WorldMate is huge in the mobile world -it first started as a Palm OS app back in 2000. Then, as today, they realized that “travel = mobile” and so it made sense to build a mobile application for travelers. WorldMate had an innovative approach and built what was the industry’s first on-device portal with a myriad of travel content for online/offline use. WorldMate was so successful that many PDA/Smartphone makers including Nokia, Palm, HP, and Sony Ericsson pre-installed it on their devices. More than 3 million people use WorldMate across the Symbian, BlackBerry, Palm OS and Windows Mobile platforms.
But that was then when making mobile apps meant being pre-installed on a pre-sale phone. The world has moved on since the launch of the iPhone to a new world of online application stores. Now with after the SDK 3.0 and right before the expected launch of iPhone 3.0, WorldMate has come to the iPhone app store.
In many ways this is a huge validation of the iPhone platform, it’s one of the first dedicated for business applications of the kind that are huge in the BlackBerry world to make the platform jump to an appstore full of shall we say “less serious” applications (you can see more of this attitude in the latest WorldMate Max video embedded below).
It’s easy to see why they are coming to iPhone, the potential market is huge; there about 40 million business travelers in the US that take over 200 million trips totaling $200 billion in sales. According to WorldMate these “road warriors” are continually jostled around with 30%+ of flights are delayed or cancelled, with meeting schedules change all the time, and because there’s a lot of stress trying to make split second decisions in unfamiliar environments with a lack of relevant information. What’s more, these travelers spend on average $1000 per trip. WorldMate is the only service to that can help by effectively aggregating this disparate information. But that is only half the battle. WorldMate further distinguishes itself in that it can take this information and turn it into solutions. For example, if your flight is delayed, WorldMate will let you know and then suggest all the alternative flights you can take instead to make it to your destination on time.
WorldMate in both its free and Gold versions have both shot to the top 20 apps in the travel category and it seems that not only is WorldMate ready for iPhone, iPhone is ready for WorldMate.
This is obviously a fake. No baby would want to be seen with an outdated piece of technology like that. A baby would obviously go for a Palm Pre or maybe an iPhone.
So how old do children have to be to earn a mobile device? My oldest daughter is 7 and she is probably one of the last ones in her classroom to get a phone. If I didn’t think she’d lose it I’d buy her an iPhone. Really! She already knows more about my iPhone than I do.
Will our future children get their first phone when they are born? As a kind of welcome gift? What do you think?
Written on 2nd March 2009
15 COMMENTS Ken Camp, Contributing Opinion Writer, USA
Stated simply, mobility matters. Workers today carry a myriad devices for both business and personal use. Often marketed as lifestyle devices, many are aimed at more affluent customers. For mobile workers today, these high-end gadgets are more than a luxury or toy. For many of us, they’re quickly becoming our primary computing platform. For those of us on the go, the smaller and lighter the better.
Here’s our ‘road warrior bag’ complete with laptop, digital cameras (video and still), multiple phones, Internet tablets, digital recorder and more. It also has to carry all the cords, adapters and batteries we need on a trip, assuming that we are travelling ‘fully loaded’.
The more information professionals can fit into one device the better. Hauling a camera, browser, email access, IM tools, contacts and calendar in a single pocket-sized device is a marvelous efficiency. And as a bonus, the device serves to make telephone calls.
The Shrinking Personal Computer
Laptop computers gave way to notebooks, sub-notebooks, tablet PCs, and most recently ‘netbooks’ have taken the world by storm. A small device like a Nokia N810 or the ASUS 900 c;eee c;PC is often seen as plenty of computer to get the job done. For many of us, even a notebook computer is seen as excess baggage. It’s something we only carry along when absolutely necessary.
These devices are clearly not cell phones, and while they commonly include some form of VoIP capability, they don’t connect to the cellular carrier network. These internet tablets most commonly use WiFi technology, although Bluetooth, and recently WiMAX are both popular for specific market segments and uses.
Because the internet tablet is not a telephone, other add-ons are often included to provide support for voice services. Skype (www.skype.com) and Gizmo (www.gizmo.com) are both included in a number of different internet tablet solutions.
Another once indispensable business tool, the PDA, has all but faded from the scene. The Sharp Zaurus and Palm Pilot both soared to success based on the promise we saw in the earlier Apple Newton. No more. They’ve been swallowed inside the mobile phone today.
