of usability was the number of clicks that the user had to go through. It is still the same song I have been hearing today. In my opinion, it's the time spent rather than clicks. If something takes me more than 30 seconds to get to...I will give up. It doesn't matter how many clicks you make.
With regards to reaching mass market through applications, we have faced the same issue at iOTA Sphere and we have decided to go with Java MIDP 2.0 which really covered more than 80% of the handsets in the market. The key is simplicity and intuitiveness.
Ghazi Ramadan
iOTA Sphere
http://www.iotasphere.com
Posted by :Ghazi Ramadan | March 14, 2007 9:22 AM
I just got a data plan on my mobile. I pretty much do not need my computer anymore since I do so much with my mobile phone. The neatest thing is that I can even watch naughty movies:) It is pretty neat, it's called Mobile TV. All I do is point my phone to sexoncell.com and they have adult mobile movies in different formats like 3gp movies, symbian, pda or whatever. If you have any other cool sites, please let me know! This one, though, even has a free daily mobile movie.
Posted by :Lostminer | May 28, 2007 5:50 PM
Youtube has a new competitor who has beaten them to launching mobile video sharing. It's live now from www.yamgo.tv You can upload, share and broadcast your video on mobile phones now. check it out it's pretty cool and the quality is good. http://yamgo.mobi
Posted by :Yamgo | June 9, 2007 8:12 AM
Youtube mobile - now from www.yamgo.tv
Wonder how youtube will be like in your WAP enabled mobile phone? Experience for yourself at http://yamgo.mobi from your mobile's browser and be part of the beta test program providing valuable feedbacks. Checkout complimentary service www.yamgo.tv over web.
Posted by :Anonymous | July 9, 2007 10:02 AM