A new kind of application

August 26, 2008 4:45 PM

Like those "going to Berkeley, have an empty seat" bulletin boards on campuses everywhere, but real-time. I think this is a new kind of application, enabled by the iPhone's location awareness and ease of programming. Last Sunday, encountering traffic in an area not covered by Google's very cool traffic-monitoring service, I thought "gee, I should write an iPhone app that alerts people of upcoming traffic problems, submit new ones, and clear old ones." As the ubiquity of iPhones grows, entirely new categories of social/location-aware applications are bound to emerge.
posted by dylanjames (57 comments total)

Either this is a self-link, or you have a remarkably strange grasp of the first person.
posted by dhammond at 4:55 PM on August 26, 2008

iPhones are lame. I mean, look at the popularity of 'jailbreaking'. Why the hell would you pay $200 plus $100 a month or whatever to put yourself in jail? It's ridiculous. Apple treats the iPhone the way Nintendo and other video game machine makers treat their systems. As a closed platform where they control everything. And with more and more people accessing the internet through mobile devices more and more of the internet is becoming locked into proprietary platforms. Facebook applications are the same way.

It's a bunch of bullshit, frankly and It's annoying to see people so eager to debase themselves.
posted by delmoi at 4:57 PM on August 26, 2008 [2 favorites]

A clear expression of the though I have been trying to put into words, dhammond.

Also, they did this on GPS-enabled Java-enabled smart phones a few years ago for a proof-of-concept app. Each phone relayed its GPS coords to a central server every few seconds. Phones that were on a highway and going slowly indicated a traffic issue. Anyone could log in a get a real-time speed view of the entire 101. It never got commercialized though, it was just a state demo at JavaOne.
posted by GuyZero at 4:59 PM on August 26, 2008

Yeah the poster's website has a similar design aesthetic, and it says he enjoys Mac OS X programming.

Plus the "carticipate.com" site sucks, I'd be surprised if someone would really think it was FPP worthy unless they were involved with it. But who knows. Maybe someone can do a whois lookup.
posted by delmoi at 5:00 PM on August 26, 2008

I might have a strange grasp of the first person, it's true. This is not a self-link. It's a free app that I thought was cool, and might save some car trips.
posted by dylanjames at 5:03 PM on August 26, 2008

(that said, the Idea dylanjames outlined is different then what carticipate actually does. His idea was to warn people about bad traffic, while carticipate seems to be an app for finding people to ride with)
posted by delmoi at 5:06 PM on August 26, 2008

In related news: Is Something Rotten At Apple? -- "E-mail problems, flaky iPhones, and broken Macs. What's Steve Jobs to do?"
posted by ericb at 5:12 PM on August 26, 2008

[barely audible digital hum of electronic investigation]
posted by cashman at 5:12 PM on August 26, 2008

How strange that the bulk of the words in your post are devoted to describing an idea you had, an idea barely related to the (single) link in your post.
posted by chudmonkey at 5:17 PM on August 26, 2008

delmoi - thanks for bearing with my scattered brain: the idea I described is different from carticipate (electronic investigation will turn up nothing, but go ahead...). Location-aware, networked applications seem to me a new kind of opportunity - ride sharing, traffic-warning, "something cool is happening right now near me" detectors, etc.
posted by dylanjames at 5:18 PM on August 26, 2008

Well, why we're waiting for the results of dylanjames' guilt or innocence, I'll plug my earlier FPP on a related topic: iHitch = web2.0 + hitchiking.
posted by stbalbach at 5:19 PM on August 26, 2008

Is this app free? I'm trying to give the whole idea a fair shake, but it just seems like a very specific way of accomplishing something that can already be accomplished in a number of more generic ways, ways that don't limit one's options to pairing with fellow iPhone users. Craigslist, for example, or actual bulletin boards.

Honestly, I think I'd rather try and hitch a ride with a non-iPhone user, because at least then I'd be the one with an iPhone and the accompanying smug unfounded sense of gadget superiority
posted by chudmonkey at 5:26 PM on August 26, 2008 [1 favorite]

So while I'm happy to see all the immediate hating jumping on the concept (given that a variety of smartphones with appropriate hardware have had applications like this one for years) I have to agree that the iPhone's homogeneity of hardware and broad appeal coupled with the ease of purchasing software and developing it consistently probably *does* open an all new location-aware software market.

