Rough notes for Chris Heathcote — A mobile Internet manifesto

It isn’t Nokia pol­i­cy, he’s try­ing to be provocative.

1b inter­net 2b mobile user 5b unconnected

many net­works, you’ll be con­nect­ed to the internet

100% voice, 50% java, 10% native apps

these are not barriers:

dis­play device speed text entry net­work speed

1000 bln. text mes­sages in 2005

we might be the last gen. that uses querty

fixed 1000M wire­less 100M fixed inter­net 10M wire­less inter­net 1M

peo­ple want ter­abyte speed, we need to think what’s good enough now

we’re there already

bar­ri­ers: data cost, bat­tery life, 2 hour prob­lem, smart networks

a pic­ture used to cost 15 euros to upload

fixed price is real­ly impor­tant in data

bat­tery has­n’t seen inno­va­tion like the rest of mobile tech.

in the west we’re always less than 2 hours away from a “real” computer

David S. Isen­berg: fat pipe, always on, get out of the way

assump­tion is that mobile phones can’t work in a dumb net­work, rich client sutuation

they are

mobile inter­net does not exist!

good mobile browsers, they’re here

oth­er impor­tant stuff: smart clients — easy to devel­op: Flash Lite, Python

brows­er is like swiss army knife

E.g.: Back­pack. Nice web app. He’s been try­ing to make a mobile ver­sion of Backpack. 

Why is that different?

He can’t release it pub­licly yet, but he will soon.

PC + mobile: home + away

They’re far more use­ful togeth­er than seperate

What’s use­ful? 10 x eas­i­er 10 x cheap­er 10 x a day

Mind like water (GTD) mobile is excel­lent for this, you can action them

Mobile is social

Timekilling? Com­pe­ti­tion: books, iPods, etc.

Social is more inter­est­ing, you want to take those ele­ments from web apps to mobile

Inter­net is push + pull

Demo time!

Mobile web brows­er: access to all kinds of phone stuff. 

He loves it, he wants to see peo­ple build stuff with it.

Out of sight mes­sage: because he want­ed a domain he’s going through a proxy.

Not being online all the time is inter­est­ing from a pres­ence point of view.

no need for sep­a­rate mobile sites

basic acces­si­bil­i­ty and web stan­dards still rule

lots of web­sites are assum­ing users have lots of band­width — that’s bad on both the web and mobile

data is very impor­tant (use­ful data)

APIs are great, XML is great, as long as they work

we’re not spe­cial: Google tries to be help­ful by forc­ing you into the mobile version

Don’t repur­pose con­tent for mobile. 

Peo­ple are peo­ple… they’re the same. They have the same needs. Make sure they have access.

Cre­ate mobile sites. Aim at the 2b, not the 1b. 

Mobile is going to be the main way to access the inter­net in the future.

Voice is inter­est­ing as well. 

Q One thing you men­tioned is flat rates. We can’t solve it as devs. Any ideas to force car­ri­ers to do it? A Car­ri­ers aren’t as uncan­ny as you think. They real­ize that mon­ey can be made from flat rate. 

Sites can be built for mobile using web stan­dards eas­i­ly. That’s key.

Q What do you need for the mobile Back­pack? A The series 60 phones run­ning Python. We want to open source it so peo­ple can port it.

http://reboot.dk/wiki/AmobileInternet_manifesto

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Kars Alfrink

Kars is a designer, researcher and educator focused on emerging technologies, social progress and the built environment.

4 thoughts on “Rough notes for Chris Heathcote — A mobile Internet manifesto”

  1. Pingback: pasta and vinegar
  2. Can you please tell what this is all about it just looks like ran­dom aspects to me. I got sec­tioned for this kind of think­ing lol.

    Is this the same Chris Heath­cote who works for orange and the one who let peo­ple track him via his mobile phone and website? 

    It feels like some­ones try­ing to steal my Mojo.

  3. These are run­ning notes from a pre­sen­ta­tion of Chris Heath­cote on the mobile inter­net at last year’s Reboot con­fer­ence in Copen­hagen, Den­mark. More on Chris can be found at Anti-Mega, his per­son­al site. Hope this helps.

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