EXERCISES:

Special demonstration of the unique impact of mobile media, courtesy of Will Sullivan (@journerdism)

Then…   How mobile-friendly is your site?

• Check out your site on a mobile phone’s web browser (home page, and specific story). How much zooming, scrolling, etc. is required just to see what’s going on?
• Have your neighbor bring up your site on their phone.
• If you don’t have a web-enabled phone, check out your site on a mobile device or on the Opera Mini simulator. (Note: On a computer, sometimes the simulator doesn’t serve up the mobile site, so checking from a mobile device is more reliable.)
• For comparison, check out CNN.com, the Spokesman Review, MLB.com, West Seattle Blog, MyVeronaNJ.com, MyEverettNews.com on a mobile device. How are these mobile sites different from yours?

Hyperlocal and mobile: the big picture

Brand new report from Pew: Nearly half of American adults get some local news/info via mobile devices. So far they’re mostly getting weather, breaking news, restaurant/business info, traffic updates on their phones. So far they’re not visiting news sites or apps of any kind very much.

Why? My opinion: Most mobile news offerings are shovelware and not action-oriented. Also, they aren’t easy to use or navigate on a mobile browser. In a mobile context that makes them inherently second-rate.

The good news for hyperlocal: Independent community news/info sites may be especially well suited to do mobile news much better than major legacy news brands or centrally operated networks such as Patch or the Huffington Post. More nimble, little/no bureaucracy, not burdened by unwieldy systems they don’t control. Also, they’re closer to the community, where it’s easier to see the local nuances in the mobile market.

PROBLEM: Most people in the news business (any part of it, including hyperlocal) aren’t yet very comfortable/familiar with using the range of mobile media and channels. That limits their ability to see and exploit emerging opportunities. We tend to create the kind of media we’re used to using — going mobile requires expanding your personal media usage skills and tastes.

ACTION STEP 1: Start doing as much as you can with your phone. For everything, not just for news. Use every mobile channel you can. See what you like and don’t. Ask people in your community what they do with their mobile devices — all kinds of phones and other devices, including cheap non-smartphones.

Grab your friend’s phones and play with them. (OK, ask them first…) Walk into mobile stores and demo the hell out of the features on new phones — not just the expensive ones. If you own a smartphone, also buy a cheap feature phone (prepaid or month-to-month) to see how the other half lives.

Your goal: Get a sense of how mobile tech, media, and communication are augmenting people’s lives. Ultimately you want your news/info to be woven into the fabric of their lives, accessible wherever they are. Mobile helps your venue become more like the air your community breathes, not a special place they visit.

Look for revenue options! Sign up for text alerts, esp. fr local businesses. Look for other mobile ad/revenue strategies. Doesn’t matter if it doesn’t suit your personal taste. How do these strategies function, and how do they pay off? Most news sites, are doing a terrible job of mobile ads — and most hyperlocal sites don’t seem to be doing anything w/ mobile ads/revenue streams.

What is mobile good for?

The main problem with most mobile news offerings is that they are shovelware. With the exception of e-reader apps, music players and YouTube, cell phones are not great publishing or media consumption platforms.

Use mobile for what it’s best at: People like to use their phones to DO stuff.

(CAVEAT: Tablets aren’t really “mobile,” since they’re mostly a lean-back experience. In contrast, cell phones are all about activity and entertainment on the go. They’re what you grab when you need something right away, or have a few spare moments.)

The best mobile offerings are services, not content. Don’t expect people to read long articles on their cell phones. So figure out what kinds of services your content can offer or support.

Consider what they could use on the go, what they’d enjoy, what would give them an edge, what they might want to note to check out later, what they might want to share. Then focus on delivering just that much via mobile. And make sure your mobile users know exactly where to turn to find the fuller version of anything that caught their attention.

Mobile is a way to foster ambient awareness and value in your community. Mobile makes it easy for people to encounter your content, benefit from it, and share it — although their cell phone probably won’t be where they settle in for a deep dive on a topic you’ve covered.

Let people use their phones to talk back to you or contribute. Texting, e-mail, sharing photos, and social media are consistently most popular non-voice cell phone activities on any kind of phone. Those are all two-way (at least) communication channels. Consider how your mobile offerings can support or encourage two-way interaction, in ways that are friendly and fun for mobile users.

