Paul Golding has spent almost 20 years in mobile technology and business. He was a key member of Motorola Wireless research team up until he founded his own business in 1995. Since then, he has focused on mobile internet software technologies and techniques, from an architecture and programming perspective, and is now a freelance consultant, author and blogger. He has worked with mobile projects on all continents; recently, he consulted as Chief Applications Architect for Motorola. In 2004, Wiley published Golding's book Next Generation Wireless Applications which went into second edition last year. He also has nearly completed his first novel, a sci-fi story for kids. An interesting creation Golding came up with as early as the mid-nineties was a digital dashboard for mobile. It was based on the idea of desktop widgets, which is an idea that has come around again recently. Mobile widgets are being promoted again – let's see if they work this time around.

Website: http://wirelesswanders.com

Illustration by Thomas Wellmann

We are rapidly headed towards a new era of human interaction that is marked by perpetual conversations and perpetual info drip-feed, as enabled by the umbilical of the mobile. With its always-on and always-carried potential, the mobile allows our streams of consciousness and related intentions to be converted instantly into actions with both local and remote effects. Not only does the mobile enable us to seize the moment, but increasingly it is the cause of the moment, adding more and more events to our daily timeline.

Self-expression at the speed of thought

The Ancients were perplexed by the written word. To them, it was an odd notion, that some stranger, unknown, unplaced, would 'hear' the speaker's words from afar. Until then, words were exchanged face to face, not across distances to where the speaker was absent and the listener (ie reader) an utter stranger. Much later, radio caused similar concern, although by then we had become somewhat used to the idea of remote communication. Today, such reservations would be odd indeed. Yet, here we are again with Twitter and, soon, with widgets.

For those first immersed in its chatter, Twitter can be a very alien affair. With Twitter, users broadcast short snippets of text, up to 140 characters, called tweets. These are placed into a public timeline that anyone can follow. Tweets are posted as frequently or infrequently as the user likes, as tiny updates about the user's life at that moment, such as actions, thoughts, questions, or anything else that the user wishes to express at that moment in time, seizing the moment.

All users have their own timeline, but also follow the timelines of others, combined into a merged timeline that the follower can observe (or not) reading messages (or not) as they float on by. But it isn't broadcast. Followers can reply to tweets, but by sending the reply as a tweet back into their own public timeline for anyone following that timeline to read, not just the intended recipient to whom the reply is addressed. In other words, the conversations, as such, are conducted in public.

Without doubt, this is a new mode of communication and, after frequent bouts of initial scepticism, often fooled by its subtleties, users become addicted and then immersed: interacting with the timeline is imbibed and becomes a new habit, fulfilling »» Marshall McLuhan's insightful aphorism about immersive technologies (originally TV), that "fish don't know the existence of water until beached". And what is it about Twitter that blends so easily into our daily information sustenance? What is its essence? The clue is in the name of the tweet stream – the timeline. The essence of Twitter is all about how it redefines our relationship with time.

Time is nothing other than the intervals on a clock face counted out by the advancing second hand. But this is not how we experience time. We experience time as a series of moments measured out by events. Our personal timeline is a series of events that happen moment by moment and are dominated by the events that happen in our brains – thoughts, contemplations, urges and emotions bubbling up from our sub-concious stream, some of them converted by the conscious into intentions and sometimes into actions. It is communication and self-expression at the speed of thought.

And, it is no coincidence that the length of a tweet fits nicely into the size of a text message, for what better way to seize the moment than to do so using a mobile – the only device that is with us moment by moment. It is a seizing the moment machine. But our lives are more than just shared utterances. We crave information and interaction with our web worlds. So, what lies beyond the tweet?



Surfing the event horizon

Tweets are now being heard from machines and programs. And why not? Why shouldn't our bank chatter with balance and transaction tweets? Or our supermarket tweet the latest offers? The possibilities are endless, only it might be more useful to present such updates in a graphically rich and interactive manner, and perhaps not in the public gaze of the Twitterverse.

Enter the world of »» widgets. Not that usefully named, but likely to become as significant as Twitter in our daily timeline of moments.

Ironically, widgets do much greater service to the metaphor of web 'surfing' than their parent browsers. Surfing is somewhat of a misnomer anyway and doesn't fit with the mobile user experience. To surf brings to mind the vision of riding the wave of information as it unfolds, whereas browsing is more akin to paddling around the shore after the wave has passed and even receded.

Widgets are like mini webpages that tend to have only one function, such as tracking the real-time departure of trains from Paddington station to Cardiff. However, unlike webpages pulled into our browsers when we click for them, widgets are always active, availing themselves of the latest information updates for us. We don't have to keep opening a train departures webpage. We can imagine that the widget is doing that for us in the background, keeping an eye on any information updates, ready to bring them to our attention at the moment of change, or the moment of interest, however we define that.

Hence, widgets really are like surfers. They belly-board around for us, waiting in the ocean of information, waiting to catch the next wave, ready to bring the information to our shores as and when we need it.



Mashing here with there

Widgets aren't new. We've seen them on the desktop, although they're largely underutilised by most of us. But mobile widgets are different. Mobile widgets don't just respond to information flows through the web. This new breed of widgets can tap into the flow of events and information within the mobile devices themselves. Using interfaces into the inner sanctum of the device, mobile widgets can access events and data from phone calls, text messages, address books, photos and call records, to name a few.