Meeting reminders that alert you if you're not in the right building? Sure. With directions.

Find the nearest person|ex significant-other|bar|clean toilet|other use of the Your Favoirte Social Network Sucks? Yep, lots of that.

Use said clustering data to generate real-time maps of mobile "cred"|cool-factor|traffic|exes-per-cubic-parsec? Probably.

All of these ideas have been around in some form but right now are very likely to get made and popularized because everybody wants to be involved and the ubiquity of just-enough of the technology makes it easy. When you had to have the external GPS attachment on your half-pound black plastic geek badge those were just ideas.

It pisses me off too, but that doesn't make the ideas bad.
posted by abulafa at 5:30 PM on August 26, 2008 [2 favorites]

iHitch = web2.0 + hitchiking

Paroled Sexual Offender No. 1: "Yeah, and the beauty of it is, they come to you!"

Paroled Sexual Offender No. 2: "No way. You mean, you just say 'I can give you a ride' with this gadget..."

Paroled Sexual Offender No. 1: "Yep, and they jump right in! I couldn't f'n believe it! It's like they've never even heard of the idea that hitch-hiking is dangerous."

Paroled Sexual Offender No. 2: "I'll save a lot of money in buying candy."

Paroled Sexual Offender No. 1: "No shit. Plus, after you've had your way with the corpse, you can take their gadget thingy and sell it."

Paroled Sexual Offender No. 2: "How do you sell it?"

Paroled Sexual Offender No. 1: "There's this other thing, it's called Ebay..."
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 5:35 PM on August 26, 2008 [3 favorites]

Your hardware purchases are the most interesting part of you personality.
posted by signal at 5:36 PM on August 26, 2008

It's a bunch of bullshit, frankly and It's annoying to see people so eager to debase themselves.

Yeah, I feel so dirty and degraded when I touch my iPhone right there.

Hearing you bitch about iPhones every time they come up on Metafilter, it's like listening to Larry Craig denounce the gays. Just get one, already. Jesus.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 5:38 PM on August 26, 2008 [20 favorites]

Your hardware purchases are the most interesting part of you personality.

I'm intrigued by your scale, and I wish to know where my favourite TV shows fall on it.
posted by chudmonkey at 5:40 PM on August 26, 2008

it says he enjoys Mac OS X programming

BURN HIM
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 5:41 PM on August 26, 2008 [1 favorite]

Apple shuts down another app, this time because it was a Tetris clone. The author says he thinks it's legal, and that he would keep it up if it was his choice but no, Apple just shuts it down.

Hearing you bitch about iPhones every time they come up on Metafilter, it's like listening to Larry Craig denounce the gays. Just get one, already. Jesus.

That's idiotic. I don't have a problem with the phone itself, it's the fact that it's completly controlled by Apple, not by the owner. And no, I shouldn't have to "jailbreak" my own friggin' device.
posted by delmoi at 5:43 PM on August 26, 2008

Apple treats the iPhone the way Nintendo and other video game machine makers treat their systems. As a closed platform ... Facebook applications are the same way.

Yeah. Cause so many people just f'n hate Apple, Nintendo and Facebook. I mean, it's a wonder how they stay in business at all, what with how much they suck. I mean, if they each had tens of millions of customers, it'd be diffe... oh, wait ...
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 5:44 PM on August 26, 2008 [1 favorite]

The author says he thinks it's legal, and that he would keep it up if it was his choice but no, Apple just shuts it down.

Well, if the author says it's legal, that's enough for me. BURN APPLE.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 5:45 PM on August 26, 2008 [1 favorite]

And no, I shouldn't have to "jailbreak" my own friggin' device.

What if someone built an app that automates your trifling derails?
posted by dhammond at 5:59 PM on August 26, 2008 [4 favorites]

Yeah. Cause so many people just f'n hate Apple, Nintendo and Facebook. I mean, it's a wonder how they stay in business at all, what with how much they suck.

