8.12.2008

Travel and mobile devices

The best thing about mobile devices is we can use them as we travel. The worst thing is, when we move a little, it usually doesn’t have the infrastructure needed to function. For example, I can think of the Blackberry I’ve been testing for a few weeks. Receiving emails anywhere and being able to answer them is indeed an extraordinary working tool. Until we reach the GPRS (the standard GSM net, the most used in mobile phones) net covered area. That is, we can’t go too far away from urban areas, or our Blackberry will not have signal. Not to mention notebook computers and its WiFi needs, or even count on normal signal on mobile phones. There are many mobile devices, but at least in most of Latin America, the basic infrastructure is limited to more populated areas.
Now well, many people are surprised that the Net doesn’t have more travel related applications that can be executed from a mobile device. There are tools such as Splash Travel, available for Palm OS, but not much more. I believe such absence is absolutely logical. What’s the point in creating such a social network that work in a mobile device for travelers, when most of the planet lacks of ubicuous locations to Internet? Even if Wimax started to expand rapidly, the possibility of internet connection available in most of the country is a long, 10 years perspective, or longer. Will web applications for mobile devices take that long to arrive? In our region, in the south of the world, it’s most likely. In Europe, where distances are shorter, they will appear much sooner -and in fact, tests of social networking for mobile phones are already being done in this area of the world.
If you want to read more about the topic of Mobile 2.0 - that is, the arrival of collaborative and participative tools for mobile devices- you can read the excellent summary published by Read/Write Web (thanks to Juan Pablo Paradelo for the info).

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