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October 11, 2004
Google messaging
Google messaging: These automated SMS responses from the search engine to your phone drew a lot of attention last week... I'm late to the game, but I think this is very important, not for the particular current examples, but for what it shows of how we'll soon actually use pocket connectivity. Look, most people don't really use search engines today anyway -- the majority of queries are single- or double-word terms which aren't refined if the results are too large -- I can't see most people in the world getting geeky enough to type a period in "pizza.10013" to find something. But imagine a better interface, designed to a particular audience's common tasks, remembering or knowing things about them from session to session (a GPS locater, whether they like thincrust or thick, what their friends recommend), combined with a better outbound interface (a compass pointing "200 feet this way" instead of just "253 Canal St New York NY 10013")... a personal device with a personalized interface using these generic remote services, that's what I'm seeing when I look at these Google pages.... (Their FAQ is also useful, in illustrating the range of questions users actually have, even at these primitive early-adopter stages.)
Posted by John Dowdell at October 11, 2004 3:47 PM