Mobile

My latest UB column is now available in the February issue as well as online: “Websites Gone Mobile: More institutions exploring—and succeeding with—mobile web”

In this column written last December (so many new mobile websites have been launched since then – I’ll post even more examples in the coming days), I provide a few examples of mobile websites developed by higher ed institutions – including West Virginia University’s mobile website developed in 19 days by Dave Olsen – along with some traffic data.

Websites Gone Mobile

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I’ve just finished watching the recording of a live webinar about the mobile website of North Carolina State University Libraries: Library in Your Pocket: Strategies and Techniques for Developing Successful Mobile Services.

This free 60-minute webinar was presented by David Woodbury, Libraries Fellow and Jason Casden, Digital Technologies Development Librarian at North Carolina State University to an audience of about 400 Educause members on January 20, 2010.

The session was really interesting as it provides a good overview of the project as well as a few great recommendations for going mobile, tips that can be applied to any mobile website (and not just libraries’).

Like the institutional mobile website, NCSU Libraries’ mobile website was based on the MIT Mobile Web platform and developed in about 3 months by a team of 3 working between 25% and 40% of their time on this project. You can check it out at http://m.lib.ncsu.edu

Here are a few good tips I retrieved in the notes I took during this session:

• Don’t “mobilize” everything: it’s important to think about the kind of content you need and should provide to your mobile web users. What makes sense in the context of on-the-go browsing or searching.
• Minimize the need to enter data by typing: ever tried to type more than 4 words on an iPhone? It’s not because it’s possible that you make your mobile web visitors do it.
• Don’t shrink your web pages: keep only the essential content and relevant features
• Think about exposing hidden but useful content in the context of the mobile web user
• Don’t forget to link back to the “normal” website homepage: smartphones do a good job at displaying “regular” websites and some of your users might want to check out something specific they know is there.
• Set up a redirect on your normal website homepage to direct traffic from mobile devices to your mobile website – and to promote it.
• Use guerrilla testing to test your mobile website: go to the mobile phone store and check out your website on all the available devices – you might want to ask the permission of the store owner. You can also create a panel of mobile campus testers using different devices – and email them for feedback when you implement new developments
• Don’t forget to promote your mobile website to your students on different channels.

You can also have a look at the short YouTube video they did to promote this mobile website – nice production:

Want to learn more?
You can access the webinar recording and the presentation slides online at Educause.

Web professionals have always frown upon the use of PDF as the online version of a print newsletter or magazine.

For some publication officers and college magazine editors, PDF is an easy way to provide the online version of their hard print work.

Just take the final file from the designer (PDF has been used for proofs for many years), have it uploaded to the web server and… voila!

According to The State of Print and Electronic Publications in Higher Ed, a survey completed by 198 professionals last year, PDF is the format of choice for the electronic version of the main magazine in 38% of the cases as shown below.

• PDF file of the print magazine: 38%
• Website powered by content management system: 21%
• Email newsletter: 18%
• Flash-based flipping-through digital magazine: 12%
• Website powered by a blogging platform: 6%
• Other: 4%

Even if the practice is quick and cost-effective, it has been proven by many usability studies that PDF isn’t a user-friendly format for people browsing on computers. These files were also problematic for search optimization as their content was not indexed by search engines in the past – but this isn’t the case anymore.

Yet, in web circles, PDF still has a bad vibe. No respectable web professional wants to see PDF used on web servers for anything except maybe for official forms that needs to be printed.

While I still think web versions of print magazines or other publications are a better way to cater to readers using a computer or even a smartphone (or a pocket sized web mobile device like the iPod Touch), I can’t help think it won’t be the case for ebook readers or tablets – especially when these new “reading” devices are going to get a big push from students looking for a better text book solution.

So, what should a college magazine or publication officer do?

Adopt a multichannel approach: develop a real online version and keep the PDF version for print publications – even if they end up not printing them anymore in the future.

What do YOU think?

Last week, I attended the rehearsal of Dave Olsen’s webinars on how to create a mobile website for your university in 24 hours or less.

And, I’m happy to report that he has really done a lot of work to make the implementation of MIT Mobile Web very easy through the integration of some Google services. In just a few edits, you can get a mobile website for your institution complete with a campus directory, news, campus map and a calendar of events.

It is really amazing and definitely worth the registration fee with the time you will save – by attending the webinar – implementing the open source package.

Since I’ve received a few requests to postpone the registration deadline of Dave’s webinar series, Going Mobile, I’ve decided to give you a few more days to register if you are interested.

Registration will close this Friday (October 16, 2009) at 9PM ET: www.higheredexperts.com/goingmobile.

This 2-webinar series is composed of a live event and a pre-recorded session that can be watch on-demand.

