Latitute: The Ultimate Mobile Social Networking

Yesterday, Google announced the release Latitude, which is deemed the next step in mobile social networking. Read Write Web is a way to track where your friends are using your mobile phone. Read Write Web then goes on to question if users are going to feel like Google is too much a part of their life, and they already use other social networking sites like Facebook on their phone. What do you think?

Peek brings email to mobile devices for small businesses

Peek is a mobile phone service setting out to capture an untapped portion of the mobile phone market, aiming for the small business wireless market. According to this article at EWeek, they’ll be partnering with Target to distribute this new wireless email device which is low-cost and can satisfy the email side of those working for small business, and do what the Blackberry is doing for the corporate world.

This wireless start up company decided to tap into this market for the amount of customers that haven’t been satisfied yet. Of the 32 million cell phone users, 15 million manage their email over the phone.

When developing this mobile device, Peek came up with and followed these six objectives to better meet the needs of small businesses:

1. low cost

2. wide, color display with high-contrast fonts

3. an easy-to-use QWERTY keyboard

4. easy-to-set-up access to popular e-mail portals

5. well-designed software that gives a good user experience

6. easy to buy

New Smart Phone Available

A new phone has come to the business world. We’ve already told you about the importance that cell phones are playing in the growing demand for social networking. E Week recently shed light on the newest Treo Pro to allow us to network, and more, with a new smart phone. Palm, Inc, has developed a new series of phones based on Microsoft Software, and their direct competitor will be Blackberry. New tools on this phone include WiFi, to boost internet speed where reception is low, and GPS technology. Palm, Inc, developed this phone specifically to target the 90% of the market who don’t already have smart phones.

This phone will be carried by Vodafone Group PLS and O₂ in Europe and Telstra in Australia. Although there is currently no US carrier, Palm Inc, expects to see a demand for unlocked phones that will work on any network.

Portal 2.0 and Beyond

Over the last few years, we’ve seen the evolution of portals within the enterprise to become more personalized to specific information needs of users, but what does the future hold in store for the portal universe? I came across this post on builder au in which Lana Kovacevic notes a couple of points from Gene Phifer in a recent conversation about the direction that portals are heading into.

Here are several characteristics Gene lists that the “portal of the future” will have:

1. Portals like iGoogle and MyYahoo already aggregate content, but portals of the future will facilitate content aggregation making it even more personalized.
2. Portals fabrics will evolve to the idea of the “follow me portal”, in which the look and feel of the portal will transform based on your location. This especially will be increasingly popular as the enterprise is experiencing a surge in mobile browsing on smartphones.
3. Social Web 2.0 functionalities are here to stay. Portals will continue to make use of technologies such as social networks, wikis, forums, and blogs.
4. Portals will fully integrate with all social networks. Plaxo is a good example of an integrated portal that aggregates updates from sites like Flickr, Twitter, and Digg. The “portal of the future” will be able to aggregate updates from these social applications as well as other networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Xing.
5. Collaboration is key in the enterprise; portals will play a part in improving the overall user experience.
6. The ability to aggregate mashed up content from more than one individual websites will be facilitated by future enterprise portals.

So you’ve seen Gene’s description of future portals, but what components and functionalities will your ideal “portal of the future” have?

Mobile FireFox Might Be the Key

As mentioned in our previous post, Firefox is slowly increasing its market share as the world’s premier internet browser. A mobile browsing app called FireFox Mobile has been in the works for some time, but according to this latest post on TechCrunch it is actually taking shape.

What’s interesting about this mobile user interface is that it will be fundamentally easy to use with touch-screen smartphones. This is heaven for Palm Treo and iPhone users. FireFox Mobile will reduce the amount of typing required by simply scrolling down and makes it easier to send email, search Google, or mapping locations with any of its pre-defined buttons.

Collaboration in the enterprise is reaching new heights as we are experiencing a lot of changes in mobile applications. I would like to see how FireFox Mobile will make life simpler for those users who do not have touch-screen smartphones like the Blackberry. FireFox Mobile is still at its beta phase though, I’m sure the end result will be something that all enterprise users will be able to take advantage of.

Mobile Social Networking: The Growing Phenomenon

How often do you access Facebook on your mobile phone? Personally, I find it more convenient to share information with my business contacts on my Blackberry. The latest article in eMarketer estimates that the number of mobile social networking users will grow from 82 million users now to roughly 800 million users worldwide by the year 2012.

The iPhone and Blackberry have launched several mobile-friendly applications of popular enterprise networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn so it was only a matter of time before we would see this influx of mobile users. As the growing demand for collaboration between individuals grow, so will the need for mobile enterprise networking, since most corporate executives are always on the go. This chart by eMarketer details the forecasted total mobile users.

The enterprise can expect a huge shift from the usage of social networking sites within the office to usage on their mobile devices. Tailored social networking apps have the changed the focus of the Treo, Blackberry, and the iPhone from being primarily a consumer gadget to an enterprise mobile device.