One wish for 2006…

Most phone users, are not using phones for data, SMS (if that) and voice the extent. So until you geek-data-heads web browsing on cell phones, make up a bigger part of the demographic pool, and actually start playing economic games, your wish will remain unfilled. And oft times companies have a special site for mobile (find that), they don't always dynamically switch. You need to tap into the Mobile directories.

I dissagree somewhat... websites should be stripped of all design for mobile presentation and let the client application deal with it. A bit like RSS, just content and nothing else.

There's no way to get anything useful & good looking on one of those small screens anyway and one can't design for so many different phones with so many different resolutions. Separate your content from presentation and let someone else deal with it from there on. ;) That was always the general idea with XML/HTML wasn't it?

As far as scrolling into eternity... What do you expect? It's a small screen, how do you squeeze everything inside??

What I want in a mobile phone is a proper RSS aggregator sinchronized with my desktop PC. In this case the "river of news" style would actually become useful.

You've said many, many times that you hardly ever visit a web site, you'd rather just read their feed. Why worry about whether or not you can view a site on your Pocket PC? Are you still reading sites without a feed?

Hi Robert,

Hope you enjoyed your trip to Ireland!

The number of sites that even just have a *plain text format* is shockingly small. In Ireland (my home town :) ) there is a total of, erm...well not many.

Dublin's street tram system "Luas" (www.luas.ie) have their Christmas timetable as a 110K pdf file. 2 weeks ago, before I complained to them, the timetable was an 8MB pdf file.

For a timetable! Even a copy and paste from an Excel sheet would have done!

Text formats have been forgotten, and to some extent RSS feeds like comment number two above says, are waaay beyond average Joe.

O2 (one of Ireland's mobile operators) have released iMode (www.o2.ie/imode), a service based on the DoCoMo iMode service, but built on GPRS.

CSS driven, but charged at a special rate by KB download.

Just give me text or RSS!

Happy New Year to all,
bernard

Take your pick, if you like game news:

www.news0r.com/wap/ (formatted for WAP, looks good on 3G handsets, being redeveloped at the moment)
www.news0r.com/tmobile/ (formatted for T-Mobile's Web'n'Walk handsets - mostly MDAs - and listed on T-Mobile's Web'n'Walk directory)
www.news0r.com/imode/ (formatted for i-mode handsets)
www.news0r.com/psp/ (formatted for PSP users)

All of the above are readable (except the WAP site) using a browser, or *any* mobile phone with WAP/GPRS/3G access to the Internet.

And yes, they've all been checked on those devices. Main site is www.news0r.com - the content is the same, it's just re-formatted for the mobile devices.

Hi Robert,

Doing most of my web surfing and authoring on a dual 19 inch monitor machine with a high-bandwidth (university) connection it's easy to lose sight of the less fortunate. But I was just home for Christmas and it was depressing to try and view my web pages on my parents' computer with a dial-up connection, so I'm not entirely unsympathetic. However, I don't have a web-enabled cell phone (and thus lack the best motivation to do anything about this). If you want help designers like me meet your needs, it would really help to know just how small and how slow you're talking about. What are the dimensions of your screen in pixels? What file size is too big? Give us numbers.

Happy New Year!

Robert, before you lambast anybody publicly, I would suggest seeing what sites look like with styles turned off. Simple fact is that we web developers serve the majority, which is using a resolution of 1024 or greater.

However, the smart designer keeps web standards in mind, using XHTML and CSS. So take one of my sites, GamesAreFun.com. It probably looks not so great on mobile devices (not tooo bad on PSP though), but when you turn off styles, the site follows the logical top down flow of header, nav, news articles, sidebar content, footer. It's a single column that should stretch to fit your screen.

The way I see it, if a site looks fine that way, it doesn't deserve public ridicule. If your phone can't turn off styles, it DOES deserve public ridicule. Like I said, when you design a site you want to serve the majority first. Accessibility for the disabled is largely handled by following web standards. But that's only half the way for mobile devices. For mobile, the ideal is to have an alternate design. And most sites are not going to want or be able to afford to do that.