Register for Going Mobile Webinars

Going Mobile: How to build a mobile website for your institution in 24 hours
October 21st 2009 – 1PM-2PM ET (rain date: October 28, 2009)

Can you find your way in a page of HTML code, use Google services and follow basic steps?
Then, you can develop a mobile website for your institution compatible with smart and regular mobile phones in no time and on a dime.

David Olsen, Professional Technologist at West Virginia University, will explain why and how to build your institutional mobile website in 24 hours (or less) and… for free. He will demonstrate all the steps involved in using MIT Mobile, an open-source mobile web platform, and will share the shortcuts and code he developed to implement the calendar, map and news features for WVU Mobile Web.

Registered institutions include:

• Indiana State University
• The University of Iowa
• Missouri University of Science and Technology
• Upper Iowa University
• Susquehanna University
• Point Park University
• UTM
• Rowan University
• University of Delaware
• Southeast Missouri State University
• Angelo State University
• Washington State University
• UC Berkeley
• Lehigh University
• Emory University
• University of Tampa

For more info and to register, you can visit www.higheredexperts.com/goingmobile

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Dave Olsen’s achievement in developing a mobile website for West Virginia University in just 19 days using MIT Mobile Web open-source platform.

Dave spent some time customizing the existing code (that’s the beauty of open-source projects) to integrate Google services and reduce the implementation process to just a few hours.

I followed his progress very closely and asked him if he would be willing to share lessons learned and his shortcuts with the higher ed community. Dave agreed.

As a result, he will present a 2-webinar series next month on how to build a mobile website for your institution in 24 hours or less, “Going Mobile.”

This series is composed of:

1. a pre-recorded session – that can be watched on demand – showing the step-by-step development of an institutional mobile website in real time
2. a live presentation – scheduled on October 21st, 2009 – explaining the main development principles and addressing questions from the audience.

Going Mobile: How to build a mobile website for your institution in 24 hours
October 21st 2009 – 1PM-2PM ET (rain date: October 28, 2009)

Can you find your way in a page of HTML code, use Google services and follow basic steps?
Then, you can develop a mobile website for your institution compatible with smart and regular mobile phones in no time and on a dime.

David Olsen, Professional Technologist at West Virginia University, will explain why and how to build your institutional mobile website in 24 hours (or less) and… for free. He will demonstrate all the steps involved in using MIT Mobile, an open-source mobile web platform, and will share the shortcuts and code he developed to implement the calendar, map and news features for WVU Mobile Web.

Places are limited for this series and registration will close as soon as it is sold out. So, don’t delay and register as soon as possible to reserve your seat at www.higheredexperts.com/goingmobile

If you have any questions, just email me at karine@higheredexperts.com

Upcoming Webinar: Going Mobile

Yep, you’ve read correctly. It’s not a typo.

Web Services professional technologist Dave Olsen managed to develop the mobile version of his institution’s website in 19 days thanks to a lot of hard work and Mobile MIT, the platform developed for its own use and made available earlier this year for free by MIT.

Launched today along with an iPhone application developed separately by a WVU student, the mobile version allows users to search the WVU directory, stream WVU radio station U92, browse a campus events calendar, get University news and sports updates and link to WVU’s You Tube channel.

You can check it out at http://m.wvu.edu or have a look below at the screen captions prepared by Dave.

Pretty cool for 19 days of work, don’t you think?

Dave just proved that it doesn’t take a lot of time and money to develop a useful mobile presence for an institution thanks to the good folks behind MIT Mobile. And, if you want to learn how he did, watch out for an upcoming webinar he will present soon for Higher Ed Experts.

Got a mobile website for your institution? Share its link in the comments below!

My fifth UB column for 2009 is now available in the July/August issue as well as online: “The ABCs of Mobile Marketing: Words to know in exploring this new frontier in higher education marketing”

The ABCs of Mobile Marketing

I added a QR code to the column, but it got resized at printing time – which made it impossible to be properly decoded (a real shortcoming of the technology, BTW) by the QR code reader on my iTouch . This is why I’m adding it below if you want to test the technology.

The QR code above points to the page featuring online resources mentioned in this column about mobile technology, a web page that you can also find by visiting www.higheredexperts.com/mobile.

If you are a University Business reader who has just discovered collegewebeditor.com, welcome! Don’t forget to subscribe to this blog via RSS or email.

As reported on the Chronicle’s blog, Campus Wired, the giant of online course management system, Blackboard, has announced yesterday at its user conference BBWorld its acquisition of the start-up Terriblyclever Design LLC specialized in mobile application development and behind the MobilEdu suite.

Blackboard paid about $4 million for this small company started by students from Standford.

