Why Companies Need a Mobile Web Site
Smart phones are now used by millions of people all over the world. The smart phone gives companies huge marketing and sales potential. Tablet sales are also increasing. The iPad is an example of a tablet.
Tablets are in essence a touch screen device which uses the internet. They are extremely mobile, use apps and website browsers and can store a multimedia files and players. Photos music and videos can be stored, accessed, played, viewed. Some of the latest tablets have built in cameras.
Furthermore social networking sites are being used by a wide ranging age group. For example the facebook newsroom reported in 2010 that the highest growing demographic for new people joining facebook was the over 35 age group. They also reported that there are over 500 million users worldwide and that half of facebook users log on everyday.
The global internet opportunity is huge for any company.
Whilst iPad has been market leader, others are following and by the end of 2011 it is expected that hundred of other versions of tablets, of varying specifications and price points will enter the marketplace. Hence making the ownership of a tablet desirable to most people who use the web.
A mobile website is not an APP. A mobile website is simply a website. However it ought to be designed so that there is limited scrolling for the user, and its simple to navigate throughout the site.
A starting point when considering having a mobile website designed is the objectives. For instance is your website designed to increase business enquiries, sell products or services online, or maybe it is an information giving website which will reduce the overheads traditionally associated with answering questions on the phone and sending out brochures.
Lets look at why a mobile website is not the same as an APP. An APP must be downloaded. They are fun funky and cools, however a mobile website does not need to be downloaded. The APP must be developed for the various platforms on which smart devices operates. For example Android, Mac for iPhones, iPad and Blackberry.
Every smart phone on the market has internet access built in so that mobile website is available at the touch of a button or screen, to anyone in the world who uses a smart phone.
Smart phones and tablets, such as the iPad are now outselling PCs and figures indicate that tablets will grow in popularity and fall in price.
Some smart phones has small screens. Mobile web design considers this by a less-is-more approach and great use of color and graphics.
Some platforms, for example leading e-commerce platforms, caters for the mobile website to be designed and published, and for APPS to be produced for each platform. For companies with a larger budget this is an option.
When approaching web design companies always ask for a portfolio of mobile web design work and apps before committing to anything.
Mobile web design is still relatively new and many web designers do not have the necessary experience to be able to fulfill the requirements needed for mobile and tablet web design.
Syncd Design offer mobile web design hudderfield and build website apps. Synd Design also provide marketing services such as graphic design in yorkshire
100 Web Tools to Enhance Collaboration (Part 1)
It is easy to collaborate with your colleagues around you. What about other people in your PLN? Can you collaborate with 50, 100, 1000 people? “Collaborate”, “Collaborative”, “Collaboration” were the most frequent words I heard last year and I believe it will be more important and popular in this new decade. Here is my first 20 web tools to enhance collaboration among us!
“DabbleBoard” is a whiteboard that enables you to visualize, explore and collaborate. You draw as you are drawing on a whiteboard and you can easily share your ideas. It also lets you conduct presentation and chat though you can not share files. You can read 10 reasons why to use “Dabbleboard”.
“CoSketch” is another whiteboard that you can collaborate to visualize your ideas and share them as images. The good thing is that, you don’t have to register or install anything. It works in all browsers, it’s real time and you can get an embed code for your drawing after you finish.
“Stixy” lets you create online bulletin board to collaborate with family, friends, colleagues. You can share pictures, files, reminders, notes using different widgets that you can change size and colors. It’s fun, free,easy and colorful. “Stixy” deserves a try!!
“Grou.ps” lets you create your own social network. There are different modules to be used as many as you want. You can create your forum, mailing list, share documents,files and your agenda to organize events, have your own “YouTube”, share links, bookmarks, photos. You can have real time chat and you can let the users have subgroups and it’s free.
I’m sure many of us are a member of a “Ning” group and “Ning” is the one of the best sites to create and join new social networks that interest us. You can upload pictures,photos, feeds, bookmarks and many more.
“ImaginationCubed” is a “multi” user drawing tool. You can use a pen, stamp,shapes, line or you can type. You can also change the color of the background. I loved this one, it’s cool!