Current U.S. mobile landscape:

1. The web is quickly becoming mostly mobile by default. According to IDC, by 2015, most U.S. internet access will happen from mobile devices. (Gartner predictedthat globally this tipping point will happen in 2013)
2. About 77% of all Americans (all ages, from infants to centenarians) own cell phones. (comScore, US population clock)
3. About 35% of these phones are smartphones (comScore, July 2011 figures).
4. About 65% are “feature phones” — all of which can do text messaging (which requires no data plan), and many of which have e-mail and web access (albeit generally slow and clunky). The only thing feature phones cannot do is run sophisticated apps (but they can run simple apps). So the feature/smartphone line is blurry, and it’s getting blurrier.
5. By late 2012 most U.S. handsets in use will be smartphones (based on comScore data). But the cheaper/simpler end of the mobile market will probably always be the largest part of the market in most communities. So be ready to serve the phones that most people in your community have at any given time.

How Americans use their cell phones:

• Around 92% of smartphone owners (60% of feature phone owners) send/receive text messages (Pew. Nielsen and comScoreoffered different estimates.)
• Mobile users spend far more time doing e-mail than Facebook on their phones (Pew, Nielsen)
• Feature phone web browsers are improving. Opera Mini — which looks pretty nice — now comes preinstalled on (or can be downloaded to) almost any U.S, feature phone. It is currently the #2 mobile browser, behind the iPhone’s mobile Safari, and ahead of the Android stock browser. (NetMarketShare) In a year most feature phones will probably come with web browsers that look more like Opera Mini, so that’s a good target to design for.
• Right now, most web sites suck on most mobile devices. In fact, usability experts at Nielsen Norman Group recommend that sites don’t bother supporting feature phone access. That may may sense for e-commerce — but probably not for hyperlocal news/community sites.

Most hyperlocal and community sites are NOT friendly to mobile users. Seriously, I checked them out from the conference participant list. They’re not even mobile friendly for smartphone users — too much pinching, zooming, scrolling required for easy navigation. Basic reason: their web sites lack:

• A mobile-optimized theme
• Server-side mobile auto-detection, which figures out if a visitor is on a mobile device and routes them accordingly to an appropriate theme.

This can be relatively easy to fix — especially if your site runs on WordPress. (Examples of free, nice looking WordPress mobile themes)

Action step: Implement a mobile-friendly theme for your site (home page and story/other pages).

Yeah, I know I say your mobile presence is not all about your web site. But your mobile web site will be the core of your mobile strategy, because it’s something people can link to and access via search engines. Ultimately it may not be how mobile users encounter you most often, but it absolutely needs to be there to provide value to back up your engagement.

If your site is based on a popular content management system for which many people have created themes (like WordPress), then there are probably already many simple mobile themes to choose from. You can customize these.

Otherwise, it’s worth getting a web designer to develop a simple mobile theme for your site. Here’s some free basic mobile web design advice, and for $300 you can get all the gory details.

Or you can use reformatting services like Mobify.me, as long as they appear under your domain, and you can track the traffic, and you have options to deliver your own ads (or get a really good cut of what they serve up).

Once your site is mobile-friendly, you’ll be better positioned to leverage the power of recommendations to build your brand.

One of the most popular things that people do online is share links — by social media, e-mail, instant messaging, and SMS. New Gallup research shows that most people’s brand preferences are strongly influenced by personal recommendations, and digital media (including mobile) amplifies this effect.

When you get a link from someone you know, that’s a personal recommendation — but if that link doesn’t work on the device you have handy, that won’t help anyone.

Nearly 40% of social media users access social media content from their mobile phone (Nielsen). Many/most of those phones are feature phones — and you want to make sure that if people get a link to your site, they’ll be able to display that page on any mobile device.

EXTRA RESOURCES

These came up in my session, so here they are for your perusal

Mobile Marketing Association mobile advertising guidelines

Our online audience suggested some resources for mobile & Drupal

• Digett: Drupal Mobile: How to create a Drupal mobile site without using Mobile Tools
• Jquery mobile framework
  
• Drupal mobile tools

The Filter Bubble, by Eli Pariser

Further steps in your mobile strategy

OK, there’s no way can I cover all of this stuff in one session. But I’m ready to discuss any of these that interest Block by Block attendees (either in the session, or buy me a drink later):

Do some basic local mobile market research. Don’t guess about what phones people are using: ask.

