Mobile versions of website

Question: Should I have a complete mobile version of my website?

Answer: It is certainly an inconvenience to create a whole new version of your site, but the facts show that more people are accessing website from their mobile devices. For some people, this may even be their only method of regularly getting on the Web.

If your website is specifically geared for desktop users, then maybe making a mobile site is not so important or even not possible. But if your site provides information or a service, it is crucial to make sure people who access it from mobile devices will be able to use it.

There are a few Web companies that will create a mobile version of your site, and there are also plenty of tutorials that teach you how to streamline the conversion process. Moreover, W3C even has a mobileOK service that checks your website to see how mobile-friendly it is. Unfortunately, there is really no mobile standard. Screen sizes differ, as well as operating systems and browsers. Since you cannot test all mobile phones, try to create a site that is mostly text and is of variable size. Your visitors/customers will thank you.

Photo Source: Flickr

iPhone and smartphone SSH with WebShell

You cannot be at your desk 24/7 even if you are the best system administrator the world has ever known. You also cannot predict when your server will need attention or where you will be when it does. We live in an age where mobile devices are as common as clothing, so it is only natural that web servers should be accessible from mobile devices as well.

Enter: Webshell, a cross-platform mobile SSH tool that allows the user to access a remote server on a computer, iPhone, or any other mobile device that has a web browser. Webshell is written in Python and therefore runs on any Unix-like system, including Linux, BSD, and Mac OS X.

Webshell supports multiple terminal emulations, UTF-8 enconding, including chinese/japanese glyph support, a virtual keyboard for iPhone users, customizable appearance, and maintains all of the security of SSH since it still operates over SSL/TLS. Webshell is free and open source software (GPL) and available for download from the project’s website.

Apuestas.com.es sells for €39,000

Spanish domain Apuestas.com.es sold at auction this week for €39,000, or 56,768 USD. “Apuestas” is Spanish for “bets.”

In addition, mobile software company SPB Software bought SPB.com for $65,000 USD. Other sales of note include:

Apps.net- $25,900
AirportInfo.com- $22,222
ZH.com.cn- $18,000
PoolMerchants.com- $15,000
howtown.com- $10,000

In my opinion, the winner out of this bunch is apps.net. With every competitor in the mobile business trying to release applications and the popularity of Apple’s App Store, the term “app” has become much more common. Just look at the Google Trends data.