Don’t Forget Motorcycle Route Maps with NYT Mobile Service ShifD

New York Times has launched a service under the name ShifD which enables transfer of content for easy access from a PC, phone or any other device. The service works the following way: you see an interesting headline of a news article, copy it and read later on any gadget. If you are, for instance, in a restaurant you can send yourself a message with the name of the vine you just tasted in order to buy it later for a home celebration. If you are in a local store you can read the recipe of the dish you wanted to make and make sure that none of the ingredients is forgotten.

The personal page can be checked either online or via a phone browser. The user interface is quite simple. There are 3 memory slots – notes, places and links. Notes are the things you don’t want to forget like reviews of a book or DVD. Links are for news articles or other web-pages. Places are the slot where maps, schemes and address can be accessed. Information can be added from any browser or via a text message. The service works on any device like iPhone, Blackberry, Razr or Palm Treo.

The concept of ShifD has been made up by Nick Bilton (art director of NYT) and Michael Young (creative technologist). For the first time the novelty was shown at 2007 Yahoo BBC Hack Day and later on it was decided to realize the concept. Initially, the service required the chip RFID (Radio-frequency identification) in a phone and another one for a PC. When a user was at the computer he/she had to place the phone close to the reader in order to send the information.

The service offered at ShifD.com is beta and it seems to be a good personal reminder (and thus a good alternative to reminder letters). Nevertheless there are certain disadvantages. For example, if you keep the map of the place you are going to and forget your phone on a bed stand you won’t be able to access the information. At the moment the company doesn’t seem to have clear plans about the integration of the service into its web-page and advertising is only considered as a potential business-model.

The service ShifD uses the technological platform Adobe AIR launched by Adobe Systems. Adobe AIR allow developers to create Internet-apps based on such technologies as HTML, Ajax, PDF and Adobe Flash. The apps created on base of Adobe AIR can work as browsers which accelerates the development and enables access from almost anywhere (including a PC or mobile device). The novelty can serve as a desktop application, it means that you can work with other applications and save valuable data on your desktop.

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