If you are using Twitter, you may want to try “GroupTweet”. It lets you create your Twitter account into a group communication tool where everyone in the group uses direct messages. When a member gets a “DM”, “GroupTweet” turns it into a new tweet that all followers in the group can see.
“Wallwisher” is an online notice board maker. You can use this tool to make announcements, keep notes. You can use links, pictures, music, video and pages. You don’t have to register. You can have a look at “Nik Peachey’s Wallwisher” as a great example.
“PageFlakes” is a social personalized homepage that you can customize Internet using flakes which are small, movable of all your web favorites. You can add Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, photos, music, videos, calendar, to-do list, message board, RSS feed.
“WriteBoard” is a-web based text documents that you can track every edit and change that are made by other users. You can role back to any version and compare different versions.
“Wiggio” is an online toolkit that lets you work in groups easily. You can send emails, text messages,voice mails. It makes it easy to share files and polls. You can set video conferences and also keep shared calendar, keep track of group’s tasks and resources.
“WeToku” is an interview tool that automatically records it to play it back. You can embed it and share it with others. You can watch my “WeToku” interview with Ana Maria “Menesez”.
“Webnote” is a tool for taking notes on your computer and you can share your notes with others giving the workspace name or the URL.
“PalBee” is a free online service that allows you to set up online video meetings with your friends or colleagues. You also have a whiteboard and it lets you draw, write texts, highlight or erase using different tools.
“Phuser” is a tool for groups to discuss or work together and privately. You can share photos, files, choose who joins, create and track discussions.
“WikiDot” is wiki builder to share content, documents and collaborate with your students, colleagues, friends. You can create pages, forums,separate wikis for groups or students, discuss topics, upload files, documents,notes, images and share them with others.
“Creately” lets you create professional looking online diagrams with your colleagues.
“DoingText” is a web based text editor for collaborative writing. You tell others the URL and they write comments, make changes without signing up. It lets you track changes and comments by RSS feed, export text by embedding in other pages. You can go back to the previous version of every line or you can see an overview of the discussion history.
“SpringNote” is an online notebook for collaboration. You can write down your ideas, create to-do lists, do scheduling and work together for projects. It also has an iphone application.
“MeBeam” is a place where you can create your chat room. You just type the name of the room and tell the people to meet you there.
Create, collaborate and enjoy!
This article was written by Ozge Karaoglu.
Kevin Hogan is Editorial Director for Tech & Learning Magazine. Read more about technology in education at www.techlearning.com
Social Media – The Ultimate Outlet
Social media is that whose goal is to be distributed via social interaction. It can be defined as any type of media that is created by the public as opposed to that produced by professional reporters or journalists or other professionals. The term was first used in 2004 and has risen in prominence since. It is primarily internet based using the technology to change the solitariness of the internet to more of a community allowing users to interact. It is also referred to, mostly by businesses, as user generated content, or UGC.
Social media has three main components. Concept refers to what is posted. It could be text or pictures or video or multimedia. Media refers to the channel. It could be verbal or electronic or verbal. Social interface is the type of interaction. It could be direct, community engagement, viral or broadcast. There are several common forms. There are memorable slogans or concepts that encourage others to repeat them. There is print media that is planned to be re-distributed. There is electronic media meant to be shared.
Social media are different than industrial forms. Industrial media is also known as “traditional” and would include such things as television and newspapers. These typically involve a great deal of resources and personnel to produce. The social type does not require such resources. It is inexpensive and accessible and able to be created by an individual or group with something to say. There is not a need for extremely specialized skills. There is also a much shorter time between creation and distribution. There are some criticisms of the style. It is not regulated. The information presented may or may not be rue, accurate or valid.
A hybrid of social media and the traditional is called community media. This would include such things as public access television production organizations or small, community newspapers. They usually are small in scale and involve both professionals and amateurs. Everyone wants to have a voice. Many want that voice to be heard. They want to share their views or engage in a satisfying creative activity. The internet has provided a wonderful platform for these creative activities. Sites that allow for status updates or uploading of videos or the sharing of thoughts through blogging have given many people an outlet for their musings. Print media was an outlet prior to the internet and continues to be even today.
Troy Truman is an online publisher providing great tips on social media. To learn more about this topic, visit http://www.EcentricMarketing.com.au today!
