Are The Hackers Our Signpost to New Mobile Features?
by Ewan Spence
One of the great joys of hacking is when you use a tool that was designed for one use, but end up doing something completely different. Technology is littered with examples of this, from the discovery of the weak glue that eventually became the post-it note, to Phil Torrone receiving an alert on his watch whenever someone entered his house in Second Life. When you hand people new concepts, don’t be surprised if they turn round and use them in ways you can’t possibly imagine.
This is especially relevant when the mobile industry tries to predict what is going to be the ‘mythical’ killer feature in the future. The industry, famously, felt blindsided by the runaway success of SMS in the late nineties – trying to catch the lightning again with MMS or WAP was not as successful, and to a certain extent did damage the market perception of the mobile internet in the UK.
One case in point of unexpected user innovation that I discussed with an operator is in the restocking of vending machines – these were configured not with an expensive Telematics style machine to machine communications, but with a bog-standard SMTP server. This would email to an account that then sent an SMS of the email out to the supply manager. A simple test saying “I’m running out of dry roasted peanuts†would be received and acted on almost instantly.
You can be sure that this usage scenario was one that would not be in the slick PowerPoint presentations that justified the network creating an email to SMS gateway, but I’m sure there are many hundreds, if not thousands, of use cases where a network service has been jury-rigged to function in a role that would be regarded as business critical.
In all the discussions and surveys surrounding mobile messaging, there’s a huge focus on what technology is being well used now – surveys can easily discover what is being used now. If you ask about what you might use in the future, then generally people are picking from a list presented to them (plus a wooly ‘Other’ box that invariably will be last on the list). A list that will be made up by the carriers and manufacturers, of features they would expect to be popular. So the top five things that people want on a mobile – Digital Camera, SMS, Bluetooth Connectivity, MP3 player, and a mini-USB port (results via Telephia) – are all very much predictable.
When the industry talks about IM integration on the handset, when it looks at paid downloads of video content, when it talks about deals opening up social networks, then there’s every chance that some smart person out there has already managed it, packaged it up, and is passing it round. It’s these hackers / early adopters that are the signposts to the future direction of mobile services.
Perhaps we should ask them what’s coming next instead?