Experiment with SMS alerts/services/polls. Twilio is a versatile and affordable tool to start experimenting with on a small scale (services up to a thousand or so subscribers). If you want to grow beyond that, you may need access to a shortcode — which can be cheap (with risks), or rock solid (but costly)

Back-end technology. Some content management systems (especially Drupal) make experimenting with mobile more difficult, unless you’re a skilled developer. When you make CMS choices, favor tools that support mobile experimentation well.

WordPress is a good bet for less-technical site operators. Also consider third-party services — it doesn’t all have to be about your web site, you can have more than one digital presence. But you will need to learn more about several kinds of technology to go mobile, including telephony. Small-scale experiments are great learning tools.

Good skills/tools to learn for mobile: HTML5, CSS (including media queries), Javascript, Twilio,

Tablets and iPod Touch-like devices. Small markets for now, and probably not the best place to focus on, even though they look really cool. Wait a year or two before your seriously focus on them.

But there are some interesting developments to watch with these devices, especially if the new Kindle Fire has a decent web browser and really takes off with consumers.

There’s finally an Android answer to the iPod Touch: The Samsung Galaxy Player, coming out in October. Reasonably priced. Wifi only. Basically an Android phone without the phone. We’ll see more of these devices, especially if U.S. wireless carriers keep insisting on two-year contracts and steep early termination fees for decent smartphones.

Having a good mobile site will position you well for the tablet market — although this device would merit its own theme because it has unique size and interface considerations.

E-readers and e-books. Excellent secondary market for your content, with a proven revenue model. Robert Niles has written a lot about e-books in OJR. Also, check out the Bookbrewer platform for repackaging web or blog content as e-books and getting them into the major markets.

Start geotagging all your content with latitude/longitude info, and make sure this gets included as an element in your RSS feed. This will open opportunities to mashup/integrate your content with locative services, which will be getting more popular on mobile devices in coming years. At that point, if you have an archive of geotagged content, you’ll be ahead of the game.

Mobile web apps are an option to offer interactivity directly through the browser. Or look for mobile web apps to package as features within your site. Apps.USA.gov offers several examples that run on all phones.

Let people phone it in! Capture phoned-in audio for comments, etc. Evoca offers some affordable solutions.

Use print to complement/push mobile. This could involve publishing your own print supplement, distributing stickers/fliers/postcards with QR codes, etc.

Mobile-friendly e-mail newsletter/alerts. Opt-in only, no graphics, short versions of links.

Smartphone apps. Probably not worth the expense/effort for most hyperlocal sites at this point. A good mobile web site will get you farther.

The main problem with smartphone apps is that you have to do a separate software development project for each platform you want to serve, and maintain that platform, and make sure your content gets into the app correctly.

And on the user’s side, in order to get value from a smartphone app they must:

• Already know and like your brand enough to want to get your app
• Have the right kind of phone
• Download and install it your app
• Use it regularly. (The vast majority of apps get opened just a handful of times LINK)

That’s a lot of hurdles, compared to just opening a page on your site in their mobile web browser — especially when someone they know sends them a link to your site.

root

This morning I finally rooted my Droid Incredible! One-handed, even! (Dislocated finger hidden by massive splint.)

This morning, before I even had my tea, I finally jumped off a cliff I’d been avoiding: I rooted my Android phone (Droid Incredible).

I’ve had this phone for a year. Generally I like it, but the things I don’t like about it mostly seemed to be fixable if I rooted my phone.

Rooting means undoing the controls that the carrier and manufacturer place on how my phone operates…

Some of that is done to reduce the risk that I might accidentally damage my phone — but much of this is so they can make more money by loading my phone with bloatware (some of which I couldn’t uninstall or even turn off!) or charging me for tethering. Both of which, IMHO, are bullshit unethical business practices.

Why was this scary?  And why did I do it?

I rely heavily on my cell phone. It’s my only phone, and it’s a pretty sophisticated and potentially fragile device.

If you root your Android phone and it breaks or bricks (I had a traumatic bricking experience in 2008 with a Nokia N95), you may violate its warranty — which means the carrier or manufacturer may not replace it. Which means I’d have to shell out big bucks for a new smartphone, since I need to have a phone.

