In this video blog post, Robert Scoble interviews two of the execs running NextStop, a local search and discovery application that we’ll be featuring on the Internet2Go Web site. The video is interesting to Opus Research in two respects. For one, the application is an example of the sort of search service that is designed to enhance its users ability to find local businesses, eateries or entertainment venues quickly and efficiently. Second, from a technical perspective, which is the Scobleizer angle, the developers show why, even (or especially) on the locked-down iPhone platform, services running on the Safari browser may have an edge up on iPhone applications that are downloadable form iTunes.

Even though the video is 24 minutes long, it is worth viewing til the end. While it doesn’t get into the “how’s” of programming (thankfully), it does demonstrate that the Web services approach can take advantage of geopositioning for the purpose of finding “what’s nearby.” It can also “pre-fetch” data into a browser’s cache to serve up new images of suggested venues with almost no latency. There remain several advantages to having one’s app accepted by Apple’s evaluators for listing in iTunes – tight linkage to Apple’s billing system for initial purchases and follow up sales is principal among them; however, developers can make the argument that working in “open” Web standards, while publishing a public API is much more conducive to the rapid introduction of refinements and tweaks, as well as the incorporation of content from 3rd parties in the form of mashups.

The founders of NextStop are ex-Google employees, natch. Their support of Web-based solutions and HTML5 is no surprise. Nonetheless, their use case for HTML5 demonstrates why it they are farther along on the Recombinant Communications continuum than “pure” deployments on Apple’s iPhone.

Categories: Articles

Tags: iPhone, Recombinant Communications, Web Services