TECH-fidel

I think the programmers have gotten lazy. Fast CPU's, virtually unlimited RAM and bandwidth, and reliable connections have made them complacent. The "least common denominator" bar is actually set pretty high these days. Just try surfing the web with a modem.

Here's a challenge for you: apply context to your applications. What's that, you say? I'll tell you.

Let's start with something hot: Location. It is a lot more complicated than you might think. The parameters of interest that I see are:

Latitude and longitude
Speed
Heading
Route
Zip code
Metro Area
Country

Here are some examples to help you see why these are useful. First of all, not everyone using your service is sitting at a desk. Think wimax. Think more users in more places means more money.

Lat and long are the low hanging fruit, but the user really does not want to see them, they just want them used behind the scenes. You can plug them into google maps through the javascript API and make mapping apps know where you are when they first start up. That's handy.

Speed- hmm. I could use this to infer if you are in a car or on a train or walking or sitting still. These differences could be important to your service. For example, if you are driving, maybe you want to find gas or a place with a drive-through.

Heading. Which way are you going? Are you driving home or going to the office? Perhaps you have a to-do (or ta-da!) list that changes based on where you are driving to. I doubt you are going to go by groceries on the way to the office.

Route. What I mean by this is where have you been lately? Are you out of town- let's get you some traveler's info. Are you driving in circles- maybe you are lost. What road are you following and what is on that road that could be of interest.

Zip code is the old standby and I hope to never enter it again. Due to current limitations of how location is usually determined, zip code is the dominant player and is used in nearly ever location-related service on the web, so no example is needed.

Metro Area is a good one. Craigslist makes you pick this. Other metro area services are TV and radio stations/programming, weather, airport info, etc.

Country is used by many international sites and also has other uses (then getting the language right). It can matter because some activities may be legal in one country (or state, for that matter) and not in another. Your service may simply not be allowed to work in some places. I recall Pandora could not be used in Britain, though this was unenforceable. Now we will see.

So there you have it. Context matters. If you want your apps used from other than behind a desk you should start using it. Otherwise, your apps may just not fit with what the user is doing and also will fail to get as much use as possible.

I will be covering several more areas of context and how to use it over the coming weeks.