Mobile ready sites might make more sense than mobile apps. Here are some things to consider before making a decision.

Many company apps of today are the static sites of the early 2000s. People are just shelling out dollars without knowing what or why. They only hear that everyone has an app, so think they must get one as well. Ultimately it comes down to what benefits you see your app providing the user.

Games are clearly the leading motivator. Flash does not work on almost all mobile devices and tablets. By creating an app, you can deploy Flash based games on those devices. However, depending on what the game entails you might be able to achieve a similar experience with HTML5 / CSS3 / jQuery. They are not as robust as Flash, but you might still get a close experience, plus it will be one game for all platforms and devices.

Offline usage is the only definite reason to build an app. Sometimes, you want to give people the chance to interact with the app when they are not connected to the internet, but still deliver the data once they are connected. Obviously you could not do that with an online only presence.

The cost behind building apps is far higher than most people know ahead of time. If you need a game, offline content access or have a scenario where user interface is paramount an app might make perfect sense. Most of the time the apps I see are not really necessary. They are interfaces to data found online. If that is the case, build your site in a smart fashion and it will benefit all visitors.

A key benefit of a responsive site is that you have an easier way to manage the experience. Web sites work reasonably well across platforms. With the use of responsive design, you can maintain the user experience across devices. By keeping things online, you are able to deploy your new offering to all phones with a modern web browser. No need to build a specific app for each platform.

I tend to lean toward the well built site. In my opinion, it is more cost effective and updates to the site flow out to the mobile experience. Plus, as device technology changes, it adds a bit of future proof to your investment. In the end, the most important thing is to be mobile ready one way or the other.

Okay, I am going to try and not just re-link to other people’s posts without adding my own two cents, but this one does not have much room to expand (short of in its’ uses). It is, however, an extremely awesome tip for you .css coders out there. The universal selector ‘*’. NOTE: you do not need the quotes, just the asterisk.

As this brief article shows, this little addition to your .css opens up a myriad of opportunities, and even fix some things that you used to have to ‘hack.’

Not too shabby for a simple one character addition.

The FBI is monitoring everything they can. Even your phone is against you. While I am not concerned of being seen as a criminal, it makes me wonder why I am being treated like one. Is this really any different from wire taps? Technically, sure. But it is quite the slippery slope we have been climbing since Homeland Security decided we were not trustworthy. Why are we being hassled, and how is it for our protection? The short answer is it is not for our protection. It is for our control.

Every time we post things on social sites we are giving up more and more control over our data. It becomes public domain and can be used against you. A data profile is forming for everyone of us. Even taken out of context you could end up in the same trouble as people actually engaged in criminal activity. I have been talking for the past several years about the need for a way to still be connected to the world using the internet, but without being so exposed. Why should I be cut off from such a wonderful resource just because other forces want to snoop in my life?

I have been looking into a few solutions to help with the above. It seems like (obviously) I am not alone in this. Firstly, did you know you can set up a web server on a Flash Drive? This is a device you can take with you, and plug into any computer to access it. It means all your personal data is portable, but not tied into any static location. While there are ways to still get at the information, because nothing is completely secure, you can rest assured that no one is prowling your machine while you are sleeping. Or even working. Even if they are, they are not getting anything sensitive unless that drive is plugged in. Pretty nifty!

Taking things a bit further, a slightly more robust solution is out there. This is still under development, but Eben Moglen has a server that allows you to do everything privately from your home, or ostensibly anywhere you plug it in. This appears to be more a a personal computer than a portable server. I understand that they are very similar, but the previous option is really meant to run through a computer. Mr. Moglen has a contraption which would be your computer. Thus, you have a computer and privacy rolled into one. This month, he created the Freedom Box Foundation to organize the software. Definitely a great solution, if he gets all the ducks in a row.

Lastly, and possibly more importantly, what about your web site? That is the home for your data in the future. Your space in the sprawl of cyberspace. Where you can grow your own social equity and hang out with the people you want to see. Now, what if you could treat this the same way you treat your home? What if you could ‘leave’ and if solicitors came by, they could knock but you would not be there to answer. So they move on. Your site can be handled in a similar fashion. If you disconnect from the internet, you are not there for the bots to scour and extract your data. They could get you when you come back online, but it would be more difficult. The spam bots hijacking your email would not have endless hours of chewing their way in while your site is dormant. After all, you are not doing something on your site 24 hours a day, but there it sits with all the data you have provided.

