From O’Reilly Answers comes a great how-to; How to Send a Text Message from Your Mobile Website, a nice tutorial with example code to add to your mobile-friendly website. (more…)

I wanted to share some of the mobile focused resources that I’ve been interacting with recently. There are a lot of good resources out there!

– Mobile Web Design Blog “How to design web sites for the smallest screens on the Internet” – They have a great post on Mobile in Latin America too.

– Mobile Demystified, a blog by Waterfall Mobile, a leading SMS solutions provider.

– Nielsen Research’s Mobile Research Blog.

– Untether.tv – Great video interviews with mobile industry rock stars, by Rob Woodbridge.

– The Flurry Analytics Blog is a great pulse on mobile usage across all the apps and sites that use Flurry to track their efforts.

My favorite Mobile News sites:
– Mobile Marketing Watch.
– Mobile Marketer and Mobile Commerce Daily
– Mashable Mobile
– MobileCrunch

Organizations:

– The Wireless Industry Partnership connecting mobile developers to information, resources and people. Some great resources and worldwide mobile industry event lists.

– University of Texas’ Wireless Network and Communications Group, they put on the Texas Wireless Summit, next one is 16 Nov 2010 in Austin.

– Austin Wireless Alliance

– Mobile Monday Austin new meetings coming soon! and Mobile Monday Worldwide site, so you can find your local group.

– The Mobile Marketing Association another great resource for events and research.

– The National Retail Foundation’s Mobile Retail Initiative research. The executive summary is really interesting.

What mobile sites do you frequently use? Please share in the comments and I’ll update! More coming soon!

As you may imagine, I’m very interested in the announcements at today’s Apple Worldwide Developer’s Conference, so I thought I’d share some of the resources I monitor for
up-to-the-minute news (besides Apple Developer Connection, of course).

There are several “Live Blog” sites and several Twitter users you can follow for updates:

• Ars Technica
• gdgt
• Gizmodo.com
• Engadget.com
• CNN Tech on Twitter
• Mark McClusky from Wired Magazine

After the announcements, let us know what you are most excited about!

We saw an amazing headline this week: “Apple Sells Two Million iPads in Less Than 60 Days“. Which is a pretty amazing feat considering that the iPhone took over 2 quarters (6 months!) to sell that many phones. That’s also counting less than a week in international sales, so that’s mainly in the US. I’ve heard that many US Apple Stores are out of stock, or are limiting the number purchased to 2 per customer, as they are in short supply.

From the announcement of the iPad, to its launch, even today, I hear people asking “Why iPad? What would I use it for?” I got asked those questions about 5 times this week, but yet some people clearly “get” it and are picking them up like free tshirts.

When I try to tell people why I enjoy my iPad, I often feel like it’s difficult to express why it’s useful, why I use it instead of my laptop or why my 3 year old daughter loves and uses it so much. It is different from my iPhone and different from my laptop, but it combines several elements of each… enough that make it a really nice and convenient device to have around.

Here are some of the ways I and my family use our iPad, some of these may resound with you, some may not… I’d certainly like to hear how YOU use your iPad, or why you aren’t.

• Checking and responding to personal and work email, it’s better than my iPhone for typing longer emails.
• Checking and updating Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media status and content. Those links to websites, articles, news, videos… all work great on my iPad.
• Reading news and other content sites via dedicated apps, RSS apps, websites, then sharing on my social networks.
• I load it up with videos, podcasts, iTunesU content and books for travel or other relaxing downtime, for myself, my wife and my daughter. We all use it to consume media.
• My daughter loves it as a educational and fun game device… from drawing apps, to matching and alphabet learning apps, she picked up how to use it on the first day, and continues to learn new apps nearly immediately. What other things can you really say that about, with a 3 year old?
• I use it while my wife and I are watching movies or TV, to look up characters/actors, topics or locations around the world that are mentioned. I don’t have to get up, I don’t have to strain my eyes to see the results. I had the iPad to my wife and share the info… the technology gets out of the way.
• Many days, I use it instead of a printed newspaper while having breakfast and coffee with the family. I can instantly go into more depth during a news topic discussion, or offer insights when somebody says “what happened in Buenos Aires this week?”
• Even though I have the WiFi only model, I’ve taken in on a few daytrips and client meetings, using it for email, Skype calls and our company PowerPoint presentations too.

