Thord D. Hedengren

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Tag: mobile

  • Mobile internet is changing the web

    Mobile internet is changing the web

    1 in 5 American households now rely on purely mobile internet connections, study says. That’s twice as much as in 2013, which of course is one hell of an incline.

    I think two things drive this:

    1. Mobile devices are so much better these days, thanks in part to the faster mobile networks. Why even bother having a connection that isn’t always available on your primary device(s)? That is, on your smartphone and tablet, which have no ties to your home other than if you happen to be there. Non-traditional primary devices aren’t tied to traditional internet access solutions.
    2. Users are already paying premium for internet access on their primary devices, and if they need secondary devices (aka computers) to have internet access for some reason or other, they can just share the connection. Why pay for internet access again? Better to just rely, and crank up, the primary subscription, right?

    (more…)

  • Google's mobile friendly search

    Google will highlight what they believe to be mobile friendly web pages in mobile search.

    Starting today, to make it easier for people to find the information that they’re looking for, we’re adding a “mobile-friendly” label to our mobile search results.

    Details here, but just about any responsive site should be fine. This is a good thing for the web, and I hope other search engines will follow.

  • The Smartphone, Dumbphone, Tablet Thing

    The Smartphone, Dumbphone, Tablet Thing

    There are those who dream about not having to carry around a smartphone. That’s obviously easy enough, just get a feature phone, or dumbphone if you will, and use it. Thing is, these people don’t want to give up the functionality of a smartphone. For that they have the tablet instead, a device that in many ways mirrors that of a smartphone. “Why should I have to carry both?” they tend to complain.

    Why indeed.

    The Nexus 7 and a dumbphone picked up in France while snowboarding.
    The Nexus 7 and a dumbphone picked up in France while snowboarding

    The idea is this. By replacing the smartphone with a dumbphone, you cancel out all worries about battery life (any dumbphone worth its name can work for days, weeks even, without charge) and the fact that you’re carrying an expensive piece of glass-encased machinery that could easily be lost. Dumbphones are cheap and accessible, and they do one thing well (being phones), thus they’re superior at their prime function, or so the reasoning goes.

    (more…)

  • Blackberry, Netbooks, And Are We Really That Stupid?

    Twitter tells me that Blackberry, the company formerly known as RIM, is launching a new phone, and that it has a keyboard. Because, you know, that’s what all the cool kids want, physical phone keyboards.

    That kind of snark is common these days. Everyone is doing touchscreen, Blackberry obviously doesn’t “get it” and thus they’re stuck in the 00s. It’s almost Bill Gates bad, you know!

    Except that it might not be, of course.  (more…)

  • A thought on mobile websites

    There’s a lot of talk these days about responsive web design and creating fancy mobile versions of websites. I love some of the frameworks and solutions out there, and the fact that HTML 5 and CSS 3 opens so many doors for web designers.

    No doubt the myriad of screen sizes and resolutions changes everything. Smartphones are actually useful these days, and tablets have turned back resolutions to 1024 pixels width. As if the netbook resolutions weren’t bad enough.

    I digress. (more…)

  • WordPress moves too fast for apps

    One thing that my weekend using only my iPad reminded me of is how lacking the blogging apps are. Sure, the official WordPress app is starting to be useful and my newfound favorite Blogsy is just lovely. But both are behind, and so are desktop apps. I have yet to find an app, mobile or not, that lets me post to custom post types. As far as I know no apps support custom taxonomies, and they’ve been around for some time. Post formats are relatively new but a strong feature for blogging on the go, but again no app support.

    This is a shame. As mobile devices in particular improve, I’d like to be able to update using them. This is only truly possible if I stay away from custom taxonomies, custom post types, and post formats. Or, in other words, if I stick to a pretty basic site built the way we did it before these CMS-like features came along. (more…)