I don't know that people really like facebook all that much, they certainly seem to get a lot of complaints from their users, certainly I don't think I heard too many people talking about how much they loved the Beacon advertising platform. The problem is even if they did want to move to another network, it's unlikely they could convince all their friends to leave as well. It's a collective action problem.

Nintendo and other video game systems aren't really that important in the grand scheme of things, if people want to write games people play at home, they can, by writing PC games.

But the problem is that it's impossible to buy a completely open cellphone. I'm interested in the new HTC dream which will be running Google's Android OS, and Nokia just open-sourced the Symbian OS that runs their phones. The problem, though, is that phone companies control the handsets, and even if they are running open OSes, the phone companies can still cripple the phones.

Cellphones, unlike video game systems are becoming the principle way that people get online, but those devices are locked down for the express purposes of making incombant cellular providers make more money. Would Napster have ever been created if desktop PCs were like cellphones are now? What about Skype?

Tens of millions of people voted for Bush, twice. That doesn't mean it was a good idea. The fact that something may be popularity has no baring on whether it's well thought out or in any particular person's best interest.
posted by delmoi at 6:01 PM on August 26, 2008 [2 favorites]

As the ubiquity of iPhones grows, entirely new categories of social/location-aware applications are bound to emerge.

It sure looks like you're just shilling for Apple there, but I have heard that this eye-phone thing is sometimes used as a powerful tool for inducting people into some kind of sinister cult based on flashy consumer-oriented gadgets, so maybe you've just been brainwashed. Hard to think of any other explanation as to why you'd be at least momentarily unaware that there are other mobile devices out there that can do this sort of thing, indeed any of them that come with a web browser could probably be made to handle it well enough, and many of them are a whole lot more ubiquitous than this one. Let us all hope that if some such application does come to dominate the inevitable but for now legally-hindered application of electronic hitch-hiking, it's web-based and otherwise platform-agnostic. In the mean time, at the next iPhone users group meeting, I suggest you don't drink the Kool-Aid.
posted by sfenders at 6:07 PM on August 26, 2008 [1 favorite]

But the problem is that it's impossible to buy a completely open cellphone.

That's only true in the US. This is your friendly non-American reminding you that the rest of the world exists.
posted by jacalata at 6:07 PM on August 26, 2008 [1 favorite]

Tens of millions of people voted for Bush, twice. That doesn't mean it was a good idea.

Using an iPhone is exactly like supporting Bush. Exactly. Your logic is undestructable.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 6:08 PM on August 26, 2008 [1 favorite]

Apple shuts down another app, this time because it was a Tetris clone. The author says he thinks it's legal, and that he would keep it up if it was his choice but no, Apple just shuts it down.

No they didn't, they forwarded a complaint from a third party to the developer, and he's decided to take the app down voluntarily. In fact, at time of writing, it's still up.
posted by cillit bang at 6:11 PM on August 26, 2008 [2 favorites]

Cellphones, unlike video game systems are becoming the principle way that people get online, but those devices are locked down for the express purposes of making incombant cellular providers make more money.

But internet-capable cell phones wouldn't have proliferated except for the fact that they're heavily subsidized by cell phone companies. The reason you can go buy an iPhone (or insert new, flashy phone with the latest must-have features) for as little as $200 (there are many new smartphones available that cost under $100) and basically walk out with a computer in your pocket is that phone companies eat a large percentage of the device's cost in exchange for the predictable income they generate from your service contract.

