It’s becoming increasingly obvious to marketeers that consumers are quite happy to click on the ‘Like’ button on a website or Facebook page – a much easier task than convincing consumers to give away their email address to ‘Sign up for Newsletter’ on their corporate websites.

Visit the Tescos Facebook page here:
http://www.facebook.com/TescoGB?sk=app_152412024816199

This follows on from corporates moving their marketing to social tools and campaigns rather than focussing on their corporate websites. The alcholic drinks brand Smirnoff noticed that should they drop their corporate website, it would not affect their brand at all. However they were able to engage with their consumers through Facebook from their campaign pages. Consumers are willing to engage with campaigns, but not so willing to engage with corporates.

Facebook page tracker counts 600,000 branded pages and over 90% have less than 1000 fans…

Now I like the fact that designers are now thinking about design in 2 1/2 dimensions, in that they’re designs should be fluid and great website design should look great in all resolutions and ratios.

However my thought is that responsive layouts using media queries are not the solution for a mobile version of a desktop targetted website, in that the markup still contains the same content as the desktop version, it simply hides it from the mobile browser. That means it still has to load the same markup and potentially load the same media (images etc) – on a mobile network this could be very significant!

Another point of view was whether with mobile browsers becoming so sophisticated that most smart phones can display desktop targetted websites exactly like their desktop counterparts.

My view is that in a mobile situation the normal website is too bloated to be useful. Too many bytes to download and use quickly. To me the whole point of a useful mobile device is to be able to get to information quickly – and the context is different – I have different requirements and I want different things. Shouldn’t we consider those usability issues when building a website that should also work on mobile devices?

Usability guru Jacob Nielson appears to agree and his thoughts are here: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/mobile-usability.html

After much deliberation I opted for an HTC Desire. I’ve had it for 2 weeks now and I’m genuinely enjoying it. I think Android is great – being an open platform it’s so easily extensible however it does has its shortcomings. I couldn’t believe that the phone is lacking a voice dialing over bluetooth, something that i use a lot with my Blackberry I hadn’t even checked that it didn’t support it. Also, battery life is pretty appalling – I could go a whole weekend without charging my Blackberry and the Desire needs charging every night – it’s not a big deal but still such a shame. I want to use the phone – i don’t want to use the phone worrying that i could be running the battery down.

Typing on a screen still sucks. I don’t care what any iPhone fanboy tells me – typing on a screen sucks. To be honest i would’ve bought the HTC with the slideout keyboard had it had a faster processor. I still think the best keyboard I’ve ever used on a phone was on my Blackberry curve 8900 – I thought it was even better than the 9700 as it had a distinctive click feel, not the spongy feel of the 9700 keyboard.

I’ve been so frustrated that BB have taken so long in releasing BB 6 for the 9700 – I may revisit the 9700 when BB 6 comes out for it.

Overall I think that even without BB 6, it is a much more refined and useful phone – it does all the things you want from a phone well. Great signal, battery life, easy texting and typing, etc etc. but simply lacks the ability to do other things such as browsing and apps to be able to compete with iPhones and Androids.

I believe Android phones may not have Apples momentum I would put money on them winning out in the long run – all the Google apps are so brilliant and high quality. You don’t ever have the issue that iPhone users have when they say to me “Oh, Apple won’t let me do that…”. If Google continue to keep pace with iPhone it won’t be too long before they overtake… (in fact current sales figures show they are very close to doing that already)

The past few months have been fairly hectic though. Prior to the move, I was spending most weekends and evenings packing. Then post move, I’ve spent most weekends and evenings unpacking, DIYing, and trying to find space to put everything.

Almost 2 months since moving in the house is much more comfortable to live in so all the hard work (and sweat) has paid off and now we can look forward to Junior arriving in October…

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Told you it was exciting.

Facebook Pages vs Facebook Groups: What’s the Difference?

In a related note there is an article in the Times about the Battle of Britain beacon with a video produced by Flipside:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article7125952.ece

Clearly Jobs felt the backlash required an in depth letter! I mean seriously, he really wanted to make his point. The mere fact that he felt it required that kind of response is exactly the reason why I think he may have shot himself in the foot…

Listen, when you have a bunch of such loyal customers like Apple do (and if you know me, you know I’m not one of them) you shouldn’t be dictating to them what content they can or cannot see! The fact that the web is littered with Flash content – WHY prevent those loyal customers from seeing it?!

Jobs does makes some valid points – yes Flash is resource heavy, yes Flash has always been slow on Apple products, but that is not your customers problem: it’s Apples.

Mr Jobs can’t sit on his pedestal and criticise Flash for being proprietary – the majority of Apple software isn’t ‘Open’ either!! Apple dictate what apps go on the store, you cannot install your apps onto your iPap product without the Apple store, and I bet if a 3rd party wrote a Flash viewing app, it’d get rejected!!

He criticises Adobe for being old fashioned, but Jobs’ view on the world is far more archaic. The public do not like to be dictated to. It reminds me of when Yahoo felt that they had enough of a user base to start making money by sticking adverts all over their homepage. Subsequently we all started using Google. How much do you think it would be worth to Google (in terms of money) if they allowed 1 banner on their homepage? But they don’t. Because their users wouldn’t like it.

OK, I’m not a massive Apple fan – however I was starting to shine to the idea of an iPad, but this ‘article’ by Jobs today has really put me off. I’m sure I won’t be the only potential or existing customer who is not going to let Jobs dictate to me what content I can or cannot see…

Mr Jobs  - you muppet