These devices are dropping in price every month, and become more readily available. The power of the CPU today enables WindowsXP or even Vista. We’re seeing portables that will likely sell for around $300 c;USD.
Smartphones and Handhelds
Mobile phones aren’t what they were just a couple of years ago. They’ve become portable multimedia workstations. The Nokia N-95 or the Apple iPhone are among the premier lifestyle devices for personal use, but they may not complete the picture. Many workers also carry a Blackberry or Windows Mobile device for work. For those who do, even these two devices are frequently viewed as irritants. We want a single device to do everything. (more…)
Written on 23rd January 2009
7 COMMENTS Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
Yes this photo has done the rounds, and you are likely to have heard the confirmation of the phone in his hands not actually being a Blackberry. So what exactly is it you ask? Unfortunately we’re still not certain, but there are a couple of good possibilities. What’s been confirmed? Well…
The White House have confirmed that President Obama will definitely keep a Blackberry-like Device during his time at the White House, however they are refusing to reveal exactly what the phone is.
The below report is CNN’s attempt at narrowing down the possibilities for, what we are calling, the OPhone BarackBerry (thanks John Craft).
His reasons for demanding a smart phone/portable email device? To ensure he doesn’t get trapped in a bubble, detached from the outside world and of course to stay in touch with a few ’select’ personal contacts.
Written on 30th November 2008
4 COMMENTS Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
In an ironically hypocritical turn, India’s terrorists used Western made technology to highlight their hatred for the West and what it represents.
Amongst granades, ammunition magazines, credit cards, food rations and thousands of dollars of cash found in terrorists backpacks lay one vital piece of tracking equipment – Blackberry’s.
After all cable television feeds had been cut to the two luxury hotels and office block, the gunmen had planned ahead and used Blackberry’s to monitor the situation and global reaction. The terrorists used the smartphone to track the status of their other planned sites of terror and the police/army response. Also however, the used the now iconic device to see first hand the public reaction to the atrocities, both locally and worldwide.
It’s difficult to be certain as to whether the Blackberry’s were a well planned pre-thought or a clever after-thought once the television feeds had been cut. Either way, the young assassins were tech savvy enough to know that amongst thousands of foreigners probably lay hundreds of blackberry devices – all perfectly powerful enough to give them real time updates of the horrific action & anti-terrorist re-action around them.
This Monday we retired our Blackberries and replaced them with our brand new iPhone 3Gs.
We have used the Blackberries extensively for work, travel, play, on our way to the office, in the office, during conferences, meetings and while swimming, during cooking and in our bathtubs. We dropped it, almost drowned it, overheated it and lost it while skiing and found it back again. We photographed the stars and ourselves and wrote many thousands of email and read even more.
Now it is time to say goodbye. We thought about ceremoniously burying them somewhere in the woods to give them the respect they deserve, but why not ask you? What do you think we should do with these trusted machines? Should we give them to you? Burn them? Recycle them? Keep them? Just forget about them? Tell us!
The people from Perk Mobile are helping companies out which have no idea what to do with “this new mobile web thing”. Some of the world’s largest companies ask the New Yorkers to figure out problems concerning mobile devices and software.
But the consultant life alone isn’t enough for them. They need some excitement – something weird. I know one of the founders personally, even consider him a great friend, and seriously, I haven’t met anyone with such a bizarre sense of humor that even comes close to his. I could go into details here, but let’s skip that for now and see how these New York city boys fulfill their somewhat freaky needs.
What about… a zombie-themed location-based game? Grab your Blackberry, hit the streets of Manhattan, and slash some random strangers. You might even become friends afterwards. That’s basically the idea behind Mobile Dead. It uses GPS (or other location data) to find your position and the position of your enemies. You’ll recognize them by their color. Humans are blue, zombies green.
Of course it’s a bit more sophisticated than that, as you can also pick up items along the way. Such as health packages and weapons. Use the latter in fights, which consists of taking turns in slashing. You hit, wait for the nasty reply, and hit again.
It will be interesting times for the developers, as they need a lot of participants before the game becomes interesting. Supporting of the iPhone, Android, and other smart phones will definitely help. One thing is for sure, they’ve picked the right city. Everybody’s commuting all the time over there.
The UK mobile social media platform Next2Friends launched the world’s first ‘Live’ mobile video broadcasting application for the BlackBerry Curve and Pearl today.
The Blackberries aren’t the only one devices supported. Nokia, Sony Ericsson, LG, Motorola, Samsung are also fully supported by the Next2Friends social mobile network.
This move tappes a segment of industry which nobody has entered so far. To start streaming from your Pearl or Curve, all you need to do is head over to Next2Friends, complete the 60 second free signup, and install the application. You can see a demo in the video below:
Next2Friends Live enables people to share their lives from anywhere, from broadcasting the little things that make up the day, to capturing a must-see-moment, to bringing happenings across the world closer to home.
Some of the new features that have recently been incorporated are one click streaming, the ability to zoom, pause or re-start live streams and automatic quality selection that guarantees the best streaming experience independent of location, carrier or connection speeds.
Right after this launch Next2Friends also announced the Live embeddable Flash widget which allows you to display live videos on your website or anywhere you can use HTML code. Check out an example on Dotlizard.com.
RIm has announced their iPhone killer recently. They call it the “BlackBerry Storm” and it is supposed the be their answer to the Apple iPhone.
It looks more like a direct reply actually. A reply that quotes most of the original message too and doesn’t add much. Do you know those replies? You write a long, funny and intelligent story and anxiously await a reply only to get your whole message back with one sentence at the top?
That is what the Blackberry Storm is like.
Even worse: the online demo looks and feels terribly low tech. The “Typing and Email” demo is supposed to show me how cool and fast text entry is on the Blackberry Storm. We recorded what it looks like here so you can get look too:
32.4 for the Blackberry Storm VS 22.3 on the iPhone! Ugh!
You could argue that this is ‘just’ a demo and the real product will be much cooler, but isn’t that a bit weird? Take a look at the movies for the iPhone. Like this one. High production values, terrible slick and amazingly cool. If you manage to ignore the slick sales guy.
Maybe the demo just sucks on a Mac and works a lot better on a PC but how much sense would that make? If you are going to compete with the iPhone you better make sure your demos work well on the Mac as I’m sure a very large part of iPhone users also own Macs.
Well no, RIM is not interested in any Mac users, at all. You can Sync your desktop iTunes® music files using BlackBerry® Media Sync, unless you have a Mac. It only works with Windows, as explained in Fine Print bullet number 9.
I have been a loyal Crackberry user for years. I used, abused, trashed and lost more than 10 Blackberries since I started using them in 2003. I was just as excited about the Blackberry Pearl and Blackberry Curve when they came out as I am about the iPhone. The Blackberry Storm however is ‘too little, too late’ for me.
Okay, one thing is cool: “At 3.2 megapixels, you can take sharp, print-quality pictures using the BlackBerry Storm smartphone. You can also rely on the auto focus and auto flash to help you capture the moment”. Just don’t forget to buy a few microSD cards because the only has 1GB of internal memory.
Since the iPhone was announced Blackberry users suddenly felt less special. Weren’t THEY the ones that were always connected, always on and always in sync? Flashing a Blackberry Curve or Pearl just didn’t make an impression anymore. But there was just no way we could switch from our trusted Blackberrys and get used to that innovative onscreen keyboard that the iPhone made such headlines with. As a RIM executive said
“I could just never get the feel for it because, well, there is nothing to feel.”
Fortunately you can now get a preview of Research in Motions iPhone killer. Will it kill the iPhone? Definitely not. But it will get us Blackberry users back some self esteem:
Written on 4th June 2009
2 COMMENTS 
WorldMate
is huge in the mobile world -it first started as a Palm OS app back in 2000. Then, as today, they realized that “travel = mobile” and so it made sense to build a mobile application for travelers. WorldMate had an innovative approach and built what was the industry’s first on-device portal with a myriad of travel content for online/offline use. WorldMate was so successful that many PDA/Smartphone makers including Nokia, Palm, HP, and Sony Ericsson pre-installed it on their devices. More than 3 million people use WorldMate across the Symbian, BlackBerry, Palm OS and Windows Mobile platforms.
AppStore, blackberry, business, iphone, itunes apppstore, markets, mobile application, Nokia, palm, smartphone, Smartphones, Symbian, travel, Windows, worldmate
Written on 9th April 2009
Written on 2nd March 2009
Written on 23rd January 2009
Yes this photo has done the rounds, and you are likely to have heard the confirmation of the phone in his hands not actually being a Blackberry. So what exactly is it you ask? Unfortunately we’re still not certain, but there are a couple of good possibilities. What’s been confirmed? Well…
Written on 30th October 2008
Written on 17th October 2008
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show off, the future of the Web. (More info 
