Cameron Moll just released his highly anticipated Mobile Web Design ebook. For those of you unfamiliar with Cameron, he’s a top-notch mobile web designer, and his book will serve as a good reference for people willing to create great mobile sites.
The ebook only costs $19 and is available here.
Finally, someone posted something that looks like a reliable confirmation of the coming release of the Google Phone. Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins, a technology podcaster, says that one of his inside sources over at Google confirmed that a phone was about to be launched, and gave him more details on its features.
According to Rizzn’s source, Google doesn’t plan to create an IPhone killer, but rather a $100 Laptop killer. By providing a phone with embedded applications, Google hopes to fill the needs of people who don’t own a computer and offer them an Internet access.
He said that the Google (applications) Suite is going to play a huge role in the usability of the GPhone, and the thought process behind it’s functionality is less about beating the iPhone and more about beating the $100 Laptop, which provides a huge clue behind what will be the pricing structure on this.
Mark believes that the GPhone will be sold at a very low price, and that Google will make its money with advertising. I agree. Google is not a hardware company, it’s an advertising company and this phone will be a way for them to make more money in the growing mobile search/advertising field.
Remember that Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, said last year that they would provide free phones to people if they accept to view advertising.
Fierce Mobile Content also reports that Google is in discussion with Indian mobile operators Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Essar to launch the device in early September.
By targeting that kind of area, Google hopes to gain more users of their search engine from people who don’t have a desktop computer.
So, with a phone, a mobile search engine with mobile content search, a mobile billing solution, Google will be all set to maximize its mobile search revenues.
Be ready to see some fierce battle between Google and mobile networks in the coming months.
I recently had the pleasure to speak with Simon Hunt, Novarra‘s CTO. The goal of my phone call was to know more about the the deal they signed with Yahoo!. Novarra will automatically repurpose websites that are part of Yahoo’s OneSearch results.
I was quite worried when I heard about the partnership, since I didn’t want to experience the same issues than with the Vodafone UK case (which is now partly solved). I then contacted Novarra to get more details. Simon Hunt immediately got back to me and replied to the questions I had.
– Yahoo OneSearch provides two kind of results: traditional web results, and mobile web results. The good news for mobile commerce sites is that Novarra won’t transcode sites from the mobile web results.
– Only sites from “web results” will be transcoded. However, not all web sites have to be transcoded. If your site is properly coded, it doesn’t have to be transcoded to render properly on a handheld device.
Novarra stated that they have created a W3C Content Transformation task force, whose goal will be to work closely with the W3C in order to improve their service, and find signals on web sites that indicate that they do not need to be transcoded.
The team will operate publicly so that people that are active in the mobile web community can provide input.
I’m really glad to hear about the efforts made from Novarra, and wish them good luck in their endeavors.