Robert. This is a review on our approach:
http://wapreview.com/blog/?p=50

I have a question. I just fired up Visual Web Developer 2005 and I couldn't find "Mobile Web Project." Is that not available in the free version? It's a shame.

I'm a dork. I just found this article explaining that they merged the controls seamlessly in ASP.NET 2.0.

http://www.devx.com/wireless/Article/22552/1763

actually Scobele's, your BLog rolls well on my Blackberry7250. Maybe, Because i get feeds via a single PermLink and i dont load the whole page.

But there is an existent bug on this series, if you surf a site and go back again after sometime, it just pulls the cache into the mobile browser. Does your gadet do the same thing ?? I find this frastrating as one tracks comments.

Secondly, when my gadet goes WAP it crawls slowly. It really really sucks !! big time.

Last but not least, I heard that a vendor of mobile technology is extending their browser to MDS4.1 which includes XML Web Services among its methods for integrating mobile applications with back-end servers, and supports the Microsoft .Net and Java 2 Enterprise Edition environments. That would be an aswome gadget to get !! :)-

Just last night my S.O. was showing me how he was working on adapting an online reference manual for an open source project he works on, so it would look better on mobile devices. I gave him a PSP for Xmas, and it inspired him.

I actually asked him: wouldn't someone who needed to look up something about this programming language be working on his or her computer at the time?

He thought it was a good idea anyway, you know because some people actually read manuals, not just refer to them when they have a problem.

I'm going to send him your post, so he feels all validated :)

(And yes, you're right: it was New Year's Eve, and we were home having that conversation. We're both sick, as in with colds. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

for mobile devices, i use RSS as alerts - i don't think i'd browse sites on the go ever as much as i'd want to know when something happens important or when some blog i like posts. right now i have the top news from digg and the last posts from boinbgoing hit my phone while i am on the good (via instant message). then, if there's any i like i read them. the sidekick (my phone) does a good job formatting pages.

Ummm... Whatever happened to "RSS is the future of content delivery!"

Feeds don't care what they're consumed on.

Honestly phones are just getting crazier and crazier to the point of insanity. Do you really need a call making, mp3 listening, video watching, web surfing, with a sprinkle of PDA in there?

Yea I may sound like I'm against mobile convergance, but it's only because there isn't a killer app, or well functioning form factor I've found to suit my needs.

Stefan: as long as we aren't to the point where we're expected to do non-linear video editing, load up photoshop, or compose songs on our cell phones ;) Then things will truly have passed the point of no return.

Robert,

Check out Technorati's Mobile site:

http://m.technorati.com/

We tuned it specifically for mobile browsers. It's also why we make Technorati XHTML 1.0 strict - to make it easier on mobile users...

Dave

The comments here have convinced me to do a video and show you the usefulness of a cell phone and a Web browser and just how bad many sites are for cell phones.

Hi Robert,

You really should check out Opera for your mobile browsing needs. If your phone can run Java Applets, you can try Opera Mini at
http://www.opera.com/download/operamini/

If it is a "Windows Mobile Smartphone 2003" (who comes up with these names?) there is a version of the full mobile offering available for you:
http://www.opera.com/products/mobile/products/w...

Yeah, half the problem is that you aren't using Opera. Get ridda the poooooooopeeeerrrr scoooopppppper IE on that NotReallyAllThatSmartPhone and fire up Opera, half your problems will vanish. ;)

And websites? I thought you didn't browse the web, just feeds...

I can't believe you have such a nice smartphone on such a slow network!

Such a nice device begs for EVDO :)

Just tried my site from my phone, and it actually works very well! Score another point for Wordpress :)

My PPC-6601 is the reason why I altered my site's layout. Now, the first thing that loads is the 'meat' as it were. the other stuff is still there, but on the bottom.

This had the happy coincidence of making the real content show up much faster on a dial-up connection, because the text stuff loaded first. So there was less need to wait for the graphics.

This is also important when you consider how craptacular IE is when dealing with PNG alpha channels and modern CSS styles.

