Steve Thompson[SMTP:stevet010@yahoo.com] wrote:

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned cell-phones as a digital cash platform. Perhaps this belabours the obvious, but I'll spell it out anyways:

o They are ubiquitous.

o Most of them have an IR port and many contain enough storage and horsepower to keep and play small MP3 collections. Chaumian digital cash code should fit easily. Hell, some companies are already making noises about full-motion video. How long before the damn things have a digital camera built in?

o Peer-to-peer transactions will obviously work via IR. Central clearing mechanisms will work through the phone net. Thus they embody the basic infrastructure for both worlds. The entire thing could be done over SMS, of course, but IR for peer-to-peer, day-to-day transactions is best from a privacy and usability standpoint.

o PC-based software is in use for the synchronisation of calendar data, etc. Many people are already familiar with using their phones for these kinds of purposes so what's one more application to the user?

The problem is that phone software is (to my knowledge) all closed-source and running on proprietary hardware. What's the liklihood of manufacturers opening up their phones for third-party code? A Java VM might do it, as might something lean like an Inferno VM. More informed list members could probably suggest other virtual machines which would suit our purposes.

[...]

Regards, Steve

The phone SW world is nowhere near as closed as you think. * Thousands of developers are writing Java applets for Japanese iMode phones. * Hundreds are developing applets for the Blackberry 5810 and 5820 phones (free Java-based IDS from RIM). * Similarly, the high end Pocket PC and Palm phones both have free or inexpensive development environments (C/C++) * Finally, Qualcomm phones support BREW (free SDK, expensive training). My take on the situation is that the platform vendors are so anxious to get developer mindshare, and new apps, that they are for the most part giving away the development environments and specs. Peter Trei