Tapping into local device data, mobile widgets possess greatly amplified seizing-the-moment capabilities, by mashing web moments with mobile moments. Some examples will illustrate the possibilities.

A call into the mobile can bring a widget to life. Imagine the widget has been belly-boarding around in the sea of Facebook data, watching the waves of change as our friends change their status updates. Moments ago, Zak pinged an update: "Getting ready to max it out at the gym." On his way to the gym, Zak gives us a call. 'Whoa!' says the widget, 'Here comes a call – time to ride this wave.'

The widget jumps on the board and starts to surf. It grabs the latest ping from Zak and puts it up on the screen: "Zak calling – 2 minutes ago from Facebook: 'Getting ready to max it out at the gym'."

We see what Zak's up to on Facebook and take the call. Something to talk about perhaps, or confirmation that our friend is on his way to meet us at the gym where we plan to work-out together. There's no real need to spell out all the possibilities: you will imagine them for yourself. If not you, then the millions already riding the status update wave, be it in Facebook, Twitter, Yammer, LinkedIn or somewhere else.

But it doesn't end there. Widgets can support rich media and are fully interactive. During the call, we can update Zak's wall, add comments to his latest photo, even upload a photo, one taken that moment and sucked back into the widget via the camera program interface.

Call the bank; get the latest balance on the screen. Text a friend; get their current whereabouts. Text a colleague; get their meeting status from their online calendar. It's even possible to mash-up widgets with telephony functions. For example, instead of waiting and listening to all those irritating interactive voice options ('Press 1 for sales, 2 for more sales, 3 for everything else'), see them on a widget instead, including status info, such as maintenance announcements letting you know why your email is currently down.

The mashing across phone and web blurs here with there, letting events local to your phone (and presumably therefore your current activities) merge with events unfolding 'out there', on the web and as far as its digital tendrils can reach – your oven, perhaps.

Even mash-back with Twitter is possible. Tweet: "Paul just took call from Jake." Not for me or you? Perhaps not, but definitely for tweeners, teeners and millennials. We'll catch on later.



Sensing the moment

The device interfaces available to widgets can also expose sensor information, such as location, temperature, light, and even emotion in the voice. Widgets running on our mobiles, able to access the sensor data, are hence uniquely placed to seize every aspect of the mobile moment. These belly-boarders can catch the waves as they really do move: up and down, back and forth, near and far, colder and warmer.

A entire class of 'proximity widgets' is possible – widgets that stand up and surf whenever we get near to a particular place, event or position of interest and opportunity. Such ideas are not new. We have all heard about how a mobile could offer us a free muffin as we pass the local coffee concession, but the realisation of such ideas has been constrained by the rather dull and passive affair of the text alert.

Widgets are a far better bridging point between the concession's web-bound presentation of its offers and wares, and the customer's location. Widgets really can bring proximity services to life, surfing not just the timeline of moments, but the timeline of movements.

Sensors can go even further, into the realms of detection. With voice-recognition services rapidly becoming available in the network, the potential exists for seizing the spoken moment: Mary could call Ameena and during the conversation make mention of Yoyo. Moments later, Yoyo receives a message on his Facebook wall: "Yoyo – that's YOU – was tagged (ie mentioned) during a call between Mary and Ameena." There are some privacy issues to be explored, but welcome to the new world of open social networking.

And to complete the bridge from the digital to analogue, near-field sensors in the mobiles can allow widgets to talk to other widgets on phones nearby. Note passing at the back of the class takes on a whole new dimension. Sure, tweeners will regularly text each other within speaking distance anyway, but there's an alluring and palpable dimension to passing stuff in person. Mary proclaims 'I got this from Josh', proud of the fact that the party invitation can only be got from Josh in person, not by forwarding or any other means of duping. If you don't know Josh, you're not in! How cool is that?



The medium is the moment

Not long ago, phone calls ('ring ring'), texts ('beep beep') and the alarm clock ('brrr brrr') were the only ways that our mobiles might 'interrupt' us. With Twitter and widgets, this is changing. But don't mistake these moments as interruptions. These are the moments that make the stepping stones of our daily timeline across the ocean of people and info chatter. We weave them into our timeline and they weave us into theirs. The tools invented to seize the moment have began to define the moment.

And we shouldn't underestimate their significance. As »» Neil Postman pointed out, "technology is transformational". It is not like the dropping of a pebble into a glass of water, but more like the dropping of red ink. It rapidly infuses and cannot be undone. For example, Europe after the printing press was not merely Europe plus the printing press; it became a new Europe. Similarly, our digital societies post-Twitter, post-Widgets and post emergent timeline-weaving tools, are new societies. Already there is a growing feeling amongst the masses that these tools are creating an emergent chattering class. Sign-up or get left behind: society is moving on.

All this is possible because of mobiles and their unique seizing-the-moment potential. But more than that: the mobile medium has become instrumental in producing the moments, courtesy of timelines from Twitter, widgets and our digital worlds. The medium is the moment.

This article was written for receiver

Contact: Paul Golding