If you've been following the WHIR blogs, you've probably seen some of
Isabel's posts about the
importance and
potential of mobile-formatted Web sites.
While I'm skeptical of the "there are more mobile phones than PCs" argument for the mobile Internet (I'm a pretty Web-savvy guy with a more than passing interest in gadget-related technology, and I still think of my mobile phone and my Web browsing as separate experiences), I do understand the value of a mobile-formatted Web site and its obvious relevance to the not-so-far-away future.
Given the opportunity to check out the mobile-formatted iteration of Akmin's SiteGalore Web site builder, I deemed it about time that I built my own mobile site.
First, a disclaimer regarding the potentially misleading title of this post:
What I produced is not technically a "site," though it is technically a "dot mobi" something. I supppose it would be more accurately described as "the product of some exploratory fiddling, stored in a sub-folder of a free hosting service." But I went for the flashier title. If you're a stickler, feel free to think of it as tongue-in-cheek.
The site building tool itself is a pretty bare-bones tool. But then, the mobile phone is a pretty bare-bones browsing tool. And frankly, I have no mobile site builder frame of reference. The company appears to be putting an interesting amount of focus on the tool specifically. They've set up a separate site, mobisitegalore.com, and it's one of the few free .mobi-compliant Web site builders of which I am aware.
In about 15 minutes I managed to put together the basic skeleton of my mobile business, Mobile Tires - a sort of browsable-by-phone tire history archive and online store (don't steal my idea). I renamed headers, edited content and uploaded a picture. And I published it to SiteGalore's free hosting service pretty easily.
One of the major selling points of the tool, according to the Akmin folks, is the fact that it is designed to produce sites that not only meet the .mobi registry's standards for mobile browsable content, but to score perfectly on its MobiReady Report test (a pretty bad-ass little application in its own right). Sure enough, Mobile Tires scored a 5 out of 5.
You can visit my site here. It's live, but it's still a work in progress.
SiteGalore is, first and foremost, a site building tool for Web hosts to offer customers as a value-add or an up-sell. So that might explain the bare-bones feature set. A more complete tool is available for hosts to fill out their feature sets. And it makes for a pretty no-brainer add on to the .mobi domain registration.
TAGS: mobile web, dot-mobi, site builder, sitegalore
I have to admit that I was skeptical about this whole mobile web browsing thing too, until I met a group of Hitachi guys at the Tier 1 hosting conference back in September. They said PC browser based social networking isn't quite as popular in Japan because nobody sits in front of their computers. Instead, people do their searching and shopping and interacting through their cellphones. One guy actually showed me how nicely Google works on his handset. Since then, I've been working on becoming more hip. Last week I even bought a book on Amazon with my Blackberry.
Earlier I read something about location-aware search and recommendations. As that kind of technology matures, I think mobile browsing will become more compelling.
I suppose that's probably where the distinction lies. Most of the people I hear talking about using the Web from their "phone" are talking about their Blackberry or Treo.
That said, I think the "number of mobile phone users" folks probably purposely leave out the percentage of those phones that are actually functional Web browsing tools. I would bet (based on nothing but a hunch) that the number of decent smart phones out there in people's hands is probably smaller than the number of internet-connected PCs.
I have the feeling something like 80 percent of the mobile phones out there are like mine - a phone, with the sort of Web browser I'd just rather not use.
http://gigaom.com/2006/11/20/google-mobile-search
Many consumers may still need convincing, but a lot of vendors are totally intent on bringing the web to your phone.
Thought of you when I read this Techdirt thread, which states the very obvious: "believe it or not, people still use mobile phones for phone calls". Several commenters agreed. One even thinks there's a "new" market for EZ Phones: intuitive interface with big buttons, nothing to figure out and long battery life.
http://techdirt.com/articles/20061229/004931.shtml...