Oatmeal Stout – Justin Thorp’s blog

So… yesterday, when I found the link to get early access to the iPhone 2.0 software, of course I tried it and loaded it up right away.  (Yes, I am that guy.)

I then proceeded to download a bunch of apps to my phone.

Now there are just some apps that I don’t get why they are apps.  For example, there is Facebook and the New York Times.  Their iPhone apps are almost exactly the same as their iPhone Web site.

As the implementations of mobile Web browsers improve across mobile phones, increasing the use of new Web technologies (better CSS and JavaScript), there is a chance you’ll be able to use the iPhone Web site again.

I can’t imagine that Apple will ever license the iPhone OS so you’ll never be able to see your iPhone app used on anything but an iPhone.

Now I can understand Sega’s Super Monkeyball.  That is a REALLY fun game for the iPhone.  I can’t imagine you’ll be able to do that with a browser for a long long long time so I understand if you wanna make that an iPhone app.

But… why does Twitteriffic need to be an iPhone app? Didn’t we get EXACTLY the same thing with Hahlo?  Actually, I think Hahlo has more and better functionality.

With iPhone 3G, a lot of the speed, responsiveness, and interactivity issues with iPhone Web sites should be resolved.

Yeah… so when you start to think about time and resources around whether your company should build an iPhone app, ask yourself whether or not you’re doing it because it’s cool or you’ll get a lot of people to use it.

Am I crazy?  What do you think?

On Monday, geeks from around the world watched with baited breath as Apple CEO Steve Jobs, in addition to announcing the 3G iPhone, gave a status update on iPhone 2.0 which will include 3rd party software apps.

They software apps they demo’d were awesome and showed the amazing breadth of what you’ll be able to do with the iPhone.

BUT… I wonder if all this interest in creating 3rd party software apps for the iPhone will quell interest in creating Web apps.

While the promise of iPhone software apps leaves me with glee, it also kind of bums me out.  Why would you want to create something that can only be used on device?

I can’t imagine that Apple will ever license their iPhone software out to other hardware manufacturers.  If you make a software app for the iPhone, it will always stay on the iPhone.

While the promise of the Web is that if the browser makers and the Web publishers both adhere to standards, you’ll have no problem using the content or application no matter what device your on.

The biggest problem with Web apps on the iPhone 1.0 was that the connection was too slow.  You really desired for better interactivity and response when you did something.  Well, having 3G in the iPhone should fix a lot of this.

I wonder if just like with the computer, where we saw a generation of apps first start off as software and then move to the Web (mail, office productivity), if we’ll see the same with mobile and the iPhone.

What do you think? If you were to create an app for the iPhone would you do it as a software or a Web app?  If software, are you comfortable with being so silo’d?

This is really cool.  The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Mobile Web Initiative (MWI) has just release as Web Compatibility Test for Mobile Browsers. It tests against compatibility with twelve different Web technologies.

Point your phone’s browser to: http://dev.w3.org/2008/mobile-test/test.html.

If you see twelve green boxes, your mobile browser has passed the test.

Here’s hoping that this compatibility test will cause the same level of competition among mobile browser vendors as the release of Acid 3 did for desktop browser vendors.

Last Wednesday,  I popped up to New York City to fill in for our CEO, where he was scheduled to speak at a conference.  I had never to be to NYC before so I especially jumped at the opportunity.

In NYC, I felt pretty overwhelmed.  Everything is way bigger and more packed then Washington DC.  Felt like if you stopped on the side walk for more then 5 seconds you were going to get run over.  Yet, I needed to be able to find my way around.

My iPhone quickly became my best friend.

To be able to pull up Google Maps was amazing!  With the triangulation feature, it was able to pull up where I was and use that as a base for the search.  I could find a landmark or place super quickly.

I felt like I could maneuver my way through NYC without much of a problem.

It really demonstrated to me the power of having the Web in your pocket.

At WidgetDevCamp, I floated the idea of doing a iPhone SDK Dev Camp. Seems like there was some interest for it then.