But I’d finally had enough…

Four about the fourth time in a year, my phone malfunctioned due to being “low on space” — despite that I’d purchased a much larger SD storage card and used Apps2SD to move everything possible onto it, freeing up the phone’s built-in memory. The culprit is a known bug in many HTC phones that inflates my phone’s Contacts Storage to gargantuan proportions (over 53 MB for me yesterday).

Every HTC phone forum is filled with people complaining about this bug. It can be fixed — for a while — by exporting your contacts to the SD card as a backup, deleting your Contacts Storage data, and then reimporting. That process takes me over an hour, during which I can’t use my phone for anything else or it halts the restore and I have to start over.

Annoying. And after a year, it seems HTC doesn’t care to get around to fixing it.

It seems one way to fix it, for good, is to root the phone and then install a custom ROM (modified version of the Android OS, which would replace the “HTC Sense” flavor of Android that came with my phone) such as CyanogenMod. I’ve now made substantial progress down that path.

How I rooted my Droid Incredible using Unrevoked3

Following guidance from Lifehacker, I learned yesterday that there’s a simple and now well-established way to root the Droid Incredible and several other popular HTC phones: Unrevoked3. It’s a free download. I Googled around and saw many people singing its praises, so it seemed reputable and about as safe as a rooting tool can be.

So I slept on this decision, and I followed the steps suggested by Stever Robbins in his recent podcast, How to face your fears. (Really, it’s good. Give it a listen.)

First thing this morning I went for it: I used Unrevoked3 to root my Droid Incredible.

The phone process took about 15 minutes, and I didn’t have to do much — just hook up my phone to my laptop in charge-only mode with USB debugging turned on, and let it do its thing.

The process quit partway on first try, which concerned me. But I carefully disconnected and then reconnected my phone, relaunched Unrevoked3, and started over. It worked seamlessly on the second try. Whew!

What I did after rooting my phone

Safety first! Immediately after my phone was rooted, I downloaded Titanium backup, widely considered to be a must-have’ for every rooted Android user. I also sprang for the $6.88 to get my Pro Key for it. I used Titanium to back up absolutely everything on my phone, so if through further monkeying I broke my phone, I could restore it to a condition that worked.

Titanium also lets you delete, uninstall, or freeze any app or service on your phone. One really annoying thing about much HTC/Verizon bloatware is that these programs not only can’t be uninstalled, but some of them (like Stocks, CityID, and Skype Mobile) keep auto-launching even if I turn them off! How obnoxious is that????

Generally I think it’s safer to uninstall programs rather than delete them, because you never know how they really interact with other stuff, and finding and downloading the right stuff to reinstall if necessary can be a hassle.

I uninstalled these bloatware apps:

• Car panel 1.0
• City ID 1.0.23
• Facebook for htc sense 1.0
• Flashlight 1.0
• Friend stream 1.0
• Friend stream 1.0 widget
• HTC Sense live wallpapers 1.00
• live wallpaper picker 2.2
• Magic smoke wallpapers 2.2
• Mail widget 1.00
• Music visualization wallpapers 2.2
• News 1.0
• Peep 2.0
• Slacker 2.1.14
• Stocks 2.00
• Stocks widget 1.00
• Teeter 1.00
• V cast apps 1.0.14
• Visual VM 1.13
• 3G mobile hotspot 1.0

In addition I “froze” these apps and widgets, so they can’t be launched:

• Mail 2.00
• Skype mobile 1.0.0.17
• Footprints 1.10
• Footprints widget 1.00
• FM radio 1.00
• FM radio widget 1.00

When I got this far, for good measure I powered down and restarted my phone, just to make sure everything was working — and to see which apps and services would automatically launch. I was pleased to see that no more bloatware was auto-launching!

I can haz tethering, too! (so far)

“Tethering” is when you use your phone as a wireless modem to supply a data connection for a laptop or other device using your wireless carrier’s data network. Google includes this function with the plain vanilla (“stock”) version of Android.

Unfortunately U.S. carriers disable tethering, so they can force you to pay them a monthly fee ($20 or more) for tethering as if it’s some kind of “extra” service — not something they crippled.

