Interview Hein van der Wielen, BlueMango from Erwin Boogert on Vimeo.

Read more

It started with handhelds

I always loved handhelds. I was one of the first ones who wasted all his money, made on a weekend postal job, on a PSION series 3 and later a Palm 3. Lots more followed and they became integrated with a phone and internet. With the coming of 3G, the iPhone and the google android devices, a user friendly mobile internet for the masses is near. But what will everyone use when mobile internet is widely available?

Evolution of the handheld device

This small super functional flat boxes are not addictive to me anymore but remain a passion. Right now I’m in a really interesting company, Logia, that specializes in Mobile content. Internet on your phone is widely available and will do nothing else but grow. I can check my Gmail and Google Calendar on my Nokia 6120 stamp sized screen. The tiny buttons, the screen and the user interface are so incredibly crap, no matter how good the application is written I just don’t feel like using it. It is frustrating and makes me want to accidentally drop it in the meat grinder my wife uses to make meatballs.

And then there was the iPhone. Finally a company that dared to break with all the norms and came up with something great! Personally, I would really like to see a blackberry alike keyboard attached or build in to the iPhone but I think the android phones are covering that part of the market.

The advertising industry will sponsor the mobile internet

Huge changes are taking place in the advertising industry. I don’t know about you but I just don’t watch ads on TV anymore or TV for that matters. They show me products I have no interest in and they annoy me while I’m trying to relax after a long day at work and putting the kids to bed. The google and facebook concept of showing ads based on your interest is definitely the future of advertising.

It is not difficult to guess that mobile phone advertising is not far away and an even bigger industry than the regular internet advertising. Worldwide there are much, much more people with a mobile phone than computers.

How will we use it?

The next big thing is when the public will get in-expensive user-friendly mobile internet devices (like the iPhone or android machines). When using internet on your mobile becomes as normal as you use your web browser now.

How will people use the mobile internet?

• Easy look up of local businesses and services. The phonebook, yellowpages in paper form will finally become obsolete. I would especially enjoy mobile sites of restaurant ratings (imagine when you’re in a town you don’t know).
• Emailing, Chat(formerly known as sms) will remain one of the most popular function besides talking
• Navigator or trip planners: Why do you think Google invests so much in their maps functionality?
• You get coupons in your mail when you are close to a store of your interest
• Posting to your social network, blog (text, foto, video)
• Download music, movies, tv series, ring tones, themes. I expect that it will be possible to hook your mobile up to a bigger screen to display a movie
• Gaming

Will content licensing be a great answer to all the bad rewrites or clueless tries.

Open ID

The Open ID project is a great initiative. Imagine you can login into all of your application sites (facebook, google apps, vimeo, flickr, blogger, msn) with only one username and password.

Right now if I change my password for gmail I have to go through all my frequently used sites and change each password or I’ll forget or mix up logins. If you use OpenID you only have to change it in one place. Which is nice when you probably have at least 5 or more logins for different frequently used sites).

Too many open IDs

I really like the single sign on concept but the reality shows that we’re not there yet. Several big players “work” with openID but I still cannot login with my selfmade openID url johndoe.myopenid.com. I can not use it when I login to google apps, facebook or flickr who all “work” with openID.

They all have an integration with openID. Google gives you a beta link that you can use in an open id login field so you can use your google account to login into for example basecamp or plaxo. BUT Facebook has the same functionality and Yahoo also!. So yes you can login to open id enabled sites but you cannot use your google openid to login to flickr or facebook and vice versa and thus ruining the whole “open” concept.

Beautiful use of single sign on

I use Basecamp and could change my existing login name into my Open ID account within minutes also works with the google openid. Very nice since I use different basecamp and Highrise accounts and now I have three username/password combinations less to worry about.

You can almost touch it

The whole Single sign on dream seems near and you can almost touch it. Why wouldn’t google give access to their applications with a facebook account and vice versa? I guess they rather promote their own social network orkut then to make it easy for us the poor users. Would someone really move to orkut because of an extra password?

Still I hope that the OpenID project will succeed. I don’t like the idea of all Single SIgn on ID with one company like Facebook, Google or Microsoft. Just doesnt’ seem right that all this data is with a commercial institution.

Interesting article about Facebook Connect and Google Friends

I heard stories about a control freak Steve Jobs and expected a detached from reality kind of person. But this speech makes me not only love the Apple brand but also admire the person.