links for 2008-04-01
March 31st, 2008 | Published in Bookmarks
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Such a striking photograph
Archive for March, 2008
Speaking at Web Visions in May
March 30th, 2008 | Published in Announcements, Mobile, Portland, Web Development
I’m happy to announce that I will be speaking at Web Visions on May 23rd on “Going Fast on the Slow Mobile Web.”
Speaking at Web Visions has been a goal of mine for a few years now. Every year Web Vision brings the best and brightest to Portland to talk about the future of web development. After each conference, I’d tell my co-workers that the following year I was going to put together a presentation for Web Visions. Well, I finally did it! :-)
My topic this year combines two interests of mine: the mobile web and web site performance. We’ll be covering the steps necessary to make the web as fast as possible on mobile devices including looking at device-specific details that make performance on mobile devices more challenging.
I’m honored to be included with such a list of illustrious speakers. As I mentioned in my previous post, Jeffrey Veen’s presentation from Web Visions is one of the best I’ve ever seen. Roger Black is one of the big names in design. I’m stunned to be sharing the stage with them. Then we’ve got fellow twitterers and friends like Erica O’Grady and Scott Kveton. And I could go as there are so many names on that speakers list that I admire.
I’m truly overwhelmed and looking forward to May. I hope to see you there. Sign up today for early bird rates.
Web Visions Early Bird Rates End Tomorrow
March 30th, 2008 | Published in Announcements, Mobile, Portland, Web Development
If you are interested in attending Web Visions, I encourage you to register now as the early bird rate ends tomorrow.
If you haven’t been to Web Visions before, you’re missing out. It is a top-caliber event. It takes place in Portland, and is reasonably priced. You’d be hard pressed to find a better deal.
At my previous job, I took my entire team to Web Visions every year. For the same price I would spend to send a single person to a more expensive conference in another city, I could send my whole team.
This year’s speaker line up is exceptional and includes a keynote by Jeffrey Veen whose last keynote at Web Visions was worth the price of admission alone. His presentation remains my favorite and is something that I’ve used to inform my thinking many times.
So if you do anything web related, I can’t recommend this conference enough. Plus, you may recognize a familiar name on the speaker list. :-)
Mobile Portland is Tonight!
March 24th, 2008 | Published in Announcements, Mobile, Portland
A quick reminder that Mobile Portland is tonight at 6 pm at eROI. Tonight’s hot topic is the iPhone SDK. More details and RSVP information.
links for 2008-03-23
March 22nd, 2008 | Published in Bookmarks
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“Google has pushed out a new release of its GData Objective-C Client Library that adds support for the Google Contacts Data API and YouTube API. What this means, in a nutshell, is that applications written in Objective-C (including those created for the i
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Guy has set out to create energy from tornadoes. Wants to “stable tornadoes using the waste-heat from power plants.” Has gotten some funding and doesn’t seem entirely insane.
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Web-based presentation software that Scoble has gushed about.
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“Boarding pass is an image of an encrypted bar code displayed on the phone’s screen, which can be scanned by gate agents and security personnel.”
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“84.8 percent of iPhone users report accessing news and information from the hand-held device. That compares to 13.1 percent of the overall mobile phone market and 58.2 percent of total smartphone owners.”
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Funny comparisons between simplicity of Google and Apple products with “your company’s app”
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“New data from M:Metrics for the month of January confirms that folks who own an iPhone tend to do more entertaining things on their devices — such as watch video and visit social networks — than those who own smartphones.”
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“The mobile phone is too complex for users to feel comfortable using them to buy physical goods, however, consumers in the U.S. and the U.K., say they are likely to use the phone to check prices and the location of a store”
Verizon’s “Open Networks” Not Very Open, Sprint Breaks the Web
March 22nd, 2008 | Published in Mobile, Web Development
Verizon announced that they would open their network late last year. Last week they provided details which shows that it isn’t terribly open.
Verizon also one the recent spectrum bidding where again, the definition of open is being debated.
Carlo Longino of MobHappy has written about how “open” has become the big buzzword for mobile this year, but most of what is being called open isn’t really very open.
My favorite is Sprint’s new “OpenWeb” service which seems to be breaking everything on the web. What a mess.
Google Speeds Up Mobile Sites, Sees Traffic Increase
March 22nd, 2008 | Published in Mobile, Site Performance, Web Development
One of the reasons for my interest in site performance is because these techniques become even more important when developing for mobile. Google published some recent evidence supporting this belief.
“We saw something similar after we launched an updated interface for Gmail on the iPhone during MacWorld earlier this year. Lots of iPhone users tried the new interface (hence the bump in Gmail pageviews between January and February), but they didn’t stick around like we hoped they would. Over the course of the next few weeks, we made some tweaks to drastically improve the speed of the product, and Gmail pageviews on the iPhone not only stabilized, but began to rise, as the graph below shows:”
links for 2008-03-20
March 19th, 2008 | Published in Bookmarks
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Details on how the iphone handles caching.
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Is this why Apple doesn’t want flash on the iPhone?
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Connection between environment and site speed
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“What we saw today was the beginning of two-decades of mobile domination by Apple. What Microsoft and Windows was to the desktop, Apple and Touch will be to mobile.”
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“the user-perceived latency on Google Code dropped quite a bit, anywhere between 30% and 70% depending on the page”
Page Load Time Means Money
March 19th, 2008 | Published in Business, Site Performance, Web Development
One of the arguments I made in my presentation on site performance last year was that making small changes to your site to speed it up can make a big difference in your revenue. This was based on bandwidth savings.
However, now marketers using Google Adwords have an additional incentive to make their pages load quickly. Google is incorporating landing page load time as one of the factors for evaluating the quality ranking of an ad:
“Users value ads that bring them to the information they want as efficiently as possible. A high-quality landing page should load quickly as well as feature unique, relevant content. Fast load times benefit advertisers as well, since users are less likely to abandon a site that loads quickly.”
For companies that are spending thousands of dollars on text ads, ignoring their landing page load time could be spendy.
