Mobile Phone – The Innovation Platform

I continue to see the mobile phone as the “innovation platform.” In other words, entrepreneurs and even larger companies apply their innovation dollars to the mobile phone. Chip makers seek to provide components that require less power to run for mobile phones. Software vendors seek to make widgets, Linux-based, and other software tools work on it. Computer vendors seek to make their computers work more seamlessly with it – Apple for one. Google seeks to make the next generation applications – calendar, maps, readers, and more work seamlessly between the web and the mobile phone.

The mobile phone even impacts the development of literature. In Japan, the latest wave of novels are written by those typing on the mobile phone. They are called cell phone novels. Five of the top 10 books on the bestseller list in Japan started as cell phone novels. Typically, the sentences are short and the vocabulary limited but the human voice comes through despite the limitations. Authors monetize their work by cutting deals to publish the novel in hard copy format. Publishers offer this to novelists who can generate a following with posting their novels in serial form to a blog or website.

Cell phone novels may seem a long way from the world of virtual instrumentation but then again virtual instrumentation always made use of commercially available technologies. One can envision the collection of data on the mobile phone only to be published to a web interface for archival and sharing. The cellphone novel helps mature those tools for the scientist and engineer.

Another innovation coming to the mobile phone is speech recognition. While speech recognition has been around for over 20 years or more, it’s now coming to a point that it works smoothly in the workflow of users. Vlingo is one example in which voice driven commands can overcome the limitations of the keyboard. Combining “context aware” techniques with voice driven commands makes a useful combination.

VoiceSignal is another example of using speech recognition to overcome keyboard limitations with its ability to take spoken commands and perform functions on the phone as well as convert spoken messages into text messages.

Mobile phones will soon come out with mini projectors built into them. Soon, your handheld can project the latest video download or even display a PowerPoint presentation for others around the conference table to review.

Best regards,
Hall T.