RSS as the mobile "killer app"

I read Paul's NFC proximity sensing in shops post, in which he mentions the possibility of shops providing their latest offers via an RSS feed. This got me thinking about Lidl's weekly specials and how it would be cool to get them as an RSS feed in my new LiteFeeds mobile aggregator. A quick Google search yielded RSSxl - Convert an HTML Web Page to RSS which has a handy form for - you guessed it - generating RSS from HTML. In about 5 minutes I had a feed that lists each special (with a link to the product page) in the title and the price listed in the description of each item.

Now I'd like to be able to say that I added the feed to my LiteFeeds account and the rest was history - handy notifications of Lidl's weekly specials in my mobile aggregator. But that's not quite true. The generated feed doesn't actually work in LiteFeeds (I'm not sure why) and besides this is a rather brittle hack. (Although I prefer LiteFeeds, my generated feed worked fine with Bloglines mobile.)

I think the exercise illustrates an important point though. With fairly little effort, I was able to make use of readily available information and tools to get notifications of interest to me, on my mobile phone. No premium rate text messages and no need to browse the full HTML site with the limited resources of a phone. Now the question is: why aren't Lidl already providing their specials as an RSS feed (instead of an email newsletter)? And what about the recruitment sites and the property letting and sales sites and, and... Surely the obvious thing for them is to offer highly personalised feeds of jobs and properties and weather reports and DART times and ... the list is endless. Feeds that people could aggregate on their mobiles allowing them to get all their notifications in one convenient place.

BusSched as an alternative to busTXT

I had seen BusSched before, but it seems to have been updated.

BusSched is a utility for Palm OS and Pocket PC based PDAs. It is designed to display Dublin Bus bus schedules.

This application has an interesting list of features, including the ability to enter how many minutes your stop is from the terminus, and have the timetable altered accordingly. The thing I like best about the site though, is the ability to create your own timetable. You can select the routes you use from a dropdown list and download only the databases for those routes.

With virtually every new mobile phone now supporting Java, I think this app is just crying out to be converted to j2me. Throw in the ability to download only data for routes you use (saving space on low-end handsets) and I think you've got some serious competition for busTXT.

Luas Smart Card top-up idea

I just applied for a Luas Smart Card, which is billed as “the easy pay-as-you-go way to travel on Luas”. Strange – I thought pay-as-you-go was what I was doing when I put my money in the ticket machine and paid for a single trip. I would have thought the smart card more of a “prepaid” way to travel. Semantics aside though, this seems like a good idea and it would have saved me 45 minutes of queueing on Paddy’s Day.

Now if only there were a handy way to top it up from my mobile phone. The thing is, I’m most likely to “remember” that it needs topping up when I “tag-on” and I’m informed that my balance is low. If I could send off a top-up text message while I’m waiting for the next Luas or completing my journey, then I save myself from having to queue the next time – which is surely the point of the whole system.

MobileIrish

So I was watching Million Dollar Baby this morning when I suddenly needed to know what "Mo cuishle" means in English. I have the number for MobileIrish (sms Irish dictionary) on my phone, so I sent off a quick text. Unfortunately, the service seems to be down though. This isn't a service I'd use every day, but it's perfect for this type of situation and it provided some entertainment on a pub crawl that included Anseo and Solas, when it WAS working.

A Google search for irish sms displays an AdWords link for MobileIrish, which is how I found the site originally. This despite the fact that the service isn't (wasn't) a premium rate one, and would have COST the provider to translate words. I'm not sure whether the service is just down temporarily or if it has been discontinued, but I for one would like to see it back - even at a premium rate.

Anyway, it's probably a good thing I got no reply - it would have ruined the end of the movie for me.

PodGuides

As a recent convert to PodCasting, I believe that James at EirePreneur has had another good idea : PodGuides for the Irish tourism market. He links to PodGuides.net, which explains that a PodGuide is

the combination of a map (PDF) of a certain place and a series of audio tracks (mp3) which you can download for your iPod. Think of an audio tour in a museum, but not limited to just that. You could have a PodGuide about the 10 coolest pubs in London...or Dublin.

The site goes on to explain

On the pdf-map all the stopovers are marked with a numbered dot. Each number corresponds with a track number. So if, for example, you are on dot '3' you choose track 3 of the PodGuide, and the appropriate info will be played back to you.

My suggestion would be to offer either mini WAP sites or java midlets for displaying the maps, as an alternative to the pdf.

m-Paddy's Day

A friend suggested that I post something about Paddy's Day. A quick Google search yielded the following:

• Get in the spirit of things by downloading some free St. Patricks Day Themed Ringtones
• FoneBlog.ie has a page from last year that says Join in on our Paddy's Day Blog! Send us pics and text to paddysday@foneblog.ie while you are out and about celebrating!!www.foneblog.ie/paddysday. I checked out www.foneblog.ie/paddysday and found no pictures, but maybe someone will post something this year.
• VisitDublin.com's wireless site has a schedule of the various events.

DartMobile

DartMobile allows access to live DART times available at www.dart.ie from any mobile phone that supports Java. If you do have a Java enabled phone and GPRS then this might be a cheaper alternative than DARTXT, and a list of stations in the application saves you from typing in the station name. My only suggestion would be that since people are likely to be using this while walking (or running) to the DART station, a larger/bolder font (at least on the Nokia 6600) might work better.

BusTxt ideas

I found the excellent Wireless Wonders blog recently and read Paul's Follow-up text protocol post. His basic idea is that user's would opt-in to allowing merchants to send one follow-up text message per transaction conducted with them.

This reminded me of an idea I had when Dublin Bus had their annual fare increase earlier this year. Since I’ve used BusTxt a couple of times, they KNOW I take the bus (at least sometimes) and they KNOW my mobile number. It would be a no-brainer for them to send me a single text message with the details of any fare changes. Saves Dublin Bus 10 cents (since the driver lets you on at the old fare anyway) and saves me from looking like an idiot, giving me a warm fuzzy feeling about them (if that’s possible). Come to think of, I wouldn’t mind them sending me route or timetable changes for routes that I’d enquired about either.

The important point Paul makes in his post is that the number of follow-up texts be limited, so that people don't get spammed. I think in the case of BusTxt follow-ups, most people wouldn't mind getting the odd fare or timetable change text.