Bill Joy calls mobile Internet the 'here' web

When will there be more wireless Internet users than wired? Mid 2007 would be my guess.

Bill Joy is putting his money--or, more accurately, his VC firm's money--on the Web as the platform of the future.Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems and a driving force behind the creation of Berkeley Unix and Java, among other technologies, said the explosion in devices like cell phones, PDAs and other wireless gadgets connected to the Web is radically changing the technology industry.He calls that phenomenon the "here" Web, because the Internet is always "here, because you access it through a device you always carry."

Link: http://news.com.com/Joy+Future+of+the+Web+is+mobile+devices/2100-1016_3-5885769.html?tag=nefd.top

What is Web 2.0?

Posted from Tim O'Reilly's Tech Crunch.

There's a moose loose

Story about True Blue - another good find via Jyri:

True Blue Love is a mobile phone social networking experience, designed to explore the politics behind intimate phone-based relations. Designed as a program for mobile phones; each participant enters into the program the characteristics of their ideal sexual mate, chosen from a series of preset selections. While the program is running, every time another phone comes within range, a love metric is calculated which is a representation of how close the incoming person matches the participant's ideal mate. If the match is close, the phone will emit a raucous mating call that will be unique to that participant.

Cute idea, but I can't see it taking off - surely the idea is to use the phone to solve the problem of embarassing human interactions not make them more acute...! My modest proposal would be to shift the focus onto a shared common experience, such as music, that one can happily discuss without embarassment. It's easier to say, 'So, you like the libertines too?" than "So, you are desperate too?".

I want to break free

From Jyri:

Three, the UK operator, sells 3G contracts but doesn't tell its customers that it blocks them from accessing the internet.
Al Iguana shares the experience: I got an amazing new phone, a Nokia 6680. Symbian 60, dual camera… you can read reviews of it all over the internet. Superb bit of kit. My wonder-phone has a flaw. a serious flaw. because I’m on Three. I can’t access the internet. They’ve blocked it. No blog clients. No RSS readers. No Wap. All I can do is visit Three’s website. A Pay website. Want to read the news? Each item costs 50p. The weather? 50p. OUT-FUCKING-RAGEOUS!!! So I have all this stuff on the phone, Opera, Lifeblog, Yahoo Messenger, and I can’t use it. Whats the point of that?? quote Three: “Due to a business decision 3 have chosen to promote a great range of products and services available via the 3 browser instead of offering open internet access Open internet access is something we are currently looking at, however, I can provide you with no definite information at this time.”

In the comments to the post it is noted that 3 offers open Internet in other European countries, just not the UK.

First Past the Post

This blog is going to be looking at what happens when the Internet goes mobile, bumps into people and veritably collides with the media industry.

It will be sporadic, of wildy varying quality, and the posts will be liberally doused with inpenetrable English asides, tossed in pretension and given a light sprinkling of off-topic rants. These are all my own words, and not those of past or present employers.