I agree that it would be great to see an open-source phone platform that could work with any carrier, but the fact is that we're insulated from the cost of these high-tech gadgets due to this system of subsidization. There's little incentive to develop such a gadget when the costs would be prohibitive for most users, whereas anybody who can afford a cell phone service contract can likely pony up $100 for a Centro. If you were a phone manufacturer would you rather sell 1000 units at $600 a pop to individual users, or 100,000 units to a service provider at a discount? Additionally, phone manufacturers don't want to deal with the hassle of retail- by selling to vendors they can completely avoid the problems associated with operating a retail operation, even one run completely online, to say nothing of what happens when you start talking about opening a brick and mortar Nokia, LG, etc. store.
posted by baphomet at 6:18 PM on August 26, 2008

Well, while I'm also not exactly an iPhone fan, this sort of idea is good. Ideally, however, they wouldn't tie it directly to the iPhone. There's no reason it has to be, many phones can support this sort of thing. With a nice platform-neutral backend, people can write iPhone, Android, etc front-ends. For things like this, the larger your userbase the better.

A better example of Apple's App Store shenanigans would be Murderdrome, which is very similar to the Nintendo example: companies that wish to enforce some sort of content morality on their users. For Nintendo, this is touted as a plus for parents. But the iPhone is mostly for adults, so it's a little more annoying. Something like Android inherently avoids this by not having a single chokepoint for apps, which is a big plus to me (even WM or Symbian can allow this, although they come in varying states of openness).
posted by wildcrdj at 6:20 PM on August 26, 2008

That's only true in the US. This is your friendly non-American reminding you that the rest of the world exists.

Of course, I meant in the U.S. The civilized world is a little different.

Using an iPhone is exactly like supporting Bush. Exactly. Your logic is undestructable.

Yeah, it's not hard to find flaws in people's argument when you don't even bother to read what they say.

Just to clarify:

Me: Companies who do X suck
Cool Papa Bell: Those companies are popular
Me: Bush was also popular.

So it ought to be pretty clear that my only point was that popularity isn't necessarily a good measure of something.

Now, of course if you actually cared about what you were saying, it would probably be obvious, but I understand it can be hard to think clearly when you when you're delirious with consumer lust. There is truly no love like the love between a man and the corporation he enriches.
posted by delmoi at 6:24 PM on August 26, 2008 [1 favorite]

But internet-capable cell phones wouldn't have proliferated except for the fact that they're heavily subsidized by cell phone companies. The reason you can go buy an iPhone (or insert new, flashy phone with the latest must-have features) for as little as $200 (there are many new smartphones available that cost under $100) and basically walk out with a computer in your pocket is that phone companies eat a large percentage of the device's cost in exchange for the predictable income they generate from your service contract.

Why not? A Nintendo DS costs just $100, the hardware needed to surf the web isn't that complex, I mean PCs have been able to do it for over a decade, little pocket PCs about the size of a smart phone have been able to do it since 2000. I realize that the iPhone probably has a lot more CPU horsepower, but a simple computer with a small display and the ability to surf the web does not need to cost over $100.

The cellphone subsidy model may have been necessary when the cellphone industry was first getting started, but it doesn't really seem necessary at this point. Besides, there is no reason to lock down the phone further, when a contract would suffice (or somply giving people credit to pay the phone off over time.
posted by delmoi at 6:35 PM on August 26, 2008

Additionally, phone manufacturers don't want to deal with the hassle of retail- by selling to vendors they can completely avoid the problems associated with operating a retail operation, even one run completely online, to say nothing of what happens when you start talking about opening a brick and mortar Nokia

Nokia actually has brick and mortar stores. Jole Spolnsky wrote about buying a Nokia at one of those stores, interestingly primarily aimed at foreign tourists who use cellphone providers that don't need to lock them in, and don't need to pull this bullshit.

Anyway, I can't speak about other providers, but Nokia would definitely like to have a relationship with the consumer, and they do in most places in the world. They don't have that kind of relationship with customers in the US because they can't. To say that other cellphone companies "don't want" a relationship with customers is kind of weird. Lots and lots of companies sell hardware to customers with no intermediaries (other then retail outlets) and seem to do pretty well doing it.
posted by delmoi at 6:41 PM on August 26, 2008

I don't have a problem with the phone itself, it's the fact that it's completly controlled by Apple, not by the owner. And no, I shouldn't have to "jailbreak" my own friggin' device.

I have to say that while I agree with all that (and the last particular thing that's making me hesitate about the iPhone is the fact that tethering is verboten)... it's still quite probably one of the best phones on the U.S. market.

