While contributing content to the text articles would be tough on a cell phone keypad, there are ways to make cell users useful contributors - photos.
Dpreview just had an item about a 3 megapixel camera/phone, and many new phones now have 1 megapixel cameras. It would be nice to make it easy for folks to submit photos via mobile means for articles. This might be part of a larger effort to make the whole photo submission process more friendly.
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0407/04071202samsungsph2300.asp
- User:Fuzheado
On Fri, 16 Jul 2004 14:53:16 -0400, Alex Hottenstein ahottenstein@gmail.com wrote:
I had not seen the http://www.kwickee.com site, but it does prove that there is movement toward doing more and more things on cell phones. I do not know that it is actually what I am hoping that we can achieve however.
Wikipedia is perfect for this type of endeavor simply because all the information on it is free, and saved in a centralized, basic standard (I am assuming) all of which should be able to easily be pulled into whatever cell phone form we would need to use.
I am not looking for some complex site with user interaction, only one which allows the user to punch in a keyword, get search return results, and then see the article (obviously broken down screen by screen). This would not need to be complex, and there are few to no security issues that I can think of if we make this read-only.
Wikipedia can gain greatly from the concept that this would push. Publicly available information accessibly anywhere that a Internet enabled cell phone is accessible. Would it be 100% useful in the first phase? probably not. But, it could (and I believe) should be done.
Again, I do not know the protocol here, so who is in charge of determining actual product movements?
On Fri, 16 Jul 2004 19:20:45 +0000, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
On 07/16/04 14:06, Alex Hottenstein wrote:
Simply stated, by creating a cell phone web interface for the Wikipedia database, instant access to a dynamic encyclopedia could be given to all cell phone users worldwide. From what I can tell of the site, the infrastructure to undertake such a project is all there. I do not know if this is a project that you are already considering, but if not, I would be happy to lead this initiative, and am very interested in recruiting others who are interested in becoming involved in the project.
You want http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mobile_subdomain
This is an idea that's in the air at the moment. Have you seen this?
http://www.kwickee.comHave a look at this thing and read the FAQs and marketing documents.
It's a collaborative user-contributed articles thing for mobile phones in the UK, done on a commercial basis. "The first group to welcome new technologies and ideas are predominantly the young. Since this group is also the largest to own browser-enabled mobile phones, we anticipate the bulk of the market for Kwickee Bitesize will be 16-30-year-olds. It is also understood that the 30+ market use the Kwickee website - taking full advantage of the special features and subscription services."
(i.e., it looks like the sort of wishful thinking dot-com marketers come up with on a Tuesday afternoon down the pub.)
I think they're onto a loser, because their intended market uses Internet-capable phones. Which would therefore be quite able to access any web page readable in Opera. Like OURS, let's say.
They plan a *significant* marketing push for this thing (from http://www.kwickee.com/2a_marketing1.html):
"How will Kwickee Bitesize be advertised? A major marketing programme is planned for the first year of launch. This will include a major SMS campaign, advertising in magazines, daily newspapers, cinemas and over the Internet. The marketing campaign has been awarded to a UK top three Advertising & Data Marketing Agency." "How big is the UK market for Kwickee Bitesize?" "There are approximately 30 million people with mobile handsets capable of receiving a Bitesize. Alternatively, anyone with an Internet connection can receive a Kwickee Bitesize."
Dot-com taught us that trying to *start* an idea as a business that your competitor could start in their garage is unlikely to work.
We should be able to ride this big time. How does Wikipedia look on browser-capable mobile phones? Do we have any automatic function to pull the intro from all articles (that have an intro) and just send that on request?
(This'll make news style for article intros a better idea ...)
- David.
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