Mobile Design and Development by Brian Fling

By E. Brown

In March 2013, the U.N. said 6 billion of the worlds 7 billion people had mobile phones. Of this number over 1 billion had smartphones. Although there are some slow adopters due to cost and bandwidth issues, the fact is mobile is here to stay. And the mobile web is a maturing part of doing business in today’s world. Are you engaged?

Most organizations have a mobile-friendly web site. This allows for audio and video playback and touch interface navigation. While that is a start it is only the bottom rung of the ladder. You need a strategy, a mobile design, and well developed site to compete for the eyes of mobile savvy users.

Brian Fling’s book, Mobile Design and Development is a good place to start. As Fling says, “I wrote this book to be a beginning—your beginning in mobile—and to give you all the information you need to know in order to start thinking of your site, application, or business in the mobile context.”

Brian Fling. Mobile Design and Development (Kindle Locations 305-307). O’Reilly Media.

Before you dismiss this book as too basic, be sure to check out the chapters on:

• The Mobile Ecosystem
• Designing For Context
• Mobile Strategy
• Mobile Web Apps versus Native Apps
• Adapting to Devices
• The Future of Mobile

Everything rises and falls on strategy and a good mobile strategy is the key to a successful mobile design and roll out. In the case of mobile, context is king! Understanding your users and, consequently, their needs will get you most of the way there. Based on proper personas you can assess the needs of your mobile audience and begin to define goals for meeting those needs. You will most likely have a large list of needs and related goals. Don’t be tempted to develop them all. As Fling notes, “keep it simple.”

Without going into too much more detail, suffice it to say there are many good nuggets of information for application in Mobile Design and Development. This book should definitely be amongst your personal library.

iOS 6 Update Can Be Hazardous To Your Health

If you are amongst the bleeding edge tech hounds that need to be first for every little gadget and upgrade, you might want to rethink updating to iOS 6 until Apple has worked out the kinks. In our culture of “it’s shiny, it’s new so upgrade now!” this particular case can be hazardous (or at least VERY stressful) to your health.

Amongst many of the issues reported, those of us that use our smartphones for business and work will find these issue noted below particularly painful:

• Apple Maps – yes, 3D is cool but tell me where I am and how to get where I need to go = fail!
• Passbook – nice idea but doesn’t work = fail!
• WiFi – the most egregious of all because it’s not connecting = major fail!
• Music – disappearing artists, songs, and playlists = fail!

While we love the hype, the energy, and excitement of new Apple roll outs, this kind of roll out is embarrassing. My recommendation is to wait until the kinks are worked out and then upgrade to iOS 6. You’ll be less stressed and your family and friends will like you.

Best Purchase I Made All Year

I love my new ScanSnap S1500M! I just do. This product paid for itself not 4 hours out of the box. Tasks that would have taken me days, even weeks, to do were accomplished in a short time.

Business cards that were piled up – done! Oh, and input into my contact manager! Conference manuals and notes stacked beside my desk – now digitized and searchable. Sweet! File cabinet print outs from previous projects are now converted to Word documents.No more paper clutter.

Did I say I love this tool?!

Save files as PDFs, searchable PDFs, Word, Excel, add to your contacts and in color or black and white. Everything I have wanted to do the Fujitsu designers and engineers seem to have thought of. Even if there is a paper jam, a window pops up showing me the last item scanned and asks if I want to rescan it after I clear the rollers and continue with my project. Nice work.

If you are an information hound and collect research, periodicals, newspaper clippings, business cards, and more – you have to get a Fujitsu ScanSnap. If you do, let me know what you think. If you already have one, tell me of your experiences here.

Mobile Websites: Strategy Plus Tactics Equal Success

This is an article I wrote for the Five Q blog. Enjoy!

With the rise of mobile devices–laptops, tablets, and smart phones–having a clear mobile strategy is a must. If “strategy” is doing the right things, and tactics are “doing things right”, then there are multiple things to consider when creating a mobile strategy.

Data Analysis

Good decisions are made with good data. Reviewing your mobile trends in your web analytics tool will help you see trends as well as learn more about your mobile audience.

