Google has just released forms for it’s Google Docs spreadsheet application. This post from MacOS X Hints explains how powerful this can be when combined with an iPhone. Just make a form to collect your expense details, share it with yourself, save it onto your iPhone home screen and there you have it.
This is interesting and suggests an application of the iPhone in a more corporate environment, if Apple can somehow work through the iPhone being incompatible wth so many corporate security policy requirements. Would the Google development se be applicable to any future devices that mimic the design principles of the iPhone? I believe the improved user experience of the iPhone has a lot of scope for improving the mobile finance/ banking/ shopping experience for users, managing expenses being one example. This is something I want to investigate as part of my MSc in Computing Interaction Design. If you’ve got any research or info on this subject you can share I’d be interested.
You can mimic the same functionality on any phone with a browser – it’s just that the iPhone allows you to save the page to your home screen which then acts pretty much like an application. The SDK which has just been announced opens up the way for much more functionality, though