I ran across the site MobilizedSoftware (Published by CMP Media) indirectly this morning. The online publication is sponsored by the big guns: Intel, SAP, Microsoft, and IBM. It’s audience is the IT market. If, for instance, you’d like to deploy mobile forms in your company, you’ll find some whitepapers and some links here and there to help out. It’s pretty high-level stuff–“architecture level” if you will. In fact, the site would probably be better named “MobileArchitects.”
A “mobile” site like this is interesting to me. Although I found it via a single “Tablet PC” reference, it’s more about PDAs and cell phones. In fact, the term “mobile” is often a codeword for these two classes of tech items. Tablet PCs are that “other gadget.” Weird.
What many people miss is that just by taking a docked notebook from your desk to your lap can make a significant difference in what a user expects and demands. And then stand up and use the same programs. Without the trusty mouse, operations become combursome. Things like ctrl-click, or drag and drop operations become a pain. I’m not talking about pen actions here either. Most non-mouse pointing devices have these problems too.
Discovering and addressing these new user expectations is what excites and fascinates me.
