Jon Udell gets the portable service

I opened Bloglines today to see this bit by Jon Udell, entitled “The myth of the One True device”. It’s basically what I’ve been promoting for a while, i.e. that a portable service is of much more value than a portable device:

Pervasive connectivity and ubiquitous computing don’t depend on the device you tote in your briefcase or clip to your belt. Or anyway, they shouldn’t. The environments we visit, as well as the ones we live and work in, could provide for our communication and computational needs. Service portability would, in many cases, trump device portability.

YES.

This is why I read Jon Udell. He just gets it more often than any other tech journalist.

Service portability is everything, because services can be delivered to a wide variety of devices. Devices might just as well be software, not just hardware. I take browser-delivered services like bloglines.com and gmail.com over NetNewsWire and Entourage since I know I can use the service no matter where I am. For me right now that means work (Window box or Linux box), home (Windows or Linux), or somewhere in between (Mac Powerbook). In the future the list of places/devices will certainly continue to expand.