I'm kind of annoyed about the 2125 and Cingular's decision to go with the non-WiFi version of the phone. I'm not sure how much I'd use the wi-fi part of the phone but it's nice to know it's there. It would have moved me over to Cingular from T-Mobile, I think. TMobile's supposed to get the full version of this phone, but having tried both networks, I like that Cingular's is less restricted.

I've been playing around with a Nokia 9300 over the last few months and have been very happy with how it handles websites. It's running Opera for its web browser and combined with its wide screen, web pages look fantastic on it. It's a combination of the browser's atuo-scaling and the form-factor of the screen. It's a great mobile internet device...I still think it's kind of big for a cell phone though and don't carry it around as much as I should (I'm testing it out as my work phone).

OK Robert - thanks to your contributing commenters I've got winksite set up for my main Feedburner feed. So now posts render perfect for any moby phone. But then I had a thought. Plug winksite to near-time.net and now you've got a collaborative crew updated to your mobile from the near-time.net feed. As it's a members only thingy it's bullet proof for managing multiple projects...

The Verizon Wireless site doesn't work at all on my Verizon Wireless phone.

"If your site makes you scroll for 20 minutes just to see your content, it sucks. It’ll get called out."

I hope, then, that you'll reconsider using so many words, requiring so much scrolling, when thinking during typing. Getting to the point is more respectful of the reader's time, thanks.

I dunno about the US but in Europe websites-via-phones is not in demand much. I think 'millions of web users with cellphones' might be overstating it a bit. The best services have a separate page for the PDA like google (http://www.google.com/pda) which redirects you to it when it detects you are using a mobile client.

Still, why would I want to view websites on a itty-bitty screen? Or movies for that matter? Answer: I don't.

Yes, mobile Web is getting more important - W3C has realized this about a year ago - check out the Mobile Web Initiative
http://www.w3.org/Mobile/

and the Mobile Best Practices
http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-mobile-bp-20051220/

Getting participation in this by MS would be great, btw:)

Michiel. I don't think we necessarily need to think in terms of "websites". Have you considered mobile spaces other then websites? (The old school website model fails for a number of reasons - squeezing a desktop UI into a small screen, transcoding of content, poor standards support, the fact web sites do not factor in mobile technologies,now one wants to "browse", I and go on and on.)

In Europe and elsewhere usage of mobile forums, chat rooms, and user profiles(think - social networking) are going through the roof. I'm talking mainstream users connecting with each other through their main access point to the Internet, there mobile - NOT web-based bloggers "discovering" some new mobile tricks. Using RSS to transport web-based content into those environments provides added content and context for conversation.

I posted this elsewhere today but let me give you the "speech"...

"I made a resolution to myself that 2006 will be the year mobile gets respect. Part and parcel is a bit of unavoidable self promotion in order to make my point. So don’t take this as a sales pitch or rant but more of a “Hey Web 2.0 Bloggers. Please Wake Up” call.

As such I respectfully submit the following:

750 million mobile devices sold this past year compared to 250 million PCs.

2 billion mobile phone users worldwide.
3 billion by 2008 -Nokia.
US penetration rates climbing over 80%.

Creating a new generation of content creators & consumers.

Consumers that don’t leave home without their phone.

An example of Web 2.0ish mobile app:
Warner Launches Mobile Portal For The Veronicas - Mash-Up Of Branded Content With Social Media
http://winksite.com/site/help_bl_view.cfm?blog_...

MAKE: Mag, BoingBoing, SmartMobs and others create mobile versions of their blogs with WINKsite. Creative Commons works with us to mobilize the works of Lessig, Doctorow and others.

RSS & Syndication is now is being used to bring content to the mobile phones of people who have until now had zero or little access to a desktop computer - combined with mobile forums, chat etc.- the technology shortchanged are able to engage in mobile-to-mobile and mobile-to-PC communities.

The blogging world is now is overflowing with wonderful Web 2.0 services to send information - text, photos, video, geographical data - from a mobile device to a conventional Weblog or Web Site. But, what has been blatantly missing and quite critical are community-based solutions that provide spaces where individuals can meet, share and interact with content from mobile device to mobile device - “closing the loop.”

My belief is that the availability of simple and flexible tools for the publishing, discovery, personalization and distribution of user-generated content is essential to empowering the masses."

