Speaking at Digital Lifestyle Day 06

5 Comments

Digital Lifestyle Day 06 Hubert Burda Media is organizing Digital Lifestyle Day 06 in Munich on January 23-24. They’ve invited 200 people to ‘discuss the connected worlds, the digital consumer and Europe’s role in innovation.’

I want to discuss the need for a new approach to mobile devices. I’m not thinking phones but devices that have internet built into their DNA. With Martin Varsavsky around, I’m hoping this will trigger some fruitful discussion.

But I’m still wondering what form the talk should take. My first choice at the moment is to try to develop a set of design principles for the next generation of mobile. Suggestions, anyone?

Comments

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Henriette weber Andersen
December 21st, 2005 at 12:04 am (#)

Do you mean technical design or aestical design ? I would love to come with suggestions… but let me know what you are looking for *s*

Max Niederhofer
January 5th, 2006 at 8:18 am (#)

Cool, I’ll see you there!
Max

Joey Valdez
January 12th, 2006 at 10:47 pm (#)

Hi Jyri!
Saw your stuff on 43Things….I’m also doing stuff on how to leverage social networks within organizations and improve process improvement efforts (especially in addiction treatment agencies). Cool blog! Could you be a “guest blogger” in my blog?
Joey
http://magis.blogs.com

Gerd
January 16th, 2006 at 3:37 am (#)

Jyri,
I like the idea of identifying design principles for mobile “devices that have internet built into their DNA”. However, I see the device as less important than the network. We don’t currently have a true mobile Internet because the mobile phones networks are restricted in so many ways because they are controlled by network providers. For example there is no universal addressing scheme for mobile phones that could be used by application developers to build the kind of end-to-end applications that are common on the Internet.
Mobile network providers are not used to seeing independent application developers as an asset. The results is that small creative developers are shut out and do not have direct access to users and markets.
Elevating mobile devices to the status of true Internet devices requires following proven Internet standards and opening up the phone networks so that developers can use their creativity to come up with new services that people want to use.
-Gerd

Jyri
January 22nd, 2006 at 12:19 pm (#)

I think it’s hard to say if it’s handsets or networks that drive / inhibit the change. There’s this yin-yang play going on. I also think it’s important to emphasize that networks ARE changing, most importantly because unlicensed band is becoming a real alternative. Last year a number of devices were introduced that use unlicensed band: for instance, the UTStarcom F1000 Vonage phone, the Accton Skype phone, and the Nokia 770 internet tablet (there are more coming). Muni networks are gaining more traction, and 802.11n promises better performance and coverage.
But if we want true mobility (and most people do), the devices will still need to access some wide-area cellular (or satellite) network that very likely operates in licensed band. So most likely the cellular operators won’t go away entirely. There are alternatives on the cellular network front too, like EVDO.