Hard to think of any other explanation as to why you'd be at least momentarily unaware that there are other mobile devices out there that can do this sort of thing

The big thing is that a product is more than laundry list of features... and a platform is definitely more. So, part of it's the finish (and by this I mean the things that make the features better, like the fact that mobile Safari kicks the ass of any other mobile browser I've seen), and part of it's the larger ecology. I'll grant that Windows Mobile and the Palm phones and even some of the Symbian smart phones have had something of this, but there's been no mass point-of purchase or even communication channel that hasn't been far more brutally squeezed and micromanaged far more thoroughly than Apple has the iPhone. That has network effects on development and use. So Apple's marketing power doesn't just help them create a broader platform built on moving more units, it actually creates a potentially deeper one as well.
posted by weston at 6:54 PM on August 26, 2008

Thankfully the open source OpenMoko Freerunner has arrived to solve all of our iPhone problems, right?
posted by meowzilla at 6:56 PM on August 26, 2008

There is truly no love like the love between a man and the corporation he enriches.

Is that platonic love, or dirty, degrading love from stroking an iPhone screen?

Just get one already. Consummate your love that dare not speak its name!
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 7:30 PM on August 26, 2008

I really dislike Apple for irrational reasons. . . but I just got an iPhone (I'm going on deployment and needed a music player. . . and I needed a new phone. . . and I needed a GPS . . . so I got one to do everything) and I really am having a blast with it. Everything from texting to surfing is so darn easy. And really, when I'm playing with a phone, I want it to be easy. I can tinker and min-max on my desktop. But the grace and power of the iPhone is rather sweet, especially at the new price. And the touch screen is fantastic.

If this sounds like a shill, that's because it's really a remarkable piece of technology. So much in fact to make me hold my nose from Apple and get one. And love it.
posted by Lord Chancellor at 7:51 PM on August 26, 2008

Erm, I think you're seeing shill where there's only rueful acknowledgement, sfenders.

Anybody who's ever written one of these supposedly-platform-neutral client-server systems can attest that while I'm sure it's preferable in theory, you usually have just barely enough resources to get it working on one platform very well at all. For a very long time, that's what drove Windows development over Mac - that has only changed somewhat as the platform has gained larger acceptance, largely as a side-effect of its lifestyle marketing. Also, of course, standards have evolved that make it *ever-so-slightly-easier*. Not much. Not a lot. But a little.

At the moment, the handset market is a strange one, and I come at this from a background writing for Windows Mobile since it was Windows CE. Put simply, the ecosystem that worked in PCs hasn't panned out as well for mobile devices for many of the reasons Delmoi complains about. Imagine if you could buy any computer you wanted but the power company decided whether you could actually turn it on or not. (Again, in the US.) If I'm writing mobile apps I have to spend a lot of energy both building the solution and deciding on my revenue channel. Often, that means rolling my own licensing mechanism (or using someone else's), it seldom means I can set up a single-point-of-sale where a user will be able to find my app. If I have a vertical market to service, I can build to the specifications of hardware they already deploy, if that exists, but for the most part I'm shooting in the dark to find a market for my application so it's a much bigger investment - even if it's a free app!

The iPhone, as annoyed as I am to write this, addresses the distribution problem and takes what was previously a "some handsets have GPS, some don't, and you won't know until they've installed the app which one this is" problem and makes it an "every program you write for this platform can rely on the availability not only of GPS but of rich usability features built around it like a local mechanism for launching interactive maps, privacy features and power management," so you don't have to spend a bunch of resources making it service multiple markets (leaving aside iPod Touch at this point). In the end, you had some bright idea or saw a pain point you could address and you want to build that idea rather than tinker with several platforms' notions of "Location Awareness" which can appear as anything from the iPhone's API to some raw NMEA data you have to parse yourself!

Further, as ever, the web experience just isn't as usable as the native experience, so your multi-platform web-app will suffer in comparison to a native one (tap-and-drag navigation is properly ubiquitous in native apps and is comparatively cumbersome and unresponsive in web apps) not to mention that native apps allow you to cache and use information offline whereas web apps would still require a regular connection for most information and lose state when the browser is exited.

