The Gartner Hype Report has some interesting analysis of where various technologies currently lie along the hype curve.

Particularly interesting to me is the analysis of LBS.

Location-aware technologies should hit maturity in less than two years. Location-aware technology is the use of GPS (global positioning system), assisted GPS (A-GPS), Enhanced Observed Time Difference (EOTD), enhanced GPS (E-GPS), and other technologies in the cellular network and handset to locate a mobile user.

Location-aware applications will hit mainsteam adoption in the next two to five years.

Nextel phones in the US already have exposed the location API to developers. Lots of other devices are using them now for finding friends or getting info on various locations.

Interesting, they also state that maintstream adoption of the semantic web is five to ten years away. I’m surprised that they predict so far out with the growing support for Microformats and other semantic technologies that are being used by Yahoo, Technorati, and search engines such as Swoogle which require content to already exist in order to have something to search. See the article Geospatial Semantic Web Blog: Pinging the Semantic Web for some more discussion on how to spread the use of the semantic web using ping services

Mobile applications are teetering on the edge of what will be Web 3.0. Web2.0 showed us that web-applications can be as full-featured as their desktop counter-parts with the added benefit that we don’t have to download and maintain the application and also carry our data between various computers.

Previous mobile applications were relegated to simple applications, or Brew/J2ME applications that were carrier specific, limited in use, and non-upgradeable. By contrast, full featured mobile web browsers like Opera Mobile provide a common base to deploy applications via web interfaces. This could be compared to the effect a standards based, open-browser like Firefox spawned Web2.0. Give users a single, stable application, and developers a common framework in which to deploy the UI for applications, and things will happen.

This article on Getting Mobile, by Brian Fling of BlueFlavor is a good introduction to some of the current hurdles in developing a mobile application or site.

What is particularly scary is the control mobile carriers have in North America. This was definitely illustrated for the niche geo-market at Where2.0, where US mobile operators refuse to open the location-interface for mobile phones (except Nextel, and limited Nokia phones).

However, I think this is the same powerplay that Microsoft was pulling in the ’90s. Standards and open-platforms will emerge that will enable developers and companies to provide various tools and utilities to users on the go.

Picoformats, are like Microformats, but smaller.

Specifically, where a microformat is full XHTML, which I mentioned here previously, a Picoformat is a standard-means for defining markup in small, probably mobile, devices. They are not necessarily in XHTML, and probably not, as XHTML is rather heavy and takes up a lot of screen/memory space. Additionally, writing out long-bits of info take too long on a limited form factor like a phone.

An example Picoformat is the “@” symbol used in an SMS to then specify a location, such as in Flagr or Dodgeball.

Another solution might be something like Zlango’s “picture” dictionary. Using a standard - though rather varied - set of icons, 2 people can “draw out” a message, across language barriers, and convey large amounts of information with minimal clicks. I highly recommend you try out their Zlangulator.

Technorati Tags: microformats, mobile, picoformats, sms, zlango

Greetings from Prague. The trip is going great - and don’t mind the 30Kr Pivo ($1.20USD 0.5L beers). I have limited internet access, so difficult to upload some of the great shots I’ve gotten.

While traveling, I can imagine an incredibly useful technology, where you could rent small handheld GPS receivers & maps that were pre-loaded with sites & tours of a city. As you wonder the city, interesting historical facts pop-up, and routes to sites, hotels, restaurants, etc. show up as well. The device would be small and inexpensive. Perhaps rentable from a central location and as you traveled to different cities, you jacked it into a booth and it uploaded new information. Then when you return the unit, your actual travel logs are downloaded and emailed to you or burned on a CD. Then you would have a time history track of your travels and sites. You could even make your own bookmarks & notes of locations.

I think this is what Schmap (Dynamic travel guides) is, though I haven’t gotten to try out my demo cd that recently came in the mail. However, this still requires a full computer to use.

Off to see a bone church & then to Budapest.

Last night I got to attend a talk given by Robin Chase, Founder and Former CEO of Zipcar. Her talk was titled “Sustainable Transportation and Accessibility Research & Transformation”, where she discussed how to decrease the impact of transportation on the environment and also using new transportation paradigms (such as shared car ownership) as a vehicle for bringing out mesh networks.

Mesh networks are simple: everything is a sensor and can connect to other sensors. She referred to it as “Ad Hoc Wireless networking”, but I think that confuses the issue, because then people start thinking it just means WiFi everywhere.

What it really means is that all of these sensors and network devices can talk to one another, gather, share, and use information. For example, if every car was a member of the mesh network, they would all share traffic information, road conditions, and driver destination, perhaps. Then your in-dash display would update real-time traffic ahead of you as each of these cars shared their data. Also, you may be able to get internet down the line as you all shared a common network system.

Other examples that have popped up in the past include finding potential mates/friends around you by a profile you broadcast, or tracking birds with RFID.

Of course, now that you have all this data, how do you share it? Robin says she envisions all of this being built on open-source technologies, to allow for “innovation” (aka ‘good hacking’). Open standards like GeoRSS could also be used to begin disseminating all of this data as it streams in and share it between devices. See the notes on Mikel’s XTech talk for more inspiration along those lines.

If the devices are cheap (< $100), open-design, and run on open-software, this is a great future. If, however, it is run by proprietary, expensive technology, and closed standards, then you’ll have a future where you get fast connections in your Ford car from other Ford cars, but no connection to all those BMW’s or Toyotas on the road.