Handivi
In the Portuguese Web scene there were two projects that caught my eye. The first one is Tarpipe and the second one is Handivi.
I’ve been in touch with the 7syntax team and I was waiting the first alpha preview. Until that moment I knew nothing about it, except that it envolved Python and J2ME. Python for server-side, and J2ME for the client. Because that were what the were looking for in their job boards.
The application
For an alpha preview, it was pretty advanced, in my understanding. Only a few features missing, a few small bugs, and the deploying is yet to be well-designed.
The app is really nice to use, but it’s not for everyone. You need a 3G enabled phone (or a lot of pacience) that runs a Java Virtual Machine, this is all the 3G nokias around and a few more.
I tested it in my TyTN through wireless and it was fast enought., but I didn’t had the camera support.
The concept
At this point you should be wondering what this app does. Imagine a twitter clone, or maybe a jaiku one, since you can post video and pictures, and you follow friends. Just that, but always mobile.
Handivi is all about you sharing experiences with everyone or just your friends from anywhere. It’s a free, easy to use application for Java™ enabled phones on 3G mobile networks, where you can express yourself, create and socialize using photos, videos and messaging.
This is my understanding of it from what I’ve seen, and I hope the team doesn’t keep limited to this. Because it will not succeed as it is. Why?
One of the few things people mentioned in Twitter is that the need of an internet connection all the time will be too expensive for people to use. I don’t agree. This is not a product for this time, it is being developed for the next years, and phone carriers will have flat-fee 3G dataplans.
The problem is that we’re confined to the cellfone. When I’m at the computer, I dont want to see things in my small cellphone’s screen, I want to be able to use my computer as well. And I believe they are not forgetting this, and that a web interface is also in the works.
I know that in Japan people dont really need computers, and can do this stuff all from their mobile. But we aren’t them, and I don’t believe they are handivi’s target audience.
Ok, so if there is a web interface, is just a jaiku clone, with a J2ME client, instead of their S60 one. And Jaiku is owned by Google, so if they get one or two of their smart geeks making a J2ME client like Handivi, I bet they will ruin 7syntax success.
But I also don’t think this is the right approach. I don’t want to open a program to be able to access all my friends activity (or publish mine). Why can’t I do it natively from my phone’s SMS, MMS or Email service? That is the integration I like. If I wanted to open something to explicity ask for this information, I didn’t want to open a Java application, but rather my mobile browser. That all current phones have, unlike the J2ME.
Just as a final note, I understand the choice behind J2ME. Web-Browsers don’t have the system integration developers would want it to be. You just can’t take a picture or record a video from a website. And browsers should start thinking of this integration. Right now you can only archive this with plugins. That’s what I did with my webcaminput project and with Flash and Silverlight moving to the mobile, this might be the solution in 2-3 years, the time handivi kind of application will be really boosting.
1 Photo by Ricardo / zone41.net