I have been looking into a way to keep your website as mobile as you are. DDNS is a way to use Dynamic DNS to target your website. With this idea, you could always have your site with you, and take it down when you are not online.

I understand that there could be some issues with it. People would not have 24 hour access to you, for one. However, does that really matter? I think we have given too much of our freedom up in order to be ‘found.’ Cell phones being a great example. Remember when you left the house and just turned on the answering machine? Or not! Yup. We really did once leave home with no way to have our pockets vibrate and interrupt our evenings out. Now, we see the trap of these conveniences. Always available means always locatable means always monitor-able. What a price we pay!

Firstly, I am as guilty as most in all of the above. I have a cell phone. I use a computer daily for work. I limit my exposure, but I do have a web site. I am not trying to place myself above anyone else out there as more savvy or more aware. All I want to do is help people think about what choices they are making and then offer some solutions to change their current situation. Pulling yourself out of the mass data pool might keep you dry while everyone else takes a bath.

The basic idea is that you use Conditional Comments to put a wrapper around your site. This is only seen by IE. All others simply display your page as they should. The tag is written just after the body tag and closed before you close your body. Very easy. In fact, here is the code for your HTML:

<body>
<!––[if IE]><div id=”IEroot”>< ![endif]––>
<p>Whatever other elements for your page.</p>
<!––[if IE]></div>< ![endif]––>
</body>

That is it. Now, you can write your styles like this:

/* all browsers make border red */
#p { border : 2px solid red; }
/* all browsers see this, but only IE thinks #IEroot exists as an element and makes border blue */
#IEroot #p { border-color : blue; }

The nice thing about this approach is you can further customize the Conditional Comments to suit your needs. Better is unless the IE team decides to remove Conditional Comments, you have a future-proof fix. At most, you might need to modify the way the Conditional Comments are written should that ever change. But compare that to having to go back through hundreds of lines of CSS which are rendered useless because the IE team fixes existing bugs we regularly exploit to make our pages work.

I only wish I knew of this a few years ago.

Are you tired of having your forms appear with colored background when you know you did not code it? Wonder why it is only in IE? Well, as many of you already know, the Google bar in the IE browser has an option to auto complete form fields. While this is definitely a handy thing, it is probably not how you pain stakingly designed the page. As well, it does not even do it to all of the fields so the style is not even consistent. Good news, there is a fix!

Since it is not always a reality that your visitors will know to go up and disable the functionality of the Google toolbar, CSS will have to save the day. Here is all you need to add to your style sheet:

input { background-color: white ! important}

Viola! Now your page appears as desired. Thanks to html dog for posting the solution.

We are not meant to be isolationists. We are not meant to distrust our fellow man. We are not meant to be conniving and self-serving to our own ends. We are part of a social tribe. A network of helping, where everyone does their share and the group prevails. Did you read that? The group and not the individual. Our current life style bucks this system which existed since way before written records. The lure of the Dollar, Euro, Yen, etc is stronger than our own since of duty to each other.

The biggest result is the stifling of self. We lose ourselves in the quest to obtain the newest, shiniest, bell-and-whistliest thing out there. We over extend our selves morally and financially to impress our neighbors. But what about ourselves? Are we really impressed with what we are doing, or are we impressed by our own impression upon others? It seems like the salad days are gone before we even get a chance to realize what we have lost. Kids are forced to choose their majors before their senior year of High School so they know where to apply. Most kids have never even worked when they make this decision. How could they possibly know?

Well, I have been a part of this cycle. I want out. Therein lies the rub: what sort of exit strategy really exists? Of that, I am not yet sure. I am sure of this. I do not care about having the biggest house. I do not care about having the newest car. I do not care about dying with the most money. I want to enjoy my days, spending time with the ones I love and creating. Watching sunsets. Getting up early because I want to, and not because I did not finish my work. I want to make my art and live and breathe my life. I am tired of working to live. I am glad I hit this realization at an early age, because I have time to figure my exit strategy.

I believe you, and the world, would benefit if you gave thought to this as well.

