One Billion Mobile Pages Served and Counting

From my desk...

Kudos to our good friends at Opera who announced yesterday that they had reached the milestone of 1 billion web pages served in the first 7 months since they launched their awesome Opera Mini browser. Interestingly Russians topped the list of most avid mobile browsers, followed by U.S., India, Scandinavia and the United Kingdom. High mobile usage in many countries is a reflection of low PC penetration, though U.S. users would seem to want to consume their web anywhere and everywhere. Sony, which this week unveiled its Mylo handheld web surfing and email device--with Opera bundled, is banking on this growing popularity. But for $349 couldn't they have matched the Sidekick and built in a phone?

It's All in the Wrist, er, Thumbs...

Filed from my desk...

Despite our name--as many of you have pointed out--our initial content offering has leaned more towards news and services than games. But we're actively trying to put the "play" back in Mobileplay! A half-dozen or so game developers are currently or will shortly be integrating with our ad-supported network. When you have 5 or 10 to kill waiting for that bus, sometimes a wee Tetris goes just as far as the latest smear from ValleyWag to relieve the tedium. Since my mind has been on games lately, I was pleased to see a column from Pocket Gamer's Chris James with 10 Tips for improving the quality of mobile entertainment. One I particularly liked, which goes for any mobile app, was "Provide the player a reward within the first 30 seconds." Since the likelihood is high that a mobile gamer has spent a hefty slice off life struggling to get the darn thing onto the phone that's advice well-heeded. The other was to add a dash of "madness or humor." It is just a game after all. We'll definitely keep his advice in mind and maybe just maybe we can help get the other 97.7% of the U.S. public engaged in one of our favorite pasttimes.

Opera Mini + Mobileplay=?

Filed from my desk...

When we first started playing around with Opera's new Mini 2.0 browser we couldn't believe what a huge improvement it was over other mobile browsers. And we're not just talking about WAP. That included browsers like Pocket IE and Blazer designed for powerful smartphones. The secret is that Opera does a lot of the formatting, compression and compiling on their servers so the download and display speeds on device are incredible, even via slower data networks. This makes a lot of sense for phones, particularly lower end models.

So that is why we decided to partner with them to deliver a browser-based version of our content on Java-enabled phones. That's not to say we aren't stilll big believers in applications-based content delivery. There are huge advantages for many forms of content when they are delivered via sync, and can be cached on device for offline viewing when you don't have a data connection. This is particularly true for mobile games and some of our more database-driven and location-based applications for smartphones.

The world of mobile content delivery is still in its early stages and involves a lot of experimenting, especially when you want to be out on the pioneering fringes. We look forward to your feedback as we provide new and different options for viewing content and services for your mobile device. Browser vs. Application? You decide.