Google hosted their G South Africa 2.0 conference in Newtown, Johannesburg on the 3rd and 4th of November 2011. Having been at the conference last year in Camps Bay, Cape Town I was excited to see what Google had in store for us this time around as last year’s event was a major success.

Arriving there I immediately felt that the event had grown since its premiere event hosted the year before and the venue (Turbine Hall) was an excellent choice for hosting an event such as this.

I attended day 2, a day for the geeks (software developers) on the 4th. It started off with Nelson Mattos giving a keynote presentation themed around key opportunities and challenges in South Africa, Google’s mission to South Africa and Umbono.

Some of the key opportunities and challenges he mentioned was that South Africa is among the most prosperous countries in Africa (with a GDP of over $500bn) and has an impressive mobile penetration rate. Unique challenges we face are: still very expensive internet access (with infrastructure still very poor), lack of quality content, low penetration of businesses online and very limited general awareness of the internet in some of the regions.

Google’s mission in South Africa is to continue serving advertisers, businesses and general internet users. They also want to get others online by enabling an accessible, relevant and sustainable internet ecosystem.

Google strengthens South Africa’s start-up ecosystem with Umbono. A six month incubation project to help technology entrepreneurs in South Africa get their products off the ground – basically to jump start their ideas.

The Umbono project includes the following (if selected):

• $25 to $50k in funding
• Angel investors and networks
• Google mentorship
• Space and internet
• Visibility

You can learn more about the Umbono project by visiting the website.

Google on Mobile…

In the last couple of years there has been a lot of focus on mobile technology worldwide, and especially in Africa where the cost of other technologies is far higher than that of mobile devices. Entry level phones account for 40% of all mobile devices in Africa, however, drastically limiting mobile development because of the levels of content (and limitations of content) it can serve.

Bruno Albuquerque had an interesting presentation on mobile development and gives the following reasons for developing for mobile going forward:

• Fast growing market worldwide
• Different ways of monetizing
• Location-based targeting
• Low cost – high volumes
• 52 million activated SIM Cards in South Africa
• 14 million mobile internet users in South Africa
• 6.5 million smartphone users in South Africa (Nokia, Blackberry)

Market segments:

• Mobile web (browser based)
• Native applications (Specific for each device/OS)

Other categories touched on at the conference were Android development, Google Web kit, Web performance, Google+ (G+) and a couple of API’s, e.g. the YouTube API.

The conference was great! I can’t wait for G South Africa 3.0 which will probably be back in Cape Town next year!

With enough of a budget getting traffic to your site is often the easy part. Don’t get me wrong planning a good marketing campaign is definitely not easy but guiding your users once they have landed on your website can prove to be even more complicated.

Yes it is extremely important to make sure the pages visitors land on when finding your website through one of your marketing campaigns is tailored to the audience and platforms. This could mean the difference between a successful marketing campaign and an unsuccessful one.

I’m going to look at specifically mobile traffic today. Now it comes without saying that you need to create a mobile version for your users who visit you on their mobile devices. This is because of the broad diversity of mobile platforms. There are hundreds if not thousands of variations of platforms being used in the mobile space. This means that you will need to make sure that your site works and is user-friendly on most of these platforms. Below are a few variations of the same site on different mobile platform.

Telephone vs. Skype.

A week ago some friends and I were talking about today’s technology and what we would have done if we were still living in the 1900’s. How did our parents manage without mobile phones? How did they know where their kids were, how did they manage to contact anyone during an emergency, just think of all the frustration they must have experienced by the lack of technology.  Now if you think back a little bit further, do you remember the old landline phone connected to the wall?  Yes that phone on the brown antique table with the Yellow Pages right next to it.  The old landline telephone was not very flexible in terms of providing privacy, for example when speaking to your boyfriend or girlfriend you would wish you could take the phone into your room. Sometimes you wished you could see the person you were speaking to.

Thanks to the technology of today we don’t have to struggle as people did in the 1900’s.  The mobile phone almost replaces the landline and most of you started to make use of Skype.

In today’s article I’m going to discuss the mobile phone and the usage of Skype with you.

As said earlier, the mobile phone has almost replaced the landline phone. Well, we all have a mobile phone.  There are some advantages and disadvantages of having a mobile phone.

Advantages:

• You can carry a mobile phone with you so you don’t miss important calls
• If you are lost, you can call for directions.
• If you are in an accident, you can call the police or ambulance – and if the phone has a camera, you can take pictures of the accident.
• You can use a mobile phone to call your customers or boss if you are running late to a meeting.
• You can surf Internet & Connect with the whole world by Mobile.
• You can chat & video conference.
• Keep in touch with friends and family
• Good for emergencies

Disadvantages:

• Mobile phones can be expensive
• They can cause damage to your ears
• Sometimes the reception is poor in some areas, limiting your connectivity (you can’t talk underground or on planes).
• People use the phone while they are driving, and this can cause accidents.
• They can limit your face to face time with friends and family
• They can get you in trouble at school

Okay, let’s t take it a step further.  You have a mobile phone but you live abroad and you struggle to keep in touch with your loved ones.  Let’s see how Skype can help you communicate with your loved ones.

