Enabling your blogs for mobile
by Blogie • 10 November 2008
In this age of high technology, you find an increasing number of people with more than just cellular phones — there are PSPs, iPods, smart devices with a huge identity crisis (are they phones or cameras or something else entirely?), and there are more to come for sure.
Suffice it to say that we are now in an era of heightened mobility. We now demand — nay, expect — to have our desired information readily available via our handheld gadgets. Therefore, as a publisher, I thought it important to get my blogs’ content onto other platforms other than the Web browser.
I’d like to share what I’ve found for doing exactly that: Feedm8.com.
Feedm8 is a service that lets you republish your blog’s RSS or Atom feed for mobile consumption. Now that 3G and HSDPA have become prevalent, coupled with the relatively affordable airtime rates, it would be a very good idea to offer up your content to people on the go.
And in Davao City and other parts of the country with widespread free Wifi access, mobile information on hand is becoming more and more commonplace.
For example: my food blog. Modesty aside, quite a number of people refer to Davao Delicious when they’re thinking of dining out in Davao City. What if you wanted to check it out but didn’t have a laptop with you? Go mobile! Instead of accessing www.davaodeli.com, you can go online via your cell phone and access m.davaodeli.com. Neat huh? Here’s a sample screen shot:
That URL, by the way, is just a redirector that I’ve created. You’ll notice that you’ll be taken to a feedm8.com address. This is only possible if you have control of your own domain name.
However, the Feedm8 service works for all types of blog platforms, including Blogger.com. For as long as your blog or website generates an RSS feed, you can avail of this free-of-charge service.
Over and beyond the seamless content portability that Feedm8 offers, you can also make money from getting your RSS appear on mobile devices. I haven’t really explored that part yet, but it involves advertising (which is the biggest business model on the Internet anyway).
Another cool feature: Feedm8 also generates QR codes for you. If you have a cell phone that can read 2-dimensional barcodes (such as the Nokia N82), scan the barcode I have on my sidebar. You can then save the embedded URL, or click through to my blog right away.
(This is not a paid post.)
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