RunningWithBulls.com - The curse of Sanfermin

[UPDATE:] Dood, I just had Robert Scoble comment And he says:

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Robert Scoble Says:
January 1st, 2006 at 8:05 pm
No, I do NOT want plain text. I want full-bore Web sites that work well on cell phones. You need to see one of these new SmartPhones. I’ll do a video.
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Herm, ok, so I read it wrong. My bad. if you are offering to lend me a SmartPhone, no problemo! Just stick it in the post!

So, re-reading it again, I think I get what he means. He wants web developers to take mobile users into account, with regards screen resolution.
Well I don’t think that is going to happen (at the moment).

Why? Because everyone is going for the “bigger is better” idea when it comes to display, and screen resolution. Mobile users don’t really come into web designers minds, unless they are specific sites that should be used on mobile (mobile phones, pdas, etc) devices.

With regards Irish sites that MUST have mobile versions I would offer the following 10 (not in any particular order):

job listing/adverrtising sites (Ok, IrishJobs.ie has one as I said earlier, but so does, apparently, Monster

travel sites (IrishRail has a plain text site, which is usable. Aer Lingus, RyanAir do not. Why?)

banking sites (AIB Online is usable, BOI Online is another story)

news sites (well there is a whole slew that are offering iMode sites, but at rates of 1c per kb of data traffic, I am not too interested in that.)

housing/accommodation sites (the like of DAFT, MyHome.ie all have iMode sites, but what happens to people who are not subscribed to O2 iMode.
.ie

I don’t really get why Robert wants full sites to be available on a mobile device. It may bring the size of pages down, using CSS or whatever, but I don’t think it would be too useful.

I only want the information, or to be able to get the task done (I remember having to buy a new flight home from Pamplona’s Fiesta De Sanfermín on my Treo last year through EasyJet. It wasn’t easy, but with styles, and images turned off, I managed it!)

I do eagerly wait to see exactly what he means!

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Poor Robert Scoble has wished for something impossible for 2006: more websites to do either just plain text or else supply an RSS feed for their sites to keep mobile users in mind when developing their sites.

I used to view websites on my Palm Vx with Internet Connection via my phone 8-9 years ago.

Since I got my Treo 650, I have been doing this daily, between reading my FeedOnFeeds, looking at various, news travel, and blogs.

A few weeks ago I was looking for information on the Luas timetable for the Christmas period. So I do the normal thing, look at www.luas.ie on my Treo.

Under timetable, I find an 8 (EIGHT)MB sized pdf file. Thats right…8MB PDF. Now, I do have a PDF reader on my Treo, but do I really want to download an 8MB pdf file *just* to get the timetable? Hell no.

So I complain to them, asking what the fuck is the point of having a website if you are going to distribute the timetable via huge PDF files. You may as well distribute them via hyroglyphics written on papyrus.

Well, I checked again last night and the pdf file has now shrunk to a 110K file.

Jesus, a copy and paste from an Excel sheet would do!

Incidently, for anyone interested, my Treo webbrowser bookmarks are as follows:

PalmOne Portal
PalmOne Downloads
MapQuest Mobile
IrishJobs.ie IMode site
SlashDot Mobile
Treo TreoCentral
Google IMode
BusinessWeek Mobile
Wired Mobile
EuroNews Mobile
BBC News TextOnly (WEBSITES TAKE NOTE!!)
BBC WorldNews TextOnly
BBC TechnologyNews TextOnly
GoldenPages Ireland
Flickr Mobile
IrishRail TextOnly
OnLine Free Dictionary
My FeedOnFeeds URL

And then a few others that I use personally.