who is using Mobile Web 2.0 and how can we understand them better?

Ever look at www.webware.com?

That's the sort of extensible AJAX rich stuff that SkyFire are trying to enable. There's a big camp that is looking to web 2.0 to inform what will work for mobile too.

i agree. i have a HTC TyTn II for a while which looked the better option than waiting for the iPhone when it came out - putting aside the hell of WM and driver failures in the device - the web experience has not changed my world. i put that down to site design and lack of clear thought about what a mobile user is actually doing with their day. The most exciting service i have used is Amazon - in a book shop, see a book, instant & clean route to price check and alternative purchase. brilliant. more services like this and people will use them. The neatest thing the phone does is GPS+G maps - real time positioning. however, the lack of simple integration with devices such as the camera etc, means that the fun of geo-tagging etc, is beyond me at the moment, which is crazy for such a lump of phone (also, the reality of GPS is that it only locks when you move, not when you stand still... but anyway).

one major issue with "mobile 2.0" is the shocking quality of the handsets. i have to reboot two or three times a day. some nokias make me glad i have a HTC. this is a material issue in advancing the platform. the average user is scared backwards from any service that locks or crashes their handset. until this position improves advances in the mobile web i think will be a lot slower than many people hope.

I had a similiar buying experience when I first used Ebay when I got a mobile on 3's X-series. I was on a bus to my sisters and decided to play with it, I wanted a new memory card for the device and I hadnt got round to buying one so I thought it would be a good test use case. Under 10 minutes I'd ordered one. Really drove home the point of having mobile sites designed to *do what you want them to do*.

I think what Google (with their whole suite, especially maps on Android) are doing is quite game changing, and a look at what the future has to offer. Let's take your GPS example. At the moment, geotagging is limited to the iPhone, a couple of handsets, and a hack. This quarter (next month) see Sony Ericsson releasing the C702 and Nokia the N96 and N78 which have geotagging as standard. This is going to usher in a new layer of meaningful data to social networking and blogging sites that take advantage of it properly. With the cost of GPS chips decreasing dramatically, it's going to be de rigeur soon imo.

You say that handset quaility/crashing is a major issue, but you also supplicate this by saying basically that 'them's the breaks' on the OS development road, and I couldnt agree more. I was thinking about Android yesterday after watching the demo video and made a short post about it.

The idea which excited me came out of thinking what untrammeled paths are left out there, and the mobile OS really is the one. Google are entering a Global market dominated by only a few OS manufacturers, and using the same deployment strategy as everyone else; deals with manufacturers/operators. But what if the OS was available for all the handsets capable of running it, by simply flashing your phone and over-writing the existing OS?

I, for one, would totally do it. a million mobile geeks out there would too, and more importantly, tens of thousands of coders will want to crack the driver/hardware problems that such a project would throw up. My point is, if a flashable Android OS was available, it would disrupt the entire OS/Manufacturer/Operator chain, whilst maintaining the Open principle which Google is rightly maintained as having in their approach.

I'm in Windows Mobile Hell on my T-Mobile Wing, but I hear rumors that this platform will run Android with very few issues--after Android gets a few driver bugs worked out. I'm not sure what kinds of problems would be solved by making room for a hardware abstraction layer on every phone, but it would certainly help developers provide a consistent level of quality across hardware models.

Windows Mobile, in particular, has nasty problems with resource management. It has memory leaks. Features will launch, try to do something, fail for one reason or another, and then stay resident (at least partially) in RAM and refuse to get garbage-collected. The RAM left, after a while, isn't enough to actually play a sound file or trigger the vibrator motor to let me know I have an incoming call. Sometimes this triggers an emergency garbage collection routine that doesn't really have time to finish before the caller hangs up. In a phone, not ringing when there's an incoming call is abject failure.

SKTools allows me to keep an eye on this process, but it really only tells me about when it's time to hit the reset button. I truly hope Android is better written.

I do have tons of ideas for what I see happening and what I'd love to see happen instead. And I certainly wouldn't mind tossing you an article. What's the submission process?

[*]

I must admit, I've never owned a microsshaft device, but what you're describing sounds like mobile *hell*, even Symbian let's you know when it's screwed. Would love you to submit a piece Laz, Ill email you direct on how to post.

I'm an avid user of the mobile second web. A large factor for me is that I'm constantly depending on battery powered devices and a 2.5/3 G connection, because I have no mains electricity and no phone line at home. One of the up/down-sides of being a river gypsy.

