(Note from Ken Smith, web grunt here at Bageant Central.)
Joe is taking a short break from writing, so I'm using this opportunity to explore a technical issue. This may be of interest only to a small percentage of Joe's online readers. Or, we might be surprised to learn that many people want to read Joe's essays on mobile devices such as the iPhone, Blackberry, Android, Nokia and other handhelds.
I recently installed a new traffic counter called Clicky. Among many other things, Clicky tracks the total and type of mobile phones accessing this site. I was surprised to learn that on some days up to 2% of the traffic is coming from mobile devices, and two-thirds of those are site visits from Apple iPhones. The 30-day average of readers accessing this site on mobile devices is about 1.5%. This is a surprisingly high percentage, considering that the site is not optimized for the smaller screens.
So, we are testing two systems that optimize this site for mobile.
The first is on a development site of mine. From your laptop or desktop computer, you will see a slightly tweaked WordPress theme. I have added a plug-in (WPtouch) that detects when an iPhone or other mobile is accessing the site, then renders an optimized version for the smaller screen.
Here's the index page. On a desktop or laptop, you will see a normal web page with a headline and the first two paragraphs. On an iPhone, you will see a headline and an abstract of about 25 words.
Or, go directly to this link of a recent essay by Joe.
http://smartmobiletoday.com/?p=686
The current publishing engine for Joe's website is TypePad. Recently, Typepad offered a new widget called Mippin for mobile devices. I installed it, but the display on smaller screens is not what I had hoped for. Take a look with your iPhone or other smart phone.
Here's another Mippin link to try:
http://mippin.com/web/index.jsp?sp=1&st=http://www.joebageant.com/
Send me an email with your comments and suggestions:
Ken Smith, ken9@kvsmith.com
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Neither Joe nor I often see this website the way most readers do, and we have little direct contact with readers other than by email. We both live in the small town of Ajijic, about 30 miles south of Guadalajara in central Mexico. (Joe grew tired of my second bedroom on his visits here, so he recently rented his own casita about 500 meters down the cobblestone road.)
I use a 13-inch MacBook and Joe has a tiny stripped-down Dell net book. We don't have a convenient way to test various browsers on desktop screens. Pages may not always display properly and we won't know about it until a reader sends us a note. If a page doesn't look right to you, please let us know.
One of the interesting statistics from the Clicky counter is that 23% of the traffic to this website is from Mac computers -- not counting the iPhones. That's two or three times the average Mac traffic for all other sites. This renewed my push to get Joe to seriously consider switching from Windows to Mac.
But, Joe says a Mac is just too expensive. I remind him that in the past three years he has been through four laptops (two Toshibas, IBM and a Dell) while I'm still using the same MacBook.
