Beam me a new one!

Sorry for the long absence. You know, life gets in the way... no time... yadda, yadda.

I'm tip-tapping away right now from my room at The Scarlet in Singapore after a long day at Nokia Connection 2009 (disclosure: that's my day job - public relations consulting for Nokia amongst other clients). Naturally, being surrounded by journalists, bloggers and other intelligent people from the mobile industry leads to a whole lot of discussion about mobile devices and where its all heading.

Of course, what most people were most excited about were mobile apps.


A thought struck me. Have we come a full circle? What could really be a killer app today is what was a killer app more than a decade ago - beaming!

Let me explain. In the mid-90s, when a phone was still a monochrome block that made voice calls and sent SMSes, Palm ruled the roost in a category called the PDA. I remember reading a report at one point that the Palm OS had some 300,000 applications in existence. Like today's application scene, most were pointless apps that let you read random quotes from Star Wars, display a Beer picture, and much much more.

But the beauty of the 90s scenario was this - one Palm device could easily beam across any application (as long as the developer didn't lock it) to another via infrared. Want this cool freeware game? *ZAP* its yours. Want my Yoda application? *ZAP* its yours.

Beaming made sharing and spreading applications easy peasy and fun to boot. On a macro scale, this meant popular (though often pointless) apps could spread "virally" through super-distribution.

So what if we brought beaming back today? Would it work?

Beaming would lead to piracy. Not every developer will want his application freely beamed. There's always the option to lock apps. In any case, people who really want to pirate an app would find a way to do it anyway.

There's nothing to lose to let a free app be beamed. In fact, there's massive opportunity. Developers could make money thru ads within the app and a larger distribution means more revenue. Brands could easily "viral" good marketing apps (think iBeer).

IRDA is not commonly found on phones and Bluetooth leaves me open to viruses. Leaving Bluetooth on all the time does pose a security risk and its really annoying to keep rejecting requests to receive a virus application. But wait, new technology is on the horizon like Near Field Communication (NFC) and similar technology could be the new IRDA allowing short-range transmission of apps from one device to another.

So there you have it - my argument for beaming. Now, I know there'll be differing opinions, but I'm thinking, with mobile apps coming to the forefront again, maybe it's time to bring back the ability to share fun apps we love with one another. Let's hope some manufacturers are listening.