Jul 20
Posted: under Mobile marketing, Mobile Web Design, Web Tech.
Tags: android, app store, blackberry, book, css3, David LaFontaine, Design, Dummies, html5, iphone, Janine Warner, mobile devices, mobile web design for dummies, WAP, web design, WML, xhtml mp
UPDATED WITH NEW COVER: Like any project, the last 5% takes 50% of the effort. So here is the new&improved cover of the book, which shows the essence of what we want to communicate — that it is possible (if you take the time and know what you’re doing) to achieve a consistent good design [...] [...more]
UPDATED WITH NEW COVER: Like any project, the last 5% takes 50% of the effort. So here is the new&improved cover of the book, which shows the essence of what we want to communicate — that it is possible (if you take the time and know what you’re doing) to achieve a consistent good design look&feel, even across a variety of mobile devices.
While this does not quite rank up with “Our long national nightmare is over…” I assure you that the relief that
Janine and I feel over finally putting the finishing touches on
the book we’ve been co-writing for the last six months is truly special. We knew going in that writing about designing web pages for mobile devices was going to be a difficult and intense task — but we didn’t know it was going to be THIS difficult.
Contrary to what you might see on Amazon.com, this is what the cover of our new book will look like.
But the upheaval and changing standards in the mobile web space in just the last year have been, from a designer’s perspective, a real handful. What was once the conventional wisdom – create a dumbed-down, simple website that will work on any device – has been supplanted by a much more nuanced approach, involving using sophisticated scripts to detect what device is accessing your site, looking up what technology that device supports in a vast (you hope) database, matching your content to the capabilities of the device (that means video in Flash, 3GP or MP4 formats), and then assembling a site on-the-fly and delivering it quickly and cleanly.
If the struggles of Apple with their antenna (see the Mobile Web Design Blog for more on this) have provided us with a stunning example of how even the market-leading mobile device company can stumble, well, trust me, we have had our moments these last few months. I’ve felt like the digital/authorial equivalent of Dr. Stanley searching for Dr. Livingstone, hacking my way through the dense underbrush of acronyms like WAP, WML, 3GPP, LTE, GIS and many more guaranteed to make your head spin.
We have worked extremely hard to ensure that the book is as current and accurate as possible; re-reading it one last time before it went to the presses last week was a real moment of pride for us both. We are going to deliver some real value to both designers that want to figure out how to jump on the mobile bandwagon, and for business owners who want to look beyond the “Gotta get an App!” frenzy that is leading so many down what is increasingly apparent as a blind alley.
By the way – the cover illustration above is only the placeholder – we redesigned it to feature our grinning faces. At least in Janine’s case, it should help spur casual walk-by sales (cue soundeffect: “Awwww…”).
We now return to your regularly scheduled online media-commentary snarking. The last six months have kept me hopping so much that I’ve really had to de-prioritize my blogging. I’m looking forward to being able to devote some more time to writing about all the developments in the content monetization & distribution space.
Mar 25
Posted: under Mobile marketing.
This is the audio podcast of the Mobile Advertising session at the OMMA 2009 conference. Download Mobile media session OMMA 2009 [...more]
This is the audio podcast of the Mobile Advertising session at the OMMA 2009 conference.
Download Mobile media session OMMA 2009
Sep 15
Posted: under Found Genius Artifacts, Google Android, Home Office Technology, iPhone - Hype and Reality, Mac v. PC, Mobile marketing, New Media Strategery, Online (Multi)Media, Web/Tech.
It's going to be interesting to see if the upcoming mobile phone platform/application war & shakeout will be a repeat of the Apple vs. IBM, or Mac OS vs. Windows wars of the early 80s and early 90s … ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny and all that, you know… Apple has done a tremendous job breaking ground [...] [...more]
It's going to be interesting to see if the upcoming mobile phone platform/application war & shakeout will be a repeat of the Apple vs. IBM, or Mac OS vs. Windows wars of the early 80s and early 90s … ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny and all that, you know…
Apple has done a tremendous job breaking ground in this area, popularizing the technology with great hardware that works … well mostly works … they have put tons of effort into conceptualizing and designing the interface, and 
creating the paradigm that people actually want to use.
…and now that they've done the heavy lifting, along comes the more open-source competitor, flinging open the doors of innovation and competition to take the tidy Apple walled garden and turn it into, well, pretty much what the landscape of PC-based applications has looked like for the past 28 years or so. A loud, rude, complicated, chaotic landscape where everything is much cheaper, does kewl new things that businesses/people need to have in their lives, and that you have to be half-systems engineer yourself to keep all your various hardware & software all playing nicely together.
To stretch the "walled garden" metaphor a little, the IBM-PC space, rather than a tidy garden, more resembles a giant sandbox full of toddlers on meth. Only they're NFL lineman-size. With power tools.
If the past is to be our guide, the Android and Blueprint somewhat open-source projects are going to start off behind Apple, biting off what Apple does. And the developers will be relentless. And the hardware manufacturers will churn out warehouses full of cheap, buggy handsets to run all this on.
And they will gradually erode Apple's lead in the smartphone/app space.
Anyway, here's some interesting quotes from MSNBC:
While Android is an operating system, it is
also an open-source system similar to Linux, upon which it is based.
That’s creating a lot of excitement and interest in the kind of
programs that will be available for users, including one that can track
family members’ whereabouts in an emergency to another that offers a
short cooking video, followed by information on nearby grocery stores
that carry the ingredients needed for the recipe.
Since
its inception, Android has been tweaked and built upon freely by
developers, device designers and wireless carriers who have had
complete access to Android’s Software Developer Kit. Basically, Android
is whatever users and developers want it to be.
That’s
in contrast to Apple’s approach with the iPhone. Nine months ago, Apple
created a Software Developer Kit offering application makers the same
interface and tools Apple uses to develop iPhone software.
But Apple has closely regulated and monitored every program that is being offered through the company’s online App Store.
Android
will “create a new, attractive environment to foster innovation and
make it easier to bring new ideas to market, ultimately ensuring
consumers a richer, more personalized mobile experience,”
