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during the audience review (which is typically our first workshop session), we focus entirely on user personas and, critically, the context of the mobile interaction with a company’s intended end users. The goal here is to map out the type of user, mindset, location, and specific needs at the time they are interacting with or accessing the mobile content. It’s not enough to know just the demographics and some sample scenarios. We need to study the end user’s goals through all touchpoints that frame the context.

Make fewer HTTP requests

Use a content delivery network

Add an Expires header

research suggests that readers prefer their tablets' Web browsers to the meaty, slow-to-update and even more slow-to-evolve native apps that publishers have been eagerly developing since Steve Jobs first held up the iPad on stage in 2010.

Inspired by the Netflix model, magazine subscription service Next Issue launched on iOS in July. For $10 per month, readers can get access to dozens of magazines from the likes of Conde Nast, Time Inc. and Hearst. This approach comes with challenges of its own, but it's certainly worth a try. 

Then there's The Magazine. Instapaper founder Marco Arment launched the stripped-down, iPad-only publication in October and it couldn't be more simple. For $2 per month, readers are promised eight thoughtful, well-written articles delivered in bi-weekly issues. The Magazine eschews the clunky, multimedia-loaded digital editions of print magazines in favor of a no-frills, high quality reading experience that Arment hopes people will think is good enough to pay for.

Paul Guyot, the founder of Semiocast, says its analysis indicate that on average, less than one-third, 27%, of Twitter’s user base is active — in other words, only around 170 million people, and possibly less at the moment.

Netherlands had the highest proportion of active users, at 33%, with Japan following closely behind at 30%. As you can see in the list below, there doesn’t appear to be a clear trend in active users directly related to how developing/mature each market is.

In terms of how people are accessing Twitter: Guyot says that Twitter’s own access points, including TweetDeck, represent 75.4% of all public tweets.

Ember’s library size and support network are its two greatest strengths, but if you’re only trying to create a small widget or single-page app, it might be overkill for you. If you’re working on a multipage, navigational, long-term project, Ember might be your pick.

Imagine people in developing countries thinking Facebook is the gateway to the Internet. They would log into Facebook to access email, Wikipedia pages, weather information, and food prices. If they wanted additional services like the ability to stream video, they can buy it with a simple click—through Facebook. That’s Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for Internet.org. 

“Connecting the world” is Facebook’s vision—one that can’t be achieved without the support of other organizations, including the six telecom companies it partnered with for the Internet.org initiative.  Zuckerberg said the organization is looking for an additional three to five partners to bring on board, ones that will bet big that Facebook subsidies of social services will pay off by up-selling their data plans.

By using Facebook as an on-ramp to the Internet, the next one billion people will use social logins not just to control various apps, but their entire Internet usage. 

Google’s Matt Cutts said that he “wouldn’t be surprised” if mobile search exceeded desktop queries this year. A similar comment was made by a Google speaker informally during a roundtable discussion at the International Franchising Association conference in New Orleans earlier this year

The comments above refer to global query volumes not in the US or North America where PC-based search still far outstrips mobile queries. However in many developing countries, such as India, mobile internet traffic has eclipsed the desktop.

Globally mobile traffic is about 30 percent of all internet activity. That’s also the case in North America.