Readings from the blogosphere

It has been over a month since my last "blog sounding" posting (here), to it is probably time to have a look around at what is interesting/novel in the world of online commentary relating to mobility, context, and rich media.

One of the newest blogs I have been reading is called "pasta and vinegar" (how's that for an unusual title?) and it comes from Nicholas Nova, in Switzerland. Nicholas took note of a recent academic paper by a group in Calgary, at the University of Calgary's Computer Science department. The paper, titled "Sticky Spots and Flower Pots: Two Case Studies in  Location-Based Home Technology Design," is by Kathryn Elliot, Carman Neustaedter and Saul Greenberg . What is interesting in this paper is that for this study they looked at "location" within the home, rather than the usual orientation of location based services as being used in situations when you are far from home and need help finding where you are or what things around you you are wanting to buy or know more about. An interesting study, to be sure.

Speaking of LBS, the MobHappy crew recently posted an item claiming that LBS has finally "come of age."  I am not sure I believe them, but it is a pretty comprehensive review of the situation today, based in part from a new report from Berg Insight. More importantly, MobHappy has this suggestion, which I think is a good one, as far as it goes:

"If operators diverted 5% of the their massive marketing or R&D budgets to Nurturing Grants for these bright young companies, we’d see a real fast-forward effect that would benefit the whole value chain immeasurably." 

What comes to my mind is, rather than one time grants, how about revenue sharing deals that make sense and are the kind of things that would entice entrepreneurs into actually creating some content? iMode in Japan took this approach and it worked wonders for them. 

The second piece that caught my eye this past month comes from networked performance, a blog that I have mentioned here before but should do so again as it almost always seems to have something of value. In a posting from June 9th, they provide a link to an academic paper by Eric Gordon, looking at the way in which talk of virtual worlds - which dominated our early conversations about the web - has lately morphed into a more practical and grounded language of mapping and social spaces. You can download the full paper (PDF), or catch the summary here.

 A perfect example of this focus on social networking - which has moved from the web to the handset, as we have more and more data-capable phones, is this posting at Mobile Marketing Magazine about a whitepaper (registration required) from an application developer called Mobestar. The key, they believe, is not to concoct some new form of community but rather enable communities that either already exist or at least have a good reason for coming together.

Since I have been posting little items about my experience with the N80, I should perhaps start making a few other "phone gear" postings, or at least link to those who do. After all, as interesting as these application are, they won't run if there is no platform, right? WAP Review, a place with its fair share of geeky phone moments, has recently added some new links to its "phone fan" coverage. I can think of no better way to get pointers to such material than to point at their links.

Finally, one last item. This one is one context awareness, the premise behind the whole Mobile Muse project, and the topic of this posting from Wireless Wonders. Paul Golding, the author of Wireless Wonders, points out that in terms of context, tagging is the key to making it sensible and useful for people. He gives the example of a "coffee shop" being transformed into "meeting place" by virtue of tags that have been applied to that place by others. Now we have to get something, akin to ShoZu, that makes it as easy to "tag" things as it is to snap pictures of them (maybe taking inspiration from opentag projects like GUSSE.

Well, that's all for now...