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Craig Kerstiens

Bearish on mobile

I’ve heard that mobile devices will be everywhere and will replace computers for what seems like decades, but is probably growing on 6 or 7 years now. The thing is I don’t really need a desktop with me every where I go. Seldom am I somewhere and I wish I had access to Microsoft Office or wish I had Eclipse or Visual Studio. While I concede that I occasionally watch youtube on my IPhone, this is far more rare than it is common. Most of the time it’s simply for the wow factor that I pull it out and load up the “Here comes another bubble” video.

Meanwhile I will admit that I do love certain things about my mobile device. The ability to, within three button clicks, publish a photo to twitter or flickr. Or to quickly to live micro-blogging from an event, or (not I, but others) the ability to stream an interview from my phone and have others text questions to ask. But is this truly what I use on my desktop, yes I have IM and micro-blogging clients, but it’s far different. I seem to care more about existing services integrating to support SMS, or mobile applications, than about my mobile device being able to run whatever is on my desktop.

My primary point here is that I care less about supporting multimedia formats, applications, and power. And more about data and accessibility. Mobile devices are at a point now where I could locate friends, communicate with others, and have access to my small pieces of data I want. We simply need to have the backbone systems support them more.