To not sound like toooooo much of an Apple Fanboy (Although I really am), I should mention that I’m not connected to my iPad like a leash (my wife says my iPhone is stuck to my left hand though). I don’t use it all the time, I don’t use it to create long-form content, like this blog post. This amount of content is really more suited for my notebook computer… this may change if I get a Bluetooth keyboard though (when my wife lets me).

Sometimes I use my iPad instead of my phone, sometimes instead of my laptop… sometimes instead of the TV or newspaper too. My family and I use it on the road for fun, I use it for work and presentations. It allows me to bring less gear with me, but still gives me access to much of the information and utility, and it can be a lot of fun too… I am certainly hooked, and I bet you would be too. Give one a try and see what you think… let me know too!

Internet Retailer shares that Best Buy has launched an iPhone app to share their specials and deals.

The mobile app, available through Apple Inc.’s App Store, enables iPhone and iPod Touch users to view weekly deals and mobile-only specials and find the nearest Best Buy store. However, like the Best Buy m-commerce site, located at m.BestBuy.com, it is not yet transactional. Mobile shoppers must phone Best Buy to place an order.

iTunes link to the “Best Buy Weekly Deals” app here. Looks like it’s a good start for them… but with a quick search of iTunes I found another app called the “Best Buy – Gamer’s Club” which seems to the same thing focused on gaming deals and news. Not sure why there is two.

The “Weekly Deals” app seems pretty useful, even using the GPS on my phone to find my nearest physical locations, give phone numbers and connect to my Maps application for driving directions. You can’t search for deals in the app, and the settings are a little odd to operate, but it seems like a pretty good app to start off with.

Best Buy is also promoting another app-focused site/blog in the promotional materials called Best Buy Apps. I can’t quite tell what the point is, but it also links to other apps/sites they seem to have built.

Overall, it’s a great step to see a company promote specials and give some extra service to their customers… would sure like to see if it can drive any sales.
Is there an iPhone app that can help your company work with it’s customers better?

BTW: The easiest way to get links directly to the iTunes store is via this page from Apple.

(Disclosure: I work with a company building iPhone apps now, Common Sense LLC, at GetCS.com)

Although most Americans haven’t used text/web/data services on their mobile phones, mobile ad companies active and some are getting acquired by major players. AOL, Google, Yahoo and several startups are all focusing efforts to either buy or build mobile ad platforms.

Market research firm eMarketer says American ad agencies spent $421 million on mobile advertising in 2006, a figure that is estimated to jump more than tenfold to nearly $5 billion by 2011. Wow.

More info here at Business 2.0.

Some of the mobile ad companies I’ve seen: AdMob, AdBrite Mobile, Millennial Media, ThirdScreen Media, Greystripe and Hovr.com (ads for mobile games).

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been re-reading some of the old information architecture books from the mid- to late-90′s… from Clement Mok’s Designing Business, to Richard Saul Wurman’s Information Architects. It’s great seeing their early efforts, most of which are still amazing… they brought such order to very chaotic information. Subway maps, road atlases, information graphics, business process graphics… Tons of great examples and learning experiences in those two books.

As I’ve been looking over those, I’ve realized that my focus on information design has been mostly around electronic spaces, web, email, mobile, software… but it can also be about phone books, maps, directions to and from stores… it’s really a pervasive discipline. And if you look at some of today’s media, still an under-used one.
Even art can have an information design aspect to it: CNN profiles an interesting art project showing snapshots of people’s emotional experiences as they move through a city. Not just the streets mapped with a GPS, but how a person feels, heartrate, respiration, blood pressure and notes of what they did and saw.