So...

I see why this (and many other apps) are on iPhone and face much more resistance to wide adoption on other platforms. They made iPhone's barrier to entry for silly apps very low, so they get lots of silly apps. Sad fact is people fucking *love* silly apps. I'm frankly shocked nobody's made iPhone screensavers yet.

I hear there are a few more App Stores floating around in the twinkling eyes of folks like T-Mobile, so more power to them. This round, despite the fact the fucking iPhone is crazy slow and unresponsive for me after the 2.0 firmware update (the curse of the 2.0 rev of anything), goes to Apple. I am highly, highly unconvinced that Android will do anything anywhere because, in the end, its success is not in the interest of the folks who sell the air.
posted by abulafa at 8:21 PM on August 26, 2008

Or, what weston said.
posted by abulafa at 8:24 PM on August 26, 2008

The iphone is becoming more and more like windows 3.1.
posted by afu at 8:48 PM on August 26, 2008

...um, weren't you folks in the middle of hazing me? or should I be glad the pitchforks and torches have been put away, or at least redirected at Apple and the mobile application market? As a learning experience, I'll say I should have thought this post through a bit more - mostly by putting my idea for an application in the [more inside] section. I trust that the background investigation turned up no Pepsi Blue. ...but did anyone find the flowbie?
posted by dylanjames at 10:40 PM on August 26, 2008

Nokia just open-sourced the Symbian OS that runs their phones

AFAIK, Symbian has been open-sourced since... 2002 at least? Additionally, while Nokia is one of the biggest Symbian licencees out there and has a clear majority stake in the corporation, it'll be interesting as to how much of a voice it has in major decisions such as this, given the corporation's stated corporate governance standards.
posted by the cydonian at 11:16 PM on August 26, 2008

baphomet: I agree that it would be great to see an open-source phone platform that could work with any carrier, but the fact is that we're insulated from the cost of these high-tech gadgets due to this system of subsidization.

At least here in Singapore, the cost of subsidization isn't as high as you'd think. An iphone with a two-year contract goes for about S$350, while a mostly comparable Nokia N78 goes for about S$420-ish without a contract. The same for a Nokia E51. My estimate is that you get about S$200 knocked off with a starter monthly plan (S$30/ month for two years; the subsidy is greater with other plans)
posted by the cydonian at 11:22 PM on August 26, 2008

Anybody who's ever written one of these supposedly-platform-neutral client-server systems can attest that while I'm sure it's preferable in theory, you usually have just barely enough resources to get it working on one platform very well at all.

I suppose this depends on where you're doing it from. On this sort of project, that's probably true. My experience with such things has been at larger companies, where the resources are less of an issue. But I acknowledge it's clearly easier to at least start out on a single platform.

I understand the appeal of the iPhone for the user who just wants a good phone. For a programmer and tinkerer like myself, it just doesn't work. As someone who has written both open-source and for-profit software, I'm not OK with violating their terms to make something work, since I'd hope for the same courtesy in return. That's why I currently use Windows Mobile, which at least makes it very easy to write my own stuff, but Android is at least potentially more interesting due to the increased access.

If there is an interest in open platforms, however, it should really be from the providers. Unless I'm mistaken, they (AT&T) are not making any money off the App Store. The early articles, at least, said there was no revenue sharing. Since Apple controls the distribution channel, there is no way for AT&T and others to make additional money, unlike platforms where they can deliver their own apps. Of course, they have to make stuff worth buying, which will be the big question. I expect initially most of the interesting software will also be free, as with a lot of free/open-source stuff, there will certainly be an interest in "monetization", but it doesn't always work.
posted by wildcrdj at 12:34 AM on August 27, 2008

AFAIK, Symbian has been open-sourced since... 2002 at least?

I think it's Nokia's Series 60 UI that's been open-sourced recently, which is by far the most common variant of Symbian.
posted by cillit bang at 12:40 AM on August 27, 2008

It might be nice if the iPhone was wide open. I could have fun with that. But if it was, I doubt it would work as well. (Nintendo DS's also rock. Simple, cheap, locked down hard... and dammit they just work well... while every attempt at an "open" videogame system has crashed and burned... often literally.)

