Mobile Appropriation

Technologies are often designed for a particular purpose, but can also be put into other context for unintended use. One of the upcoming technology that would be coming to our libraries soon would be the use of 3D barcodes to provide library users the ability to use their mobile phones to record which books they need to find in the shelves.

Another use in the academia domain is the use of 3d barcodes applied in electronic retrieval of documents. This can be in form of displaying a 3d barcode in library listings which after using a mobile to capture, will download the PDF document to the phone.

Another idea is the use of 3d barcodes to book a movie or download a song. Lets propose a scenario in which after using your phone camera to capture the 3d barcode from either a bus station advertising board or magazine ad, you are directed to a catalogue to choose which song to download or which theatre you want to watch that movie (and also provide the option of viewing a trailer) after selecting it, you can use your mobile phone to download the song, or buy the movie ticket.

By providing an easy way to generate 3d barcode allows the technology to be appropriated and put into context of unintended uses.

http://www.engadget.com/2007/04/13/in-intels-future-we-wear-computers-still-have-to-work-and-exer/

Adding value to lifestyle - The key to mobile appropriation

This may also seem very relevent to the directions in which Nokia is moving towards. Having their E-series and N-series mobile phones diverging into different arenas of target audience. Adding value to a particular lifestyle, hence catering the technologies that would most likely be useful for them.

More is needed to be done in order to identify the various lifestyle and needs of the users and cater mobile applications to their needs. An 'identity' has to be associated with the mobile technologies they use, be it fashion or function.

Appropriation in Action
It Suits me
It Shows me
It Knows me
It Reminds me
It Goes with me
It Speaks to me
It Connects me
It Lets me to be me

At the ITU TELECOM WORLD 2006 held in Hong Kong, a number of mobile phone companies showed off their concept of the next generation phones. The evolution of mobile technologies will allow more appropriation to users as users get more technologically educated.

New technologies include integrating RF-ID readers into phones so that phones can read information that is embedded in the environment. Such as a RF-ID that is implemented on products and posters can display the relevent information. A practical example is where a movie poster with RF-ID chip can display session times and nearest location of the movie theatre that shows the movie.

Phones are becoming more of an assistive tool, or a computer, that has the functionality of mobile communication.
The different designs of handheld devices are at the dawn of a merge, by which PDA are becoming phones, and phones are expanding its functionality to becoming more like PDAs. Thus, how will the merging and emergence of new technology influence the appropriation of technology? Hence, how will users use these new technology in ways that are unintended by the designers, or how will they combine the technologies to perform tasks that are never thought of by their creators. These will be areas to explore and focus on.

A wikipedia explaination of Mobile development

Seems to sum up all the technologies in a good matrix

Following the link below:

Wikipedia: Mobile technologies summarised

Nearly missed out on considering MS Windows Mobile devices.
This includes a whole range of smartphones, PDAs, Portable Media players etc.

Development will be based on the .NET platform.

http://www.microsoft.com/australia/windowsmobile/default.mspx

Another Link for a series of webcast by Rory @ Microsoft to teach you on the development of Windows Mobile 5

http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=209784

Macromedia / Adobe released Flash Lite as a mobile platform for their reowned Flash technology.

The current release of Flash Lite 2.0 is not capable of communicating with Bluetooth, Infrared or the camera on a phone. Hence, restricting the interactivity between users. It acts more like a web-service, able to communicate through GPRS/3G networks.

The following link will provide a list of application that won the Mobile Flash Content Contest, most of which utilise web-services to provide users with information that are useful on-the-go:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/devices/articles/flashlite_winners.html


A presentation by Chanda at the BREW2006 conference outlines a few specifics of this technology:
http://brew.qualcomm.com/brew_bnry/pdf/events/brew_2006/tech501_chanda_creatingflash.pdf#search=%22flash%20lite%20capability%22

Previous distributions of Netbeans Mobility Pack were unable to support Mac.
According to the blog link below, by using the most recent build of Netbeans 6 and mobility pack 6, Mac users will also be able to develop J2ME apps.

http://blogs.sun.com/lukas/entry/zip_distribution_of_mobility_pack

http://blog.no-panic.at/2006/04/13/j2me-development-on-netbeans-50-in-mac-os-x/
*When configuring the Preverify details, remember to avoid the smart quotes and use your own "quotes" (hence, dont copy n paste)*

Alternatively, Jbuilder 2006 also offers support of J2ME development. However, a release for Mac OS is not yet available.

http://www.borland.com/downloads/download_jbuilder.html