Gifts Ideas That Enhance the Hottest Gadgets This Season

This fall has seen a steady stream of exciting new devices hitting the market. Apple led the way with the iPhone 5, followed by the announcement of the iPad 4 and iPad Mini. LG recently released the Nexus 4 and the HTC Droid DNA. And don’t forget about the Galaxy Note 2 with its S Pen stylus. There are just too many great new devices to list.

Many people are going to need accessories for their new gadgets this season. Our 2012 Gadget and Accessories Holiday Gift Guide arrives just in time with great gift ideas for those learning how to get the most out of their new gizmos.

Furthermore, several of the phone and tablet accessories highlighted in the guide allow for new ways of enjoying these devices that many people haven’t thought of before.

The guide features gift ideas that are thoughtful and practical, and with prices at around $50 you can be a hero without burning through your holiday budget.

Our holiday guide is free for our tech newsletter subscribers, to sign up, just visit this page for instant download:

Gadget and Accessories Holiday Gift Guide 2012

Mobile Browser Interest Heating Up

Mobile browsers accounting for larger share of web traffic

We all know, or should be aware, that mobile devices are growing and taking up more of the day to day usage in people's lives. One of the biggest usages is browsing the web which is not a surprise. That web browsing takes up traffic and performance is an important item in that process. And with the growing importance of mobile devices, it follows that there is growing competition among those who provide mobile browsers to get a larger share of the market. In the mobile world, things are far different than in the desktop world in terms of control. In the desktop world, Microsoft has control of the desktop, yet they have not been able to maintain control of the browsers being used on the desktop.

In the mobile world, getting a mobile browser installed on a mobile device before it is released for sale gives a company an edge in the browser being used. Recently, we have been hearing a lot about the Opera Mini browser in the news. This has been because of talk of Facebook purchasing Opera to be used with Facebook to move the company more into the mobile world. Depending on who is doing the reporting on mobile traffic, some have indicated increases in Opera Mini usage on mobile devices. But that is not the only one we are hearing about. In a recent report, Opera and Android are the 2 top browsers being reported.

While we have been hearing a lot about the Safari browser for mobile devices, it is because it is the default browser on the iPhone. Since the Opera Mini mobile browser is not directly tied to a device, itS future is far more robust. The Opera Mini for Android has been growing steadily and is now a big contender in the mobile world. But the Android Robot browser has the best future given the huge gains for the Android OS on the growing number of devices. It is very popular, especially given that it is the default browser on Android phones.

If you look around at measurements for the most popular mobile browser, you are going to find a variety of different results as to popularity. That is because of exactly what is being looked at, such as ad traffic to a particular ad provider. But the end result of all the numbers is that mobile traffic is heating up and competition among various browsers is heating up. There is much talk about Safari, Android Robot and Opera Mini right now. But what about Internet Explorer? Microsoft's Windows Phone OS is expected to grow this year because of Nokia phones being rolled out around the world. How much shifting is going to take place is unknown, but it is going to intensify.

In the mobile world, browser selection is important for performance and just how well things are being displayed in the small screens on smart phones. Exactly which one you like is a matter of personal preference. Given the rapid increase of smart phones, we expect to see much more interest in which mobile browser people are going to be using.

What mobile browser do you like the most?

Is Your Wordpress Site Prepared For Mobile Users?

Desktop browsers are not the only place to display your site

 
The desktop used to be the only thing that mattered and up until a few says ago, that seemed to still be true. But with the recent proliferation of tablets and smart phones, the whole environment has altered and mobile must be part of your considerations for the future. If you do not look at mobile, you will be missing out on a growing segment of the market. And that segment is growing quickly and will continue to do so, especially with the improving smart phones which we are seeing this year. And they are only going to be getting better. The question is what have you done with your Wordpress site to prepare for the the coming mobile wave?

On some of my sites over the past few years, I have been using Wapple Architect which I have been very happy with under various sites. It has served me well and displays sites very nicely on a smart phone. It is very easy to set up and use, so there was no excuse to not have it on my sites to take advantage of. While I have used this Wordpress plugin, I am always open to considering other options for getting a mobile displayed web site. But, here at TechieDiy, we have found another one we are using for this site and it meets out needs very nicely.

In looking around, we here at TechieDIY have moved to WP Mobile Director as a different option for handling our mobile traffic through the same web site as our normal web site. As with other plugins, it detects the device, whether a computer or a mobile device. If it is a mobile device, it determines whether it is a smart phone or just a normal cell phone and handles it accordingly. There is both a free version and a paid version of the product available with the paid version providing advertising support. You should take a look at WP Mobile Director to see whether it will fit the needs that you have for handle mobile devices on your site.

These two are not the only ones available which can provide you with a mobile display from your Wordpress site. One of the popular ones is Wordpress Mobile Pack which many are using for their sites. This one provides a complete package to help you with your site and the ability to display varying displays and as with all of these, the ability to switch between the mobile or desktop version on a mobile device.

Another Wordpress plugin is MobilePress which has similar features as other leading plugins to render your browser based site on a mobile device. There are the expected capabilities for advertising as well. There are many other Wordpress plugins available for your Wordpress site where you want to display to a standard browser and to a mobile device. If you only want to have a mobile site, there are a number of mobile themes available for your to take advantage of.

For the world of mobile, it is important that you look at this now. With the changes to how mobile devices are working, in particularly the recent and coming smart phones, it is important to realize this shift in technology. With Siri from Apple, it has forever changed search options from purely text based to now voiced based. Now, with S Voice from Samsung and coming on their Galaxy S3, we are seeing an expansion of the methods for searching the web and you must consider the growing traffic. Even Yahoo's Axis, which has just been announced, is changing the mobile platform to use thumbnails as a way to navigate instead of entering text.

With GPS on smart phone, the ability to return search results based on where a smart phone user is located will further alter the mobile search world. There are so many others related to search which will be changing how mobile browsing is going to evolve and it is important that you make sure you are a part of it.

Take the time now to look at your mobile strategy for your Wordpress site. As more people get smart phones, where will your business be?