How I Watch RTE from Outside Ireland
RTE stands for Raidio Teilifis Eireann and is the public service broadcaster for Ireland. It’s actually one of the oldest broadcasters around, they have been operating continuously since 1961. The Irish Government appoint a board to run the station, it is very near to Irelands version of the BBC.
It is certainly why it is missed by Irish citizens who move from home, and why many were so pleased at the announcement of RTE Player which is a similar version of BBC Iplayer. It allows you watch the majority of RTE content and programmes over the internet. Alas all the homesick Irish were to be disappointed when they tried to access the RTE Player from abroad, the dreaded Geotargeting stopped them.
Now some of you are probably not aware of this term, but ‘geotargeting’ plays an important part on what you access online. The most obvious example is when you go to Google, you will always be directed to the Google Home page related to your location e.g Google.com, Google.co.uk, Google.IE.
In this case it makes perfect sense, but unfortunately Geotargeting is also used to block access in many cases. It’s quite a simple process, everyone connected to the internet has an IP address to identify themselves. This IP address is registered and can be traced to a physical location, so all a web site has to do is look up the location of this address from a database and it can determine where you are.
This is what RTE Player does, it looks up your IP address and if it’s not registered in Ireland you won’t be able to access the content. BBC Iplayer does the same for Non-UK surfers, in fact most of the big media sites block access to their content outside their specific country.
But the truth is that this doesn’t stop people accessing the shows if they use a workaround. In the instance of RTE Player all you need to do is to connect through a proxy server that is registered in Ireland. When you connect throught the Irish proxy your IP address will be listed is Irish and RTE Player will work perfectly.
Now the methods you can use this depends on lots of things, if you don’t mind spending time tracking down and testing proxies then you can use free ones. The advantage is obviously the cost, however it can take a long time to find a new Irish proxy each time you want to view RTE. The free ones never stay live for very long either so it’s going to be an ongoing search.
I have found it simply takes too much time to find a free, fast and reliable proxy which is why I generally use a commercial one as they are fast and secure.
There’s more information here, on my US RTE post, on this blog.
Can I Watch BBC Iplayer Outside the UK
If you have ever tried to access the majority of the wonderful BBC Iplayer content outside the UK then you will have certainly been disappointed. The reason is that the BBC use a system called geotargeting to restrict the content of it’s web site, outside the UK, it simply doesn’t work.
It’s a well used concept, basically every computer connected to the Internet has an IP address. This address is basically your presence on the internet and it can be traced to the exact computer that you are using. Many media sites, the BBC included use the location of the IP address to allow or restrict content.
For instance if you connect to the internet in the UK you will be assigned an IP address from your ISP. This IP address will be listed to be used in the UK hence you are identified as a UK surfer. If you connect to the internet from somewhere like the USA or France (in fact anywhere except UK) – everytime you try and access the BBC Iplayer then you will be blocked.
It’s not that clever it’s simply a big database listing which country an IP address is assigned to. In fact sometimes this can be wrong, I know for a fact that some IP address ranges in France are actually listed as being in the UK. The result is that these IP addresses can access BBC Iplayer even when connecting from France, simply because the IP database is out of date.
This targeting of content is also used by many other web sites. Google will automatically direct you to the language variant of your connection, the same with places like Amazon which will suggest the correct country depending on your location.
There are lots of US media sites like Hulu, Pandora and ABC which block users who are not from the US. One aspect that always annoys me is the way I can’t visit my favourite online casino when I’m in the US as they block US surfers based on their IP address due to the online gambling laws in the States.
In other senses their are more sinister uses of geotargeting, censorship to online users is rife on the internet and many people are blocked from lots of legitimate sites purely due to the location of their computer.
When I travel across Europe the sites my computer is allowed to access changes dramatically in some senses. When I visit Turkey lots of websites now get blocked including until recently WordPress blogs (although someone told me that has now changed again)
But remember this form of censorship is actually quite unsophisticated, it’s just a simple lookup in many cases. The solution is that you just have to change your IP address so that it looks like you are coming from a different country. It’s relatively simple to do but will either require some research or investing in a commercial solution.
So fear not there is a way of watching whatever media site you wish, you may be interested in these pages Watch UK TV and
how to access BBC Iplayer