With iOS, Android, and other platforms, we see some sites creating a native applications. What’s interesting to me is that this idea of optimizing the end-user’s experience could have been done ages ago by creating applications that interact with the web on Windows and OSX. My guess is that it just wasn’t practical at the time.

However, I slowly see sites developing native apps (although having mobile versions of their sites coexist). For me, personally, if there is a site I go to often, I prefer to have the native app (presuming that it works well). In my imagination I see the web evolving in this way. HTML, JavaScript, PHP, RoR, among other programming languages are great for what they do. But without the current type of synergy with these tools that makes the web so unique and fresh over time, the environment for web development is pretty dull. Web standards are always being debated and there always seems to be issues with creating a new site that takes advantage of new web technologies.

If you take a look at the SDKs of other platforms, they can provide deep device integration along with tools that expand on possibilities of what you could develop solely on the web. However the web surfing environment on the computer has always felt like a separate space.

It’ll be interesting what type and form of web content will be considered as standard in the years to come.

Imagine going out for a big night on the town and the only money you need is found right on your smart phone. That concept is becoming a reality and near-field communication is playing an important role.

Near-field communication or NFC is basically short-range wireless technology that allows for contactless mobile payments and interactions. It’s similar in concept to RFID key cards. You basically wave your NFC enabled smart phone close to a reader and it engages with the device. NFC has a range of about 1.5 inches making it a good choice for secure transactions.

The convenience of paying with your smart phone instead of carrying around a wallet filled with cash and credit cards is why handset providers, carriers, banks and retailers are aggressively engaged in NFC development. Google was the first company to introduce an NFC enabled smart phone to the US market: the Nexus S. This summer the company is expected to release the Google Wallet app so Nexus S owners can make payments on PayPass terminals as well as store their credit cards, coupons, loyalty cards and gifts cards on the devices. Not to be outdone, PayPal just announced that it will be providing peer-to-peer payments for Android NFC phones. Continue Reading →

A new study demonstrates the rapidly increasing impact of smart phones on Internet browsing habits.  The Pew Research Center report shows that more than 40% of adult cell phone-users in America have a smart phone.  Surprisingly, a large number of these smart phone users prefer to go online using their smart phone rather than using a desktop or laptop computer.  25% report that their smart phone is their most common means of Internet access.

This growing trend will have a dramatic impact on online marketing strategies and the way web designers and developers build the next generation of web sites. Understanding how, when and why an end user surfs the Internet and engages with content is critically important to us, especially as smart phones become the web browsing platform of choice.

The worldwide smartphone market is expected to grow nearly 50% this year according to a report by IDC. The smartphone industry is growing faster than any segment of technology in history. Google predicts that half of all Internet traffic will be from mobile devices by 2013.

While we are seeing exponential growth in mobile technology, many web developers don’t take full advantage of the true potential of this market. It’s simply not enough to create a version of your current site that is based on mobile style sheets for different browsers. Our approach is to develop a new user experience model – to understand who your smartphone audience(s) is, what platforms they use, how they find your site, what information they want, and what action we want them to take. While there may be some crossover with desktop users, we believe there are significant differences that need to be considered when you develop for mobile platforms.

Mobile sites need to not only provide the best possible experience on handheld devices, they need to cater to an audience that is far more likely to be searching for content related to the local environment they’re in. It’s critical for us to be aware of emerging technologies such as QR codes, mobile augmented reality and Near Field Communication that give smartphone users the opportunity to engage with their environment in new and more meaningful ways.

With consumers expected to spend billions via mobile this year, it’s time to stop thinking of smartphones as an afterthought, and apply the same level of user experience research to mobile platform development that we do to desktop devices.

A while back (read: months) I happened across a very interesting survey done by Gomez, the web performance division of Compuware which focused on consumers shifting attitudes and usage of the web.

Specifically, the article I found talked about the general user’s increasing impatience with websites that are slow to load, bog down or are difficult to use. While this has been anecdotally discussed amongst folks in the web industry for years, it’s nice to finally have numbers that back up this feeling.

However, users’ ire with slow or difficult sites isn’t the part of the survey that I want to hold up for examination in this post. The second half of the Gomez survey has dedicated to the growing mobile market and users’ evolving attitudes to web access on mobile devices.

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The Hawks are a business school’s dream case study of transforming a team that played before a measly crowd of 5,000 into a sell-out sensation. Now other NHL teams are trying to take hockey marketing to the next level. To compete with the big three (pro baseball, football and basketball), they’re looking for even more innovative ways to connect with a loyal fan base through social media. Continue Reading →

For anyone following the 2010 FIFA World Cup, the vuvuzela is an impossible-to-ignore aspect of the tournament’s location. A traditional South African musical instrument, soccer fans have turned the now-plastic noise makers into the Jar-Jar Binks of the sporting world – loved by few, hated by most, ridiculed by all. The buzzing noise has gotten so bad that FIFA briefly considered a ban in response to players, commentators and broadcasters complaining about it’s impact on the game. Now, if they’d just stayed in the soccer stadiums where they belong, I’d have nothing to blog about. But the vuvuzela has become an internet sensation as well; that’s right: its trademark buzz has gone viral.
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Twitter has been a topic of conversation lately around the water cooler, for reason soon to be revealed. I think that it is interesting that the “I ate crispix for breakfast” meme is still around. I wanted to counter with just one of the many ways that I employ Twitter—professional development resource.

As someone who works in the web world, Twitter fits nicely in my tool kit. After all, it is folks like us that created the service that is currently winning the Webby People’s Voice battle for the entire internet. Twitter is a representation of what the web has become: real-time, democratic publishing platform and the finger on the pulse for the planet. I use Twitter in many ways, but one of my favorites is as an aggregator for the cutting edge in web design and development. Follow my workflow outline to see how I have put Twitter to work for me. Continue Reading →

A couple exciting things happened yesterday. Nearly all my attention was focused on the launch of the new First Vehicle Services website. Meanwhile the rest of the world was focused on this. Steve Jobs said that it is “our most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary product at an unbelievable price.” Adam at Gizmod said it sucks.  My wife said “maybe we could get an iPad instead of the netbooks we have been looking at,” (no link, she said it in real life.)  Well, I still haven’t gotten a chance to read or watch anything about the device, so I will leave the opinion to others. However, I do know a couple things.

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Here at Manning, a good percentage of the staff consider themselves iPhone fanboys. Those of us who consider this gadget an indispensable resource love to extol its virtues. But like many iPhone converts, there is one major complaint we all share: if we want an iPhone, we pretty much have to become AT&T customers.

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