Blog: Kurt Booker

The two methods for delivering mobile content to your audience - phone apps and mobile websites - are different in how they are constructed and used. Which one you choose to build depends on the type of content or functionality you want to make available to your audience.

Mobile websites are usually stripped down versions of existing sites. Fancy design elements are removed, and layouts are reorganized, leaving basic navigation and text that phones can easily navigate. A benefit to the website owner is that content is easily updated, using the same tools for updating the main website. Users benefit by not being forced to download or purchase an app from iTunes or the Android market. They can quickly load the site in their browser. The cons are some phone functionality may not be possible with a website, and it is easier to click an icon than type in a URL.

Phone apps are useful if you need to make use of mobile device functionality, such as the gyroscope, camera, offline usage or push notifications. Mobile websites will not be able to make use of these. And, an app could be sold rather than offered for free, bringing in extra revenue to a business. Phone apps can also make ecommerce easier for customers, using iTunes billing rather than a checkout section on a website (if it is an iPhone app). The downsides are users are forced to find and download an app before they can begin using it. And, for widespread availability, separate versions of an app would need to be developed for iPhone, Android and Blackberry devices.

Plenty of tools and services are available for building either app or mobile sites. CAWOOD can help you make the right decision and guide you to making a decision that works best for your situation.

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The web has experienced three phases of evolution since its release to the public 20 years ago. In the beginning, it was mostly a collection of static documents that could be read, aka Web 1.0. Web 2.0 saw the birth of large-scale user-generated content, as users interacted with sites like YouTube and Facebook by posting comments, blogs, videos, images and more. Massive amounts of content detailing thoughts and experiences now exist in cyberspace.

The Web 3.0 era promises to make better use of that content to enrich our lives. Semantics and personalization are two terms most often identified with the emerging technologies. Rather than matching keyword text strings, new software will attempt to understand the context in which requests are made, serving answers relevant to our needs.

For example, if you tell your computer, "I want to buy an apple," two possible results could appear. The software could recognize from your web history or recent purchases that you have started a diet, so it will direct you to the nearest location selling produce. But, if you have recently surfed websites devoted to troubleshooting Macs, you may find yourself on the product page for a shiny new iMac, along with directions to the closest Apple store.

That example only scratches the surface as to what will likely be possible. Mobile devices are a big part of Web 3.0, as our physical location is known to the net and can be communicated to people and places we identify as important. Advertising will evolve as targeted ads become reality. New forms of entertainment will surely emerge as well.

And, as with all new technology, a double-edge will develop. As we gain efficiencies in our affairs, privacy will be diminished, or even lost. The physical affects of electronic devices continually attached to our bodies may be problematic. And, criminals will certainly take advantage of any new opportunities available (should you really post on Facebook that you are leaving town for a few days?). We can work towards making the pros outweigh the cons.

At CAWOOD, we understand these changing times and how we can help you keep up with them. We are increasing our skills in producing mobile content, as well as having full-time staff devoted to Search Engine Optimization and Social Media. These are exciting times, and we are glad to be a part of it!

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Some very interesting uses for Google you may not have known about:
http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/2482-13-Little-Known-Google-Search-Functions

 

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The biggest buzz in the Web developer community this past year has been HTML5.

This is the new specification for coding websites, which is supported in most modern browsers. While it offers some nifty new features, not all Web browsers support it (hello, Microsoft), and this can cause problems for developers wishing to use it. Here's the scoop.

Among other things, HTML5 adds support for audio/video playback, and can be seen as a means to replace Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight for animations and interactive functionality. Flash and Silverlight both need commercial software to enable development, and require third-party plugins be installed for Web browsers. HTML5 will need no browser plugins to function and is code based, so anyone can write it without need of additional software.

HTML5 has been developed since 2004. But only in the last year have Web browsers such as Firefox, Safari and Chrome added support for it. Microsoft is finally throwing its hat into the ring with the new Internet Explorer 9, which was launched as a beta earlier this month.

But because previous versions of IE do not support HTML5, and IE9 works only on Windows 7 and Vista (no WinXP, which is half the Windows user base), it is difficult for developers to consider using HTML5 in a site, which must reach a broad audience.

Different browsers supporting different features is also a problem. A quick look at this page shows the sporadic nature of support among the various browsers. (It's also a good page for examples of what HTML5 can do.)

Here at CAWOOD, we are keeping an eye on HTML5, as it is definitely the future. But until it matures a bit more with ubiquitous support, we'll likely just keep an eye on it for now.

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I learned a new word today: yottabyte. A yottabyte is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes. I'm a computer guy so I'm familiar with the other common units of measure: kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte. I even bought a terabyte-sized external hard drive at Costco last year, something I could never imagine doing in the early days of the Internet. It's almost full now, and I may need to get another. Will I ever have a petabyte (1000 terabytes) sitting on my desk at home, I wonder?

I doubt I'll ever need a yottabyte. It's the equivalent of a trillion terabytes, and I'm not sure I have need for that. That's a lot of mp3's and avi's. And I can just imagine the time it would take to defragment that disk. I might have to go into cryogenic hibernation for a few million years.

And the wikipedia page for yottabyte claims "as of 2009 the entire Internet was estimated to contain close to 500 exabytes." So, we are collectively still a ways off from needing a yottabyte, as that would be 2,000,000 Internets. That's a lot of facebook postings!

But then again, I recall reading an article by Robert Anton Wilson many years ago, which claimed the sum total of human information was doubling at an exponential rate. If we start with 1 A.D., it roughly breaks down like this:

• Once between Christ and Leonardo Da Vinci
• Once between Da Vinci and the Revolution
• Once between Revolution and early 1900s
• Once again in each: 1950, 1960, 1967 and 1973
• Today, info. doubles every 18 months, and by 2012 it is expected to double every day, and then by the end of 2012 every second... (source: http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread588139/pg1)

And this isn't just foo-foo, new age stuff. Even IBM made the claim back in 2007 that by 2010, information would be doubling every 11 hours. (Is it?)

I'll try not to veer off into 2012 territory, although I am pleased it is just around the corner, and we can finally witness whatever may happen. Information doubling every second? It would be a shame to lose all that knowledge to some kind of apocalyptic disaster, so I hope we keep it backed up properly. We might need another yottabyte.

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