GigaOm gets mobile
GigaOm has a terrific article, What Makes a Good Mobile Application Great. Their examples are Flickr mobile, ShoZu, and Mobile Google Reader.
This is suggested reading for anyone working on a mobile application.
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March 26, 2008
March 21, 2008
The Redirect Conundrum
Browsers and users’ choice
With Safari on the iPhone users, new browsers like Deepfish and Skyfire on the way, and the increased browsing capabilities of Internet Explorer Mobile and Opera Mobile, users want to be able to choose between a mobile formatted site and the traditional Web site.
Reasons for this vary. If you look at MacWorld’s Web site and compare it to what they offer mobile users, you will notice that the content is significantly reduced. If my handset has the capability to render the normal site, albeit more slowly, I should have the option to get to the content I want.
Another example came when I was using the AT&T 8525 to access corporate email. A colleague sent me the link to an article in BusinessWeek. The 8525 has a nice landscape screen and runs Internet Explorer Mobile which can view most sites. When I attempted to follow the link to the article, the redirect BusinessWeek uses kept forcing me back to the their .mobi home page. It was incredibly frustrating to be forced to browse where BusinessWeek thought I wanted to go.
I had to wait until I could access the site from the laptop to see the article. Had this been business critical information regarding a customer, it could have had a negative affect on the meeting I was about to attend.
The answer is simple – allow users a choice and apply cookies. If users can toggle between versions at their discretion and use cookies to record their preference, content owners will not frustrate and lose readers.
March 07, 2008
Occasionally Connected Computing is Coming of Age
It appears that Occasionally Connected Computing (or OCC as Intel identified it) may finally be approaching with Silverlight and Google Gears for mobile devices on the horizon. TechCrunch covered the announcements.
Google defines Google Gears as “an open source browser extension that lets developers create web applications that can run offline.”
Nokia announced that Silverlight by Microsoft will be made available for S60 smartphones. From the press release :
Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering next-generation media experiences and rich interactive applications.
Back in 2005, I wrote about the advantages of what was then called Occasionally Connected Computing in three posts:
UPDATE - Brighthand has a great explanation of Google Gears here.
March 05, 2008
Yahoo! onePlace for Mobile Expected in Q2 2008
I found Yahoo! onePlace over at GigaOM today and I must say that I am impressed with what they are promising. This looks like it could be an excellent 'clipping' / bookmarking service for mobile devices.
In a bold move, Yahoo! is including content from their competitors, like Google, in their onePlace service.
This shows real guts and insight - rather than owning the content, Yahoo! wants to own the user expereince. Just as content owners are formatting content for specific mobile devices, Yahoo! is making it easier to mobilize content. And we can be sure there will be advertising built around the UI based on the contet.
From the onePage site:
Yahoo! onePlace™ brings together all your interests, passions and important information into a single location, creating a rich, highly personalized experience around it for you. Everything is instantly organized, dynamically kept up to date, and served up to you the way you want.
Let's hope there is an open beta soon.
Mobile Ads Drive Astonishing Level of Interaction
Media Post reported on the latest Neilson findings on mobile advertising. The article shows that an increased number of consumers recognize and, more importantly, recall mobile ads. But the most astonishing statistic to come from the research is the third paragraph.
Further, more than half of mobile data subscribers (51%), who saw an ad responded to it by sending a text-message, clicking on it, or calling a specific number.
Fifty One Percent? That would mean that of the 58 millon people that Neilson says recalled seeing a mobile ad between the second and forth quarters of 2007, 29 million interacted with the ad in some way. Mobile advertising has been a powerful performer over the last few years, but this exceeds anything I have experienced or read. Neilson and Media Post may want to take another look at those findings.
The Nielsen study was based on a survey of more than 22,000 active mobile data users who used at least one non-voice service in the fourth quarter of 2007. Participants were asked about responses to banner ads, text ads, and video advertising, among other mobile formats.
March 04, 2008
Content Vs. Carrier, Carrier Vs. Content, Part II
This may be considered more of a battle between carriers and developers than my previous post, but it still brings the walled garden strategy into question.
Mozilla recently announced that they were examining moving into the mobile space with a browser for Microsoft Windows Mobile and embedded Linux.
With the announcement came the typical caveats that some carriers would embrace this while others would outright block the application in order to control the user experience and revenue. The most interesting quote to come from MacWorld’s coverage of the announcement is below.
In Japan, operators said their subscribers transmit three to four times more data when allowed to browse the open Web than they do when kept in a walled garden.
Now some carriers claim that their ‘walls’ protect their users from other dangers, including viruses and criminal acts, but I have yet to see much news out of Japan regarding these types of attacks. Are they coming? I think most people in the industry would answer with a resounding yes. Is the walled garden strategy the best defense? In my opinion, anything that limits the mobile experience hinders innovation, adoption and user satisfaction and it appears that Japan agrees.
The iPhone Affect
Perhaps I am a little late on this one, but I felt I needed to weigh in on what the iPhone has done for mobile browsing.
In 2000 I worked at AvantGo, a mobile content site. Our software helped popular media sites easily move into the then budding mobile space. One of our selling points for publishers and for users of our software was that we designed each mobile site for the most popular screen resolutions on the market. At the time I left, we were making four versions of each site. Though this sounds like a lot of extra work, it was part one of our selling points and something the users became used to (and craved) – content designed for their device.
Fast-forward to 2007 and the release of the iPhone with a browser designed to bring the ‘whole internet’ to your mobile device. As most people who have used and iPhone will tell you it does a pretty good job at doing just that.
The iPhone has also increased the number of people accessing mobile data services. Fierce Mobile Content reported the following from AT&T Mobility president and CEO Ralph de la Vega at the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona this year.
“According to de la Vega, 95 percent of iPhone owners regularly surf the web, even though 30 percent had never done so prior to iPhone ownership. In addition, 51 percent have viewed videos via YouTube, and nine out of 10 rated the device better than their previous handset.”
That is great news! Mobile Web usage is growing. But now we need to understand where these users are going and, more importantly,why sites like Digg, Facebook and Travelocity are designing sites specifically for the iPhone even though it includes Safari. These are not just stripped down mobile sites for handsets and smartphones that include the iPhone, but specific URLs with a dedicated layout and functionality designed for the iPhone. Add in Apple's own site where they feature hundreds of iPhone deisgned Web sites and applications and it is clear that is this not a small movement, but a strategy that companies, big and small, are adotping.
So what does this all mean? Well it goes back to what AvantGo preached as early as 2000.
People want content designed for the device they are using.
There will not be a time in the forseeable future, where there will no longer be a need for products like Safari, Skyfire and Microsoft’s Deepfish. But for now, we need companies like AT&T to break down the traffic they are seeing into mobile, and non-mobile sites so we can better understand how users are accessing the Internet on their phones.