Mobile Mashups
With all the talk about the mobile Internet and mobile search, I am coming to the conclusion that it’s going to be very difficult to support everyone’s diverse needs for different data via a device with a small screen while maintaining an acceptable mobile experience.
There’s also a large ‘long tail’ of things people might want to do on their phones which just won’t make it to mobile - in particular things that are very specific to individual users interests and needs. This leads to the question whether users themselves should be creating their own services… and this leads to the possibility of mobile mashups.
There’s no reason why existing mashup services (eg the newly announced Yahoo Pipes, Dappit , Google Gadgets) can’t be used for mobile. You just need a service at the end to transform the data into a form that’s readable on the device. Such services already exist, for example, PHONifier , Madgat or even Google’s own transcoder. In fact, it makes me wonder why Google haven’t combined gadgets and the transcoder to create a ‘mobile gadgets’.
Remember, rendering information on the device isn’t limited to web or wap browsing. You can use a RSS reader or even SMS. For example, SMS services such as Clickatell allow you to send an SMS via http or invoke a http request via a sent SMS. Hence, it’s possible to invoke and retrieve data from mashups via SMS - even sending information to another person’s phone.
Mobile mashups aren’t ideal, especially for commercial use. There are ambiguities over copyright, particularly when using third party use services/information. It also impossible to predict or ensure service levels. For example, a break or change in a 3rd party service on which a mashup depends can tarnish your company reputation. Also, while you don’t have to be a programmer, it’s currently not that easy for ‘man on the street’ to create these mobile mashups - but this is an area ripe for innovation.
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