This is unreasonable, rapacious bullshit. If I’m paying for a data plan, why should they care which device is the end user of that data?

There have been several Android apps to supply wireless tethering on unrooted phones, but recently carriers have started cracking down on wireless tethering apps.

So I downloaded and installed the free Wifi Tether app for rooted Android phones, and enabled access control in the settings (so I could control which devices connect to my phone).

Then I shut down my home wifi router and looked under the Airport wifi modem menu on my Macbook Pro. There was my phone! I connected to my phone’s wifi from my laptop, then approved that device on the app on my phone, and ta-da! There my laptop was connected to the internet! I repeated the process with my Macbook Air.

In neither case did my phone pop up a warning from Verizon that they wanted to charge me for tethering — something that did happen to ReadWriteWeb. So, as far as I can tell at this point, I can do free tethering from my phone.

I don’t expect to need tethering very often, but I think it’s an important option to have. I have to do a lot of work when I’m traveling, or running around town, and free or reliable wifi isn’t always available. Also, my VPN service Witopia sometimes doesn’t work on soe wifi connections, and connecting via my carrier’s data network is more secure than being on open wifi.

What’s next

I’m still investigating which custom ROM would be best for my phone. I’ll probably do that at some point, since that will probably fix that Contact Storage bug once and for all.

But so far, for now, I’m a much happier Android user now that I’ve gone root.

Recently Google maps changed something, I don’t know what, and it’s broken a feature I use a lot. Very annoying.

I keep a custom google map where I mark the locations I need to be for upcoming appointments and events. I list them in date order. This has worked great for me, with all the running around I do, for the last year — especially via mobile.

BUT… Sometime in the last couple of weeks, Google maps stopped respecting the order I specify for places on my map. It’ll let me reorder locations in my map, and save them — but that order only last the session. When I reload the map, all my newer locations are back down on the bottom of the list!

There’s a Google Maps Forum thread on this, but so far no help.

Does anyone know how to fix this problem or get around it?

It’s even more annoying because Google Maps’ “starred places” function doesn’t let me add notes, or specify a custom order. So that’s not really a solution for me.

My review: Google+ a clean, intuitive mobile experience so far

Clearly Google+ is going head-to-head against Facebook, and I think it has a decent chance of winning in the long run, especially if it includes good mobile integration of core Google services like calendar, Gmail, and docs.

But what about Facebook?…

I’ve praised Facebook in the past for not forgetting that most of the world, including most people here in the US, do not use smartphones. They have a very lean mobile web app, and they also bought Snaptu (a leading purveyor of feature phone apps).

But then, Google makes Android, and some good lower-cost Android phones are starting to hit the market. Also, I tried out the Google+ web app using Opera Mini, the browser that Qualcomm says will come standard with all feature phones using its BrewMP platform (which in the US is most feature phones) sometime in the coming month. That web app ran just fine on Opera Mini — which means lots of feature phone users would be able to make good use of Google+

So what, then, does Facebook do? On Google+, my media colleague Lynne d Johnson just found out Facebook is launching their own branded phone the HTC Status — complete with a physical Facebook button, and other integration. It’ll be coming out on AT&T. AND it’s an Android phone

Curiouser and curiouser….

Adirondacks (Tivoli 440/540): Mobile Reporting
As more and more users turn to mobile devices for news and information, journalists should be including the platform in their news gathering and delivery. But how? This session will take a big-picture look at trends in the mobile industry, the differences between mobile and the web, the significance of having a mobile presence and the best tools to use in the mobile space.

Here are some things I’ll be mentioning…

My Twitter ID: @agahran (be sure to spell it right — most people get it wrong)

Know your mobile media channels — if you understand this, you can do a better job of mobile publishing/engagement and reporting from the field

Will Sullivan, master of all things mojo: @journerdism

Will’s excellent mobile journalism tools guide

I’ll expand this post after the session with links to whatever mobile stuff we end up discussing.

If you’re in the news business, or in any way involved with media, it’s important to devise a mobile strategy that’s inclusive. That means: Unless you’re really only interested in serving the small minority of the population that can afford (and has lots of time to play around with) souped-up, pricey smartphones and tablets, then it’s crucial to offer at least some mobile content and services that works well with simpler devices and slower data connections.

