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mobile-editionDo you visit many blogs with your mobile phone? If you do, you’ll undoubtedly have noticed that most blogs are simply not intended for viewing on a phone’s small screen.
My blog is no different. Indeed, the design elements - banner image, sidebar, graphics and badges, overall layout, etc - make this blog a wholly impractical place to go to via just about any mobile phone.
It’s designed for display on a computer screen.
What’s needed is a version of your blog that is designed for display on a mobile phone and other small-screen mobile devices.
That means a focus on displaying the content (the text) in a way that’s easy to read on a small screen, easy to navigate it using a typical phone’s small buttons, and display hyperlinks in a way that makes it easy to spot them.
It also needs to be quick to load over the comparatively slow connection speed of a cellular network, or even the comparatively faster speed that you might get with a wi-fi-enabled mobile phone.
All this needs to be available in an easy-to-create way that doesn’t require you to spend hours coding and creating a mobile-specific version of your blog.
You’re in luck if you’re a WordPress user - there is such a tool. It’s a plugin called WordPress Mobile Edition, created by Alex King (one of the most generous contributors to the WordPress user community).
This plugin is simplicity itself. Upload the files, activate the plugin, and that’s it - the mobile version of your blog is done. It works (and looks) a treat as the photo suggests. Download the zip file and follow the simple instructions.
Having an easy-to-use version of your blog for small-screen mobile devices is becoming more important if you want to make your site easily accessible to visitors no matter what device they use to connect to the net.
Something else to think about, too. With a mobile-ready version of your blog, the focus is on your text content and what you say, not how it’s presented. As with subscribers to your RSS feed, no one will see the cool design you might have for your site.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
1.5 Billion Mobile Internet Users
Market Intelligence and research firm IDC released some data from their Digital Marketplace Model and Forecast which should put a smile on everyone's face who is in the mobile content space.
From the release:
Nearly a quarter of the world's population - roughly 1.4 billion people - will use the Internet on a regular basis in 2008. This number is expected to surpass 1.9 billion unique users, or 30% of the world's population, in 2012, according to IDC's Digital Marketplace Model and Forecast.
"The Internet will have added its second billion users over a span of about eight years, a testament to both its universal appeal and its availability," said John Gantz, chief research officer at IDC. "In this time, the Internet has also become more deeply integrated into the fabric of many users' personal and professional lives, enabling them to work, play, and socialize anytime from anywhere. These trends will accelerate as the number of mobile users continues to soar and the Internet becomes truly ubiquitous."
While the PC is currently the dominant means of gaining access to the Internet, IDC expects the number of mobile devices accessing the Internet will surpass the number of online PCs by 2012.
Additional highlights from IDC's Digital Marketplace Model and Forecast include the following:
* Users will access the Internet through more than 1.5 billion devices worldwide in 2008, including PCs, mobile phones, and online videogame consoles. By 2012, the number of devices accessing the Internet will double to more than 3 billion, half of which will be mobile devices.
* Roughly 40% of all Internet users worldwide currently have mobile Internet access. The number of mobile Internet users will reach 546 million in 2008, nearly twice as many as in 2006, and is forecast to surpass 1.5 billion worldwide in 2012.
* The most popular online activities today are searching the Web, finding information for personal use, using Internet email, accessing news and sports information, and accessing financial or credit information. In addition to these activities, more than 50% of online users worldwide are using instant messaging and playing online games.
In case you need any help with the math,
1.5B people connecting to the Internet from their mobile phones.
50% play games online.
That sounds like at least 750M mobile gamers worldwide. My research shows the current number of mobile gamers worldwide at 165M.
From the release:
Nearly a quarter of the world's population - roughly 1.4 billion people - will use the Internet on a regular basis in 2008. This number is expected to surpass 1.9 billion unique users, or 30% of the world's population, in 2012, according to IDC's Digital Marketplace Model and Forecast.
"The Internet will have added its second billion users over a span of about eight years, a testament to both its universal appeal and its availability," said John Gantz, chief research officer at IDC. "In this time, the Internet has also become more deeply integrated into the fabric of many users' personal and professional lives, enabling them to work, play, and socialize anytime from anywhere. These trends will accelerate as the number of mobile users continues to soar and the Internet becomes truly ubiquitous."
While the PC is currently the dominant means of gaining access to the Internet, IDC expects the number of mobile devices accessing the Internet will surpass the number of online PCs by 2012.
Additional highlights from IDC's Digital Marketplace Model and Forecast include the following:
* Users will access the Internet through more than 1.5 billion devices worldwide in 2008, including PCs, mobile phones, and online videogame consoles. By 2012, the number of devices accessing the Internet will double to more than 3 billion, half of which will be mobile devices.
* Roughly 40% of all Internet users worldwide currently have mobile Internet access. The number of mobile Internet users will reach 546 million in 2008, nearly twice as many as in 2006, and is forecast to surpass 1.5 billion worldwide in 2012.
* The most popular online activities today are searching the Web, finding information for personal use, using Internet email, accessing news and sports information, and accessing financial or credit information. In addition to these activities, more than 50% of online users worldwide are using instant messaging and playing online games.
In case you need any help with the math,
1.5B people connecting to the Internet from their mobile phones.
50% play games online.
That sounds like at least 750M mobile gamers worldwide. My research shows the current number of mobile gamers worldwide at 165M.
Test Your Website on Mobilephone
Lately there is a lot of buzz about .mobi domains and making websites compatible with people browsing from mobile phones. Personally, I believe that this issue is important for mainstream websites like Google or The New York Times, while small publishers (read you and me) still have at least one year before they need to pay attention to the problem.
Regardless of that, however, it might be interesting to check how your website would look on a mobile phone. The dotMobi company has an useful online emulator that does just that. You need to type the URL and you will see a mobile phone on the screen displaying your site. You can even screen down using the keyboard of the virtual phone.
Daily Blog Tips was displayed correctly (i.e., it was readable), but I think it might be related to the clean design that I am using. I wonder if more elaborated themes would encounter problems.
Regardless of that, however, it might be interesting to check how your website would look on a mobile phone. The dotMobi company has an useful online emulator that does just that. You need to type the URL and you will see a mobile phone on the screen displaying your site. You can even screen down using the keyboard of the virtual phone.
Daily Blog Tips was displayed correctly (i.e., it was readable), but I think it might be related to the clean design that I am using. I wonder if more elaborated themes would encounter problems.
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