Since declaring this blog open a couple of colleagues have suggested that I mobilize the site using an online service, so I thought I’d do a quick review of what’s currently available.
The term “mobilize” generally refers to ‘on-the-fly’ conversion of existing content [ designed for desktop ] to a mobile-friendly format.
An example of this development shortcut is Funkify - a free online service promising to optimise your website for easy viewing on a mobile phone.
The service can be utilised in two flavours:
- by accessing Funkify on a mobile browser and typing in your required destination URL - similar to Mowser, Squeezer or Google Mobilizer
- by allowing Funkify to convert your website and host the mobile version at a direct URL, e.g. funkify.tv/yourdomain
“We can also give you a line of code… which will [detect a mobile phone] and automatically direct the user to the mobile friendly version”
Online publishing tools: Zinadoo, mobiSiteGalore and Winksite offer free site creation tools and free hosting of your efforts - the latter a social network platform to connect with mobile communities.
Alernatives, Mob-it and Feed2Mobile will fetch your RSS feed and adapt its content ready for mobile devices. Which is great if you have one!
All of these services make it real easy for the masses to publish mobile content without any technical knowledge.
But I guess that it’s for this reason why Optimisers will take a wide birth. The flexibility to tweak and test the code behind the written word (and I’m not talking Black Hat) is lost - a simple trade-off against the speed of point-and-click.
As a perfectionist, I need to know how the mobile Web functions. As a Consultant, I feel duty-bound to know what the hell’s going on!
Anyone out there know of any other “Mobilizer” services (besides bona fide designers) please comment below.
Comments 2
Good overview, Paul. Here are a few that I’ve found in my research that you didn’t mention:
http://www.site.mobi
http://mobilizer.volantis.net (the Google representative mentioned this one in the Mobile Search Optimization panel at SES Chicago last year)
Would love to get your input on those, and maybe put together a matrix of features for each.
Best,
17 Jul 2007Bryson
I would never mobilize my blog through such a service. I wrote an article about mowser (another of those mobile proxies) and duplicate content. The problem is, that they use your content under their domain and thus might get links from people linking to “your” mobile site. I’d rather block all those services so they can’t steal your content and either make a light mobile site or use a plugin, for wordpress I’d recommend Andy’s free one: http://www.andymoore.info/wordpress-mobile-plugin/
02 Apr 2008Post a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.