Category Archives: Mobile

Zipcar has a Great Mobile Web Site!

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Zipcar Mobile Web site Screenshot

While the mobile Web in the USA has a long way to come, there are some shining examples of what it can be. Car sharing and hourly rental service Zipcar has one of the best mobile Web site’s I’ve seen.

My whole family was in town last weekend. We were out and about and thought it might be fun to get a Zipcar to do some more shopping. The thing is… I wasn’t near my computer or my apartment for that matter. All I had was my mobile phone.

I typed “zipcar.com” into Pocket Internet Explorer on my Samsung Blackjack. It auto-detected that I was surfing from my mobile phone and gave me the mobile Web site. I was quickly able to see if there was or wasn’t any cars available. It was so handy. It was quick and easy.

Not only is it useful but it makes me more happy with Zipcar as a company.  It makes me think they understand me as a customer.  They understand that we live mobile lives.  We don’t just need a car when we’re at home and in front of our computers.

If you plug Zipcar’s mobile Web site into dotMobi’s evaluation tool ready.mobi , you can see that Zipcar has followed industry standards. It scored a 5 out of 5.

This is the kind of site that is going to people in the USA excited about the mobile Web.

Test the Web Standards Compliance of Your Mobile Web Browser

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Wanna help the advancement of the mobile Web?  Test the Web standards compliance of your mobile phone.

All you have to do is run your mobile phone browser through a bunch of test cases.  It’s super easy.

Point your mobile phone here – http://www.w3.org/2007/03/mth/harness

The Apple iPhone is the Next E-Book Reader Not the Amazon.com Kindle

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So it seems like everyone and their brother is talking about the Amazon Kindle E-Book reader.  Well, I’m not a fan yet.

  1. It’s something else that I have to carry.  Do I wanna carry one more device?
  2. It’s expensive.  It’s $400 (well $399).   Is carrying paper books with you that much of a problem?  A big enough problem that it’d be worth $400.
  3. If I lose a hardback book, I’ve lost $25.  If I lose the Kindle, I’ve lost $400. (This is speaking from someone who was mugged and got his iPhone stolen.)

I think the future of e-books is the Apple iPhone.  It’s something more people already have.  It’s the most popular device with the biggest screen.  It has a good battery.

The Apple iPhone is also launching it’s SDK in February.  Who’s going to write the e-book reader app come February?

Find Washington DC Metro Times via SMS

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Metro Times Screenshot

Washington DC programming rockstar Zvi Band has just launched a cool new Web app called Metro Times. It allows you to send a text message (SMS) with the name of a metro station to an address and it will send back to you the times of the upcoming trains. It’s awesome.

What’d make this app even better is if it were a mobile web app and not just for SMS.

This site provides essentially the same content as the iPhone Web app Meenster. Metro Times is great for those who are iPhone-less.

Buy Cameron Moll’s Book “Mobile Web Design”

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The mobile phone is hands down one of the most ubiqutous devices ever made. If you have a message that you’re trying to communicate over the Web, it’s a medium that you can’t ignore. The problem is that the medium is new enough (at least within the United States) that most of us don’t know enough about it.

Well this week Web industry luminary Cameron Moll released his book “Mobile Web Design.” The book is a great high level introduction to the Mobile Web and how to develop for it. It’s available only in PDF and costs $19.

Pick it up right now!

Have you read the book? What do you think of it?

Carson Systems Announces the Future of Mobile Conference in London

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Today, the crew at Carson Systems has announced a new conference, the Future of Mobile in London on November 14th.

It has quite the prestigious lineup of mobile industry dignitaries  such as Brian Fling, Daniel Appelquist, Andrea Trasatti, Tom Hume, Luca Passani, and others.

This just continues to validate what I’ve been saying about how the Web is moving in a mobile direction (and in some cases or parts of the world it’s already there.) People want to take the Web with them wherever they go.

We need an event here in Washington DC about the Mobile Web.  MobileWebDevCamp?  What do you think?

Meenster – Find DC Metro Times on Your iPhone

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One of my favorite new Apple iPhone apps is Meenster (http://www.meenster.com). You can select your Washington, DC Metro Line (Red, Orange, Yellow, Blue, or Green). You then select your station. It will tell you how much time you have before the next train moving in each direction.

If you’re at the pub grabbing a drink, you can check Meenster. If it says the next train isn’t coming for 20 minutes, you have time to grab a quick drink. It’s super convenient.

It’s built with Joe Hewitt’s iUI.

iPhone Web Apps Can Never Replace Actual Applications

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As I had mentioned before,  there is a pretty vibrant community of developers who are excited about making Web applications for the Apple iPhone.  This is awesome.

These applications are great but I have to admit that they can never replace actual applications.  iPhone applications just don’t have the same responsiveness and feel that actual applications do.  Maybe it’s just that EDGE and WiFi in my area are just not snappy enough.

It’s not that the Web apps can’t work.  It’s just that they aren’t good enough.  If I need information from an application right now, I don’t wanna wait that little bit of time for it to load.  I want the information right now.  If I’m surfing on my phone because I’m waiting for someone, that’s different.  I’ll wait the extra time.

Even with the release of Blue Flavor’s Leaflets, which gives all of these applications a really great streamlined design and ui on the iPhone,  it just feels clunky and not as responsive as i’d want it.

Steve Jobs, when will people be able to develop applications that are running off of the client side and not loaded completely over the Web?  Tell me now.

Digg.com Launches an iPhone Optimized Site

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Digg on the iPhone

Kevin Rose and the crew at Digg.com have just launched an iPhone optimized version of their site (http://www.digg.com/iphone). It’s really really cool.

It’s one of many sites that take advantage of Joe Hewitt’s iPhone User Interface template. This means that it uses the inherent interactions found in the iPhone.

It only shows the recently popular stories but, unlike Digg River, when you click on a story you get to see the story description and the top 5 comments. It looks really nice.

They did the whole site in 48 hours. Kudos to them!

This gives me a few ideas for my own iPhone optimized apps.

Figure Your Restaurant Bill Tip on Your iPhone

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When you live in Washington DC, you go out to eat a lot.  There are so many great restaurants and eateries.  Inevitably,  the dinner bill comes and everyone sits around trying to figure out how much tip they should add on.

The problem is now solved with my iPhone.  With the Web app Tipr (http://www.tipr.mobi), you just enter the dollar amount, the percentage of tip you want to give, and it will say how much tip you should pay.   This is all done in an iPhone optimized environment.

I will be using this app.