This one is for Ubiquitous Computing for Mobile Devices…

Had to analyze a mobile application web site.

Here it is:

Groovr

Groovr is a tool to share where you are, what you are doing, and what it looks like to a bunch of friends or to the whole world using your cell phone.

You can check where your friends are, create places, add comments, upload pictures and create groups.

And if you have a camera phone you can upload your pictures as well.

The interface to browse through users/places and their pictures is very intuitive and smooth – simple and well labeled.

Maps integrated to Google Maps… adds a nice touch to the interface but could be more integrated like Platial, described further below.

And I did not find a “find friends” tool that will search my Yahoo or Google address book for example to see if I know anyone who already is a member…

In general – cool interface – not so novel idea – basically a blog that you upload from your mobile – well ok – the differential would be in that it is about where you are at the exact moment of your post.

Platial:

First of all I love the play on words of this product… play… spatial… place…

Basically a geo-tagging/blog/social network with tons of tools.

You can add places of your own, tag them, collect them into your own “map” as well as search other user’s places and maps…

You add buddies to your list so that you can monitor their activity…

You can upload photos from your computer, a web site, or your Flickr account…

You can create a MapKit – a tool you embed on your own web site.

Did not see any mobile part from it but I imagine that you could upload photos from your mobile into your account by sending it to a specified email account.

Nice and easy interface that does not jump around pages every time you update some information… is this what is called Web 2.0?

I also did a quick review of where I used to work in Brazil.

http://br.ringtones.com

Ringtones, wallpapers, and games for your mobile.

To purchase a product you send a command like “TOP” to the short code (1212 in Brazil) and receive a menu of songs. If it is your first time browsing, you will have to inform your cell phone’s make and model through a long series of SMSs between you and the service.

You finally receive the link to the ringtone – a WAP Push (SMS + url) that the phone recognizes as a web message. You open the link via your phone’s browser and download the content.

There is also a WAP interface which is much simpler to purchase with. It automatically detects your phone’s make and model and you are browsing through a site – not dealing with hundreds of messages back and forth.

One cool app is a tool that will automatically format a picture from your computer and deliver it to your phone (R$2.99 – US$1.40 – the price of a wallpaper)

The web interface is almost childlike and very simple… menu on the left and tabs on the top.

No social network or login – straight and pure retail.

That’s it for now 🙂