Cruise Bruise For Mobile Is Launched
PDA Friendly Format Debuts
August 17, 2008
It is here, Cruise Bruise for mobile. In recent weeks there have been changes in my life that will keep me on the road a good portion of the year. To make it easier for me to keep up with the life I have come to enjoy, I decided that desktop and notebook computers were not going to fully meet my needs. Really, they haven't been meeting my needs for some time.
I have been spending an increasing amount of time in places that make using my laptop computer impractical. So, time has been lost, sitting around day dreaming, waiting for somebody, somewhere to decide it was my time for their attention.
I was losing days of my life, to too many hours spent being unfulfilled and unproductive instead of maximizing my time and my enjoyment. Life is short, and while we all know that, a day comes when it is no longer an age-old clitche, but instead a reality.
This week my outlook on life changed and so my lifestyle needed to change with it. I bought my first PDA, a Blackberry Curve. At first, I was pretty disappointed with the things I could do with it. But, then back in 1980 I was disappointed with the first computer I used as well.
I remember my first time on the Internet, back in 1992, and thinking to myself, is this all there is? Well, of course it wasn't all there was, but being new to things, it takes a while to see all the wonderful things you can do with new technology.
By the end of the day, I managed to have my email accounts imported into my little Blackberry, my favorite sites for mobile bookmarked, and had figured out how to make calls, surf the web, text people, and play a few games. Life was wonderful again, almost.
For about a year I have been wanting to evolve into web sites for mobile users. But, with so little time left each day to explore that option, I had repeatedly placed this option on the back burner. The reasoning for the most part, was this. How many mobile users out there were actually visiting any of my web sites?
A check of my web site statistics told me there really were no visitors coming in on PDAs. That has changed. Cruise Bruise is the first web site in my network to have visitors coming in on mobile units, and that number has been increasing, with mobile visitors from around the world becoming regular Cruise Bruise visitors, all of them on Blackberry mobile units.
As I visited Cruise Bruise and many other web sites for the first time with my cell phone a few weeks ago, I was just plain sick. The web sites are not formatted for mobile, the pages do not display correctly and surfing them is nothing short of a pain in the neck.
As I surfed on over to Cruise Bruise, I was very disappointed, and began to imagine how that increasing number of mobile users felt when they came to Cruise Bruise. This HAD to stop, and this morning it did.
I have never been one to let technology pass me by for very long, and since my first footprint on the web, I have been a leader in my chosen nitches to offer what the competition has failed to see as a valued asset to their visitors.
I like to set trends, not follow them, where there is value to my visitors. Today, Cruise Bruise has become the first Cruise Industry News Website to be formatted for mobile users, with full copy, perfect for Blackberry users.
To that end, I now give you Cruise Bruise For Mobile. Up before the sun this morning, I needed to do something progressive. With the basics of my Blackberry pretty much mastered, I needed to do something to make this web site mobile friendly. You have to understand, this web site is HUGE, much too large to be converted for the few, but increasing numbers of mobile users.
Today, I have launched the first incident case story for mobile. As new cases are added, they will be added to the mobile site. These cases are not going to be in full version, but much more in depth than the Cruise Bruise RSS Feed.
You will get the headline, and what would be as many as a dozen paragraphs, with images for the most part not included. I am clumping the text all together instead of using typical paragraph formation, so that it reduces the length of the case details on the page.
The case entry will tell you everything you want to know about the case, all the most important information, dates, names, ages, places, ship involved and incident details that will give you the complete picture of what really happened. It will hold you over until you can get back to your laptop or desktop to see the full version.
If you go to Cruise Bruise Mobile on your laptop or desktop browser, it will look horrible. The new web site is exclusively for PDA users, not for typical web users.
If you are on mobile, you will want to bookmark the Cruise Bruise Mobile web site on your PDA device so you can pop right in to see what is new. If it is on this web site, beginning today, it will also be on Cruise Bruise Mobile.
If you are new to mobile units, please be sure to REFRESH your browser when you come to the Cruise Bruise Mobile web site, so you can see the latest version and the most recent update.
If you view Cruise Bruise Mobile on your PDA, please drop me a note to let me know how you like it. It will help me design the pages to benefit you the most.
The page is designed for 320 pixel wide screen resolution, perfect for a Blackberry Curve. This means that on the Blackberry Curve, you will not have to scroll horizontally as well as vertically in order to read the cases.
OH YEAH !
The new mobile web site address is: http://mobile.cruisebruise.com
