Mike’s leading a discussion on mobile technology.

Delivering just the content and handling presentation on the client, like twitter and RSS helps usability through performance. Richard mentions a service that proxies and condenses information, referring a previous geekup conversation. Excerpts, provided by content authors, can help reduce the amount of data being sent to the client and more services are trying approaches that auto-summarize, maybe providing only the first part of content for review.

Mike notes that popular services like flickr are providing mobile friendly interfaces aside from their general browser service. Some people have had bad experiences with poor device support of these kinds of interfaces though.

Michael Heap counters that many of these services are highly reusable, providing a feed of data that can be interpreted in different ways, and used in different ways. If you don’t like it, you can fix it! Sometimes this can raise questions around ownership, perhaps when authors don’t realise that their information is being provided in an open way.

The discussion moves more to devices – the HTC magic  is mentioned with other devices, specifically issues around tiny human interfaces being difficult to use.

Emma Frost brings in the idea of tiny projectors to perhaps counter the usability issues of small devices. Projecting a user interface onto a newspaper os such like. Conversation moves on to arts projects and other approaches involving alternative interface approaches.

Richard Allsebrook likes the idea – he wants his phone to be very small, but he wants to interact with it in an easy and intuitive way – that involves a larger interface.

Caz Mockett likes the feel of a keyboard – Emma mentions innovation that provides the feel of a keyboard  without the rigid in-device limitations.

The iPhone’s finger sliding and touch-screen keyboard is something that users very quickly get used to and come to prefer. Would we want to be touching and sliding on a computer monitor – say if you are a developer a spend a lot of time in from of a keyboard – it is tiring to hold your arms up for a length of time. But what if the monitor/human interface device was on the desk, not in front of you?

Lisa Hall mentioned an up-side – holding our arms up all day might result in a more toned and healthy person – although perhaps with skinny legs!

Voice recognition systems have come a long way, and might provide a viable alternative to physical interfaces – the group is split on the viability of this approach. Even people on the end of a phone can be hard to understand for other people.

The discussion splits into a few small threads. The voice recognition software on Windows Vista is getting good feedback for users who are maybe not so comfortable (or dependent?) on a keyboard. This kind of solution doesn’t work so well for developers because of the unnatural syntax and semantics for programming.

Mike takes the discussion back to the projector idea. Perhaps heads-up-displays, projected into glasses or directly into the eye.

The conversation goes back to RSS – the miminal implementation of RSS, providing only the date, title and link limits some of the value of capable RSS readers – why is this approach adopted? Perhaps advertising, simplicity. Delivering content in an open way defeats advertising. If it’s not possible for force advertising, where does revenue come from?

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