“There are different ways of mapping the city that aren’t strictly about the practicalities or financial sensibilities that we usually guide our urban planning with”

At the artist’s site, you can download some data for Google Earth, and see lots more examples of UK cities mapped.

Today I got caught up in mobile websites and (between diaper changes) set up Seven87.mobi as a basic mobile site for this blog. Not much there, but it has some links and my contact info.

After spending more time in developing a mobile site, I’ve realized there are some real usability and response issues that have to be taken into consideration when designing for mobile use. Mobile sites need much simpler site architectures, simpler layouts, link structures and smaller images than regular sites. Testing for multiple phones is important too, as most display sites differently. Also, in browsing around, I’m seeing a real need for clear labeling and more consideration for information scent… as the time cost for a wrong link is high for users.

The first version of Seven87.mobi is not pretty in a web browser, but looks okay on a phone. For some reason, I can’t get it to validate on the emulators linked below… I’ll have to work on it a bit more.

The interesting thing is that once phone download speeds get a bit faster, I could see this type of site being super useful on the go. Even for those that don’t have web access could find out relevant info quicker than a yellow pages book. I’ll be thinking of more ideas on this…
Here’s to the mobile web! w00t!

The Wall Street Journal has an articlle this week on the mobile web. That is, sites with the .mobi suffix that are accessed via entering the address in a phone browser. This is similar and complimentary to SMS or “texting” mobile marketing campaigns but different in that it’s a web browsing experience.

In it’s simplest form the mobile web is about making your company’s site or a version of it available for browsing on mobile phones. It’s managed by the mTLD dotMobi company, a global .mobi domain registrar backed by leading mobile phone and internet companies such as Google, Nokia, Microsoft, Samsung, Telefonica, TIM Italy, T-Mobile, Visa and Vodafone.

Their site is really a great place to start and get an overview of the industry. You can test your regular website for mobile readiness via their evaluation tool. This site doesn’t score too well… a 1 out of 5. Ouch!
You can also view and work with your site via their online mobile phone web emulator, and see a showcase of corporate, information and other mobile sites.

There are also developer forums and Web Developer Guides, a great strategy PDF and Dev.Mobi developer’s community site.

The OMA – Open Mobile Alliance is another great resource. Their mission:

The mission of the Open Mobile Alliance is to facilitate global user adoption of mobile data services by specifying market driven mobile service enablers that ensure service interoperability across devices, geographies, service providers, operators, and networks, while allowing businesses to compete through innovation and differentiation.

I’ve just registered “Seven87.mobi” and will be developing a version of this site for it. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Do you have a mobile strategy for your company? How does your site look/work on a mobile?

I’ve been using Google’s Mobile apps on my Blackberry for the last few weeks. It’s pretty interesting… and the setup is pretty easy. Send yourself a link via their web page (above link) and you can download their apps without typing in a long address on your phone keypad.

This provides installed applications on your phone, and gives you phone shortcut icons (at least on many phones) to Google’s Search, Maps, Gmail, News and even Google Talk instant messaging.

In addition to the installed applications, and the obvious mobile search, there are also some stand-alone mobile apps available as well via your phone’s browser at http://mobile.google.com.

An overview:

Text message for info
I’m pretty excited about the free Google SMS beta, whereyou can get info on a variety of subjects by texting a 466453 (‘GOOGLE’ on most devices). You can text several types of information (examples on the page) like:

• a food type with a zip code, and it will give you a local listing of restraunts in that area

• sending a sports team will text back recent game scores
• a stock symbol will send back recent pricing
• “weather” with a zip code will send back the current and forcasted weather
• texting a flight number in will get you a status update
• and many more… check the site for examples

Maps with traffic info
Maps with traffic info, directions and satelite info are also accessible via www.google.com/gmm on your phone browser as a stand alone service.

Text and images to your Blogger account
You can set up your Blogger blog to accept images and posts via your mobile phone too.

News updates
Search and view news, even set key words to show personalized news.

Seems like a great start for mobile information services…