Mobile RSS

Carlo at MobHappy has been thinking about RSS for mobile phones. He had a good article up last week that pointed out his thinking that RSS on mobile phones is not really about blogs. In that post he quotes Russell Beattie talking about the new Yahoo RSS service:

"Then there’s all these custom site feeds out there as well! Subscribe to a custom Simply Hired feed and you can know instantly when there’s a new job for you. Subscribe to an eBay Store, and know when a new item is available before anyone else does. Same thing for Craig’s list - be the first to hear about a new apartment available or car for sale. Subscribe to, um, I don’t know, a Surf Report Feed and you know when the tide is perfect for hanging ten right away. ANYTHING that can be made into a public RSS feed can now essentially be linked directly to your phone."

Well today Carlo is back with more thoughts on why Mobile RSS is not just about blogs. He thinks mobile RSS could be about Presence:

"At the most rudimentary level, users could upload status messages, like those in IM programs: away, busy, available, at the store, in the shower, and so on. Their contacts could check their status before trying to call or message, and tailor their communications accordingly. The info could be viewed by anybody with an RSS reader. On a higher level, perhaps the application could update the feed, which is then read by an element in the network that then controls how people can be contacted. If a user says they're in a meeting, it shuts off push email and sends calls to voicemail, or if they say they're at work, it diverts personal calls or something similar."

I think this is right on the mark. It seems to be a work around to LBS type services without the need for GPS or end users doing somekind of short code dance.