Key items to review in your analytics for mobile:

• Mobile traffic on your website
• Mobile devices used: iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry, etc.
• Mobile browser usage
• Top entry pages
• Top exit pages
• Bounce rate and more

Having a good understanding of how mobile users are accessing and viewing your web content will help you better set the direction for your goals and metrics.

Goals and Metrics

All good strategies begin by identifying your key goals for building and delivering your mobile brand. Some examples could include:

• Expanding your reach
• Increasing sales/donations
• Usability for mobile users
• New market outreach

Once your goals are established, then you can set your clear and concrete metrics for success. Some metrics for success could include:

• 50% increase in page views for the website
• 100% increase in time on website site
• 25% increase in donations
• 20% increase in contact form inquiries
• Adding 1,000 new Twitter followers
• Increase to 5,000 new Facebook fans

Remember that your goals and metrics should be grounded in data as well as flexible enough to adjust to keep pace with the activity your users are experiencing on their mobile devices.

Best Practices

Now that your goals and metrics have been established, you can consider some best practices in developing your comprehensive mobile strategy:

• Mobile Visitor Goals and Mobile Surfing:
  • Visitor’s goals will be different when visiting the mobile website than when visiting the desktop website.
  • A Nielsen study from May 2010 showed that Americans spend the bulk of their time on their mobile phones checking email, visiting social networks, and reading the news.
  • Mobile users will often be interacting with mobile websites in 5-7 minute chunks of time.
  • Therefore, they will have less time and desire to read content.
• Mobile Content:
  • The best mobile websites do not simply make the original website viewable in a mobile browser, but restructure the website to meet the needs and goals of the mobile user.
  • Content blocks need to be shorter than they are on the desktop version of a website.
  • Navigation needs to be limited to meet the immediate information needs of mobile users and should be action oriented.
• Mobile Donations:
  • Making a donation may not be the first thing a mobile user thinks to do, but if the timing and ask are appropriate to the channel, increasing donations via mobile is an attainable goal.
  • For text message donations, you are limited to $5 or $10 per gift.
    • This may not be strategically aligned with your ministry/organization’s objectives to further develop donors who are able to give more or those who would be willing to donate more if approached properly.
    • The dollar limit may likely cause someone who would be willing to donate a larger amount to settle for donating $5 or $10 since it is the path of least resistance.
  • If using a donation form, make it as easy to use as possible, including pre-populating it with the visitor’s information when they access the link from email on their mobile device.

Responsive Design & Progressive Enhancement

A trending discussion about mobile design revolves around Responsive Design and Progressive Enhancement.

Responsive Design allows your site to be designed to perfectly fit a specific platform/environment–smart phone, tablet, or desktop–with a single design. Through specific adjustments to the website code and style sheets, the design scales and responds accordingly per the device. Here is additional information about responsible web design and its adaptations for mobile.

Progressive Enhancement, on the other hand, “is a way of designing web pages so that the more features a user agent supports, the more features the web page will have. It is the opposite of the design strategy graceful degradation that builds pages for the most modern browsers first and then converts them to work with less functional browsers.” (About.com) A how-to guide for progressive enhancement is provided by Webdesigner Depot.

Knowing that the design is also part of the user experience is something to consider when crafting your mobile strategy.

Deliverables for Your Mobile Strategy

Keeping the goals, metrics, data, and best practices in mind when developing your mobile strategy will lead to success. You will also want to include in your strategy:

• Audience Analysis: clear definitions of your mobile users, trends for different demographics, and usage patterns
• Mobile Sitemap: defining the core website navigation and pages for your mobile offering.
• Mobile Wireframes: taking into careful consideration that your mobile audience will interact with your mobile website differently than on a desktop, establishing a clear information architecture for mobile will be key to ensuring no gaps exist in the user experience.
• Mobile Design: with the information design complete, you can elevate your wireframes to life through your mobile design.

Be sure to work closely with your web team to ensure that your goals and metrics are clearly being met throughout the mobile production process. As technology continues to evolve, you want to be sure that your mobile strategic efforts grow with your brand.

Comment Below:

• Have you started thinking through a mobile strategy yet? Why or why not?
• What about a mobile website vs a mobile app? Are you seeing your organization lean more toward one or the other?

