Measuring the Effects of Operator Transcoders
The issue of mobile-operator transcoders on the mobile web has been hugely controversial. For many iPhone and Android phone owners the negative effects of the transcoders are no longer visible and the issue has dropped off the radar, but they remain a serious problem for those using lower-end devices. more...
The Beauty of Mobile Device Data
Recently at dotMobi we have been investigating how to make our DeviceAtlas device detection even better, while at the same time trying to keep the size of the distributable database as compact as possible. As some of you may know, DeviceAtlas uses a tree of data stored in a very compact JSON file to distribute our device data knowledge. The actual format of this JSON file is a Patricia tree organised around the user-agent strings of the devices that we have data about. more...
Don't forget the supine surfer
It's easy to be waylaid by the word "mobile" in "mobile web", to assume that the defining characteristic of mobile web surfer is the fact that they are out and about. Not always so! Sometimes, mobile = not at PC. Remember that "mobile web" often means the "consumed-on-mobile-device web" rather than the "out-and-about web". more...
Transcoding: what are the Viagra, Cialis and "Dear Winner" of HTML tag soup?
Over the last 6 months or so part of the tech team in dotMobi has been working on Instant Mobilizer, a site mobilizer service to help small businesses dip their toes in the waters of the mobile web. One of the big problems with content transcoding is deciding when it should be applied: if there is little hope of it working well another alternative should be offered. more...
Creating mobile web sites using Google App Engine
Just a quick note to say that we've just published an article on building mobile web applications with Google App Engine, complete with advanced device detection. Check it out on mobiForge. Advanced device detection, meet infinite scalability! more...
Server-side predictive text
We've decided to try an experiment on find.mobi: server-side T9: if you type in a purely numeric query we will try to see if it maps to any common words in the English language, and offer you a link to the search. Thus searching for 46835 will ask you if you meant "hotel" and "7464 8663 " will suggest "ring tone". more...
Mobile search: what are people looking for?
One of the great things about running a mobile search engine (find.mobi ) is that it gives you a direct line of sight into the behaviour of normal users, and their expectations of what is available on the mobile web. One interesting insight we've gained from find.mobi is that the majority of search phrases are navigational in nature. more...
MMS is a usability disaster
I can't remember the last time I got an MMS message. Ewan of SMS Text News reminds me why: MMS: Still a piece of shit more...
Viewports on mobile browsers
Is it any wonder that users of low-end phones don't browse the web that much? Take a look at this photo of a Nokia 6131 in the default web browser. By my very crude calculations, the percentage of the overall screen area actually used by the browser to display useful content is a mere 65%. Why the gaping void between the bottom of the viewport and the menu? Why throw away so many pixels for the scrollbar? By the way, the browser was configured to use "Full" screen size. more...
A snapshot of the mobile web
One of the nice side effects of crawling the mobile web for find.mobi is that we have a good idea of exactly what is out there. One thing that find.mobi does which is a bit different to the other mobile search engines out there is that it captures screenshots of mobile web pages as it crawls. As an experiment (with a tip of the hat to Russell Beattie's annual phone model images 2008 2005 2004) I pulled a selection of find.mobi's thumbnails and assembled them into a contact sheet. Preview below, higher resolution versions in page attachments. more...
