Hold on, I need to scan the badge on my cell phone


I just spent the weekend in Stratton Vermont with 39 guys playing in our annual golf tournament - Goodfellas Open or GFO 2006.

It was frustrating being “off the grid” for part of three days but there was one observation I made which I believe will have implications for the social scripting space in the medium-term (12 to 24 months out).

Namely, none of my buddies brought his laptop up to Vermont for the weekend. Not one. I did and it was useless. Yet, almost every single guy was constantly checking his Blackberry or cell phone.

Normally, when playing golf one hears shouts of “Fore.” But this weekend the “Fores” were joined by various ringtones echoing through the hills.

What does this have to do with social scripting, widgets, and badges?

A lot!

Although it is pretty obvious to all of us who follow the trends and changes in the web2.0 space, I think it should be repeated again for emphasis that handheld devices are the appliance of choice for the vast majority of mainstream America and web service companies are going to need to find ways to enable wider distribution of widgets and badges onto those handheld devices.

Handheld devices may become, in effect, the web platform of choice for the average Joe. The explosion of blogs and social networking pages has fueled the popularity in widgets and badges over the past two years among the early adopter crowd but I think it’s doubtful that my golfing friends (who are primarily in corporate sales positions) will soon have either a blog or MySpace page.

However, I do think that they will still want to take advantage of the benefits of web2.0 and handheld devices will be how they do it.

Fortunately, badges and widgets are ideally suited to be displayed on small screens. So, don’t be surprised to see “Download to device” (wifi) as a choice next to Static URL and Embed Code as methods of distribution for widgets and badges in the near future.

I, for one, would love to have all my frequent flyer and preferred shopper cards stored on my cell phone instead of having a separate wallet for traveling and 8 key FOB cards on my key chain. As I wrote before, barcodes will be the bridge between widgets/badges and the bricks and mortar world.

My guess is that the first handheld device onto which widgets and badges will migrate is the next generation of video iPods. We can already synch our Contacts list, photos, To Do’s, Calendars, etc onto our iPods. It’s not such a large leap to imagine downloading Apple’s Dashboard widgets.

Lastly, as my friend Bucky and I drove to dinner Saturday night we realized that we weren’t exactly sure where the restaurant was located. Bucky, one of the least web2.0 savvy people I know, quickly booted-up his GPS navigation device (he spends 4 days a week on the road selling plastic buckets) and expertly navigated through what seemed like 13 screens, found the restaurant, and within 30 seconds we were on our way there. So, I would include GPS navigation devices as another platform for widgets and badges that we should consider.

// 08.21.2006 at 2:56 pm // Tagged webwidgets
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