ReadWriteWeb

Netbooks, iPhones, Android mobile devices. Personal computing around the world is converging on the hand-held device, and the combination of price point, sophistication and network effect could help deliver more of what many early supporters of the internet were aiming for - democratization of media and technology.

What's it going to look like when mobile devices really change the world? A new effort to provide funding to mobile projects aimed at public good could give us a good look at the future. The nonprofit N2Y4 Mobile Challenge from Netsquared is accepting project submissions from mobile developers through this month and will provide seed funding to a handful of lucky winners. The submissions so far are quite interesting.

Nonprofit tech analysts Idealware released a collection of resources today that anyone can use to evaluate APIs under consideration. Titled “Getting Your Systems Talking: A Framework to Evaluate APIs and Data Exchange Features,” the guide at its core is a worksheet that walks you through more than 30 different technical questions you should ask about any new data exchange technology you're evaluating. It's free to download.

While data portability is a hot topic of the day, there hasn't been a lot of tangible work done around the details yet. Idealware's guide could make implementation of these themes much more manageable. Readers may also be interested in this related discussion about data portability use cases over at the DataPortability.org public discussion.