Facebook Changes That Affect Your Page

It is offical: as of March 11, your Facebook pages are now using iFrames. What does that mean? For the average user, it really won’t mean much since the way you update your Facebook page will be the same, for the most part. For the more sophisticated user, here are a few things you will want to pay attention to: FBML has gone away and you can host your own media using iFrames.

Facebook Markup Language
The FBML tab is gone. If you used FBML on your old page, the tab will still be there but Facebook will not allow creating any new custom FBML tabs. Luckily, there are several companies that have come to the rescue and created applications you can use to continue to leverage FBML:

• Wildfire (As of this writing, this app is free for the next 90-days)
• Involver
• Iwipa

For more information about what this means for you, see Mari Smith’s post about iFrames and Fan Gates.
Other Items of Interest
Over the last months, Facebook has been making other changes as well, the most noticeable differences are Use Facebook As Page and Real-time Analytics for Social Plugins.

Use Facebook as Page
You used to access your Facebook page from the bottom of your profile, but now you can use the Account drop-down to use the feature Use Facebook as Page. When you click on this, you will be given a choice of the pages you own and can switch with a simple click. Switching back is just as simple: click on the Account drop-down and click Switch back to [your profile name]. Aside from the FBML changes, you can edit your page just like before by accessing all your tabs from the left sidebar.

Real-time Analytics for Social Plugins
Facebook also recently announced website and social plugin analytics to their Facebook Insights. This will allow you to gather more actionable data about your page and how well it is performing.

Food for Thought:

• Have you already started implementing some of these changes?
• What could you use a little more information about?

Could This Be You?

Saw this on a friends feed and had to post. Can you relate?

Thanks to: Comics.com | Pearls Before Swine

Python Programmers Twice As Productive As Counterparts

Saw an interesting article today by Kurt Grandis. After a six-month productivity study of teams using Python and C#, Kurt states, “Given our development processes we found the average productivity of a single Django developer to be equivalent to the output generated by two C# ASP.NET developers. Given equal-sized teams, Django allowed our developers to be twice as productive as our ASP.NET team.”

A programmer friend of mine says, “You have to write 3x more code in C# just to do the same stuff….”

Read the article on Kurt’s blog and tell me what you think about Python v. C#

eBooks and eLearning – Finally!

By E. Brown

Now, a group who “gets it!” CourseSmart has released this movie of how eBooks are going to change and adapt — they have to — for the next generation of reader and learner. Also, the rumors of the Apple “iSlate” make this reality a lot closer than you might think. So, where might this leave the Kindle? You be the judge.

Do you think there will be a market for this product? How do you think it will revolutionize learning?

Related Articles
- Kindles For Kids

Wiiwaa Video Game Will Have You Saying, Wii!

Seems I grew up too late for all the cool toys. I just missed the Big Wheel, too late for the PS2, and don’t get me started on the Nintendo DS. We had bikes, cards, and make-believe games (not saying that’s all bad) but I sure wish I could be a kid again. Now, along comes Wiiwaa for the Wii. Oh well, missed another one, but you still gotta check it out. Fun! Watch the video and then let me know what were/are some of your favorite games growing up?

Kindle’s For Kids

By E. Brown

How many of you have kids in school? How many of you have kids carrying HUGE backpacks to school? How many of you are paying doctor bills for your child’s back problems because of lugging around heavy books? Even the packs with wheels are a pain – literally. Ever seen a child try to roll one over a curb on his way to school? Not a pretty sight.

Here’s an idea for Amazon — why not work with the National Education Association, State Departments of Education, or the U.S. Department of Education and give K-12 school kids Kindles with all these “heavy books” loaded into them? The schools own the Kindle’s and when the child graduates, he or she will certainly want to have one of their own. Did someone say, next generation adopters/consumers?

I’ll bet, once parents see the Kindle up close and in action, they will want to buy one for themselves. Talk about market share and saturation. I hear the distant sounds of Ka-ching!

