Web standards body gets involved in social development
May 27, 2008 – 8:08 pm
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the international body charged with managing the standard file formats and protocols that make the web work, has formed a group to look into connecting people with mobile phones. The Mobile Web for Social Development interest group (or MW4D, they really like acronyms) will be looking in how to better utilize mobile phone networks to provide services to rural and under-privileged communities in developing countries.
Mobile phones are increasingly touted as the key to issues from how to provide content to people to how to get rural communities online. Wireless cell networks are cheaper and easier to setup and phones have become inexpensive. The MW4D will bring together industry leaders in mobile technology and hopefully come up with some good ideas on how to make use of these networks.
Although the mobile device is hailed as by content producers looking for the next revolution, it has a way to go before it can be use for more than the simple communications it’s designed for.
I have a Windows smart phone right now, and it was the top-of-the-line when I bought it from AT&T last summer. Let me tell you, I really don’t like using for anything other than making calls, sending texts and sending emails. The screen is too small, the software is not well designed and the Internet connection is slow in most places. In the past few weeks I’ve had the opportunity to use an iPhone and I have been impressed by how it seems to finally fix most of the problems with using a mobile phone to access Internet services. Most mobile web pages are added as an afterthought, but the iPhone gets around this by doing a great job of displaying full size web pages.
It’s good to see W3C paying attention to the problem of using Internet services on mobile phones. We shouldn’t all have to buy iPhones to be able to make use of services on the web, mobile device designers and content creators need to focus on the big opportunity on the small screen.
via Businesswire and Cellular News
