I use multiple mobile devices on Apple & Android, and believe really strongly in a fair and balanced approach for customer experience. Why? Because we have evolved (partially) from the design for one browser mentality, and why would we waste time going back to that awful closed thinking?

Mobile is at a huge evolutionary step, and in all aspects of life we have to deal with other fanboys such as the iMyopia possee. Depsite the huge growth of Android and the benefits of HTML 5. Both of which I do admit are more attractive because they are open to me, but in honesty, neither platforms are perfect.

Only web apps can bring the balance that is needed and ease the development issues for cross platforms, and dammit as a customer and being involved in mobile development, choice is bloody important!

Would you open a shoe shop and offer only one shoe, in one size?

I’m trying to bring the choice wherever I can, and from a work perspective was very proud that my team & I were able to offer this to our customers this year with RMIT University’s first HTML5 mobile web app.

So where do we all go from here? Enter Scott Jenson, an ex Apple, and Google employee and mobile developer and strategist. A great talk and worth watching for his valuable and knowledgable insights in to the clutter of apps surrounding us, and I thnk only backs up what I and others have been saying which is…’choice’. Bring it!

A brilliant, and beautifully simple idea.

The RiderLog app records basic details of your trips and anonymously uploads them to the Bicycle Network. (An initiative by the Victorian Government) All the travel logs are then aggregated to show when, where and why we are all riding. Allowing more informed choices for road planing and providing better facilities for bike owners.

Sadly iPhone only so far, but still a great idea.

Get the App: http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/riderlog/id370727480?mt=8

I’ve always enjoyed designing mobile web sites. They’re relatively easy to build given their need for simplicity, clarity, and the ability you get to truly focus hard on the customers experience of using it. If you think about it, nowadays your customers can not only watch and listen, but squeeze, tilt, pinch, and flick your site or application.

That’s pretty interactive, and recently I had the pleasure of doing all these things for a site, in working with two incredibly talented guys; Christopher Cheong & Vincent Truong when we pulled together a marketing app for the iPhone. Credit where due, Christopher and Vincent did all the really hard work, I just got to design, and get to tweak and play with all their excellent code : )

Built for RMIT University’s Open Day, this relatively one day use app was RMIT’s first, and I’m eternally grateful for those two for helping us get this live, and all that I learned from them. Not only great developers but multi skilled, (Chris also lectures in several subjects at RMIT) and damn nice guys to boot. They put up with me and did so with a smile, despite my endless requests, so I’m looking forward to doing more with them in the near future.

If your not coming to our Open Day it’s a little hard to appreciate what this will do on the day, but I’d love to hear any comments, good or bad so we can learn for future apps.

Download the app from iTunes

(And yes Android lovers like me, you are not forgotten, and I have already heard you on our RMIT social networks, but we need more Android developers out there! In the meantime, most functions on the app will also be available across the www.rmit.edu.au/mobile web site on Open Day.)