Let me see, off the top of my head here are some ways this could be of benefit:

1. Less paper consumed
2. Less trees cut
3. Easier to update published content
4. Less trash from out-dated school books
5. Lighter pack backs
6. Less stress on children’s backs and bodies
7. Lower family medical bills
8. RSS feeds to teacher assignments
9. Bookmarks to teacher blogs
10. Exposure to Kindle eReaders
11. Create raving fans

I am sure the list could go on. Also, if you’re an Amazon employee, this is another opportunity for you to help out your local community. School administrators will thank you and parents will love you.

If you think this is a worthwhile idea, let Jeff Bezos know. Send him a quick email and let’s see what happens.

Feel free to comment here as well and let me know your thoughts or if there is anything missing on the list of benefits. If you do not see an upside to this idea, let me know that too.

The Economics Of Social Media

This provocative clip gives you some data to chew on if you are wondering about the ROE and ROI of Social Media. Thanks Socialnomics – Social Media Blog.

iPhone Tips and Tricks

By E. Brown

Okay, I admit it, I have become an iPhone fan-boy. I wasn’t always this way (see You May Not Want An iPhone, and Your Virtual iPhone). I have used Palm OS,Windows CE, and Blackberry phones yet the sheer expandability of the iPhone blows the others away. And, iPhone OS 3.0 is yet to come. I cannot wait.

However, there are still lots of little tips and tricks to be learned no matter how long you have had an iPhone. With this in mind, I borrowed a friends book the other day, The iPhone Book, by Scott Kelby and Terry White. Even though I have had my iPhone for several months now, there are still some nice little tips and tricks I am learning and thought I’d share – so here it goes (all credit goes to Scott and Terry, of course).

Address Book Search
I used to have a Blackberry and before that a Palm phone. One of the thing I liked was the ability to quickly find contacts in your address book. If you’re like me finding one contact amongst 2,400+ can be daunting if you have to scroll through many of them. While the iPhone does have an A-Z sorter and search field, a new trick I learned was using initials. Simply enter into the Search field the first initial of your contact then a space followed by the first couple letters of the contacts last name and – bingo – you have your contact pop up. 

For example, if you are trying to pull up the contact information for Joseph Mahma you type “j mah” and Joseph’s contact info will pop to the top. Try it. 

Erasing Email
I know this may seem easy at first, all you need to do is tap the Edit button when looking over your list of incoming emails, right? But what if you’re scanning through emails during a break in a meeting and want to erase those one or two spam messages? Just scrub your finger across across the message and a Delete button will appear. Tap Delete and the unwanted email goes away. Nice. 

WiFi  Finder
My first reaction was to go to the App Store and grab a free application for finding WiFi in my surrounding area. Did, you know the iPhone can do that out of the box using the built in Maps application? Simply type in “wifi, [city name], [state]” and you’re off and running.

Convert Home Movies In iTunes
Did you know you could convert your very own movies for the iPod and iPhone? I didn’t. All you need to do is add your movie to iTunes and then choose “Create iPhone (or iPod) version” from the Advanced Menu. Yes, it is that simple. Isn’t that cool?

Control Music Playback From Other Apps
Here’s another trick that I was not aware of.  If you’re playing music you can switch to another application and continue to listen to your music. But, what if you wan to control the music? Do you have to go back to the iPod app? No! Simply double click the Home button. This will bring up your iPod controls. Make whatever adjustments you want and then tap the Close button. That’s it. Oh, and if all you want to do is adjust the volume, don’t worry about the iPod controls…you know what to do — use the volume buttons on the side of your iPhone. 

iPhone Sleep Machine
Do you have trouble sleeping at night? You can use the Timer feature to help you drift off to sleep  while listening to your favorite tunes. First go to the iPod app and choose the album or playlist you want to listen to as you go to sleep. Next, press the Home button, go to the Clock app, and tap Timer. Here you can set the minutes or hours you want your music to play. Finally, tap When Timer Ends and choose Sleep iPod from the top of the list. Tap Set and you are done. The neat thing that Apple built in is that the music will fade as it shuts down. Nighty-night.

