Web to Mobile Transcoding vs. Mobile Content Management
When Crisp Wireless first started with powering mobile sites using its proprietary content management technology, I got a fair amount of surprised reactions from technologists and programmers who knew me. We weren’t only known back then to power the content for downloadables (J2ME mainly), we also found WAP significantly flawed.
Back then one would have expected mobile site software to scrape HTML from the web, and reformat it to WML, cHTML and XHTML automatically or via customizable templates. Considering our experience with mobile and our unusual positions on mobile technology, it should be no surprise we took a different technical road. Luckily … because as far as I’m concerned the transcoding approach doesn’t hold much value in today’s even further fragmented mobile browser landscape. The famous Russell Beattie knows what he’s talking about when he considers it difficult to derive revenue by stripping down web sites for the mobile users.
To create more compelling and well distributed sites, what is needed, is a Content Management System that is designed to ingest, manage and create XML content feeds of all shapes and formats. (Creating feeds is important for efficient on-deck distribution and integration with aggregated content sites) What’s also needed is a product that with the help of solid mobile device intelligence can render mobile sites in all shapes and formats. It does not suffice to create mobile compatible sites; you need the ability to create a different optimized site for every type of device. These sites should have a different data flow, graphic design and information architecture depending on how and when it is used. In other words, the mobile web is not just making PC web content into mobile compatible content. The mobile web is a more complicated and soon more sophisticated version of the world wide web that beats to a different rhythm. With a further evolution of mobile devices it might very well prove to be far more popular. This trend is evident looking at many recently launched mobile sites. I’ve listed them below.
The idea behind many good mobile sites is not a commercial transaction, but the method of content discovery - asking the question “what’s the best way to find movie reviews?” or with Fandango - “are there tickets available at this theater for Iron Man?” These sites are focusing on how to make mobile media and information management better, which requires that content is organized and accessible in new ways. Some sites go pretty far in experimenting with this mobile behavior. For Twitter there is no shortage of mobile sites trying to perfect the way to manage status updates. When you are on a small screen you have different modes of behavior and you look at different times of day and have different goals: such as you need something right away or you want to check something before you go to bed or you are just trying to waste time.
The point is, the mode and motivation of the interaction is different from when you are sitting at your desk. Great new research shows these new modes of behavior where consumers interact with mobile websites are not cannibalistic to desktop web traffic; they actually improve overall web performance by 13%.
You’ll notice that many of the sites below are specifically designed to help iPhone users. The mLogic technology is perfectly suited for innovative iPhone sites . Our technology is also great for distributing content to 3rd party applications in modular formats on carrier decks, in applications like Yahoo OnePlace and for powering new content interfaces like Flashcast or other device side applications . Our platform offers content management that is centrally managed to serve content to all other downloadable applications, browser plug-ins or mobile widgets.
As promised, some interesting mobile sites:
- http://www.vtap.com/#0 for video
- http://www.seeqpod.com/m#_home for finding streaming music for when you know the name of the song…
- http://m.heysan.com for mobile IM
- http://m.tripit.com for keeping track of trips
- beta@hahlo.com send an email for this continually improving interface for twitter Hahlo version 3 (still in private beta and is looking great).
- http://summize.com for twitter keyword search
- http://slifter.com product and comparison pricing search
- http://iphone.urbansetlist.com for concert listings
- http://www.bigbucketblog.com/webtomatometer for aggregated movie review scoring - Rotten Tomatoes
- http://i.rememberthemilk.com Remember the milk is a to-do list manager that has integrated with gmail, their mobile site is a premium service.
Of course there are many sites that we power that offer a high mobile value for facilitating retail 2.0, in which the shoppers rediscover shopping by using the mobile web as a product information guide.
(yes, we’ll be at Apple’s WWDC this year)
Crisp Voices
May 3rd, 2008 at 5:28 pm
[...] Daniel wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptWhen Crisp Wireless first started with powering mobile sites using its proprietary content management technology, I got a fair amount of surprised reactions from technologists and programmers who knew me. We weren’t only known back then … [...]
May 4th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
I personally believe, its not possible to transcode normal web to mobile in a automatic way.
May 27th, 2008 at 5:36 am
I could not hold on after reading this post, and suggest the only solution on the web today, really making the web to mobile transcoding you speak in your article.
MobileNOB.com allow the innovative feature for every website ’send to mobile’ button. to send and download every web content to mobile, in real time support 500 different mobile video formats for best possible end user screening experience.
In addition to that it can make trascode of all web site into mobile in real time to WML, XHTML, HTML