This is a big thank-you to all of you beta testers. It's going really well, and your comments and feedbacks are very informative and at the same time very encouraging. It's good to see that there are people out there - besides us - who like Frucall!
Well, if you are into technology and you want to know how we're doing it, here it is. Frucall heavily uses VoiceXML, SOAP (for Web Services), TTS or Text To Speech, ASR or Automated Speech Recognition, SMS and WAP. We are in the Java camp, so we use JSPs and servlets. One thing which is hot these days, and we have not used yet (can you tell that I'm looking for an excuse to do some?) is AJAX - although I'm not sure if I fully like the name...
Frucall is currently focused on online comparison shipping delivered to the mobile shopper, which is what I call "mobile shopping". However, that's just the beginning. The vision is to deliver all kinds of useful information to the mobile user. Notice that I'm not saying mobile shopper anymore - it's the mobile user.
Millenigence has been doing this for some time now for the enterprise users (I have not had a chance to give you some history - sorry, too much to do :-) We have learned over the years, that using the right tool for the right purpose is very important. A cell phone, in my mind, is never the best tool to access the Internet. When there's a lot of interaction, using the cell phone is going to be really tough. But, there are quite a number of situations where you mostly "receive" information. You need to supply one or two pieces of information, such as a product bar code, or your vicinity, and then the Internet has a lot to offer, such as price, used prices, ratings, or the local shop where you can find what you need. And guess what, you usually need that on-the-go. We see Frucall as a first step towards that. This kind of availability of information is much closer to reality than one would think...
That's why I keep telling the people that are participating in our invitation-only beta test. We have been testing the service with some fifty people, and there'll be more. I'm not sure when we'll open it up to the public, but I'm sure very excited about it.
Almost everybody has a cell phone these days, with Europe and Far East being by far ahead of the US in the market. Although technologies are coming about to allow consumers to use their cell phones to connect to the Internet, at least here in the US consumers are far from comfortable doing so, set aside the fact that services are not reliable enough. So accessing the Internet information on a cell phone is still a couple of years away.
But voice is a different story. People are used to making phone calls, and are used to using touch tones to access services over the phone, such as checking bank account balances. Frucall does the same: It leverages the familiar, simple voice/touch-tone interface, but brings real time information right from the Internet to the consumer, when and where they need it most.
Very interesting:
Some interesting cell phone services are being introduced. Check this out:
http://news.com.com/2061-12351_3-6036769.html?tag=nl
I believe that there are two sides to any service focused on cell phones: A web portal and a voice/SMS/WAP portal. Users prefer to do their "administrative" things conveniently from their PCs on the web. They would prefer to follow the history or result of what they have done with their cell phone on the web. At the same time, the focus is on the cell phone, so there has to be a voice portal which is the automated voice that brings data to the cell phone, followed by an SMS/WAP portal to display data on the device. The user interface of a cell phone is limited, so the application should use all these three means to their fullest potential to give the user a good, easy, and intuitive experience.
A few years ago a new buzzword hit the market: M-commerce. The idea was to do E-commerce on mobile devices. Just like VoIP, the concept was too early, and companies that jumped on the concept could not pull it off, mainly because the market was not ready.
But the time has come. With great adoption of cell phones and handheld devices on one side, and more mature Internet technologies such as Web Services we are now seeing interesting companies and ideas come by. As a part of this blog I will share some of these companies with you. It's my job to look for them and study them anyway, so I might as well share the names of some of these companies and services with you...