There is no perfect phone, or computer, or car. Everything has pluses and minuses. The iPhone pluses more than overcome its minuses, at least in my experience. For others, mainly the folks who want to hack their own hardware even if it means their phone crashes in the middle of a call... there will always be other choices. And that's great.

Heck, someday even the other big phone makers will realize it's more about "it works easily" than a feature checklist*, and they'll be able to catch up. But by then there will be 2,000,000 iPhone applications, the new model of the handset will cost $59 at Wal-Mart, and teenagers will groan if they receive anything else for Christmas. We went through this with iPods, remember? Apple's really, really, really good at both the "cool" thing and this "usability" stuff, and that is a juggernaut combination.

Heck, I haven't even seen another phone that's even a Zune-level threat yet.

* the phone I got most excited about recently was a sort of world's simplest cell phone. Just a keypad and a call button. No GPS, no address book, no screen, nothing, and it was like $20. I love that idea. But now I can't find the link. Anyone?
posted by rokusan at 1:53 AM on August 27, 2008

Anybody who's ever written one of these supposedly-platform-neutral client-server systems can attest that while I'm sure it's preferable in theory, you usually have just barely enough resources to get it working on one platform very well at all.

Well, it depends on the application. Google search, for example, works just fine as a web application, even with the relatively limited interface of my mobile phone web browser. The typical phone still has a long way to go before it can easily do more complex applications, but they're slowly getting better, and from what I've seen they're probably good enough to handle a "ride board", which isn't all that complicated. The GPS bit would be tricky, but it isn't strictly necessary for something as limited as commuter car-pooling, and it could be supported only on particular platforms without making the whole thing inaccessible to everyone else. I suppose the location-tracking thing is most useful for those offering a ride, as it can watch their travel habits for a while and provide that info to ride-seekers. For finding a "car-pool buddy" it's not such a big deal.

For "iHitch", which is yet another approximate description of the ideal electronic hitch-hiking system I've been wishing for since 1998 or so, the "location-aware" capability becomes considerably more important. Still, this application space is exactly the sort of thing where you'd want to make it work on as many clients as possible, it has its own network effect. You need every advantage you can get to make it catch on, and having it accessible to pretty much everyone is a rather big one. Since it's still basically illegal in many places including most of America I think, and because of attitudes such as those parodied above by Cool Papa Bell (which incidentally are based on some of the perceived problems with traditional thumb-based hitchhiking that the elctronic version makes disappear when done properly), it'll probably not catch on for a while yet. Perhaps it will take long enough that the "web experience" on mobile devices has enough time to catch up to what it ought to be capable of.
posted by sfenders at 4:57 AM on August 27, 2008

This application is a decent idea, and it's nice that it is free. However, I don't think it does what you think it does. As far as I can tell, this application just lets you post that you will be taking a trip from one place to another at a certain time. It doesn't automatically find people going your way using Location Services or anything. You could accomplish the same thing with Craigslist, or even something like Twitter or AIM status. One obvious flaw is that it will only be able to notify other carpoolers who happen to be running the Carticipate application. Perhaps when Apple enables push notification services in September, the application will be somewhat more useful.

Oh, shoot, this the IPHONE IS SHINY POSER SATAN JAIL thread, isn't it? Sorry, guys, didn't mean to rerail.
posted by designbot at 7:26 AM on August 27, 2008

delmoi: "iPhones are lame."

 iPhones are&nbsp: Metafilter is lame. I mean, look at the popularity of ' jailbreaking&nbsp: commenting'. Why the hell would you pay  $200 plus $100 a month or whatever&nbsp: $5 to  put yourself in jail&nbsp: comment when it costs nothing elsewhere? It's ridiculous.  Apple&nbsp: Mathowie treats the  iPhone&nbsp: users the way  Nintendo and other video game machine makers&nbsp: fascist dictators treat their  systems&nbsp: countries. As a closed  platform&nbsp: website where they  control&nbsp: moderate everything. And with more and more people  accessing the internet through mobile devices&nbsp: joining Metafilter more and more of the  internet&nbsp: conversation is becoming locked into  proprietary&nbsp: moderated platforms.  Facebook applications&nbsp: Ask Mefi and MeTa are the same way.

