mobile

mobile

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Mobile and microformats make for a particularly powerful combination. Microformats help users complete more tasks with fewer steps, and requiring fewer steps is especially important in mobile applications. This page lists current known mobile support of microformats, and ideas/suggestions for mobile applications that could use microformats.

mobile support

Treo

The Treo browser has good integration with the Treo address book and calendar.

• hCard support. Clicking on a "Add to Address Book" link (e.g. on Technorati's contact page) will prompt the user to add that hCard directly to their Treo address book.

• hCalendar support. Clicking on an "Add to Calendar" link (e.g. like on the events page) will prompt the user to add hCalendar events directly to their Treo calendar. (Note: the "Subscribe to" links that use webcal: do not appear to currently work on the Treo.)

Nokia

• The S60 3rd generation browser can handle vcards and icals (as those generated by X2V and technorati) extracted from hcards and vcards very well.

List of models: N80, N95, (please update).

Sony Ericsson

• The Sony Ericsson W810i can handle vCards generated by X2V (it also supports hCard to vCard to QR-Code (http://www.microform.at/hcard2qrcode/))

mobile non support

Smartphones that should know better! I.e. they have a browser, they address books and/or calendar programs, and yet, they're not connected! They might even sync with a desktop that supports vCard and iCalendar (and maybe even hCard and hCalendar), but they lack built-in support.

BlackBerry

No support for hCard/vCard/hCalendar/iCalendar in BlackBerry 8700, 81xx, 88xx models. Anybody have experience either way with BlackBerry 9000?

• see mobile-advocacy for more.

iPhone

No support for hCard/vCard/hCalendar/iCalendar in first generation iPhone / Safari / Webkit. No support on iPhone 3G software v2.0.2(5C1), clicking the "add to address book" link as above results in a message saying "Safari can't download this file". This is particularly sad for the iPhone as the iPod has supported vCard and iCalendar for many years!

• see mobile-advocacy for more.

Palm Pre

No support for hCard/vCard/hCalendar/iCalendar in Palm Pre. It does support url dialing and vCards generated by X2V (it also supports hCard to vCard to QR-Code (http://www.microform.at/hcard2qrcode/)).

Sidekick

On a Sidekick LX (2008, I think; maybe 2007), it treats text/directory as text/plain; that is: if you use h2v to get data out of a page with hCard, you get some text back; text that's less readable and useful than the hCard. This is pretty disappointing, given that the sidekick can send contacts via email. Perhaps it's not all that surprising, though, since this sidekick doesn't do anything when *receiving* vcards.

mobile application thoughts

If this section gets too big, we can move it to a separate page like mobile-user-interface.

browser address book integration

Every mobile browser should auto-detect hCards and provide the user a simple/unobtrusive user interface to add them to their mobile address book.

Example: you are browsing a business site, or business listings (e.g. on Google Maps) which list business name, telephone number, address, URL etc. With a simple click or two, it should be possible to save those listings in your address book for future reference or navigation (see below).

browser calendar integration

Every mobile browser should auto-detect hCalendar events and provide the user a simple/unobtrusive user interface to add (or subscribe to) them to their mobile address book.

Example: you are browsing an event site (e.g. Upcoming.org), or event listings on a business site, and see event names, start/end times, locations, etc. With a simple click or two, it should be possible to save those events in your calendar for future reference / alarms etc.

mapping and navigation

adr and geo microformats are useful for mobile mapping and navigation applications. (from tweet: [1]).

The most obvious thing to do is extending support for geo so you can get directions to places from browsers, so you could, for example, get off the train, go to Upcoming.org on your mobile, click the address and have the mobile mapping applications walk you there. (from tweets [2], [3]).

url dialing

Most phones have a way of invoking a call from the browser or from applications built in the native languages (JavaME, Python etc.) - it'd be useful if you could have a really simple way of putting in a URI, and it finding the relevant hCard on the page and auto-dials it. I can remember "companyname.com" but not some long phone number. I'm thinking of building something broadly on this line using JavaME, backed by a web service to get the numbers and return them to the device (favouring hCards, but regexing for things that look like phone numbers if it doesn't find any). This came to me a while back when I was walking around London trying to find a shop - I knew their URL but had no idea of their phone number. --TomMorris 05:07, 12 Sep 2008 (PDT)

effortlessly add a contact to the address book

By using a bit of URL voodoo we can provide a QR Code (here's a reader)so that the user can point their phone at the image and following the URL, a popup appears prompting them to add the contact to their address book. Downside: It requires internet access.

Example: [4] (Thank Brian Suda for X2V!) --Andr3 01:19PM, 12 Sep 2008 (WEST)

thanks

• @bryanrieger for asking the question on Twitter.
• @markng for providing some ideas with user scenarios.

see also

• advocacy
• mobile-advocacy
• user-interface
• operator-phone-tests