The low end will always be the largest part of the mobile media market. If your plan is to focus on smartphones and wait until most people get the kinds of devices and plans you think they should have in order to serve them, the next Craigslist is going to come along and eat your lunch. Again.

Here are the key mobile channels…

Mobile web site / Social media / Text messaging / E-mail / Mobile web apps / Native smartphone apps / QR codes / Tablet apps / More

NOTE: I’ve listed these in the order in which I think most journalists and news orgs should implement them in an integrated, inclusive mobile strategy.

1. MOBILE WEB SITE

Your mobile web site should be the core of your mobile strategy, since it’s linkable and search-friendly (which means it’s not a silo). Everything you do in any digital media should link back to specific pages within your mobile web site (not just to your home page). Your site should use responsive web design or multiple themes, plus auto-detection and routing of mobile visitors, to serve mobile users the experience most appropriate to the device they have in hand.

All smartphones and most feature phones come with web browsers. Of course, right now the feature phone web browsing experience generally is slow, cumbersome, and costs extra. It doesn’t help that most web sites display spectacularly poorly on feature phone browsers. So for now, roughly only around half of feature phone users browse the web. That’s still a bigger mobile web audience than all smartphones put together, though. However this is likely to change quickly, since feature phones will start getting much better browsers within the year.

The mobile web site is probably the smartest way to deliver most of your online content. It’s easier to develop an maintain, and this single channel serves a multitude of mobile devices. Really only do a native smartphone/tablet app (see below) if you have clear plans to make specific, prominent use of the added functionality those devices offer. Content shovelware makes a boring app.

2. SOCIAL MEDIA

Facebook, Twitter, and other social media are hugely popular. Many journos and news orgs already use them to engage with their communities and spread the reach of their content. And most people who use social media access it at least part of the time via mobile devices. Therefore, expect anything you do in social media, or any links to your content that people share via social media, will have a sizable mobile audience by default. In fact, once you have a good mobile web site in action, you can use social media to jump start your mobile strategy.

3. TEXT MESSAGING

Hands down, this is the single most popular non-voice activity among mobile users of all kinds. Even smartphone users who have access to sophisticated apps text a lot. For news publishers, you should at least be offering opt-in text messaging services for breaking news and perhaps your top story of the day. You could segment this further to offer top stories by section, community, or other criteria.

Whenever you send a text message, it should include a short-format link to the most relevant specific page on your web site. At least give mobile users the option to learn more if they want to or can access the web. Do not provide a link to your home page. Navigating and searching on even the slickest smartphone is a hassle in most mobile use cases. So even for fast-breaking news, first post something — anything — on your mobile site as a placeholder, then add news to that destination page as the story develops.

You can include links to ads in SMS alerts if you like — but if you’re using bottom-feeder ad networks (like the Denver Post currently does), that really puts off users and tarnishes your brand, in exchange for what probably amounts to pennies. Only put quality ads in your SMS messages. This is a highly targeted, opt-in media channel. That makes i valuable. Sell it that way to advertisers.

4. E-MAIL

Most mobile phones (including most feature phones) can do e-mail — and it’s especially popular on BlackBerry, which is still the most popular type of smartphone in the US. According to comScore, mobile e-mail is getting increasingly popular overall.

Offer one or more opt-in newsletters or alert services for breaking news, top stories, etc. Do this as opt-in only — if you buy lists or try to co-opt lists you’ve built for other purposes, you could end up violating the law and having ISPs block your outbound mail.

When people subscribe to your e-mail newsletter/alerts, ask them if they often check e-mail on their phone. If so, make plain text-only e-mail the default for those newsletters/alerts. Offer HTML formatting only as an option, or as the default for people who don’t use mobile e-mail.

Keep your newsletter very short — just 1-3 items at a time, with a specific link for each that will default to a mobile-friendly page as needed. 100-300 words is a good length. Get in, get out. If you include ads, make them text-based rather than graphical.

5. MOBILE WEB APPS

This is web site or page that delivers interactive services via the mobile web browser. These can be simplified to work on feature phone browsers. On the high end, many smartphone browsers are now HTML5-compatible, which allows even more app-like functionality through the mobile browser. If you have an iPhone or Android, check out Twitter’s new mobile site to see this in action.

