Handi Mobility
Another one of the people/companies that I was introduced to at Vancouver Barcamp, Handi Mobility is exactly what the name implies: a combination of conveniently accessible content available through your cellphone. The site currently has two (public?) offerings, MyBus and Youth Talent Showdown. When I talked to Igor Faletski, he seemed more eager to talk about MyBus, so I will start there.
MyBus does a couple really good things from a company/marketing perspective; first, they have decided to try and tap into the Facebook juggernaught (am I allowed to use that on a site other than MySpace?!), and second, they offer the content/information via SMS text messaging. If you sign-up for MyBus, you can keep track of your bus schedules right on your Facebook profile. This provides a huge potential audience for the service and a chance for free advertising and promotion of the service. It could even go viral, but this is a fairly niche/targeted offering, so that might be more difficult. The bus schedule on your Facebook profile is private, and as mentioned before, is available outside of the world of Facebook. Text messaging of MyBus is facilitated through a partner of Handi Mobility, Quick Mobile. The service currently supports the cities of Vancouver, Calgary, and Toronto.
The Youth Talent Search is a bit more difficult to give information about. It was a part of the 8th Annual Vancouver Chinatown festival, and voting has closed - the winner was supposed to be announced on August 12th, but there doesn’t seem to be an update on the site. From what I remember, Handi Mobility provided a way for people to vote via their cellphones, and it might be a stretch, but the talent might have even been viewable via your handheld, too, I just can’t remember. This is probably less earth shaking, nonetheless it is a great example of pushing the boundaries of interfacing with the web.