Normally, each week I post lists on “Managing the Danger”, “Capturing the Power”, “Enabling Technology”, and “Indicators.”
However, this week, apparently due to the holiday mid-week, was a relatively slow news week, so each of these lists only has one or two items in it. Therefore, I’m going to wait until next weekend and will reflect two weeks worth of new items.
Have a great weekend!
The most convenient way that mobility is getting built into products is through the convergence of capabilities that previously existed as standalone products into the cellphone. That way, those products are now with you and available for your use whenever you need them wherever you go.
Techdirt is reporting that domain registrations for the .mobi TLD are lagging to the point that the .mobi folks have had to extend the registration period. Of course, this is no surprise to us, since:
a) There’s no need for a new domain – businesses just need to develop mobile-friendly versions of their site and use the existing web standards to automatically point mobile users to the mobile-friendly version, and
b) .mobi itself reflects the lack of understanding of its organizers since .mobi is one of the hardest TLDs to type on a mobile device (especially if the only input is a numeric keypad).
Jason Fry, in his column in the Wall Street Journal this week (subscription required), wrote about frustrating gaps between how we want the mobile world to work and how it really does. I share his frustrations. However, his article rambles quite a bit and reaches an inconsistent conclusion.
His first observations are about how we’ve come to enjoy the power of the Internet, and then he laments that that power isn’t yet available on mobile devices.
I had a recent experience with that frustration, which should be a lesson for any business. This weekend, my family and I went shopping. Before we left, I looked up online the address of a couple of businesses that I’d never been to but that I wanted to check out. My memory is lacking and I accidentally left at home the paper on which I’d written down the addresses, but the first place I wanted to try I remembered the general area it was in and, based on the address, believed I’d be able to see it while driving down a main thoroughfare.
Unfortunately, we didn’t see it, even after retracing our steps a couple of times.
No problem. I pulled out my PPC-6700 and typed in the web address for the chain of businesses, one of which I was looking for. The website format totally fell apart on the small screen of my Windows Mobile device, but I was able to find the form field to type in a zip code and the button to “Find Stores.” With my broadband connection, the resulting page quickly appeared, however, the dark blue left border of the web page completely covered up everything except the last few characters of the longest lines of each address, making it impossible to read anything.
As frustration and impatience grew within the car, we merely drove on to their competitor whose location I’d remembered well enough to find.
The mobile world failed, simply because the web developers of that global business had failed to accomodate the needs of a mobile user. As I’ve pointed out before, this is not such a hard problem to solve. Broad adoption of mobile-friendly adaptation of web content would be a huge first step towards making the Mobile World a better world.
But Mr. Fry doesn’t stop there. He spends most of the article talking about the cool use of a compass and GPS in a cellphone as embodied by GeoVector to enable information interaction in a real-world way that goes way beyond anything possible on the Web.
This is truly cool stuff and really points towards the power of mobility. I hope that these kinds of futures happen and that they happen soon.
But, Mr. Fry closes by blaming wireless providers for the fact they haven’t happened yet.
“If even GeoVector’s current services sound like science fiction, to an unfortunate extent they are — in the U.S. Why does it seem like our cellphones and PDAs do so much less than Japan’s? Blame a combination of factors — but above all, blame the four big U.S. wireless companies.”
Given that GeoVector only announced their technology on May 1 of this year, I think Mr. Fry needs to give wireless carriers time to adopt this new cool stuff.
Hopefully we’ll all soon by pointing and clicking on the real world (as GeoVector would describe it).
In the meantime, Mr. Fry and I could both benefit from learning to exercise some patience.
Happy 4th of July!
We in these United States of America set aside this day to celebrate the relative freedom that we have. The date is picked because of the linkage to the specific act of adopting a Declaration of Independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain under King George III. (Although, of course, these days Great Britain is a strong friend and ally of the Americans.)
The parts of that document that most often come to my mind are the noble words of “When in the course of human events…” and self-evident truths and that all men (and women) “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” including “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
These are strong and powerful words, containing concepts to which we should cling tightly.
But, in reality, most of the document is an indictment of how the King and his government had abused the American colonies and therefore stating their case for separation and independent sovereignty.
On this day, I propose that we begin work on creating a declaration of independence for mobility.
For those of us who believe passionately in mobility, I sense that much of what we value in mobility is the freedom that it brings us. But freedom from what? Do we feel oppressed when we don’t have mobility? Just as the Revolutionary War had been raging for over a year when the Continental Congress voted to adopt the American Declaration of Independence, the Mobility Revolution has begun, but it is far from won.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t really see mobility on the same level as democracy and freedom from oppression. I don’t truly equate this bloodless revolution with the ones in which real people die. Most of all, I’m too much of a coward to pledge my life, my fortune, or my sacred honor to this cause of freedom.
But I still see value in this exercise.
I set as a goal to have this declaration complete by August 2 since that was the day that most of signers put their names to the original Declaration of Independence. I hope you’ll help me over the coming weeks.
Are you with me?
A few side notes:
More and more, the world around us reflects the growing assumption of the law of mobility. Each week we will track indicators of Mobility’s growing importance in our businesses, our lives, and our society:
The Law of Mobility talks about value increasing with mobility. The impact of this law is being felt because the cost of adding mobility into products is falling, making it a no-brainer for mobility to be built into everything. Here are examples of technology advances enabling this to happen:
Research is good. Free highlights from expensive research reports are great. Here are some recent headlines:
Mobility is a wonderful thing. As mobility gets built into all products and services, businesses need to learn how to both capture the power of mobility and manage the dangers introduced through mobility. Here are some examples of how the power of mobility is being applied to create competitive advantage:
In order to be winners in the new mobile era, businesses will not only need to capture the power of mobility, but also manage the danger. Highlighted below are recent examples of the danger of mobility and how some firms are beginning to manage it: