A phone is not just a phone

Smartphones are changing the way we interact with the world and people around us. With the internet access in a device that you carry around with you anywhere you go the possibilities go further than just being able to have a phonecall on the way. This is slowly but surly starting to create all kinds of new uses. Especially in third world countries. See the following links:

Student projects explore innovative cellphone uses in developing world
A cellphone is not just for calling, texting and taking pictures anymore. Several startup business ventures spawned by MIT students, sometimes as class projects and sometimes as independent work, are exploring new ways to harness the increasingly ubiquitous devices. They are using phones to help people, especially in developing nations, to raise their incomes, learn to read, get where they're going and even diagnose their ailments.
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NextLab is based on trying to answer the question "can you make a cellphone change the world?" says its instructor Jhonatan Rotberg, director of the Media Lab's Next Billion Network - a group, of which NextLab is a part, formed to examine potential applications for the next one billion people expected to become cellphone users over the next three years. With cellphones now in the hands of four billion people worldwide, he says, "we're at the threshold of something important in history."

"Future Perfect is about the collision of people, society and technology, drawing on issues related to the design research that I conduct in part, on behalf of my employer - Nokia."

"A lot of rich qualitative user research loses its soul by the time it's been squeezed into conference and journal submission formats and in addition, with the exception of published patents work involving concept generation tends to remain confidential. So what you see here scratches the surface, nothing more. Media/interviews here."

First Person UIs

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Luke Wroblewski writes:

In my iPhone with a Compass = First Person UIs article, I discussed how location and orientation awareness in mobile devices opens up a set of new interface possibilities that are designed from the user’s current perspective. In other words, first person user interfaces that are built knowing where you are and where you are facing.

Recently I found three such applications have made their way to Google's Android Market. Though in their early stages, these apps demonstrate the potential of creating user interfaces from a natural, first person perspective: how we actually see the world. 

Very interesting!