I ran across a neat little mobile site called i-Mode Webcams<\/em> which has links to fifty or so webcams around the world – mostly cityscapes and street scenes. Handy if you want to check the weather across the world or across the city. The images are scaled down to 120 pixels wide by default so they should work on just about any WAP2 phone. You can also specify a different width if your phone has a larger screen. You can even enter the url of any other webcam you happen to know of and view it on your mobile.<\/p>\n
Content: Usability:
html i-Mode<\/a><\/p>\n
The fact that this was an i-Mode site, lead me to do a bit of research into the whole i-Mode phenomenon. One of the first things I Googled was a fascinating article <\/a> in annoying PDF format about i-Mode at www.ion-global.com<\/a>, a multinational web (including mobile) development and marketing company. I’ve never heard ion-Global before and don’t know anything about them, but the article seems well researched. I coraborated most of the facts and dates at two other excellent i-Mode sites, NTT DoCoMo’s official i-Mode marketing page<\/a> and the Unofficial independent i-Mode FAQ<\/a>. For someone who writes about the mobile web, I know far too little about i-Mode. Like everyone, I’ve heard it’s great, that in Japan you see everyone browsing away on their phones, etc. I’ve also heard that the success of i-Mode is probably a uniquely Japanese phenomenon because of cultural and economic differences including the relatively high price of wired telephone and Internet service in Japan. Well, after reading the article, I wasn’t so sure that Western mobile developers, marketers and carriers couldn’t learn a thing or two from i-Mode.<\/p>\n
i-Mode is not only in Japan. DoCoMo has been trying to spread the technology worldwide with alliances and investments in mobile operators around the world. Adoption outside of Japan started slowly but seems to be gathering momentum, KPN in Holland, BASE in Belgium, E-Plus in Germany, Bouygues in France, Telefonica in Spain, Wind in Italy COSMOTE in Greece, Telestra in Australia and O2 in Great Britain have all launched i-Mode services – in most cases as an optional alternative to their existing WAP services. Initially, i-Mode email was a big selling point for these new services as there were few European i-Mode sites. i-Mode seems to be growing in Europe although slowly. In February, 2004 KPN celebrated their millionth i-Mode subscriber<\/a> as well as 400 official content providers. Of course, it was the discovery of an interesting European site that led to this article.<\/p>\n
OK, so you want to see some i_mode in action. A good place to start is http:\/\/www.shinkansen.com<\/a> an English language i-Mode portal with dozens of links to English i-mode sites in Japan. i-Mode, because it is mostly a subset of HTML will display reasonably well in IE, Firefox and Opera as well as most WAP2 browsers. You won’t see the emoji, instead you will get a question mark, little box or nothing at all where the emoji should appear. The latter is a problem as most links in i-Mode are on just the emoji not the text following it. The only browser that I’ve seen that strips emoji completely – thus removing the links is the Access Netfront browser used on some Sprint Sanyo handsets. Fortunately, most English i-Mode sites make very limited use of emoji. If you want you can download the DoCoMo iMode simulator<\/a> and see i-Mode sites as they should look. There is also a good online emulator at http:\/\/pukupi.com\/tools\/mimic\/<\/a><\/p>\n
Developing for i-Mode<\/strong> The official DoCoMo i-Mode developers site<\/a> in English is the best place to start. Note that all three Japanese providers are recommending the use of xhtml for new sites. The site has loads of documentation on i-Mode including specifications of the various technologies that make up i-Mode such as xhtml, cHtml, iappli which is a Version of Java ME, Flash, multimedia, email, security, barcode and ringtone protocols and a list of emoji with their character codes and what they mean. The DoCoMo site also has a wealth of downloadable tools to support development of all of the above.<\/p>\n
More References:
\nJapan cellular subscriber update<\/a> (pdf)
\nTime-Asia: Deflating DoCoMo<\/a>
\nIBM: i-mode – From bandwidth problem into Internet phenomenon<\/a>
\nBuild your own i-mode site fast and simple<\/a>
\nHow to create an i-mode site<\/a> (pdf)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I ran across a neat little mobile site called i-Mode Webcams which has links to fifty or so webcams around the world – mostly cityscapes and street scenes. Handy if you want to check the weather across the world or across the city. The images are scaled down to 120 pixels wide by default so they should work on just about any WAP2 phone. You can also specify a different width if your phone has a larger screen. You can … Continue reading