According to Wikipedia Skype is a proprietary software application that allows users to make voice calls over the Internet. Calls to other users within the Skype service are free, while calls to both traditional landline telephones and mobile phones can be made for a fee using a debit-based user account system.

The innovative and high-speed technology is quickly replacing cumbersome methods of communication. Skype is a method of online communication that allows users to speak and type as well as see one another.

You can use Skype from any phone; it doesn’t have to be from your computer.  All calls and video calls are free and with video calling you can talk to your loved ones face to face without traveling.

With Skype you can see if your loved ones are online or in a business the staff can see who is online anytime of the day – they can chat to each other, transfer very large files, start group conversations and set up conference calls.

Skype is very user-friendly, has no hassles and is easy to install. And the best of all, you don’t have to be a computer geek to set the program.  You can call somebody via Internet whether he or she is just a doorstep away or oceans apart, and this can be done either on mobile phones or on your computer.

Calls are free from Skype to Skype and while there is a fee charged to make calls from Skype to a phone, it is still relatively cheaper than a phone to phone call. You can also make video calls. This tool is ideal if people cannot make it to an event like a business meeting or job interview. Skype can also easily transfer files quickly from one person’s account to another’s computer.

The art of information and communication technology is set amid constant change, and its advances capture people’s interest as the tools of carrying messages evolve over time. The brilliant innovation of Skype has made communicating easier and has broken down a number of barriers such as distance, time, and money.

Well I think if it wasn’t for Alexander Graham Bell back in the 1870’2 who discovered the phone we would not be able to experience the technology as it is today.

These days more and more people are accessing the internet with their handsets and other mobile devices.

People are on the move, using their handsets to quickly retrieve information where ever they are. They should be able to access your business’ information such as products/services as well.

Just like in normal website development, mobile websites also have standards which are endorsed by the W3C.

In developing a mobile website, the number one factor you should keep in mind is size. When connecting to the internet via a phone connection speeds are normally slow with technologies such as GPRS. Large mobile sites will load frustratingly slow and might result in a high bounce rate.

Developing a mobile website can be done in either CHTML (Compact HTML) or XHTML – MP(Extensible Hypertext Markup Language Mobile Profile).

CHTML is a pared down version of normal HTML and does not support all elements found In HTML. For instance one cannot use a JPEG image when constructing a mobile webpage with CHTML and is defined that all/most operations can be done with four buttons.

Some of the features excluded from CHTML are:

• Background image
• Image map
• Stylesheets
• Multiple fonts and styles
• Tables

XHTML is defined by the Open Mobile Alliance and is derived from XHTML 1.0 Basic and since XHTML-MP (XHTML Mobile Profile) 1.2 the following modules are supported

• Texts
• Hypertext
• List
• Forms
• Basic Tables
• Images
• Objects
• Meta information
• Scripting
• Style Sheet
• Style Attribute
• Link

In developing a mobile website, keep in mind size, colours and functionality. Quick access to important parts of your website is vital

Also remember, that not all phones support Javascript so when developing mobile websites you should not use Javascript to render important information.

Keep your mobile website as simple as possible, if you keep it simple it is more likely to work on most mobile browsers.

Happy Programming

Almost half of the world’s population today use mobile phones and a lot of people are moving to smartphones, especially for business purposes. A smartphone is a mobile handset with more advanced features than just an ordinary mobile phone, it normally has 3G and Wifi capabilities with a QWERTY keyboard. Smartphones also allow users to install applications on their phones, I will discuss some handy applications used by marketers.

There are a couple of ways how marketers can reach customers by using mobile devices, SMS and MMS is the simplest examples of this. An SMS will only allow for text advertising, where as a MMS will be able to use video, images and sound. The nice thing about a smartphone is you can install applications, why not use these applications as an advertising medium?

One way is by using in-game mobile marketing, where you deliver promotional messages within a mobile game. Certain brands also sponsor complete games to encourage interactivity with them. These types of games or applications should be easy to use. If the learning curve is to big it might not be as effective as a form of marketing.

Another application used for marketing is MXit. MXit is a free instant messaging application developed in South Africa and can run on most phones that have access to the internet and you can also run it from a pc.

MXit has a user database of over 18 million, at times the amount of messages that pass through it is enormous, reaching  35 000 messages per second in peak times. A lot of companies make use of MXit as a marketing tool. Each time MXit starts up it shows a splash screen for a couple of seconds, companies place their advertising on this splash screen. MXit receives about 20 million user logons per day, allowing advertisers to receive considerable exposure for their ads.

There are more people using mobile phones to access the internet than those accessing the internet via their computer. I want to encourage you to start looking at ways to advertise on mobile devices as part of your overall marketing strategy.