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Giuseppe Taibi

Giuseppe Taibi

www.giuseppetaibi.com/techlog
SmartWorlds

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Mobile Application Design
  3. iShop Use Case
  4. iShop Walkthrough
  5. Web Services
  6. What Is Next?
Created:
24 June 2004
User Level:
Intermediate, Advanced
Products:
Devices

iShop: Flash Lite-Enabled Comparison Shopping to Go

Wait a minute... even stones know that shopping using a mobile phone is a horrible experience—WAP sluggish performance of wireless data links, small screens, unclear interfaces, clunky input methods, and so on. Vast amounts of ink have been spent on how the mobile shopping experience is far from ideal. Yet, the shopping experience in the brick and mortar world continues to go downhill—lack of information, no way to compare items on the spot, sales people who don't have answers to your questions, out of stock items, and so on.

An increasing number of people end up comparison shopping online from their chairs, at the expense of a "touch-and-feel" experience. Wouldn't it be great to have the best from both worlds? Enter iShop, a new Flash Lite application for quickly and easily comparing prices, reading reviews, and finding recommendations from your mobile phone while you shop at your local store.

Requirements

To follow along and experience iShop as described in this article, you can walk through the desktop version. Download the application files below:

Note: In the future, as Flash Lite–enabled phones hit the market, you will be able to use iShop on your handset. At that time, you can install iShop by pointing your phone's web browser at the installation link (http://ota.smartworlds.com/fl).

All the above files contain both iShop Books and iShop Electronics. This article focuses on iShop Books. However, once you’re familiar with the user interface for iShop Books, you should have no problems using iShop Electronics.

Once you are confident with the iShop versions covered by this article, try also iShop DVD and iShop Music, both available for download at iShop Download Central. Check the Download Central often as SmartWorlds will add more retail categories and international versions for iShop.

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About the author

Giuseppe Taibi is the Founder and CEO of SmartWorlds, a software and consulting company focused on mobile computing applications. He pioneered the use of Flash for developing mobile computing applications, including the award-winning Invisible Ideas GPS-enabled Artwalk in Boston, Mass. Giuseppe has helped major players in the mobile industry, including global wireless carriers Orange and Hutchison Wampoa, developing advanced applications and prototypes for mobile devices. In addition to his entrepreneurial activities, Giuseppe teaches a course on "Applied Innovation in Mobile Computing" at Harvard University. He earned his Doctorate in Electronic, Software, and Telecommunications Engineering from the University of Palermo, Italy and was a research associate at Boston University.