Mobhappy: Location-Based vs. Context-Aware

Location is just a part of the context of each individual user

In some cases, such as mapping, there isn’t a great need for context-awareness instead of location, but in many LBS instances, being sensitive to context is much more important than simply location

Musings of a mobile marketer: Location Based Services - are they all missing the point?

I can’t help thinking that many of the LBS initiatives are missing the point

Twitter has no location API, yet it’s actually very effective for letting me connect with people who are local to me (and to organise meeting up via tweet-outs such as ‘I’m in Soho this afternoon, anyone want to hook up for coffee) as well as helping me have relationships with friends and colleagues further away. There are no maps involved. No location look-ups.

fr.techcrunch: SpotMe va enfin nous permettre de mettre nos badges de conférence à la poubelle

I can’t believe someone has not yet developed a similar service that uses the existing device. I already have a mobile phone in my pocket, why should I carry another device ?

SpotMe

Also it is interesting to see that Twitter is becoming the “de facto” status aggregator as it is used to feed other services (it is a bit surprising as well given the lack of reliability of this tool that keeps on crashing).

After the beta phase, Blog4Mobile.com will start the central marketing of all mobile blogs. Each user gets up to 70% of the advertising incomes, generated via his mobile blog. Blog4Mobile.com is not only for free, you can even cash in by blogging!

Here is some widgets they propose:

Via 2Dcode.co.uk

Traffic from the 473 publishers grew 104% from July 2007 to June 2008. This indicates that the mobile web more than doubled in 12 months ending in June 2008.

I found it only very recently about the mobile website of the swiss radio. Really neat! It has some iPhone look and feel, it is clean and does a good job at informing on a concise manner… what else asking ?
It even provides some show to be downloaded as MP3 (depends on the connection and make sure you have a good data plan if you are on your carrier network).

URL: mobile.rsr.ch or via the QR Code below

Swiss mobile web in the mobile web serie.

[...] Visiting Web sites that have been redesigned for the iPhone is often a quicker and more pleasing experience than it is on those increasingly cinema-style desktop displays [...]

[...] By stripping down the Web site interface to the most basic functions, site designers can focus the user’s attention and offer relevant information without distractions. [...]

“By having fewer items to scan for on a small display, users can find what they want more quickly and can be more confident that they have made the right choice,” [...] “If you just put the juicy stuff up there it works better.”

With mobile browser getting the same capacity and features than a desktop one, I was really starting to wonder what was the need of dedicated mobile version. Main reasons are price, bandwidth, and usability. While price and bandwidth remain good reason for now I though that usability was going to fade away with the iPhone but it is the other way around. It is reinforcing the need of dedicated mobile version. Too bad it targets the iPhone only…