The scope of my company is synchronization (http://www.funambol.com) but I've always been addicted by everything concerning the mobile experience and in general the issue of how improving user experience using new technologies. My first tech background when I was graduating at university concerned robotics and AI control, thus when I'm googleing around for the latest news about mobile world I am always excited when I find something about what in the early '80 was called "Virtual Reality". I was just a child when the "The_Lawnmower_Man" movie was out: it clearly explain what a vitural reality approach could be (something like "Virtual reality for dummies" - see more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lawnmower_Man_(film) made on the original Stephen King's book).
As a developer I tried to figure out how to use a mobile device in order the user to have a "Virtual user experience" as 3 years ago, I was learning the basics about the Java ME Sun's technology. I made some experiment on how to interact with the real world using the device's camera and sensor (jsr 234 specz in general) but I realized that technology was a bit too young.
Today we use to talk about "Augmented Reality" as we talked about "Virtual Reality" in '80. I found this interesting article on Games Alfresco blog: it seems that if you own a last generation device the Virtual Reality issue is resolved on it. The link below shows a full video of what a mobile device can do with the current implemented technologies:
Wow!! I found it really impressive!!
The applications shown in the video are demos but just try to figure out how they can be applied to the real world. I remember when I was playing "Doom" on my first vga PC, shooting the biggest monsters with the biggest cannons many hours per day: my mother always blaming me not to be out with my friends but wasting my time in front of that violent game... Soon I think people will be able to play games down the streets, using their own device just pointing their cameras and shooting the enemies maybe in multyplayer mode...
Also think about how these new technologies can be applied to the real world using the right approach (maybe not just games ;) ) they can be used in a wide application area, starting from games, of course, down to world accessibility improvements (search "The VOICe" app in the android market to have an example).
Let's see how the market will be dealing with these new technologies...
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