Archives for category: Mobile/Tablet

Mobile is the next big thing for news organizations, but not everyone has the time or manpower needed to create a site that looks good and works on all, or at least most, phones.

Google to the rescue.

DownloadSquad points out that anyone with an RSS feed can create a link for Google Reader’s mobile site by adding the feed URL to the prefix:

http://www.google.com/reader/m/view/feed/

For example,
http://www.google.com/reader/m/view/feed/http://feeds.feedburner.com/cw-ricochet
will create a live RSS link that goes straight go GReader. Try it here.

Its not foolproof, but it does appear to work for Feedburner URLs.

A similar workaround may be available for Yahoo!Go, Yahoo’s mobile application, but I haven’t found one yet. Hints or pointers would be appreciated.

The Times Online has a new ad campaign touting its revamped mobile site.

I pointed my cell phone browser to www.timesmobile.mobi, but so far I’m not impressed. It’s just one clickable banner ad at the top plus a list of links and linked headlines and a few fingernail-sized photos. (Ooo. “Fingernails.” Perhaps I’m coining a new term here for supersmall graphics.)

Somehow, I was expecting a richer experience, story summaries under the linked heds at least. A link to weather, traffic, sports and games. (Admittedly, at the bottom of the page there’s a link to the football, er, soccer page.) And since so many Internet-enabled phones can play sound, how about some audio?

I’ll check back in another week or so to see if perhaps I visited too early. In any case, the site could be better.