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Are Banner Ads Worth It? The statistics tell the tale.
Most people on the Internet today simply ignore banner ads and move on to other things. Why so much skepticism in the media about Banner Ads? Well, I hate to burst your bubble, but Web Banner Ads are a proven thing. If you dont believe me, check...
How Relevant are Banner Ads in Brand Building?
Though a banner space is small it serves multiple purposes for an advertiser It is the ad message of the company/website, Allows visual display of the company name, logo and the product It is the click-through device it is a concise...
How to Maximize Profits With Paid Autosurf Programs
Copyright 2005 East Tech LLC
If you haven't heard about Paid Autosurf programs yet, you're
about to hear of a great way to earn extra money using your
computer and a web browser. If you have heard about them and
thought these programs can't...
How to use keywords to improve your ranking in search engines.
The importance of keywords
Keywords or key phrases you choose will determine how your site is positioned in the search engines. It is always better to have lots of pages each focusing on a small group of keywords. This will give them more...
If you Sell a Product, Use Online Marketing, Part 1
If you Sell a Product, Use Online Marketing, Part 1 Judy Cullins ©2003 All Rights Reserved. When you offer your products via an email campaign to get people to visit your Web site, you reap many rewards--you create more profit, spend a lot less...
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Are you Ready for WAP & WML?
Acronyms make the computer world go round. Things like HTML, DHTML, XHTML; it's enough to make a grown man cry. Well, look out! There's a new player in alphabet-town: "WAP." So what is it and why should you care? WAP stands for "Wireless Application Protocol" and it allows people to access the Net using wireless devices like mobile phones and other gadgets.
It's estimated that by the year 2002 there will be over 800 million wireless users around the world. Eventually all wireless tools will come equipped with WAP as standard issue. That's a lot of possible viewers for your website. The problem is that wireless net-surfers will not be able to access your HTML-driven site. Their devices can only read sites built in (get ready for another acronym!) WML.
WML stands for "Wireless Markup Language." (Are you taking notes here?) So if you presently have a website built in HTML and you want mobile users to be able to view it, you'll need to make another version of it in WML. The good news is that WML is not hard to learn and can be picked up easily. Plus, there are plenty of sites online that will teach you everything you'll ever want to know about this new technology. Some of the better ones are:
http://www.wapdrive.net Learn what WAP is (and isn't), how to write WAP "cards" (not "pages"), and best of all, you'll find some free software you can download to make your own WAP site. Free.
http://www.wapuseek.com Contains Wap articles, links, tools and more. Make sure you stop in the developers area for all kinds of webmaster tools for creating your own WAP pages.
http://www.gelon.net/dev/ A ton of helpful information here: leaning WML, books, where you can host your new WAP sites and more.
http://www.anywhereyougo.com 100% wireless application development: archives, news, books, and more. Sign up for their helpful newsletter to keep abreast of what's going on in this new field.
As far as building your WAP site you can download free software or use an online editor available at some websites.
http://www.wapmine.com WAPPage 1.0 is an extensive and powerful design tool for WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) Sites.
http://mobphone.com WAP publishing tool for cellular mobile WAP phones.
Nokia has jumped into the arena by offering "The Nokia WML Studio". A free download that adds on to Dreamweaver to create WML content from within Dreamweaver's interface. Get it at http://dynamic.macromedia.com/bin/exchange/dreamweaver/main.jsp
For hosting your new wireless-enabled site, check out:
http://www.hoiley.com/ Offering a variety of free services
http://www.tagtag.com/ Build and host your site free
http://wappy.to The first online WAPsite builder complete with hosting.
Keep in mind that the viewing area on a mobile device is a whole lot smaller than that of a computer monitor. So you need to be short and concise. Plan on about 10 text lines per WAP "card" (instead of "page.") Due to slow transmission speeds typically 14.4 to 19.6 Kbps you need to keep text and graphics down to bare minimum.
Wireless phones use "microbrowsers" to surf the web so you need to make sure the web cards in WML look good on a wireless device. But what if you don't have that kind of luxury? No problem, hop over to http://www.wapdrive.net and you'll find something called "The Wapalizer" that will allow you to look at any WAP site using your regular browser. Just type in the URL and a new window opens up that imitates a mobile phones interface. You can browse through the entire site to make sure everything will be viewed correctly by your mobile guests.
So there you have it. WAP and WML, two good things that just naturally go together. If you presently have an HTML site you might want to consider making a version of it in WML as a sidekick, thus opening yourself up to a whole new audience; a mobile one.
After all, we're a society on the move... and you'd better keep up!
About the Author
Merle's Cyber Promotions http://www.mcpromotions.com/ "Creating Visibility Online for Small Businesses" Subscribe to MC Promotions Press by sending mailto:subscribe@mcpromotions.com New Service just added "Get Ready to Market Package" For details go to http://www.mcpromotions.com/getreadytomarket.htm To find out more about the products and services offered by MC Promotions send mailto:mcservices-ar@automagical.net
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