Now that the Apple iPhone SDK is out, I’ve already gotten a few folks asking about it. One of the reasons I thought this would be cool is because it’s so new we’d all be starting at the same place.

Drop me a comment if you’d wanna attend this event.

On Friday, I was walking out the door on my way to work and I realized that I hadn’t seen this week’s episode of LOST yet.  I stopped what I was doing ran over to my computer, bought LOST on Apple iTunes, and waited 15 minutes as it downloaded.  I then put it on my iPhone and went about my merry way.

Seems like things just aren’t where they need to be.

I’d get a season pass to LOST on iTunes but I only use laptops and I’m always running out of space on my hard drives.

I want some type of easy media server type of solution that will hold all of my media but when I sync my laptop and my iPhone I can pull media off of the server and put it on my iPhone.

It’d also be nice if there was a way to buy TV shows on the fly from the iPhone so that while I was walking to the subway it could have been downloading.  It’d also be nice if my phone could pull TV shows off of my media server.  I know with current cellular technology this isn’t possible but it’d be nice.

Jupiter Research just released a new study which says the Mobile Web is growing.  As reported by Online Media Daily, “SOME 40% OF WEB SITE operators have launched mobile sites and another 22% plan to do so in the next year.”

Will 2008 be the year of the Mobile Web?

I have been playing with the social wine site Cork’d since right around day one.  Anything that brings wine together with Web 2.0 is great in my book but I have to say the site doesn’t fit or integrate well into my life.

I started off really strong using Cork’d.  I was reviewing wines, adding wines to my “shopping list”, and friending people.  But… alas alack… pretty quickly my level of activity went down dramatically.

I’d drink a glass of wine but by the time I got back to my computer to type in my review I would have forgotten all of my thoughts and review.  I started writing down my thoughts about wine in a little notebook but the thoughts never made there way from the notebook to Cork’d.

Only if I had some type of mobile computing device which allowed me to input data in a simple manner that also had Web access…. just happens that I along with a few others on the planet carry a mobile phone… and mine has Web access.

I think it’d be a completely different story for Cork’d if there were some type of mobile Web site I could access to type in quick thoughts about a wine I just tried.

I find myself taking photos of wine labels with my camera phone all the time.  What if you could take a photo of a wine label, type some thoughts, put it in a MMS message and send it to a service where it’d be store for later?  It seems like that’d be such a simple way of capturing my thoughts about a wine in a way that’d integrate well with my life.

Cork’d can tell me what wines my friends are drinking and even allows me to create a shopping list.  But in order to take the shopping list with you to the wine or grocery store, i’d have to print it off or write it down… that’s so 1995.  What if you could access the wine shopping list from your mobile phone?  Even better… what if your phone knew what wines were being sold or in stock at the store that you were going to and would adjust your shopping list accordingly.

Cork’d has SOOO much potential.  Wine is such a social object.  Someone’s review of the wine is another social object…. I just think that for a service like this the capture of explicit feedback needs to better integrate with my life.

People talk about the impending social media revolution.  I’m here to tell you that you’re already amidst another revolution that’s more fundamental and just as big if not bigger…

Figures released by industry analyst Informa Telecoms & Media reveal that worldwide mobile penetration will hit 50 per cent – or around 3.3 billion subscriptions – today, just over 26 years since the first cellular network was launched.

It’s the mobile revolution.  Around the world, people are using the mobile phone as the preferred method of accessing information.

You need to pay attention to this.   The mobile phone and the mobile Web is such an exciting medium.  The thing is… it’s also very different.

More on this later…

Mobile Monday DC is a group within the Washington DC tech community who doesn’t get talked about as much but has been putting on some great talk about what’s happening in the mobile industry.

This month Mobile Monday DC is giving a WiMax 101 talk, which I’m sure will prove to be informative.  The meeting is December 10th at 6pm at the Teqcorner in McLean, VA.

Being a carless Washingtonian, I’m not sure whether i’ll be able to make it out there.   If you live out in that area, you should go.  I know you’ll have fun and you’ll probably learn something.