Building Web-based collaboration services on mobile phones

Three technical trends are heralding a new era of collaboration technologies: (1) the growing popularity and power of mobile devices, (2) the demand for business solutions and collaboration tools on mobile devices, and (3) Web 2.0 as a new platform for developing interactive applications across devices. Based on this convergence, we maintain that the new generation of collaboration systems be provided on mobile phones as Web-based software services. The wide adoption of mobile phones has formed a critical mass of users that is necessary for any collaboration technology to succeed. The adoption of mobile collaboration services, however, is not just a matter of design but also depends on factors such as mobile network coverage. In this article, we analyze the trends and draw six principles for guiding our design of a new collaboration service for supporting formal business meetings on mobile phones.