Mobile Web Junkie

This week has seen a couple of updates to the Wapple Architect Mobile Plugin for WordPress.

First up, there was an update to the way that videos are handled on mobile pages. It turns out that in one of the WordPress updates (somewhere between the 2.8 and 2.9.2 versions), the way that videos were output to the browser changed slightly. This meant that the video parser in our mobile plugin didn’t pick up the correct source and didn’t show the video.

All fixed now though.
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With Mobile World Congress kicking off today and a whole hall called ‘App Planet‘ [I guess 'Planet of the Apps' would have looked like a typo...] it’s a great day for another story with two ways of publishing to mobile going head to head.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/28744c96-176a-11df-87f6-00144feab49a,dwp_uuid=4dce8136-4a24-11da-b8b1-0000779e2340.html?nclick_check=1

So, lets be clear once again. Installed apps are OK but they’re expensive, tied to a particular OS, distributed through crowded and controlled channels, hard to spread virally and, well, so 2009.

Web Apps for mobile are cheap to develop, OS agnostic, browser independent (if you build them using Wapple technology), free to distribute and easy to spread. Oh, and this really IS the year of the mobile web so if you want to live in the now then mobile Web Apps are the only place to be!

Last week I did a podcast with Brian Prows from MobileBeyond. We went through quite a bit – from how you can mobilize your WordPress blog with our mobile plugin to how in a future release of the plugin you’ll be able to place Mobile Adverts on your blog and make a bit of money out of it.

You can listen to the whole thing on Brian’s website at http://mobilebeyond.net/mobilizing-and-making-money-with-a-wordpress-blog-or-mobile-website/ or have a search on iTunes for MobileBeyond.

Lastly, I must say a big thank you to Brian for first of all giving me the opportunity to do the podcast, and secondly for doing such an awesome job of editing it together!

Let us know what you thought of the podcast – and if you’d like to hear more, tell us what subjects you’d like us to cover!

WordPress Mobile Admin is a fully featured WordPress control panel for your mobile. It works on every device – no matter what it’s capabilities, so it doesn’t matter if you don’t have an iPhone or BlackBerry, you can still manage and update your blog whilst you’re on the go.

It uses Wapple’s advanced web services to produce perfect markup whilst at the same time maintaining the familiar look and feel of WordPress. You can write and edit posts, moderate and reply to comments as well as updating and managing tags, categories and pages.
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Full admin controls and blogging from my mobile phone. Pre launch test! Retains wordpress styling. You’re a super genius Rich Gubby!

Content Management Systems – it seems as though they are the in-vogue tool at the moment with every man and his dog developing one or using it to power their website.

If you do a search in a well known popular search engine for “CMS” (and assuming you aren’t searching for the Church Mission Society), you’ll find Joomla at #3. With 139 million returned results that’s not bad by anyone’s standards.

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I am pleased to say that since my recent rant, the BBC have started to render correctly for my Android handset. I have the mobile version again. I am happy.

It’s movie time here at Wapple HQ! We’ve been busy conjuring up some neat, little bite-sized chunks of Wapple goodness on our new YouTube channel. We thought this would be a useful and illustrative way of demonstrating how easy it is to develop mobile websites using Wapple Architect & Canvas™.

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After a number of releases of the mobile plugin for WordPress, you’d think I’d want to put my feet up for a bit and have a well deserved rest and a cup of tea. But not a bit of it! I’ve been burning the midnight oil to get version 1.4 ready for release so that you have even more control and even more ways to mobilize your blog.
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Transcoding web pages into mobile web pages does not work.

There’s an ongoing debate on the subject of mobile web transcoding, so here’s our take.

Let’s be clear on our language here though. Transcoding videos for mobiles is essential and very good, but doing it to your web output is bad. Really bad.

A reliance on an automated process that takes HTML output and reformats it to mobile markup is a deluded one. Computers are really bad at recognising diverse visual patterns (that’s why we all use CAPTCHA to protect from bots) and you don’t get much more diverse than web design. If a transcoder has been taught your web layout, you’ll find yourself tied to that web design or face losing any learning invested in the system.

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Right now, I feel like the blind man telling my own future.

If the BBC don’t start recognising my Android handset as a mobile browser again, I’ll go elsewhere. I’ve had enough of navigating their full website through my small screen and I want the mobile experience back.

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After our last blog post on the future of the mobile web, Wapple has been busy thinking up new ways to get you involved and give you a voice. We’ve put together a survey which will help us to get a better picture of the mobile web through your eyes.

If you’ve ever been browsing on your mobile device and felt that most sites just weren’t good enough or that advertising was too intrusive, now is the time to let people know! On the other hand, if you can’t get enough of the mobile web and think it’s the best thing since sliced bread, here’s your opportunity to shout it from the rooftops…

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For the last ten years I have heard someone, somewhere say ‘this is the year for mobile’. It’s become a standing joke in our industry. From SMS to WAP, it seems everything has been tried and failed. Well now it’s my turn and, at the risk of being laughed at, I am going to tell you ‘this is the year for mobile’! We’ve reached a point where 2009 may well herald the ‘perfect storm’ of opportunity for mobile web development.

It’s a crucial time for all kinds of organisations with a web presence to begin implementing ideas on reaching a wider audience by understanding new ways of working with the mobile web. Some key points to consider are:

• Consumer adoption of new digital devices and services
• Consumer perception of value and trust
• The role played by mobile in stitching digital communications together
• Addressable markets and lost opportunities
• Site usability and design practicality

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Konny Zsigo of the MDA recently posted an insightful article into the ‘to iPhone or not to iPhone debate.

It seems to have attracted a lot of flames. Blimey! Time for Mobile Web Junkie to dive in…

Read the  article. It’s great.

If you’re trying to make money, dump your iPhone strategy

Then the comments but in case you feel too much pain before you get as far as my comment, here it is, just for you:

Wow, what a lot of hate in the comments. I really think that a lot of you need to read back what you’ve written and see if it’s truly in the spirit of constructive debate.

I would suggest that every single flame has been posted by iPhone owners. A trait I’ve noticed is that as soon as someone jumps onto the Apple train they feel they have a fight on their hands. I guess it’s a complex caused by Microsoft constantly trumping Apple in the OS battle. Read more

Today marks another significant milestone in the evolution of the Wapple Architect mobile plugin for WordPress – version 1.2 has been released into the wild!

There’s been some great feedback from version 1.1 as well as a whole load of suggestions and feature requests and I’ve tried to implement as many of them as I can.

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