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April 18, 2007
Secret sauce for designing mobile web apps
Posted by Tommi at 10:16 AM |
Categories: Internet stuff
Once again, Michael Mace makes a great point:
The way mobile web apps need to work is that they download the full app and a copy of your data to your device, so you can work independently. Then in the background, they should sync the data whenever you're connected.
Why on earth?
Two reasons:
1. Spotty coverage of high-speed data networks (the original reason identified by Michael)
2. Costs: getting free bandwidth from WiFi oases (the reason identified by Charlie Schick)
Now, go and design me an RSS reader that works like this. And make it so that it works across my S60 device, home computer, and work computer (which has access to Nokia internal RSS feeds), so that I don't have to see the same items multiple times.
Comments
This sounds exactly like how blackberries are so successful as well as what the new Adobe apollo is attempting to easily bring to web developers. I totally agree and still after 2 years of Symbian miss some of the features of the blackberry.
Posted by: dpitkinRegarding your RSS idea, it sounds great. I would love this.
The difficulty is, what technology do you use for it?
Everyone uses something different at the desktop, so you can't choose something like a Firefox plugin at the desktop since not everyone uses it. Obviously people may be using Windows, Linux or OS-X at the desktop as well, so the desktop component has to be cross-platform too... Then there is the mobile platform to consider...
Outside of that, perhaps you could have a consolidation service on the web, kind of like del.icio.us, but for RSS feeds, or something like Google offers with it's Reader service, but then make this information available as a Web Service. Then, whatever client you have, you could write a plug-in for it to work with the service and synch on whatever platform... Then people could add their plug-ins over time as they are created and have everything covered...
Does this sound like the right approach? If only they'd put Mono onto the S60, then I could do the lot... ho hum...sorry for rambling... D.
Posted by: Darren | April 20, 2007 08:09 PMYou were just trying to trick me, and I fell for it -- a version of the S60 browser (clearly not the version I have) now allows you to read your feeds offline..... So, how does the rest work? Synching with my PC etc..? ;)
Posted by: Darren | April 20, 2007 08:22 PMTwo interesting little point on apps that cache some local state that Nokia may wish to consider.
#1 There are two mapping applications installed on my n95. Search (which can download maps) and Maps (which can search for points of interest). You have two parallel developments which should be collapsed into one. The awful thing is that Search has better maps than Maps (particularly where I live in the Isle of Man, GB).
Posted by: RNC | April 27, 2007 07:21 PM#2 given the great web & wifi connectivity and the existence of Symbian installers for the n95, can we have maploader builtin to the multimedia terminals.
WidSets... they are the right people to do EXACTLY this, and do it super well. Because if they don't they will lose to ZenZui and other competitors (even on S60 platform)
I love WidSets, except that it's not perfect and that it's a bit slow (but still fast enough, for me at least)
Posted by: Jake | May 2, 2007 09:13 PM