RaffyJohn.com Rocks In My Head

Imagine taking a snapshot with your camera phone, cropping it, tagging it, maybe even adding a bubble quote, then being able to send it to all your friends without using any built-in software or having to install a 3rd party app - Every piece of software you use can live elsewhere and you can jump around from tool to tool as you see fit.

This is an idea that I was getting at when I wrote The Browser is Dead. The browser is helping remove the need for software to live locally on our systems.

BXP makes a great point:

“The beauty of browsers, though, is that as the Web evolves, the interface stays the same. Remember when browsers were just HTTP viewers? Now browsers can run applications and display dynamic content.” - BXP (The Browser is Dead #comment-69)

It is not only that browsers have changed, but that web servers have changed. Connect-ability is more important than any specific technology or platform. What needs to happen in order for browsers to become better than an OS?

My mobile phone is directly connected to my world, the things around me and can access the world at large. I can take video, find movie times, chat with someone in China and share photos. There are definitely pains involved, speed being the most grueling, but that is to be solved. The question I have been thinking about lately is, what else can our handhelds do for us? What is in store for the future?

One thing I’d love to be able to do is order from local businesses, like restaurants, for pickup or delivery. If I could order some Panang Curry from my mobile right now, I would; Get a reply back with the order details, delivery wait time, what I owe etc., I’d be ecstatic! Maybe even a history of my ordering that could build a sort of “My Guide to Chicago” list.

How about custom city pages, based on the places you and your friends have been. Remembering that patisserie in Paris your friend told you about would be a non issue. With my mobile device linked to his, I’d be attached to the parts of his world he is willing to let me in on. Mobile devices make it easier get our conscience out - Perfect for frequent travelers.

Is the mobile phone a new frontier? A place where new leaders will emerge? Or, will the Internet simply be picked up and placed on the mobile devices?

To put it another way, will handhelds simply be a redundant representation of our PCs or is the mobile space ripe for endless entrepreneurial adventures?

I think mobile devices will offer much more than a new interface on top of what we know. We will see apps we never thought possible and solutions to problems we never realized we had.