Software Everywhere — David Beers on Mobile Computing

The 47th edition of Carnival of the Mobilists is up at Communities Dominate Brands where Tomi and Allen have rounded up some wonderful pieces on mobility published during the week. Particularly noteworthy in my opinion are two articles that touch on the prospect for mobile AJAX applications and the mobile user interface, respectively.

Tom Landspurg over at TomSoft does a great job popping the bubble that some folks have been blowing concerning mobile AJAX. I think we're years away from rich browser applications competing effectively against apps with native GUIs and data stores. To Tom's list of problems with mobile AJAX I'll add the following: sufficiently capable browsers use way too much memory (the main cause of smartphone crashes), are slow compared to native wireless apps, lack often-critical OS integration, and handle intermittent connectivity very poorly. Mobile apps need to be very snappy and reliable to be accepted by users: people are out doing stuff when they're on their mobile, not sitting passively in front of a PC with multiple windows and a big mug of coffee. SoonR notwithstanding, I don't see AJAX delivering that experience for a significant number of mobile applications any time soon.

Hampus Jakobsson's VisionMobile blog is a new one for me and I enjoyed his post titled User interfaces and soft walled gardens of tomorrow. He makes an interesting and optimistic observation that the tables are turning on the network operators, whose walled garden approach to locking in users is not generating revenues as hoped. He argues that the user experience--which is still primarily controlled by the device manufacturers--is proving to be a better way to keep customers loyal. I can't speak for the world, but in North America it sure seems like the Palm and BlackBerry brands and the user experiences associated with them have vastly more stature with consumers than any carrier deck. Perhaps what they say is true: you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. Sheesh, we can only hope!

Oh, and a big thank you to Tomi and Allen for picking as their favorite my post about the use of mobile phones as instruments in a major concert in Chicago over the weekend.