Thoughts on the Maturing Digital Age
It's happening to an entire generation of tech savvy people; the increasing amount of available data is starting to be arranged in a manageable way. On my laptop I'm now combining my Twitter and Facebook feeds. Images, audio and video are starting to be shared through common channels. It's to early to proclaim the age of the web site is over, but we can certainly see a fore shadow of such a time as we increasingly pull our digital world into simple apps that manage our interactions for us. Simplicity is the key here and web apps are maturing quite well.
So what does this mean for the mobile phone industry? It means consumers are starting to expect that same functionality on their mobile device, not just the computer. Take me for example. I have a Google Voice number that rings my mobile and my Skype account. Call records and voice mail is all contained in my Google Voice account. My contact list is synced between all my Google accounts (docs, gmail, etc) and my mobile phone.
This hodge podge of technologies is just the beginning. I full expect mobile providers to provide better integration in the future. Imagine a mobile device that natively syncs all your contact lists, news feeds, social media channels. The Palm Pre is a big step in the right direction as WebOS does a pretty nice job integrating your contacts, etc.
So what's missing? The complete syncronization of data into the cloud. I should be able to fully access my contacts, voice mail, call history, documents, etc. from any platform, mobile or desktop, Windows or Apple.
