RE: Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group Charter

Missing device types:
11) internet & web enabled personal game players (PSP, NDS)
12) internet & web enabled personal media players 
13) MID(Mobile Internet Device)

I think we need to focus on web access capability of the devices.
- Is it really suitable for mobile web browsing ? 
- Is it really usable for mobile browsing ? 
- Having internet(or web) connectivity ? 

--- Jonathan Jeon 

-----Original Message-----
From: public-bpwg-request@w3.org [mailto:public-bpwg-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Eduardo Casais
Sent: Thursday, September 17, 2009 11:43 AM
To: public-bpwg@w3.org
Subject: Re: Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group Charter


Regarding the scope of investigations, it potentially encompasses at least the 
following device types:

1) pagers;
2) mobile phones of all kinds;
3) navigation systems (TomTom, Garmin and co);
4) industrial handsets (used in industry, commerce, logistics, emergency; Symbol
   Technologies);
5) wearable computers (niche in maintenance, many experimental);
6) ipod and similar devices;
7) electronic GPS compasses, with built-in databases of POI;
8) fitness monitoring devices (Polar...);
9) ebook readers (Kindle...);
10) checkout terminals.

All these devices are mobile and feature some form of wireless connectivity (short
range infrared, bluetooth, WLAN, TETRA, etc). Many (if not most) of them have, or are
being enhanced with browsing capabilities. Nevertheless, this group probably has no
real competence in the majority of these devices.

The focus on mobile phones is natural. They are familiar terminals, everybody is using
them daily, and it is easy to develop applications for them as the programming 
environments and deployment platforms are readily available. They represent orders of
magnitude more users than all other mobile terminals combined. Restricting the group
charter to mobile phones would be justifiable. If the group wants to think outside
the box, investigate more exotic devices and state anything meaningful about them, 
two conditions must be fulfilled:

a) The W3C mission must clearly include a mandate to tackle these areas. While there
seems to be an institutional commitment to deal with accessibility (in the sense of
supporting people with disabilities), a cursory look at the W3C activities does not
reveal any particular fervour for industrial applications, for instance.

b) The group must be able to enroll people with expertise in designing such devices,
developing applications for them, or at the very minimum prolonged and intensive
professional experience in using them.

People posting in this list are mainly technologists, and technologists love to play
with the latest gadgets and technologies. Let me raise two considerations. 

1) What has been the most important mobile platform in terms of users, applications 
and revenue so far? SMS. What is the latest Internet craze? Twitter -- SMS again. For
applications with mass appeal and that have a real impact mature, stable, well known
and universally deployed technologies are very often more relevant than bleeding-edge
ones.

2) The configuration of computers has oscillated between trimmed-down machines 
(diskless workstations, network computers) and boxes beefed-up with hardware and
software. The latest avatar is today's laptop, powerful enough to serve as desktop
replacement -- and marketed as such. Now its software, interfaces, peripherals and
functions are being mercilessly pruned to give rise to the netbook and cloud 
computing. We might yet see the unrelenting evolution towards expensive, super 
endowed smartphones (with never-improving battery life) being reversed.

E.Casais

Received on Thursday, 17 September 2009 22:11:49 UTC