What's Mobile Context ?

I have copied this from Enrique Ortiz Website, where he talks more about mobile context and its definition. Good inspiration for people who wants to develop social mobile software.

THE ELEMENTS OF THE MOBILE CONTEXT

The mobile context can be defined as the intersection between the elements that defines it. These elements include:

Elements of the Mobile Context

• Spatial / Location (positioning) information, and related (surroundings)
• Time
• Presence and related status (online, offline, available, busy, etc)
• Handset and their capabilities (capabilities of my handset vs. other handset capabilities)
• Personal context (User Preferences, calm behavior)
• Information Genre, Descriptor tags, allows for categorization and context-based processing
• Social context
• Represented by Sets and their Intersections (relationships)

The social context consists of the person’s social circle, and related attributes and actions.

The Social Context

• The friends and family — the augmented or live address book
• The relationship distance or degrees of separation
• Social information such as events (calendar, location, other)
• Inbound/Outbound social media channels
• Social actions — find friends/family, meet, invite/introduce, share content
• Represented by a graph

The mobile handset is the social artifact that together with software running it enables the mobile context.

The Mobile Handset

• A Social Artifact
• “An object made, and used by people to connect with people.”
• Enable better ways to find, communicate and share with friends and family
• And to learn about nearby places, to consume information, all while on the go
• “It is about the freedom to connect, interact and find”

The mobile context is implemented in software via Mobile Social Software.

Some Challenges

• Good Mobile User Experience is key to success
• Access to native functionality such as the Address Book
• Application permission, signing, cost
• Inconsistent Address books APIs on the web
• Facebook vs. Plaxo, etc.
• Carrier pricing/business models
• Subscription + Data Plan
• OTA downloads
• How to get to the app?
• Platform inconsistencies
• Java, BREW, Symbian OS, etc

See more on EnriqueOrtiz WebBlog.