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  • Browsers - Posted by ronan 2 years 28 weeks ago
  • LBS in Opera Mini?
  • Random thought: if Google can manage to make cell ID-based location information work in its J2ME map applications, couldn't Opera do the same with Opera Mini?
  • Tools - Posted by ronan 2 years 28 weeks ago
  • New features in find.mobi
  • Now that MWC has passed and we're temporarily freed of the metabolism it imposes on us (and the entire industry), it's time to report on what we've been up to. We've been adding some new features to find.mobi. The biggest new feaure is one that is not immediately apparent to the eye: a much bigger index of mobile web content. We did this with a delicate blend of brute force and subtlety:
  • Design Patterns - Posted by ronan 2 years 30 weeks ago
  • iPhone web design patterns
  • We've been putting some more features into find.mobi recently. One of these features is a new skin designed specially for the iPhone. It may seem strange to have an interface that has a version tailored to one particular device but when you think about it makes sense. Our find.mobi interface already had 3 different versions, for high, medium and low resolution phones.
  • Browsers - Posted by ronan 2 years 37 weeks ago
  • User Agent Switcher config file
  • Chris Pederick's User Agent Switcher is an essential Firefox add-on for anybody in the business of creating mobile web sites. We've talked about this before but it is worth mentioning again. This little add-on lets your Firebox (or Flock / Mozilla / Seamonkey) emulate a mobile device in its requests by sending a configurable User-Agent string. I've attached a config file to this post that contains the correct UA strings for a few common phones and the W3C Default Delivery Context. This will save you the trouble of finding the correct strings yourself.
  • Mobile Design - Posted by ronan 2 years 39 weeks ago
  • SVG and the Mobile Web
  • It has always surprised me that the mobile industry has not made better use of SVG. SVG is very well suited to publishing rich content on mobile devices for a number of reasons: compact, lightweight, open standard, reasonably good device support. We've just published an article on mobiForge that summarises the capabilities of SVG and how best to take advantage of it for mobile web applications.Link
  • - Posted by ronan 2 years 41 weeks ago
  • Price barrier to a good mobile web experience is falling
  • This weekend while idly browsing around some phone stores in Dublin, I noticed that you can now get a Nokia 6120 for about €170 from a couple of different Irish operators with a prepaid contract. This is the lowest price I've seen for a new S60 phone without a contract. It's not short on features either: HSDPA, 2 cameras (1 of which is 2 mega pixel), video calling, nice screen etc.
  • - Posted by ronan 2 years 44 weeks ago
  • Should government web sites be required to have mobile-friendly versions?
  • Last week we put together a site that advised on the current status of the fires burning in Calfornia (calfire.mobi, read more about it here). We did this partially because we thought it might be useful to people, but also because we think it can serve as an example for other public advisory sites in general. This got me thinking about the broader issue of making information available to the public: should all government/state/semi-state bodies be required to create mobile-friendly versions of their web sites?
  • Tools - Posted by ronan 2 years 49 weeks ago
  • Find.mobi goes beta
  • Those of you who keep a close eye on your web server access logs may have been wondering what the botmobi crawler was doing sniffing about your site. Well now you know: we're pleased to announce that find.mobi is now in public beta.
  • - Posted by ronan 3 years 8 weeks ago
  • Mobile internet users in India outnumber PC internet users 3 to 1
  • There was an interesting article in India's Economic Times over the weekend that confirms what a lot of people know already: mobile web is fast becoming the primary means of accessing the web for many people, specially in developing nations. India has 9 million internet subscribers against 31 million mobile internet users who use the mobile internet "to read and reply to mails, download content and for online transactions". About 54% of new handsets sold in 2006 were internet-enabled according to the same report. The figures come from the Indian regulator, so presumably they are reasonably accurate. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com...   Thanks to Prashanth for the link.
  • - Posted by ronan 3 years 9 weeks ago
  • DotMobi Email Guide published
  • We've just published the 1.0 Final version of the dotMobi Email Guide. This is a set of guidelines for service providers that wish to run email services suitable for use on mobile devices. More specifically, this guide lists one mandatory rule and a number of optional best practices for publicly available email services running on a .mobi domain. This guide was produced by us, working closely with our investor companies, who know a thing or two about email on mobile.