It’s been heartening to see some glimmer of hope on the Microsoft Windows Mobile horizon (in spite of disheartening trends). The announcements at Mobile World Congress this week show that Microsoft is at least trying to improve their offering, with UI improvements in Windows Mobile 6.5 as well as various integration strategies including My Phone (hey what’s that rhyme with…), Marketplace (think AppStore) and Skyline (for pushing personal and work email). All good stuff.
But the glaring omission of course is any announcements about location on Windows Mobile. Whilst Google continues (or is that finalizes?) setting the foundation for location aware mobile platforms, Microsoft is still playing catch-up. Although I do note Google’s slowdown on the Dodgeball front :-).
Location based search and advertising have been the ‘next big thing’ for the last 2 years or so now. I’m interested to see what (if anything) Microsoft announces along these lines. Current technology (including GPS, cell tower and wireless triangulation) still appears inaccurate (eg only within 100s of metres) but the game is changing rapidly. Better technology exists (eg local company Seeker Wireless), and is easy to incorporate.
Shortly we (and the mobile services we use and share via) will know exactly where we are – and we’ll look back and wonder how on earth we survived without it.
Windows Mobile 7.0 perhaps?
(via Mary Jo Foley)
[…] more than a decade. And recently the talk has reached mainstream discussion. But most of that talk (myself included) has been about location enabled services.Google on the other hand – with patents like the one […]