Play Movies Through The iPhone On Your TV
OK, maybe I’m slow here, but I  never thought about the ability to play back movies and TV shows from my iPhone…and  in widescreen too! You will need to make sure you have either Apple Component or Composite AV Cables depending on your television connections. Next tap the Settings then tap iPod from the list. At the bottom of the screen is an option for TV Out. You can choose Widescreen (if you have a TV that supports that format) and/or the TV Signal NTSC or PAL (depending on what country you are in). Navigate back to your Home screen and then choose your iPod and select a movie or television show to start playing. By the way, make sure your TV is turned on and tuned to a proper channel for the cable inputs. Enjoy!

Quick Typing Email Addresses
Find yourself emailing a lot with your iPhone? Ever get frustrated about entering all those new addresses? Did you know you can speed up the process with a simple little trick? When you are in Mail on your iPhone and typing in an address you can see the period button. Did you know if you tap and hold down on it there will be displayed .com, .net, .org, and .edu? No more having to type that suffix.

Custom Ringtones
If you own a copy of GarageBand, creating a custom ringtone for your iPhone is nothing new to you. Create a 30 second diddy and make sure it is set to loop. Next, choose Send Ringtone to iTunes from the Send menu. From iTunes you can sync the ringtone with your iPhone. 

There is another little app I recently discovered, from Rogue Amoeba, called MakeiPhoneRingtone. For this free little application, all you need is 40 second .aiff files. Simply drag and drop them onto the app and your custom ringtone is placed within iTunes ready for you to sync. I found that by opening mp3 music files in QuickTime, I could trim them to the section of the song I liked and then Export it as a mp4. I could then drag the file onto MakeiPhoneRingtone and — tadaa! — instant ringtone. 

Back To Top
This may be a familiar link you have seen on some long Web pages, but did you know this feature is part of the iPhone as well? In many of the applications all you need to do is double tap the top of the screen and it will bring you back to the top. This is very handy for me since I have several thousand contacts in my address book. I can easily pop back to the top and use the Search field if needed. 

Spammers Beware
Have you ever been in an email on your iPhone and seen a link in the body of the text? Ever wonder where it goes? No more worries. Just tap on the link and hold your finger there while the Web address pops up for you to see. If you do not want to launch Safari, drag your finger off the link and you will not open your browser.

Formatted For iPhone
Many Web sites are not formatted for mobile display, yet many other Web sites are. Is your favorite site optimized for the iPhone? Type the word “mobile” or “m” in front of an address and see what you get. For instance, http://www.usatoday.com would be mobile.usatoday.com -or- m.usatoday.com. Now, you try it.

 ICE Nice
If you have not placed ICE (In Case of Emergency) on your mobile phone, what are you waiting for? We saw a friend today at lunch who did not know what ICE stood for and why it was important to add to your address list. It is always nice ti have quick access to an emergency contact. A nice free app from the iTunes App Store is Close Call. By installing this you can create a custom wallpaper for your iPhone with an emergency contact number. 

iPhone Screen Shots
Apple built in the ability to take screen shots of your iPhone screen. Just press and hold the Home button, then press the Sleep/Wake button on top of your phone. The screen flashes and saves a copy of the image to your Camera Roll.

Watcha Got?
These are just a few of the tips and tricks I found useful. How about you? What have you found out to be helpful? Share your tips and tricks here for our readers.

Kindle App On iPhone Misses, But Just Barely

By E. Brown

I installed the Kindle app for the iPhone right after it came out (thanks Ryan Block for the heads up). I then found a free book that I downloaded and was able to play with. Listed below are my first impressions. What are yours?

Likes:

• Text sizing
• Bookmarking
• Page turning
• Page scrubbing (page location)
• Sync with Kindle books

Dislikes:

• Cannot annotate
• Page will not rotate when I turn iPhone on side
• Cannot download books directly from Kindle app (like Stanza)

So, what about you? Comment now…

App Trap Uninstalls All Those Pesky Added Files

By E. Brown

My friend, Heath, introduced me to App Trap the other day and I do not know how I have lived with out. It is a great little app for the Mac and needs to be on every Mac computer (hear me Apple?).

I love trying new software. Yet, every time you download and install an application or trial version, files get placed in all kinds of places. Many apps come with an uninstall feature, but there are many that do not. Welcome App Trap. This free software (although you can make a PayPal donation, which I’d recommend) will save you all kinds of time hunting down pref files and other assorted library files.

