Why Microsoft and Windows Phone 7 is the best way to pee in your pants

DISCLAIMER: I work for Nokia, Forum Nokia.
DISCLAIMER 2: What I am going to say here is exclusively my own thinking and analysis and based only on what is publicly known.
I have no insight on why and how the decisions were made, no insight of any behind-doors-agreements, gossip or promises.
What I am writing here is simply the result of my thinking based on what I have read and heard in the public announcements. Continue reading “Why Microsoft and Windows Phone 7 is the best way to pee in your pants” →

Google, Apple and the Internet OS

The other day I was reading a great post by Tim O’Reilly entitled The State of the Internet Operating System. It’s a long article if you are used to the average blog post (not very different from what this one will be!), but it’s worth reading all of it.

Now, if you are done reading it, I wonder if you agree with him or not. When I started reading and probably up to one third, I was not understanding where he was going to end up, but then I had a A-HA moment and all of sudden I realised what he means and I completely agree. It is something that has been in my mind for a while, but I was never able to put it down in words as well as Tim O’Reilly did. One of the reasons recently I’ve been paying particular attention to where I sign in, which cookies are in browser and where I go is that I can see where Google are going and how they are expanding their APIs and how developers are using them more and more. Google are amazing at how they are identifying growing trends, developing new technologies or acquiring companies and integrating their existing products. Add to this their release speed and you have an amazing juggernaut heading to the conquest of the Internet Operating System. They are obviously dominating the Web and you don’t need me to tell you that they are doing very well with APIs. Come in mobile devices and more in general mobile computing. Google have not left any base uncovered and they have the already successful Android and the upcoming Chrome OS. Then at the latest Google I/O the Google TV is announced in partnership with Sony, a company that has always tried to develop its own technologies and keep them as closed as possible. If they have given up to Google it means Google is giving them something that is worth a lot.
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Go mobile with WP Super Cache and the Mobile Pack

If you want your blog to stay as fast as possible and you want to support mobile users you will have to reach some compromise.

This was true until today. With the WordPress Mobile Pack version 1.2.1 you now can get the best of both worlds. Here is a quick guide on how to achieve it. I am assuming you have installed the latest version of WP Super Cache, already.
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Getting W3 Total cache to work with WordPress Mobile Pack

If your WordPress site has enough traffic you have been considering a cache plugin. Most people download WP Super Cache, plainly said the most popular plugin for WordPress. W3 Total Cache is a different plugin that aims to achieve about the same, but has a number of advantages such as support CDN, minifying CSS and JS and more. From a quick look at the code it looks much lighter and more in general it has a different approach to cache.
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Making Super Cache and mobile work well

If you are using WordPress for anything critical beyond your local football team, then you know that the use of a cache plugin is a must.

WP Super Cache is the best known cache plugin, if not the most famous plugin of all. Initially it did not play well with admins that also wanted a mobile presence and it is very simple to explain, the whole purpose of the cache is to generate the file dynamically once, store it and then serve it again without any further computation. As the years went by, mobile became more important and WP Super Cache integrated a basic mobile support. Recently donncha introduced a fundamental new feature, the ability for other plugins to define actions. I will not go into the details of how this works and what you can do, you can read all of it on the WordPress site.
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My 3 euro iPad stand

I will not mention how I could not resist buying an iPad while visiting a friend in NYC, but I will say that while I love using it on the couch, when watching movies I like to have have it standing on a table or desk. When I bought it the kind Apple store seller offered me a cover in fake-leather (very disappointing!) for just 40USD that could also be used as a stand. I was not impressed at all and decided not to get it and save the 40 dollars for a later occasion.

When I was at home the other day I noticed an unused plate stand that seemed perfect and in fact IT IS perfect for my iPad. Here is a picture:

Also, you can find as many as you wish online and if you get it in clear plastic like mine you won’t even notice it. Looks perfect to me!

WordPress on Mobile at WordCamp Ireland

This weekend I traveled to the beautiful Kilkenny to talk with developers and designers about mobile. Of course mobile is my bread and butter, but I thought it would be a good challenge to talk about it to people that have never worked on it or maybe still see it as a niche and something that is not SO interesting.
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WordCamp Ireland report

I am just back from WordCamp Ireland, a two-day conference about WordPress and blogging in general. Have you ever been to a WordCamp? Are you interested in blogging, or more in general about writing content on Internet? Then you SHOULD be going to a WordCamp!

I don’t know if it was this one that was particularly good, but there are so many positive things that I’ve experienced at this event, that I strongly recommend you to go as soon as you can. You have gone already? Then go again! 😉

If you don’t know what happens in a WordCamp, then here’s a quick list of things you can expect. To start off, it’s not a conference for geeks only, it’s about blogging and writing good content to publish on Internet. I admit you will likely meet a bunch of geeks, but you will also meet a lot of “normal people” that are passionate about Internet and want to get their ideas online. The general attire is very relaxed and equally the socialization is very easy going.

I have been to a number of conferences and this was easily one of the best and I’m saying so because I have a long list of things I have learnt and things I’ve heard and that now I was to learn better. This is probably the best outcome that you can get from a conference.

Small disclaimer: I was one of the speaker and not surprisingly I was talking about mobile, but for once, not to mobile nerds. Presentation coming to the Internet very soon.

Nokia mobile theme for Drupal released

After many hours of work spread over a couple of months, I have finally released the first version of the Nokia Mobile Theme on drupal.org.

The theme is really a theme on steroids! While normally it should just deal with printing out to screen a few tags and content, in my case I had to add a number of functions for device detection. We wanted to be able to distinguish between a basic mobile device and a high-end one, plus we laid down the foundations for a mid-end presentation. Since the Mobile Plugin did not provide the level of detail that I needed, I had to create my own functions that at this stage are mostly overriding what the plugin does. A lot of the experience made with the WordPress Mobile Pack was put to good use, fortunately.

You can check out the official project page to download the files. Also, check out the handbook page for installation details and if you feel too lazy to read, why not look at the video tutorial?

The work is not over, the plugin is good, but I think it could do better and for this reason I’ve teamed up with the author, Teemu, and we will release some interesting updates such as a new light detection and some extra extensibility that should allow template designers to have more freedom.

Feedback is very welcome, of course, either here or on the Drupal site.

Nokia mobile theme for Drupal demo

In an effort to show what you can achieve with the nokia_mobile theme that (hopefully) will be released shortly, I set up a small demo site with some dummy content. You can visit the site with your mobile device at dtest.dreamhosters.com. Don’t hold your breath, it’s dummy content, but the device detection and how the theme adapts based on the device capabilities should be evident.

The Mobile Plugin normally uses a PHP implementation of the WURFL API, unfortunately on a cheap hosting service (I bought dreamhost’s CHEAPEST possible offer on purpose) this crashes the server. So for this demo I started implementing what is in my view the next step, a very basic device detection that will enable site owners to decide what they want to do. If they have a lot of content optimised for different devices, they should pick WURFL and use the advanced rules settings available in the plugin, on the other hand, if they want a basic detetion and provide just two or three layouts, a simple detection should be more than enough. With the current demo version, no cache files are generated and the detection is instant. I would like to make this part of Mobile Plugin, eventually and better integrate the device classification that I built in the nokia_mobile theme.

More on device classification in the next days.