Linkbait 7

This week’s. Quality, not quantity.

• Interesting take on NFC: people will not actually use it for payments, but more for interaction. That means that the operators are following the wrong strategy, since they focus exclusively on payments (and their share of those payments).

  If someone walks out of a restaurant, and taps their phone on a theoretical Facebook-branded "Like" terminal on the way out, there isn't really a need for an uber-secure back end system. Same deal if I tap my phone at a gig, to get added to a band's mailing list. Or a million other applications and use cases.

  The net result is that an overwhelming % of all NFC connections will probably be non-financial. Not mobile payments. Not mobile ticketing with a pseudo-Oyster. Not peer-to-peer money transfer. They will be inter-actions, not trans-actions. Not only that, but these apps will appear much faster, assuming that readers are affordable and easy to use.

• The IE Mobile team gives a good overview of browser viewport managing. Focused on Windows Phone 7, obviously, but the described techniques work in all modern mobile browsers.
• Dennis Bournique lists the dangers of mobile web statistics such as StatCounter’s, which I use for my market share posts. He certainly has some good points that I need to return to in the future.
• Alex Russell continues his argument in favour of detecting browsers first and only using costly feature detection scripts if you don’t have information about the browser. He also proposes a new, very strict browser detection technique.
  Could work, and I’m one step closer to being convinced. We’ll have to offload the actual detection to the server, I’d say, because we do not want to send the dozens and dozens of regexes necessary to detect mobile browsers correctly over a mobile connection. We should also make sure the feature detection results are added to some centralised database that anyone can use.
• Jonathan Snook takes up the argument and calls for assumptive development.

  While my argument for using UA detection versus feature detection may lean towards feature detection, let it not be the only recourse.

  Use both, but in the end don’t be afraid to make assumptions. You have to do so anyway in the long run, so be honest and open about it, and about what kind of assumptions you’re making.
• Very important point about tablets vs. mobile phones:

  The fundamental difference between the tablet market and the smartphone market is distribution.

  Whereas smartphone distribution is dominated by wireless carriers, we expect carriers to play a relatively small role in tablet distribution. Tablet sales will be centered around electronics retail -- the Apple store, Best Buy, Walmart -- and big e-commerce, and not around carrier stores.

  The tablet market resembles the PC market, and not the mobile phone market. Operator subsidies remain vital for mobile phone sales, but are irrelevant for tablet sales. Operators could in theory subsidise tablets, but they already have trouble handling smartphone data traffic, and just can’t match consumer expectations for tablet connectivity. Once that changes, though, the tablet market could become more phone-like.
  Incidentally this analyst expects the tablet market to be more like the music-player market. Could be; it depends on whether one counts a tablet as a pure consumption device or also as a productivity device.
• Media Queries, a collection of responsive web design. In the time-honourd showcase format. Useful for getting inspiration and seeing how other people approach responsive design.
• Egypt’s revolution is about SMS. The government also understands this and sends customised text messages to various demographics.

  [...] different messages were sent to different phones, perhaps indicating that the Egyptian government has specific information on each mobile owner.

  The best and the worst of the mobile revolution in one simple example.
• At MWC in Barcelona new software will be unveiled that will allow Android apps to run on non-Android phones. The article immediately points to Nokia’s new MeeGo OS as one of the potential beneficiaries of such software: it could start out its life with a well-filled app portfolio.
• Like Nokia, Microsoft plans a management shake-up. Less sales people, more techies.
• Some details about the BlackBerry PlayBook (tablet) browser. Seems to be a slightly updated port of the BB WebKit that runs on OS6.
• Remember M-PESA, the Kenyan mobile banking system? It has become possible to load your money from your phone to your credit card. Note the direction: from phone to card. The article doesn’t mention the reverse.
• And Pirates Love Daisies remains a fun HTML5 game. Not for mobile browsers — yet.
• DUTCH. Als je een Linkbait-achtige site wilt volgen, maar dan dagelijks, in het Nederlands, en met minder mobiel en meer traditioneel webnieuws, ga dan naar Vasilis van Gemerts Daily Nerd.
• Have a tip for next week?