Applications and Service Platforms For Mobile User 35
Roland Piquepaille writes "ERCIM News is a quarterly publication from the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics. The July 2003 issue is dedicated to research about applications and service platforms for the mobile user. All of the 30 articles are available online. This column details the special constraints applying to the design of these applications: special interfaces, lack of power and memory, and interoperability between heterogeneous networks. In this longer column, you'll find a selection of stories, including links, abstracts and illustrations. Among other projects, you'll discover mBlog, "a mobile information service for all," or Fluid Computing, a middleware which lets "an application 'flow' from one user interface to another.""
Bigger Issue... (Score:5, Insightful)
You could have said that about the web in general (Score:5, Interesting)
You are right to question the true need for such tools. How many of us really need to update our blogs on the bus to work? Of course, an account of a bus ride would be much more interesting than the drivel that you usually see in blogs, but you get my point.
However, I have found one perfect application for my SonyEricsson P800 - it takes the public domain stock prices, and displays them in an easy to read screen. This is much easier than going to a web page, which is going to be full of graphics that I don't want. I don't really need to send emails or surf, but this little app justifies GPRS to me.
I think that there is another question about whether this technology is going to be on the client or the server side. Designers may not be willing to adjust their code for every single device out there, even though I would dearly love to believe that XML can do this for them. On the other hand, if you can make a client side application that will strip out the useless information, or illegible graphics, this will ensure that content is delivered in a useable way. I think the app will have to be device specific: to use a trivial example, the mainstream games that have been ported to mobile devices, like Doom and SimCity, IMHO just don't work, because they were never meant to be used on such small screen real estate. It's very hard to anticipate every single quirk of every single device on the server side, so the work is going to be done on the client side, where the device knows exactly its own requirements.
Re:You could have said that about the web in gener (Score:1)
Re:Bigger Issue... (Score:3, Insightful)
When the personal computer revolution hit, there was a lack of a true need for PCs. Nothing that could be done on the early PCs at that time couldn't be done with some other method -- whether manual or electronic.
It came down the killer app. And the killer app was spreadsheets. Nobody in the business world could IMAGINE this day getting by without a spreadsheet.
The Internet wasn't needed either. The killer app -- universal e-mail. Our mail server went down on Friday and there was M
Re:Bigger Issue... (Score:3, Interesting)
For one thing, a key piece of the industry, the wireless WAN providers, are simply not ready for prime time. It is very difficult to deploy an application over the air, and mostly this is for bureaucratic reasons. Carriers require long expensive c
Fluid computing??? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Fluid computing??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fluid computing??? (Score:1)
Since the prototype is in Java (which takes care of such "details") this is a non-issue.
Re:Fluid computing??? (Score:1)
Re:Fluid computing??? (Score:4, Informative)
The name tries to visualize that transferring/sharing an application's state should be as easy as pouring a glass of water into another vessel.
We were cought a bit by surprise by this early publication, so we don't have anything downloadable, yet. But we are working on it and there should be something available in a few weeks or so.
Re:Fluid computing??? (Score:2)
Re:Fluid computing??? (Score:1)
Using Fluid you might not even notice, since each device has a version of the application and a full copy of the data. And the Fluid middleware takes care, that - as soon as the connection comes up again - the changes of the different replicas will be synchronized again in the background.
RTFAs (Score:5, Funny)
30 articles! No one RTFA's as it is, nevermind 30
Global (Score:5, Interesting)
Just like in Japan... they have all these new funky 3G apps, that work no where else but Japan.
When do we get services and apps that truely work worldwide (just like roaming GSM and similar, but on the app level rather than infrastructure?)
Re:Global (Score:5, Informative)
Most other things would need to be localised or at least need local partners to provide the data that these apps need to function.
As for video calls (3G's supposed killer app), I haven't seen any problems yet communicating internationally between 3G networks. For instance, you can make a video call between Australia and the UK and it works just fine (or at least Hutchinson/Orange says it does).
Re:Global (Score:2)
On the beginning, 3G UMTS at 3GPP was supposed to be the unifying standard.
Until US & Asia said, damnit, we're not competing with others. Lets fork 3GPP with 3GPP2 or whatever and have our own standard
I guess this is not a technological reason. Like we settled on a worldwide PC hardware standard for untechnical reasons.
What goes around comes around... (Score:2, Interesting)
Am I allowed to comment before ... (Score:2)
At a first glance, this looks mighty interesting. I cannot believe I have not come across this material before.
SkipWire was the ultimate (Score:1)
It did conversions between standard formats like
You could do everything from your Palm browser. You could convert both directions and e-mail. It accepted e-mail attachments, and then converted them and made them available for download.
If you didn't have the right program to view the data, then it provided t
+2: 50% Karma-whoring, 50% for 2x in 24 hours (Score:2)
Roland Piquepaille: "This column details the special constraints applying to the design of these applications: special interfaces, lack of power and memory, and interoperability between heterogeneous networks. In this longer column, you'll find a selection of stories, including links, abstracts and illustrations."