Any mobile app, including mobile web apps, is more likely to succeed in engaging users if they focus on interactivity. Make sure your app DOES something. Also, feel free to experiment with offering several smaller special-purpose apps, rather than trying to shoehorn too much into one app.

6. NATIVE SMARTPHONE APPS

Smartphone apps are programs that runs on top of specific smartphone/tablet operating system platforms. Users download these apps and install them on their device. These apps then generally interact with data streams from the internet or from the app creator’s servers.

Apps are cool, but they should be one of the last steps in your mobile strategy. This is because each platform you develop an app for (iOS, Android, BlackBerry, etc.) is a separate software development effort that requires ongoing maintenance and updates — yet each smartphone app will only serve a small segment of your mobile audience. You’ll get much more mileage, for much less effort and resources, by developing a really good mobile web site.

Unfortunately, right now smartphone apps (especially iPhone apps) is where most news orgs’ mobile strategies begin and end. Besides neglecting most of your mobile market, there’s another disadvantage: right now native apps are content silos. You can’t really link to the content in them, and you can’t even search the content of all the apps on your phone.

Use smartphone apps only when you intend to seriously capitalize on the special functionalities that each platform offers beyond what the mobile web can do. Content shovelware is not enough for a good app. Also, consider releasing several small special-purpose apps.

Smartphone apps can be two-way, or multidirectional. They can be especially good for crowdsourcing projects, or working with citizen journalists. Also, if your reporters all have smartphones and they’re doing a lot of mobile reporting, you might want to develop a private app just for staff that integrates with your content management system to make mobile filing easier, more reliable, and more efficient. I’ve heard the BBC is working on this.

7. QR CODES

Quick response (QR) codes are fast becoming a useful way to engage mobile users with your content. The point of these is that they get around the inherent hassle of trying to type a URL in to a mobile browser while you’re on the go. You just launch the QR code app on your phone, snap a picture of the QR code, and it launches your mobile browser to take you to the destination (which should, of course, be a mobile-friendly landing page. Duh.)

People might encounter your QR code in your print news outlet, on a TV or movie theater screen, on a subway ad, in a magazine, on a sticker or flyer, or elsewhere — even t-shirts or tattoos! (Seriously!) Increasingly smartphones and higher-end, newer feature phones come equipped with (or can download) apps that allow people to use QR codes to connect to information.

If QR codes aren’t yet popular in your coverage area, invest in some market education. Publish (or link to) plain-language explainers (text and video) that explain what QR code are, how they work, and why you might want to use them.

This can be both a mobile content and marketing strategy. Experiment! Print QR codes at the end of stories to take people to mobile-friendly online extras, use them in games or scavenger hunts to help promote your news brand, offer them to advertisers, and more.

8. NATIVE TABLET APPS

Right now, tablets like the iPad get a ton of hype, but they’re a vanishingly small part of the mobile media market. Compared to mobile phones, they’re a small part of the market, and their revenue return has been disappointing for news orgs. so while it’s cool that news orgs are experimenting with tablet apps, I think doing too much of that right now is an unfortunate misuse of scarce resources.

…Unless you have a really good business model for your tablet app. Note that Apple, in particular, doesn’t offer publishers a good deal. (Yes, Apple has recently mellowed a bit, but still…)

The key point about tablets is that they aren’t really “mobile” like phones are. Sure, they’re portable, and they work over wireless carrier networks (as well as wifi). But people tend to sit down and focus with them more, rather than use them while they’re walking or doing other stuff (as is the case with mobile phones).

So when you design your mobile web site, make sure you’re auto-detecting tablet traffic and serving a tablet-friendly layout to those users. Responsive web design can help make that happen.

It you decide to make a tablet app, make sure you really focus on how to put the special functionality of the tablet device/environment front and center. It needs to blow away your mobile web experience. (And that should not be an excuse to skimp on mobile web development.

9. MORE MOBILE CHANNELS

Here are some more mobile channels which are outside of the mainstream of what news orgs and journos are using so far — but they all work on mobile devices:

• Audio (call-in or downloadable). These devices are phones, after all! Smartphones can subscribe to podcasts. Also anyone from any phone (even a landline) can call in to a phone number to listen to audio or record comments. Tools like Asterisk or Evoca can help you bring audio services to your mobile audience.
• MMS. On mobile phones, photo/video messaging is handled over the wireless carrier network via multimedia messaging service. Right now this probably isn’t a great outbound media channel for most mobile news orgs — but it could be a good inbound channel — especially for crowdsourcing projects, photo contests, etc.
• App layers and feeds. Map layers or geodata streams (Google Maps, google earth), augmented reality app layers, playing nice with Pulse, etc. Be creative, be collaborative, look forward into the future.

