Cliff Reeves at Microsoft writes about the beneficial consequences of "liberating" business data from proprietary formats. He believes the main beneficiary will be "situational applications".

Outside of mobility, but nevertheless. Quote from Shai Agassi's writeup on their upcoming Mendocino product:

All of the connections are governed by the context of the user ... and the situation they are solving. The result is an information bridge that allows for data to traverse upstream and downstream, as needed by the situation at hand, and the orientation of information change.

MobileGirl writes about a concept she calls "Impulse Information":

Impulse information is something that you need within a few seconds of thinking of it. If it takes too much time, then your addiction and impulse wears off. You want to find that one thing. You want to find it fast. You want to find it now. You know what it is you are craving. The challenge is just to get it quickly.

You don't want to browse through a lot of pages. You don't want to sift through irrelevant content. You don't want to be bogged down by massive hierarchical structures...

Or, we might add: we don't want to be bogged down by complex ways of figuring out which application to run, how to sign onto a VPN, or any other obstacle between the situation and the information.

While not directly situational software, here's an interesting project at MIT. Article from TheFeature.com.

Boston.com reports

One art project, Yellow Arrow, based in New York City, has developed a system where people can place yellow stickers in the shape of arrows around the city, stating that they have something to say about that particular location. Each arrow, which is ideally placed in a location that holds significance to the person, has its own unique code that can be sent to a mobile phone via text messaging, allowing others to read the message that was left.

I wonder how many people will actually type in codes. But the essence of the idea is clear: provide location-specific content that conveys a particular situation to the visitor.

Via ACM news service.