mobile

Mashable has written a simple and short write up on creating a mobile website:

http://mashable.com/2010/07/13/mobile-web-optimization/

It is short, but contains some links to good resources on developing mobile website.

This week I launched a Foursquare module for Drupal.

The launch of this module fits in a local experiment that lists several NYC based bars. This effort resulted in http://www.buybacknyc.com.

Further, this twitter quote directed to me raises some serious issues that must be addressed thoroughly in the Drupal community ;)

UiTinVlaanderen (dutch for 'Going out in flanders') is the biggest cultural events site in Belgium and it is powered by Drupal.

Amplexor, an IT services company specialized in content management systems, has now created a mobile version of the site optimized for all mobile devices.

The mobile site allows you to quickly navigate through all the events in your neighborhood and the mobile website augments the experience by taking your GPS coordinates into account.

The website provides an easy way to browse through all the events across Flanders, view event and location information.

Together with the recently launched mobile Drupal site of http://www.stubru.be, this is again an example of how Siruna powers Drupal in order to leverage a mobile audience.

The site can be accessed with your mobile device by surfing to http://www.uitinvlaanderen.be

If you want to experiment with creating a mobile Drupal site, surely check out OSMOBI

....with the release of m.stubru.be the mobile site of the nr.1 public broadcast radio station "Studio Brussel".

Studio Brussel, the nr. 1 radio station of the Belgian public broadcaster VRT has released last week it's mobile website using Siruna technology.

From 3 to 5 may you will find a part of the Drupal, Joomla! and Wordpress community at CMSExpo Chicago.

3 days packed with knowledgable speakers such as Dries Buytaert, founder of Drupal and Wilco Jansen, one of the main driving forces behind Joomla!

The conference will be packed with sessions covering the internals and externals of the most popular open source CMS systems today.

This year I am very glad that Mobile has entered the schedule and that I was invited to give a talk about creating a mobile CMS.

We are working hard these days to make sure that OSMOBI enables Drupal and Joomla! developers to go mobile with their existing installations, and this by doing a minimum of effort (and cost).

Since our Beta launch on Drupalcon Paris, we have come a long way towards creating this service. Build on top of our open source content transcoder we allow automated transcoding of your site + optimization using a (hopefully :)) user friendly GUI.

And today we are happy to announce a new OSMOBI release. Most notable changes are:

• Performance gains of the Joomla! plugin and Drupal module
• Support for image resizing
• More customization possible of the default theme
• Applying style changes to "id", "class" attributes and the choice of applying them to the current page, or all pages.
• ....

For who want's to take a look at the architecture, we have published our manual.

This weekend another wel organized Drupalcamp New York took place: http://groups.drupal.org/new-york-city

I could only attend half a day of the conference, but enough to see that the rest of the day would be great... For the next edition, new locations are being sought that can accommodate more Drupal enthusiasts.

At the event, Siruna was of course sponsor in an effort to support the Drupal community (of course) but also to promote Osmobi: http://www.osmobi.com

(Before your read further, head to http://www.osmobi.com, create an account and mobilize one of your drupal sites!! ;)).

A framework to keep an eye on: http://www.phonegap.com

PhoneGap allows you to use HTML, Javascript and CSS to create mobile applications using native functionality such as:
- access the camera
- access the contact list
- get geolocation information
- read acceleration data
- creating beeps and vibrations

The great thing is that no complicated Java or Objective C development is needed to make powerfull applications... It works for most major mobile devices: iPhone, Android, Palm Pré, Symbian, Blackberry and in the future Windows mobile.

December looks like another month full of Drupalcamps. Siruna will be represented on many of the coming Drupalcamps as sponsors and where possible I will try to give some demonstrations on how to get the most out of Osmobi

Three of the drupalcamps where you will find us soon are

Drupalcamp New York

On saturday 5 december you will find me at Drupal Camp New York. The venue quickly reached it's maximum capacity so a big crowd is expected to talk about Drupal!

Drupalcamp Chicago

The week afterwards you there is Drupal camp chicago. If you are attending, hopefully I will meet you during one of my proposed sessions: Making mobile websites with drupal

Drupalcamp Ghent (Belgium)

And yes, the Drupalcamp Ghent will be the first Drupalcamp in Belgium and will happen next to the Siruna offices!
To bad I will not be there , but my colleagues certainly will be present!

This is one of the nicest Drupal Camp badges I have ever seen... Some similarity with the NYC badge cannot be denied ;)

More events...

If you are organizing your local Drupal event, drop me a not if you are searching for sponsors or speakers... Building the mobile site of your event can also be an option!!

One of the cooler application you can build on mobile, are application taking advantage of the GPS or other location detecting capabilities of your browser.

In short, getting location in your browser is done by using a javascript api that is supported by the mobile browsers. Currently different implementations exist for accessing the location in your mobile browser.

Lately I started looking at the geo-location-javascript library: http://code.google.com/p/geo-location-javascript