Motorola technology seeks to deepen mobile relationships

Motorola researchers are working to extend this blending of technology and community. Using the always on, always-with-you mobile phone as a networked extension of “you,” applications are being developed that will help provide not only ways to connect with new people of similar interests, but have exciting, new communication experiences that will enrich and extend relationships with the people you already know and trust. These innovative applications will move the phone beyond supplying just the sound of voice as the core connection experience with your social network: they will add information about the user’s situation, or “context,” to the communication mix.

The vision for context-aware applications is that they will be able to automatically collect and share information about you with your established, trusted groups of friends. This is quite different from social networking websites, which are primarily geared toward finding new friends by actively searching through particular information fields about your interests or other characteristics. Mobile social networking, using context awareness, focuses on enhancing the relationships you already have, automatically alerting you and your friends about your current context – where you are, what you’re doing, what music you are listening to and more.

– Read full story
– Read comment by Motorola Fellow John Strassner (bio)
– Download paper “A Time to Glance: Studying the Use of Mobile Ambient Information” by Frank Bentley et al.