I use Opera Mini on a SonyEricsson K850 much of the time, especially if the laptops are all flat. Other than that I've got a Nokia 770 with both Gecko and Opera based browsers in ROM.

Most of the time, I just use the same sites and services I would do if I was sitting at a desk, although I have to get used to zooming in and out of pages in Opera Mini. It's rare to find something that I can't make work *at all*.

I have an issue with the quality of much of the mobile Java (j2me) content out there. Support requests disappear into the ether, I imagine because there are more users with Symbian and Windows Mobile operating systems out there.

Android is at a very early stage on the 770 and will probably never be usable. Still, why would I want to replace Linux on the device anyway?

wow, I never knew you lived on a river boat Tullis, bad ass!!

I really loved my Nokia 770, but I got it free and somehow have not been able to justify splashing out on an N800.

So would you say that you fall in the camp of "create a different site for an existing service which is specific to mobile requirements (this can still be using all the same dynamic content/data on the main site) or in the camp of Web fits on mobile (Opera Mini zoom etc.)

Web fits on mobile, easy.

Do away with the m.sitename addresses and the cut down versions of things.

Definitely don't do browser sniffing, because you won't be able to keep up.

Screens are getting bigger, touchscreen sales are going through the roof and predictably, Windows gets buggier day by day, not that that has anything to do with it.

If Internet Explorer supported SVGs, there would be a different design model already, I think.

it's funny, your points 1 and 2 above basically mean - there's no reason for there to BE a "mobile" internet :)

I personally think the form factor is going to be the biggest shift in the next 3-5 years - clamshells and 320x240 will be a thing of the past. People will get used to a larger form; it might mean they dont fit as easily in the pocket, but a 640x480 screen with a nice juicy processor and something like Skyfire running and you've got what amounts to a laptop with a sim card.

My mobile web (per se, rather than the whistles'n'bells 2.0 type) experience has been rubbish thus far. Maybe, as an avid consumer with a desktop PC set up just the way I like it, to be limited to no-Flash versions of sites, or horiffically limited implementations (m.Facebook is basically just a webmail system) or - worst of all - a completely inept attempt at mobile experience (have you tried multimap?) it leaves me dispirited and - as a previous commenter has mentioned - going 'non-mobile' version.. or just giving up (I have still FAILED to upload to Flickr a photo I took on my phone.. why? Because any aoftware that IS available comes packaged for ActiveSync installation and it ignores the pics I've emailed) and waitng till I get back to my desktop.

Perhaps this is a grumbly, unobjective response, but it's timely, since I've spent this week with just my Samsung i600 and an E-GSM connection (not a river gypsy.. just on holiday!)

But I don't just come with problems.. my solution? A unified platform (hmm.. could I get Android working on this?) which integrates the rich web experience that we get on our desktops down to 320x240.. isn't that what CSS is for? Flash? Air? Silverlight? I think perhaps Smartphones are further down the pecking order than developing for Mac OS X.. can you believe you still have to run Safari in Rosetta mode to get Shockwave to work?

I'll stop now before I end up in a kniption.. in a Morrisons cafe of all places...

There's definitely something on the Horizon to bring rich web stuff to mobiles. You've got Firefox (Moz.) coming, you've got the Skyfire guys (who if they port to Symbian successfully are going to make a *lot* of money), and I know for a fact that some *very* interesting things are about to start happening with a Large Mobile Phone Manufacturer and Silverlight.

It's a sad state of affairs, but I do think that overall there is a promise of much better things to come, and sooner rather than later. But then I've always been an optimist.

Who makes Large Mobile Phones any more?

I checked out Skyfire and it does look interesting, but again there is no J2me version. It doesn't even feature on the list.

Out in the cold again.

from my own experiences and discussing it with "non technical" friends, and even my mother over the last few years i think that mobile services will have a wide market, but they have to 1) have a simple clear purpose, with few bells and whistles 2) work quickly and efficiently 3) look solid, not necessarily pretty, but solid. 4) come from a trusted brand

screens are very hard to read for non-techies, especially mobile screens, and this needs to be born in mind.
- Clarity
- Simplicity
- Efficiency
are far, far more important on mobile where you simply will never get the chance to have a flashy "how to" demo, or lots of screen navigation hints etc. its got to be 1-2-3-done.

platform has a lot to do with this. WM IE is a crime against users. the OS leaks like a government department.

in a sense you may not need traditional browser - just some kind of widget interface. service not formatting. get the job done with minimum expression.

Nice summation Charlie

"the OS leaks like a government department."

pffffffffffft