John Battelle's Look Ahead

Mobile will finally be plugged into the web in a way that makes sense for the average user and a major mobile innovation - the kind that makes us all say - Jeez that was obvious - will occur. At the core of this innovation will be the concept of search. The outlines of such an innovation: it'll be a way for mobile users to gather the unstructured data they leverage every day while talking on the phone and make it useful to their personal web (including email and RSS, in particular). And it will be a business that looks and feels like a Web 2.0 business - leveraging iterative web development practices, open APIs, and innovation in assembly - that makes the leap. (More on this when I start posting again).

Via Marc Canter

Some interesting projects here:
Tisch, keyword : Cellphonia

Via Picturephoning

iPhone (Mac Rumours), Get ready to call iTunes (Forbes)
See also Russell Beattie who had a hunch: Apple will launch a mobile phone within 18 months

Minimo, the mobile Mozilla Browser

WiMAX/broadband wireless could disrupt 3G says wimax.co.uk. If today Ericsson joins the WiMAX Forum as a principal member this is may be not totally irrelevant - even if Ericsson states that this isn't the case.

See also:
WiMAX Forum
Ericsson tritt dem WiMAX Forum bei (Heise)

LG Plans for 6 to 7 Megapixel Camera Phones

With the digital camera megapixel race heating up fast, camera phones are destined to follow the same path. Telecoms Korea is reporting that LG Electronics has plans to bring the first 6-megapixel camera phone to market in Japan.

The Internet's key oversight agency gave a preliminary nod Monday to new domain names targeting mobile services [...], reports the Associated Press (on December 13).

"Sponsored by leading mobile phone and technology companies, including Nokia, Microsoft and T-Mobile, the «.mobi» domain would set apart Web sites and other services that are specially designed to work around the limitations of cell phones, including their smaller screen size and data capacity.

Microsoft.mobi," for instance, might carry smaller photos or fewer graphics than the main site at Microsoft.com.

Via Textually and Jérome


See also:
Father of the Web blasts .mobi domain
.jobs and .mobi on ICANN shortlist
ICANN's New sTLD RFP Application .mobi

Martin Parr: Mobile Phones

This project shows people talking on mobile phones all over the world. There is no escaping this modern phenomenon and my relationship is one of "I couldn't survive without it" but what a pain in the arse they are. I try to photograph my own and society's hypocrisy.

Human Pacman

Permeation of technology into everyday life is made easier when the human experience it creates is made associable with day-to-day encounters. Human Pacman, based on the popular arcade Pacman from the 1980s, is a novel and entertaining game which seeks to bring about such association through stimulating multiple human senses and perception.It is a real-world-physical, social, and wide area mobile entertainment system that is built upon the concepts of ubiquitous computing, tangible human-computer interaction, and wide-area entertainment networks. Human Pacman is pioneering a new form of gaming that anchors on physicality, mobility, social interaction, and ubiquitous computing.

According to today's NZZ am Sonntag*, the game should also be available in about two years on GPS enabled mobile phones.

* «Pacman im Freien», Andreas Grote, NZZ am Sonntag, December 5, 2004, p. 79

More SMS Than Internet, More Internet Than Newspapers

For young people, sending messages using SMS (Short Message Service) over cellular phones is more powerful than doing so through the Internet, according to a recent survey. The results of a study conducted by Ericsson Consumer Lab show that 68 percent of Spaniards between 15 and 24 years old send messages with their cellular phones every day. But only 38 percent of young people connect to the 'Net on a daily basis.

I know that Spain is a mobile phone crazy country, so the question is, if the same numbers are also true for other countries in Europe. Anyway, it is a good indicator of what the future will probably look like.

Via Amy