Daily there are new applications being conceived and launched into the public sphere where they are snapped up and given a seal of approval or dropped in lieu of a better solution. The wars are endless as everyone wants to build the better mousetrap, which is great. Advancements along these lines should come and we welcome them. They all aim to make our lives somehow easier, more productive or more fun. Where is the harm? For that, we need to look at what lies beneath.

The biggest flaw, as I see it, with the device market is not the apps. It is not even a specific product. It’s that there are too many fish in the pond all trying to speak their own language. If we could simply have a unified platform for the developers, imagine what could be done. An application not available for all to use because of being tied to proprietary systems become a thing of the past. Developers would not need to design for multiple platforms. Wouldn’t it be grand if companies dropped their egos, put their swinging members away and just worked on developing a single, outstanding platform? I sure think so.

We’ve seen it time and time again, and not really having to go too far back in time. Beta or VHS. Browser wars. HD versus Blue Ray. Millions of dollars spent by the consumer, only to purchase the losing horse. Even more money laid out by the developing companies to get their product ready to market, marketed and then tossed aside. What if, instead, they had worked together? What if they opted to simply pool their forces in hopes of making the best possible solution? All the R&D teams working to get the best ideas working, and working well, within the single format.

Now returning to the world of devices. A single platform would allow developers to finely hone the system and offer every application to every user. Incorporating great support of Outlook and the elegance of iPod Touch interface? Why not! The end product would be far superior to anything currently out there, because it would be the sum of all available parts. The app market would even benefit from only having to code for a single framework. I am not suggesting we only have a device to buy. All the manufactures could produce their own versions. Different colors, options whatever. It is simply the underlying technology which would be homogenous. There is no reason to kill off the entire free market.

We need is a single OS to build on. Something which can be used by everyone with a group of standards to adhere to. A system which does not care if it lives on a Droid, BlackBerry, iPhone or whatever comes along next. The core OS in lock down, making it possible for you to pick your favorite device poison, but all applications are now available to you. Which means that future appliances, automobiles or whatever can be created to sync with the device much more easily with the groundwork set and parameters known. All those machines would have no reason to rise up, because they all get along.

It is inevitable that the voices flying around our world will sometimes attach themselves to our brain. We cannot help but have take them in. Modern marketers ought not scare up mass Influentials and instead seek to tap into our peer group.

In the future, we will bring our influences to the company directly, and we will be compensated. They will not be able to find us simply and efficiently, so we need to go to them. It might not be exceptionally lucrative, but things can add up. It is no longer about finding the one prophetic voice to sell anything to anyone. There does not need to be a Golden Goose.

Following Silver Geese

The generally accepted notion is that the time and effort to locate the Golden Goose is simply not worth it. The people we are close to are the biggest Influentials in our daily existence. Period. Every group has them. How do you know what new restaurants to visit? What new bands are worth the hype? While our friends are not all universally informed, but they do have their proficiencies. Someone is always up on a specific area, and that is who we turn to for help. This does not mean we blindly follow them, but their input does help inform our views.

Let’s take an example of a new, hot band being touted by a peer.

It stands to reason that our friend did not just invent a band name, type it into the search engine of choice, find that magically there was a band of said name and that they were awesome. That would be quite some luck, no? Instead, they were told of the band from a source and then they, in turn, passed the knowledge on to us making them an ‘influential’ in our peer group. Precisely who influenced to our friend is not important, and almost impossible to pin down to a single source. The point is that they exist and influenced our friend into checking out the band we are now being told to check out.

That is the new target, our influential friends, the Silver Geese.

New Target Marketing

The near goal will be peer level Influentials approaching companies and advertising being worked out that way. Given the ‘influential’ nature of the person, there is a value to that. It might be small, but there could be a value. Only this time, companies have a better focus on where those endorsements are coming from and Influentials are only influencing for things they support.

Given, the metrics are not in place to truly give a clear picture of what someone’s influence is worth, yet. It makes sense for companies / organizations / individuals to be ready to alter the way they allocate marketing budgets and media buys. Once they give Influentials incentive to come on their own, Influentials will cash their social equity and the company will pay them directly.

Returning to Mr. Green’s blog, I would recommend any of you looking at this and with an interest in the current state of marketing and the online social strata please check out some of the links he has posted. I liked, in particular, “The Anatomy of a Movement” by David Armano.