It's a bunch of bullshit, frankly and It's annoying to see people so eager to debase themselves.
posted by WCityMike at 8:42 AM on August 27, 2008

Damn it, when live preview fails to reveal problems, it really ... grumble grumble grumble
posted by WCityMike at 8:43 AM on August 27, 2008

And obviously none of what I wrote about Mefi was meant.
posted by WCityMike at 8:44 AM on August 27, 2008

Man, do I abuse the <small> tag or what?
posted by WCityMike at 8:44 AM on August 27, 2008

There once was a mouse and he was really really really tiny.
posted by WCityMike at 8:45 AM on August 27, 2008

Alright! Another OS fight! Can I join in? Uh, um ... Windows is corporate bloatware, Mac is for hipdroids, and Linux is incomprehensible.

Seriously now. Some people don't mind buying a car with the hood welded shut. Others like to tinker around with the parts. Why must there be a hard-and-fast absolute for this?
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 2:17 PM on August 27, 2008

The only question I have is what OS is the human mind, and when can I get the upgrade?

Because until I can have inconscious google access, I'm using all of 'em!
posted by humannaire at 2:33 PM on August 27, 2008

The only question I have is what OS is the human mind, and when can I get the upgrade?

The human mind runs on Debian. For an upgrade, visualize a terminal screen in your head and say outloud "apt-get update". You should be good to go if you have all the repositories.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 3:01 PM on August 27, 2008

AFAIK, Symbian has been open-sourced since... 2002 at least? Additionally, while Nokia is one of the biggest Symbian licencees out there and has a clear majority stake in the corporation, it'll be interesting as to how much of a voice it has in major decisions such as this, given the corporation's stated corporate governance standards.

Nokia buys Symbian, turns software over to Symbian Foundation (July 24th, 2008)

Previously the O.S. was mostly open source, but not entirely. And actually reading that it looks like it will be gradually Opened over the next couple of years.
posted by delmoi at 10:06 PM on August 27, 2008

The cool new widgets and the mostly widely used stuff is going to come out for the most viable platform. That's it. I don't care if it's viable because it's got a wide userbase, because it's got the best network in the largest area, or if it's got the best application distribution model. Realistically, it's some of all of those along with a million other factors.

The fact of the matter is that Apple's got that right now, and it's not all that difficult to link into the million bits of the web that work in a sometimes-connected, sporadic-use manner. I've been sitting on a Nokia phone that's pretty great for a couple years, one that I bought in a brick-and-mortar Nokia store of the type that was mentioned upthread, in Chicago. There's an application to download more apps for the phone. There's a good camera. There's a webkit-based browser, although obviously more underpowered and dated than that in the iPhone. I can use the Symbian SDK, write apps, and deploy them on my phone whenever I want, without a license!

The number of apps I use is small. The online application distribution model only extends to a couple Nokia apps. Yahoo has this neat ZoneTag app that will location tag my photos, but it's kind of a kludge. Google's gmail and maps applications are pretty great. The thing is, Nokia's had one of the most open platforms so they tended to get a lot of cool stuff. The Blackberry models get a few good things long that line, too. But the rest of the pieces aren't really there.

Outside of token apps, using applications on phones is a hobbyist or enthusiast market. Apple's blown that open by making the phone/computer interface the same as the ipod/computer interface and showing people that transferring something purchased in their store on to a mobile device is a day-to-day operation.

Yeah, making a completely open API, allowing app installation from anywhere, and all that shit would be awesome. Awesome! But the fact is that there are some pretty sweet apps happening even amidst all the restrictions, and it's worth being impressed when something new happens (even if the GREAT CLOSED PLATFORM SUPER PROFIT-MAKING SATAN ASSHOLES made it possible).
posted by mikeh at 1:05 PM on August 28, 2008