Introducing mobiputing: My new blog for smartphone apps, tips, and news

I’ve just launched a new web site covering smartphone applications. As a sister site to Liliputing, the new site is called mobiputing. But while both blogs cover the mobile computing space, my aim is to make mobiputing a resource for people looking for software tips and recommendations for their phones, not a site for news, information, and rumors about upcoming hardware.

Long before I purchased my first netbook, I was using PDAs and handheld PCs running Windows Mobile or EPOC (the precursor to Symbian). I spent hours downloading and trying new applications for these devices, and tinkering to see if I could install alternate operating systems on older devices after the sheen started to wear off.

But after a while I started to find the whole experience a bit frustrating. Because there were fewer and fewer apps that would run on the devices I was using, and the experience of downloading applications to a desktop and then syncing them to a PDA was a bit cumbersome.

The problem wasn’t that the market for mobile apps was stagnating — it was just moving to a new area: smartphones. I held out for a long time, carrying an aging PDA and a cellphone with two special features: an LED flashlight and the ability to remember a few of my friends’ phone numbers. But recently I broke down and picked up a Google Nexus One smartphone running Android 2.1 and a 3rd generation iPod Touch. And wow… all the excitement I experienced when purchasing my first PDA 10 years ago was back.

There are thousands of amazing apps for smartphones like the iPhone, Nexus One, and other Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, Palm, and Symbian devices. My hope is that mobiputing will be a place for people to learn about new apps and to share their experiences and ideas about the mobile marketplace.

There are literally billions of mobile phones out there, and a growing number of these phones are running smartphone operating systems capable of running applications that entertain us, connect us with one another, or make us more productive.