The Third Place

With Android getting into cruise speed, it’s probably time to talk about an integration, or application, that does something I’ve been waiting for a long time. It’s actually very simple: full contact list integration.

So, what do I mean by this?

Day by day, our world is getting even more connected in each and every way, but our personal availability to connect is still limited. More, the “mobile internet” is already here: iPhone, netbooks, cheap mobile data plans, etc. Of course, not everyone wants to be available 24/7, but remember there’s always the off switch.

To put it short, I want, and predict, that the next generation of contact lists, most probably the mobile phone books, will also be instant messengers, with redundant contacts to the same person/object. It isn’t anything new, just the merging of two concepts. Pidgin is a very good example, where a single client program connects to a variety of services, providing an almost seamless instant messaging experience to the user. Now just imagine that it works in your own mobile, and integrates with it’s phone book. Bingo! You are now able to talk (or communicate) with any person in your contacts list, either they have a mobile phone or not! Another example is Jaiku’s S60 application, that integrates with Nokia’s mobile phone books.

Again, I know there are lots of programs that to a part of this, but I’m still waiting to see the full integration. No messy apps, just one contact list, with everything you need to communicate with another person.

And Android could well be the best candidate platform to do this…

Do mesmo criador do Público no Twitter, chega agora o Jornais Nacionais no Jaiku!

O próximo passo poderá ser substituir os feeds num só Jaiku, para algo mais segmentado como “tecnologia”, “desporto”, “politica”, etc. Até, quem sabe, usando OPML, como o próprio David já sugeriu.