Business Opportunities #451 and #452
Okay, so lately I've been thinking of more areas that are lacking on my Symbian phone and what I could develop and sell to meet that need. First, here's the more "mundane" app:
Automated installer/updater for Symbian applications. I was amazed the other day when I started up Spaces and found that JavaWebStart automatically went out to the internet and grabbed the latest version without any effort on my part. I really HATE it when Windows does this shit, but for an App like Spaces it was really cool. What Symbian needs is a Marimba-like auto-update tool for applications. Right now I have to use the horrible Nokia Sync client or send myself a Bluetooth message with the application attached, etc. in order to install it. It would be much cooler if all this was managed from a simple place over the net.
Okay, my second idea is based on what I just wrote below and hooks into blogging somewhat. What we need is a Unified Messaging System (UMS). Now that I've grokked what the Telecom operaters are doing with MMS and what other companies like FastMobile are doing, as well as chatted with my Mom on IM via my phone I get the idea. We need instant-on communication with chat-like features and the abiltiy to send multimedia (both pics, movies, sound AND VOICE) via our mobile devices. But instead of being a patchwork system like MMS (it uses SMS for push-notifications, and WAP for downloading content and a customized SMIL player for viewing content), this would be a single application, or maybe an application that integrated with other services more seamlessly. Maybe even with community-type services (group chat), file sharing and blog integration... Like Groove on your phone...
If you read this post by one of the FastMobile guys, they may already be heading in that direction and I just don't know it. But I'm not sure if they're there yet, so that always leaves opportunity...
Like I keep saying, this stuff is cool.
-Russ