Paged mobile: a simple and easy way for browsing the web on mobile devices. The background: Billions of mobile phones have been already sold in the world, and millions of devices are sold in each month. Selling the mobile phones outnumbers the PC selling several times. Despite the potentially very high number of devices, the internet (the web) is not too frequently used with them because of accessibility and comfortability problems. SMS messaging and voice calls are the most popular services, the latter is very likely the most convenient to use. Writing an SMS message is not too easy in general, but because the messages are mostly infrequent, short and limited to 160 characters, it's not a big effort. Assuming the web addresses typed in the regular SMS way, browsing the internet frequently to get or search for information can be quite inconvenient. Bookmarks help the web browsing, but selecting a specific bookmark from an extensive list of more than 15 items is not too fast. About Paged mobile service: The aim of Paged mobile service is to support devices connected to the web with small/limited input capability for web addresses and try to eliminate the need to maintain and navigate big collections of bookmarks. The service provides a short way to enter many thousands of web addresses like online shortcuts. Small/limited inputs are like mobile dial pads, game pads, remote controllers, small or virtual key sets. Here are some popular devices with small/limited inputs compared to a PC keyboard but capable of accessing the internet: – – – Mobile phones with 12 keys (dial pad): this is the most common type of mobile phones, including Nokia N95, LG KE970. Entering a web address can be done using the SMS way of typing, for example letter s needs 4 keypresses using the 7 button which represents the pqrs group). The group of letters can be selected by the key which represents the specific group. Devices with game pad: typical example is the Sony PSP. Entering a web address can be done using a typing method similar to the SMS way. The group of letters can be selected by the cursor keys. Additional input help exists, for example some common tags like www., .com have quick selection. Devices with controller: an example is the Nintendo Wii with WiiMote controller. Entering a web address can be done using the WiiMote to shoot each letter of the virtual keyboard on the screen. Additional input help exists, for example some common tags like www., .com have quick access. While the PC keyboard allows to type the letters of the web addresses easily, it's much harder to get the same with the devices above. However, Paged mobile shortcuts can be a good help for every kind of input devices. How does Paged mobile shortcut system work? Here is how the shorcut system works in general: you can use the first three letters and the last letter of the main word of the web address. In case of rememberthemilk.com, the main word is rememberthemilk, take the first three letters (rem) and the last letter (k) together should be entered to visit rememberthemilk.com. So the shortcut comes from the web address, no need to remember it. Suppose that we want to visit the popular tech blog, techcrunch.com. Using the dial pad by the SMS way, it needs 31 keypresses to enter techcrunch.com. Moreover if the user might mistype approximately 2 or 3 letters during the 31 keypresses (mistyping means a wrong letter, delete it, and choose the right letter again - additional possible keypresses). Paged mobile service has a shortcut tech for techcrunch.com and tech needs only 8 keypresses (with fewer possible input error). In case of a country domain the two-letter country code should be also entered additionally on pa.gd website (this is a full shortcut like imm4de for immobilienscout24.de), but this isn't necessary when de.pa.gd country-specific website called up by default (as a reduced shortcut, just type imm4 there). Extensions between dots are not used (in case of yahoo.co.jp, .co. is not used so the shortcut is yahojp on pa.gd, yaho on jp.pa.gd). In general, entering the shortcuts is roughly 3 times faster on any devices. Paged mobile website accepts regular web addresses beside the shortcuts and YubNub commands and because of the layout it basicly provides continous web browsing. More details can be found at pa.gd website. 10 examples of popular sites: carr >> careerbuilder.com dowd >> download.com engt >> engadget.com lifr >> lifehacker.com tech >> techcrunch.com teci >> technorati.com phot >> photobucket.com myse >> myspace.com wear >> weather.com youe >> youtube.com Illustration of wikitravel.org using the shortcut wikl The benefits of the shortcut system: Regarding the mobile devices, there are several factors should be considered: ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● Text input is hard compared to standard PC keyboard. The longer the web address, the more mistyping, correction and frustration very likely occur. However, the shortcuts are simply quick and short: the more easy to reach the websites, the more content might be visited. Selecting a specific bookmark from an extensive list of more than 15 bookmarks is quite hard (as well as managing the items). However, using a specific shortcut eliminates the need of browsing the bookmarks. Immediate auto complete for any web addresses even on the dial pad of the mobile phone is hard to achieve. However, entering the shortcuts is much more simple. The web addresses are not really predictable, many web addresses have artificial name like delicio.us, flickr.com, techcrunch.com, technorati.com, gamespot.com, gamefaqs.com. For example, T9 predictive text input is good for text messages, but not really for web addresses. However, the shortcuts eliminate the need of the prediction. There is no such a global shortcut system like Paged mobile, there are 11000+ shortcuts in it. Beside the generic domains (.com, .net, .org, ...), approximately 120 country domains supported. No need to remember the shortcuts (every shortcut comes from the web address). Web application, so no installation required. The hardware and software layout depends on the input device. But no matter what kind of input device used, the shortcuts are generally shorter than the complete web address. Integration of YubNub commands: Paged mobile integrated another service called YubNub which is a social command-line for the web. Some examples: .gm London – shows the map of London .gloc museum Miami – shows the museums in Miami .froo tripod - compare prices for tripods .fl smile – flickr image search for smile .imdb cars – searching imdb for movie title 'Cars' .stock NOK – stock results for Nokia .tr it en forza – translating the word 'forza' from Italian to English More details can be found at pa.gd and Yubnub.org website. Illustration of immediate wikipedia search for term 'mobile' using Paged mobile Conclusion: The shortcut system is a dead simple and easy-to-use solution for mobile devices. The integration of the system into mobile services is quite easy because it's web based. In case of mobile browsers it is an easy-to-use alternative for the users beside entering the web addresses and using bookmarks. However, the shortcuts cannot cover all of the web, but they can cover several thousands of popular websites practically. For more information about the service and business development, the presented or custom shortcut solutions, please send your inquiry to office@pa.gd. Document date: April 2008. Author: Imre Meszaros