Mobile phone security: What are the risks?

First on the list was malware — and on that front, Android definitely presents the biggest risk, because it’s such an open platform.

So, anticipating the trolls: Even though I own an Android phone and love it, and have said so several times in my CNN posts, I’m sure I’ll get lots of comments from Android fanboys complaining that I must be on Apple’s payroll.

For the record, no, I get nothing from Apple. In fact, I’m really kinda tired of iPhone fetishization, especially by tech media. I’m not anti-iPhone or anti-Apple (you’d have to pry my macbook from my cold dead fingers)

I used to own an iPhone and liked it well enough, but I AT&T really sucks in the Bay Area, so last summer I traded up to a Droid Incredible, which I generally like better. It’s got its hitches and weirdnesses, but it’s also a pretty cool device.

But being an Android owner has made me far more aware of mobile security. Ultimately, I think that’s a good thing.

So Android fanboys: Chill out. Go get some Doritos. And a reality check.

Neither am I on the payroll of Norton or Lookout, two companies whose products I mentioned as examples of the kinds of tools smartphone users can employ for mobile security. Norton did invite me to their mobile security event in SF. Yeah, I’m a journalist. I go to conferences. I meet with companies to learn what they’re doing. Shocking, I know.

My CNN post also covers premium SMS fraud, phishing, and spyware — and the spyware thing is especially creepy…

First, my colleague Jason Da Ponte gives an excellent overview of the current and evolving mobile landscape, and the role of journalism in an increasingly mobile media environment.

My part starts around 21 minutes in. Afterward, Jason & I answered questions.

And I’m seeing a common mistake in how they’re used: Often, they don’t take users to a mobile-optimized landing page…

The basic value proposition of a QR code is that it makes it easier and faster for people on the go to connect with information. Specifically, it bypasses the need to have to type a URL into the web browser of a mobile phone — an activity that’s notoriously annoying, error-prone, and time consuming. Instead, you use a scanner app to take a picture of the QR code. It then uses that information to launch a web page in your phone’s browser.

(List of QR code scanner apps for just about any kind of smartphone. They’re usually free.)

In my experience about half the time the resulting web page is not mobile optimized! That is, I must pinch-and-zoom to magnify the text, and then scroll horizontally or vertically to view all the content on that page.

Not exactly the most efficient way for someone to experience information on a mobile phone.

Here’s an example: At a comedy show last night, I picked up a postcard featuring a QR code, promoting something called Quizitter. Try going to that page right now. If you have a smartphone handy, try using the QR code below. Where does it take you? To a full web page where you have to use extra manual navigation effort just to figure out what they’re talking about.

And bang, you’ll lose a lot of your mobile audience right there.

quizitter

Postcard I saw last night promoting an online checkin service. Try this on your mobile device. Notice any problems?

This bugged me — and when stuff nags at my mind, even weird minor stuff, I have a hard time getting back to sleep. The hotel room was dark, and my eyeglasses were out of reach. I didn’t feel like getting out of bed. But my cell phone was within reach, on the bedside table. (It’s my main alarm clock.)

So I grabbed my phone and snapped a quick photo of the building with the blue sign. Then, looking at the phone on my phone’s screen, I could easily read: Central Bank.

central bank

sign on top of their downtown Louisville, KY building.

This satisfied my nagging curiosity, kind of like scratching an itch. I was soon back to sleep.

It occurs to me that this is a potentially significant use of augmented reality enabled by mobile devices — and the only “app” I needed was the software controlling my phone’s camera!

Most AR apps I’ve seen are kinda gimmicky or not very compelling. For instance, seeing local coupon offers overlaid on a camera app (which Junaio does), or local tweets similarly overlaid, hasn’t really thrilled me.

But being able to compensate for poor vision or a lack of information about what things are? That’s useful.

Now if only someone could do a similar service for audio that would automatically filter out noise in a train or bus station to tell you what the hell those announcers are really saying…