In May this year, while I was working on my upcoming column about mobile marketing for University Business, I had the opportunity to ask a few questions to one of the co-founders of Terriblyclever Design, Kayvon Beykpour.

1) Before launching your business, you were students. In that context, can you explain why you decided to design and develop an iPhone application targeted to college students?

As Computer Science students at Stanford, who were particularly interested in technology, we had the opportunity of being both consumers and producers of the “newest” and “coolest” technologies on campus. “Mobile” is a perfect example. We all loved the iPhone. We thought it represented the beginning of an incredibly powerful new medium and development environment– one that presented many more opportunities for interesting developments than other mobile platforms. We also were fascinated by how people were and could be using mobile devices. We were in the perfect environment to notice such things. We’d walk around campus and see people using their iPhones in different environments– we ourselves would discover new ways that the iPhone was useful and ask ourselves “how could this great device be used for other things– other things we do on a day-to-day basis”. Some of the common answers to these questions were based our tasks that every student on campus needs to do, like searching the campus map or searching the directory or checking their class schedule. That’s what led us to ultimately create a utility that serves a university audience– both students and faculty.

2) Can MobilEdu work on other mobile devices (Blackberry, Google Phone, etc.)?

Currently, MobilEdu operates on a few different formats:
- A native iPhone application
- An XHTML website for newer phones like Blackberrys and any other web-enabled device with a browser
- A WAP website for older phones (say old Nokia’s or old Blackberrys) with the existing browser on those devices.
- We are constantly observing new developments wth native platforms (like the native blackberry platform, android, etc.) and plan to support these platforms in the future.

3) As you try to market your application suite, do you think that higher ed institutions are ready to cater to the needs of their “mobile” students?

I think Universities are realizing more and more than addressing the “mobile” need is a significant and important step. MobilEdu represents a very sensible starting point for Universities since it’s fundamental purpose is to empower those with mobile devices, which is why we’ve had great reception among our initial customer base.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project released, in March 2009, a typology of tech users incorporating attitudes towards the mobile web (which was an addition compared to their previous typology I wrote about in May 2007) in a report titled “The Mobile Difference.”

Two days ago was released an online quiz composed of 14 questions to help you place yourself in one of these categories in the Pew Internet Project’s Typology of Information and Communication Technology Users

I filled out the survey and got the verdict the Pew’s verdict: I’m a Digital Collaborator – and part of a minority group – only 8% of the population.

If you are a Digital Collaborator, you use information technology to work with and share your creations with others. You are enthusiastic about how ICTs help you connect with others and confident in how to manage digital devices and information. For you, the digital commons can be a camp, a lab, or a theater group – places to gather with others to develop something new.

I bet many readers of this blog are probably digital collaborators as well.

Let’s try to find out!
Please take the quiz and post YOUR resulting type in a comment.

Even though I’m hosting “Writing Right for the Web” webinars this week, I’m working behind the scenes on the research for an upcoming University Business column about the mobile Web and other cell phone based initiatives.

Thanks to a Twitter tip from @gilzow, I stumbled yesterday on the announcement of the MU iPhone Student Competition Winners, a contest organized by the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri.

Launched in September 2008, this contest prompted journalism and engineering majors to create iPhone applications with a real-life purpose.

There were 2 winners for this competition: one picked by judges including ATT and Apple representatives and one picked by the people.

Both winning applications have a geolocation-based component, taping into one of the neat features of the iPhone: its GPS.

• Near Buy - the pick of the judges – is targeted to the real estate market (I’m not sure though what’s the journalism connection here). It allows iPhone owners to find home/apartment listings close to their current location – using Google’s big database. Real Estate agents can enhance their listings by including photos and get an idea of the performance of these listings by using the professional edition of the iPhone app.
• News Flash – the People’s choice – offers a local newspaper experience that can be entirely customized to the interest, needs and current location of the iPhone owner. It includes news from local sources, but also national and international news outlets.

What I found interesting in these applications is the fact they are trying to solve real problems and fill customer needs – which is always better ;-)

Apple recently celebrated its first billion of downloaded apps (a lot of apps are free, the others usually cost a buck or two), which shows there’s definitely something behind these little applications.

While many college students have developed very successful applications (including iStanford and the Duke iPhone Suite for example – both developed by the same team), most higher ed institutions seem to ignore these type of projects despite the marketing possibilities offered by these applications and other initiatives using the ubiquitous cell phones.

Is it too early?
Is it too complex?
Are the higher ed web and marketing professionals too busy getting social on Facebook, Twitter and the likes?

Why don’t we talk more about the mobile Web and its possibilities for our field? Please tell us what you think (or prove me wrong by sharing great initiatives) by posting a comment.