Category: Mobile

Speaking at Web Visions in May

I’m happy to announce that I will be speaking at Web Visions on May 23rd on “Going Fast on the Slow Mobile Web.”

Speaking at Web Visions has been a goal of mine for a few years now. Every year Web Vision brings the best and brightest to Portland to talk about the future of web development. After each conference, I’d tell my co-workers that the following year I was going to put together a presentation for Web Visions. Well, I finally did it! :-)

My topic this year combines two interests of mine: the mobile web and web site performance. We’ll be covering the steps necessary to make the web as fast as possible on mobile devices including looking at device-specific details that make performance on mobile devices more challenging.

I’m honored to be included with such a list of illustrious speakers. As I mentioned in my previous post, Jeffrey Veen’s presentation from Web Visions is one of the best I’ve ever seen. Roger Black is one of the big names in design. I’m stunned to be sharing the stage with them. Then we’ve got fellow twitterers and friends like Erica O’Grady and Scott Kveton. And I could go as there are so many names on that speakers list that I admire.

I’m truly overwhelmed and looking forward to May. I hope to see you there. Sign up today for early bird rates.

Web Visions Early Bird Rates End Tomorrow

If you are interested in attending Web Visions, I encourage you to Jeffrey Veen whose last keynote at Web Visions was worth the price of admission alone. His presentation remains my favorite and is something that I’ve used to inform my thinking many times.

So if you do anything web related, I can’t recommend this conference enough. Plus, you may recognize a familiar name on the speaker list. :-)

Verizon’s “Open Networks” Not Very Open, Sprint Breaks the Web

Verizon announced that they would open their network late last year. Last week they provided details which shows that it isn’t terribly open.

Verizon also one the recent spectrum bidding where again, the definition of open is being debated.

Carlo Longino of MobHappy has written about how “open” has become the big buzzword for mobile this year, but most of what is being called open isn’t really very open.

My favorite is Sprint’s new “OpenWeb” service which seems to be breaking everything on the web. What a mess.

Google Speeds Up Mobile Sites, Sees Traffic Increase

One of the reasons for my interest in site performance is because these techniques become even more important when developing for mobile. Google published some recent evidence supporting this belief.

“We saw something similar after we launched an updated interface for Gmail on the iPhone during MacWorld earlier this year. Lots of iPhone users tried the new interface (hence the bump in Gmail pageviews between January and February), but they didn’t stick around like we hoped they would. Over the course of the next few weeks, we made some tweaks to drastically improve the speed of the product, and Gmail pageviews on the iPhone not only stabilized, but began to rise, as the graph below shows:”

gmail-latency-improvement.png

Read more at Google’s blog.

Mobile Presentation Posted

After a process that took far too long, I’ve finally managed to publish my slides from last week’s mobile presentation.

The big news out of the event was the announcement of Mobile Portland, a new user group focused on mobile development. We’re currently planning our first meeting for March. Sign up now receive details on our first meeting.