Summit2008/Sessions/Proposals/Mobile: Device APIs

Context is King

The majority of mobile use cases boil down to context. The more a web application knows about their user's immediate situation, the better experience can be delivered. A user looking for movie tickets is typically only concerned with show times in the next couple hours and within driving distance of their location. In a perfect world, the web application would have access to the user's location information and a simple payment system.

Location API

The most frequently requested device API is geolocation. As such we've taken this as device API to fully explore first. We will discuss the technical, privacy, and user experience considerations for this particular API, and lessons learned that apply to other APIs.

Moving forward

The possibilities for device APIs are quite literally limitless. We'd like to start a discussion about the device APIs that are in the pipeline, APIs that developers would like to see in the pipeline and potential uses for them.