The Thinking Blog Goes Mobile (And So Can You)
Remember a few years ago when camera phones and music phones first started hitting the market? Everyone thought they were the coolest things on the block, but it's actually harder to find a phone that doesn't have a camera today than one that does. Technology is quickly advancing and the public wants more out of their mobile phones. They want to stay connected in every way possible and text messages just won't suffice. They want to harness the power of the world wide web everywhere they go.Mobile Web For Everyone
Wireless data appears to be the next major frontier for consumer-level cell phones, but not everyone is willing to pay the hefty data fees involved in rendering full web pages. When you visit Beyond the Rhetoric or The Thinking Blog, a series of dynamic elements are conjured up and images are loaded. Watch a YouTube video or two and you could be looking at quite an expensive cell phone bill.
At the same time, blog owners want their loyal readers to have access to their website everywhere they go, and a mobile-optimized version (WAP) is one way to do that. For those of you who aren't familiar, WAP sites carry much the same content as their full HTML counterparts, but they've been stripped of the fluff and heavy downloads. Images are kept to a minimum and the formatting has been designed to better suit the small screen of a cell phone.
I'm not a coder, so I have no idea where to begin when it comes to creating a mobile site. Thankfully, there is a service set up at Wirenode that does this for you, transforming any regular blog into one that is more accessible from a cell phone's WAP browser. Whether you've got a RAZR or an LG Voyager, there's a good chance your modern phone does WAP.
Wirenode Cuts the WiresWirenode specializes in creating mobile versions of blogs. As I mentioned earlier, these mobile sites trim the fat, so to speak, leaving readers with the core content. Yes, you lose some of the sidebar navigation and some of the flashy formatting you may have on your full site, but it opens your blog up to a whole new (mobile) audience.
After the mobile version of a blog is set up, Wirenode then allows you to enter into an admin area where you can safely edit the mobile site, adding more pages, images, and adjusting the content to suit your preferences. This appears to be a very straightforward and easy-to-understand process. If you can handle Wordpress, you should be able to handle this.
Better still, Wirenode also provides widgets for your blog. These widgets can inform your existing readers about the mobile version of your blog. These can be found under the Promotion tab in the admin area.
My main gripe is that the mobile sites are hosted at the wirenode.mobi domain, though I'd imagine it is possible to transport them over to your own servers too.
Read The Thinking Blog On Your Phone
To see what mobile blog reading is all about, be sure to check out the mobile version of The Thinking Blog on your cell phone. You can find it at http://ttb.wirenode.mobi/. Now you can access all these thought-provoking posts at the coffee shop, in the library, or when your significant other drags you to yet another boring opera.