As the Web showed, things really take off when users build out their own real estate (whatever they are called) rather than relying on vendors to supply accommodations. The success of the Web was due not to mass production and economies of scale, but rather to distributed development of local content and economies driven by individual passion.

The leave behind...

By providing a greater number of people with knowledge, you provide an even greater number with the potential to become involved. As I see, it is more than just publishing content to a mobile environment. It is about the individuals it engages, the people it connects, the dialogue that develops, the community that forms and the collective action that can result.

Let's connect everyone to all the great content and thoughts bouncing around the "Blogosphere." Don't leave anyone out or behind or without a voice.

Hi Robert. Since you're using WordPress, install (or have Matt install) Alex's King's WP-Mobile add-on that creates very friendly sites for mobile devices.

check out my blog on your phone:

http://www.j2eegeek.com/blog/wp-mobile.php

Looks great on my Audiovox SMT 5600 :)

Sure cell phone use is exploding by the minute, but what are the usage patterns? As Christopher said, does anyone use them for much more than text messaging, reading email, and what they were made for... phone calls? Call out all the web sites you want, Scoble. I rather doubt its going to put much of an economic dent into any of the sites you call out. Unless or until surfing the web on a cell phone does the equivalent of opening a Bud for the masses, it's not gonna happen anytime soon. Sure, there are the uber-geeks like yourself that get a woody over the ability to do so. But, the average citizen ain't gonna give a rats ass about surfing the web on his cell phone, unless it allows him the ability to make money, save money, save time, spend more time with his family, and generally make his life easier and more enjoyable. I'm sure that time will come, but it ain't gonna be 2006. So, call them out all you want, but those companies I'm sure will hardly feel the shame at the end of each fiscal quarter.

Dmad - "But, the average citizen ain’t gonna give a rats ass about surfing the web on his cell phone" - true surfing the web is not the usage pattern for mobile sites or applications.

Some things to think about:

1. Operator mobile portals have not kept up with the tsunami of user-generated content available on the web.

2. The Mobile Internet isn’t aggregated anywhere
in the way web users expect.

3. Numbers 1 & 2 drives up demand for audience generated content, search, and personalization.

...perhaps on needs to think of these mobile spaces as not just miniature, squeezed down web sites viewed on a small screen.

Hey Robert,

I think it is a great idea to call out poor sites, but do you think you could do everyone a favor and call out good sites also? Many of us learn by example, and the web in general pretty much comes from that... Yay for View Source. Anyway, I run an ecommerce site, and I would definitely be willing to target and support the mobile platform (I love my SMT 5600) but I'm not sure if an ecommerce site even has a place on a phone. What is the use case that I should optimize for? Yes, Amazon can compete directly with brick-and-mortar places if they let you price and buy stuff on the spot when you notice something cool at Best Buy. But what about the rest of the web?

I definitely see how blog and news content should work on a phone, and mapping, and price shop services or something... And reminders and messaging and social networks... But commerce? Are you really going to browse departments and enter your credit card on harryanddavid.com on your cell phone?

Anyway. Back to my original request: Tell us about sites that work very well on your 2125... and not just blogs.

(Also, have you installed Google Local/Maps on your phone yet? It's killer. Show it to the MS mapping people.)

Please tell me what is rss?

In response to your post, I wrote the blog entry ".. and a Pony!":

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/00049...

I found this information helpful, thanks very much.

On a side note, the dotMobi mTLD (mobile top level domain) has just been released and is in the sunrise registration period...the promise of dotMobi is to ensure that those sites with dotMobi extension will be tuned to mobile browsing...it is thus expected to make mobile browsing a far more enriching experience.

One can expect a number of .mobi web sites - those that conform with standards for mobile browsing - to be online starting Oct 2006…while opinion is divided whether dotMobi will revolutionise mobile browsing or would be just another flash in the pan, when one considers that there are four mobile phones for every PC on earth, it certainly appears worth trying out a separate TLD

More info on dotMobi can be found at Mobinomy.com @ http://www.mobinomy.com , this site also plans to start a dotMobi directory soon

Ec from IT, Software Database @ http://www.eit.in