Once you install App Trap it sits and watches what applications you download and delete. When you delete an app you will get a message asking you if you want App Trap to delete all the other associated files to that application. Once you say “yes” App Trap neatly rounds up all the files and plops them into your Trash. They are not gone until you empty your trash so you can easily retrieve them if you feel you’ve made a mistake. It is that simple.

Download a copy today and you’ll be singing it’s praises as I am. If you already have it or know of something better, comment below.

Enjoy!

iPlotz for Collaborative Web Designing

By E. Brown

If you’re a Web designer or part of a Web development team you gotta check out iPlotz. This subscription based SaaS has some very cool application for collaborative wire-frame development and workflow.

Browser-based, it works with Mac, Windows, and Linux. You can easily add and delete pages from your sitemap. THen add images, fields, navigation, etc. and size them accordingly. You can even link from within and without of your wireframe project.

To me, the real power comes in the collaborative aspects. You can invite others to work on the project and comment regarding any element or component of the pages being built. You can then assign to-do’s to members that only they can see as you start to move the project into production.

Check it out. For $99/yr and a gig of space you cannot beat the time savings.

Is The iPhone Really Cheaper?

By E. Brown

I have to be honest, I have not researched this yet. So, I wanted to hear what you have experienced. I have heard that  while the iPhone is cheaper to buy ($199) the cost of operating is more and so it all evens out similar to the original pricing.

Now, it’s your turn – talk back. Have you found this to be true or is the phone more competitive with other models and manufacturers?

5 Questions To Improve Email Response Rates

By Paul Broni | Inbox Interactive

Before you write the copy for your next email marketing effort, ask yourself these five questions and write down your answers:

Question 1: What problem does your target audience have?
You only need a few sentences here. Your prospect needs to know that you really understand her. Remember, we’re not writing copy yet, so you don’t need to be creative here. Rather, we’re developing a framework that we will turn into great copy.

Question 2: What have been the obstacles to the problem’s solution?
Again, this answer can be short, with just a few factual sentences. You need to identify what the historical roadblocks were to the problem’s solution in the past. Think about what’s been keeping the problem from getting solved.

Question 3: What is possible because of your product or service?
You’re getting ready to set the stage for what your prospect’s life will be like after buying your product or service – your solution. The answer to this question should paint a picture so the prospect can see himself enjoying the benefits.

Question 4: How is your product or service different?
Write a few sentences on your Unique Selling Proposition (USP). Your USP is what sets you apart from your competition in a favorable way. Your USP is what gives your business the advantage from which your clients and customers benefit.

Question 5: What do you want the prospect to do?
This is the call to action. Think about what you want the recipient to do. Sign up for something? Call you? Register for an event? Make a purchase?

With this framework in hand, you are on the way to crafting copy that will elevate your email marketing results.

-Source: Paul Broni has been a partner at Inbox Interactive since 1998.

Virtual Turkey Bowling! Gobble Gobble!

Fun online Turkey Bowling game. Give it a shot. I stink at it. I only got 22 points.

Play Is Good For You And For Business

I love creativity in all things. As I look for creative ways to educate and train I happened upon this video. Here Tim Brown, from Ideo, discusses creativity in the workplace and how it breeds innovation. Yet, what I think I like best about his entire presentation is the way Tim got the audience involved in his talk. So, set aside 20 minutes and enjoy this TED Talk by Tim Brown.

more about “Presentation Zen: Play is good for yo…“, posted with vodpod

International Peer Pressure Got Me To Join Twitter

By E. Brown

Who would think a friend half-way around the world would talk me into joining Twitter? Well, Justin did, but I admit I am still skeptical. I have been tweeting for a coupe days and only have 7 followers…hmmm. Could be my original conclusions were right (See Related Articles).

I’ll give it some time and try several different environments. Who knows, I might like it.

Also, let me know if you’re on Twitter too! You can find me at eweirdguy.

Related Articles
- Jeffrey Veen Taps Into eLearning Via Twitter
- Blogging Is Dead, Long Live Twitter!
- Twitter Is For The ADD Generation – Part 1
- Twitter Is For The ADD Generation – Part 2
- Twitter For The ADD Generation – Response
- Now, Some Possible Value In Using Twitter