I finished reading, actually, listening to John Battelle's book The Search. A very good book that I enjoyed very much. And listening to the actual book author is a great way to bridge the reader and author – it does add a different and neat dimension to the whole experience. I recommend this book.
I then went to John's Searchblog, and read John's predictions for 2007, where he writes various interesting predictions, including:
Prediction #13. Allow me, for the third year now, to repeat my mobile prediction in the hope it will come true: Mobile will finally be plugged into the web in a way that makes sense for the average user and a major mobile innovation – the kind that makes us all say – Jeez that was obvious – will occur. At the core of this innovation will be the concept of search. The outlines of such an innovation: it'll be a way for mobile users to gather the unstructured data they leverage every day while talking on the phone and make it useful to their personal web (including email and RSS, in particular). And it will be a business that looks and feels like a Web 2.0 business – leveraging iterative web development practices, open APIs, and innovation in assembly – that makes the leap.
Right vision, it just takes and has taken a while; the ecosystem itself has been the main challenge, introducing technical restrictions, slowing everything down… But 2007 does have the potential to see the birth of this prediction, as the ingredients for making such are converging…
…not that I'm superstitious, but note how John's mobile prediction is the #13. :-)
ceo