twopointouch

An important but under-represented part of Web 2.0 is mobility. The use of RSS, podcasts and CSS design is partly predicated on the idea that we’ll all be accessing web resources from all over the place, using all kinds of devices. Sadly, five years after the launch of the first GPRS (2.5G) services in the UK, it still doesn’t work very well and it costs a fortune. IT Week reports that there’s little appeal for such services in the UK:

Nearly three-quarters of people are avoiding the mobile internet because of high costs and poor experiences of the technology, according to research published today. The findings highlight the need for firms to develop mobile-compatible content, said experts.

In a survey of 1,500 UK consumers by web hosting firm Hostway, over a third of respondents said they were frustrated by slow-loading mobile web pages.

A quarter said they did not use mobile devices to access the internet because often the web sites they wanted were not available, while others complained that it was too difficult to scroll and navigate their way through pages via mobiles and PDAs.

“We’re in the dark ages compared to desktop browsing,” said Hostway product manager Phil Turnbull. “Firms should take [the design of their mobile web sites] every bit as seriously, and because they have to be more ruthless about how the site is designed, it’s potentially a greater challenge.”

TechDigest reported: “At the moment, most websites just aren’t flexible enough to be accessed on mobile phones,” said Neil Barton, a director at Hostway. “There’s nothing wrong with having a flash website with all the bells and whistles you can muster, but you’ve got to be aware that mobile users simply aren’t going to be able to access it. The research illustrates that even if people do wait for sites to load, quite often it’s impossible to actually get at the content itself because of the way that sites are built.”