The Skweezer Blog

I just read that Twikini, a popular mobile Twitter client for Windows mobile devices, now features an option to launch links through Skweezer. Twikini is the latest of a number of mashups, apps, and services that take advantage of Skweezer’s free API to provide users with mobile-friendy Web browsing.

It’s always interesting to see how different people and programmers use our technology–from Chinese dissidents using Skweezer for anonymous Web access to the folks at Twikini enhancing their Twitter app… it’s gratifying to see that so many people are finding a use for our technology.

If you’re a programmer, you can check out our API information sheet at http://company.skweezer.com/developers.

A little info on Twikini from their site:

“Twikini offers a powerful and efficient way to use Twitter on your phone. It conveniently updates your favorite feeds in the background, and leverages the camera, GPS, media, touch screen, keyboard, graphics and storage capabilities of your device.

Our goal is to make Twikini the best designed Twitter app for Windows devices in the world.”

Posted by Mark Sieve

Update: Posted this 5 minutes ago and was just sent an e-mail about another mobile Twitter client called TinyTwitter that’s also using Skweezer. Guess there are a lot of people building Twitter apps these days…

Recently, a Danish consultancy—Strand Consult Publications—put out a surprising "reality check" on the hype surrounding the iPhone.

I, for one, was surprised to see a list of ten myths purported to be false by this consultancy:

1. The iPhone drives data traffic into mobile operators networks
2. The iPhone helps operators attract new customers
3. The iPhone is good business for mobile operators
4. The iPhone is dominating the mobile services market
5. App store is a huge success that has revolutionised the services market
6. There is money to be made by developing applications for the iPhone
7. It is iPhone customers that are generating the majority of online mobile surfing traffic
8. The iPhone has a large market share
9. The iPhone was the first mobile phone with a touchscreen
10. The iPhone is a technologically advanced mobile phone

Unscientifically, I see more and more of my colleagues, friends, and family acquiring iPhones, Blackberries, Vue’s, Pre’s, et al smartphones. So, it’s surprising to see that iPhone—the perceived champion of all mobile devices—is causing a negligible effect… and in some cases a loss… with operators worldwide. For example, AT&T said they would’ve had a 40% margin had they not launched iPhone 3GS. Apparently, further network backhaul was needed to support the vast amounts of data consumption these smartphones create:

Nonetheless, I’m heartened by the increased amounts of smartphone usage and the "investment" the carriers are willing to do now to begin realizing the profits from such devices long-term.

The question is, how long?

By Kevin Perkins

An interesting perspective from Mike Dano over at FierceWireless… I think it continues to make the case that a need for a quick-access, streamlined view of web content will always be needed in a highly fractured device—and standards—marketplace.

A begrudging farewell to WAP

As the world rushes toward a smartphone future, I find myself a little wary of the rich multimedia of the Promised Land. After all, WAP is actually pretty great, when you think about it.

But let me start from the beginning. WAP stands for Wireless Application Protocol, and it was invented in the early 18th Century (yes that’s supposed to be a joke) as a way to give Neanderthal cell phones with grayscale screens a taste of the Internet. See, phones from the Stone Age couldn’t download huge images or complicated HTML layouts like the newfangled ones you kids use today, but they did have just enough processing power and bandwidth to access small amounts of information stored on the ‘Net. The solution? WAP, which is essentially a scaled down version of the Internet that supports tiny screens and mostly text-based content.

WAP was touted as the second coming because, after all, it was the Internet on your phone! Incredible! Amazing! What a useful, sure-to-be-profitable technology. Of course, when people actually tried WAP they discovered it was the Internet circa 1981 on your phone, which isn’t really the same thing. Nonetheless, millions of phones shipped with WAP browsers, and at least a dozen websites launched WAP versions of their desktop offerings.

Then along came the iPhone and other high-powered smartphones, and–poof–regular websites are now available to cell phone users. You no longer have to pay the WAP tax to visit the Internet! How wonderful! Further, according to various analyst projections, all phones will be “smart” in a few years, so there won’t be a need for WAP versions of regular Internet sites–and everyone will be happy. Right?

Well, maybe. I’ve been a traveler on the wireless Web since the days of mMode on the original AT&T Wireless (remember that?). I’ve perused WAP sites from The Onion to The New York Times, and plenty of stuff in between. And I have to say: WAP is not crap.

In fact, I would argue with only a little bit of sarcasm that WAP is in some cases better than the “real” Internet. Why? Because you don’t get all that extra nonsense–no enormous banner ads that move when you mouse over them, no huge lists of links to random sites that may or may not be scams, no popups and no trickery. There’s just no room for it. Instead, what you get with WAP is just straight up information. You get the text of a story or post, possibly one small picture, and maybe a banner ad. And that’s it. And since no one actually pays attention to WAP, you can sometimes get free stuff: Did you know that the Wall Street Journal’s WAP site (http://mobile2.wsj.com) is not locked down?

Further, I would argue that the WAP tax actually keeps the riffraff from clogging up the scene. When I search the wireless Web, I don’t have to wade through millions of results–mainly because there aren’t millions of results. Most WAP searches turn up relevant and legitimate results because only the entities with useful content are venturing onto the wireless Web in the first place. It’s like natural selection, without the killing and eating part.

Indeed, I’ve grown accustomed to browsing the WAP sites of publications like The Washington Post or The New York Times. In some cases I prefer them to the desktop equivalent; they’re straightforward, no nonsense, and very easy to navigate.

Obviously there’s a clear benefit to being able to access the full Internet while mobile, but I’m going to miss the simplicity of WAP. Perhaps the Web designers of tomorrow will take some cues from the wireless Web–do more with less. Make it simple and clean. No tricks. The website of The Raconteurs is a good example. Press space bar to continue, indeed! –Mike

Posted and commentary by Kevin Perkins

Skweezer on the iPhone

I was just reading an article on FierceMobileContent that announced that mobile Web access is slower than Web access from a desktop computer. This, I must say, was not a terribly earth-shattering revelation for those of us who frequently use our mobile devices to browse the Internet.

According to the study referenced in the article, mobile Web access is 30% slower than the average Internet connection used from a desktop computer. This seems a bit optimistic to me. Most of the people I know have DSL in their homes (3.5 Mbps appears to be the norm these days here in L.A.) and I don’t get anything like two-thirds of that when I’m out and about with my iPhone. This is probably why the YouTube app, App Store access, and other cool iPhone features only work when connected to the Net via WiFi. A wise call on Apple’s part, as slow network speeds would suck all the coolness right out of these apps.

All this is to say that waiting for sites to load on your phone can be slow and tedious. And this is the reason that Skweezer is still a great product, despite the proliferation of high-end handsets that promise the World Wide Web at your fingertips. Yes, your new phone might have a great browser and gigabytes of memory… but that won’t matter if the sites you visit take forever to load. Skweezer makes Web pages load faster and easier to read on any mobile device—from Paleolithic circa-1998 flip-phones to the iPhone 3G. And it’s completely free. Check Skweezer out at www.skweezer.com and see for yourself if it makes browsing on the mobile Web easier and better.

Posted by Mark Sieve

For the last year or so, I’ve been wondering how much of bubble the mobile content industry (apps, web, ads, etc) has been living in. I started my computing career in the early 90s, so I’ve lived through the original dot com bubble. I remember the days when doing simple HTML sites was considered “complex”. And companies like Shopping.com were paying US Web amounts like $100,000 just to do a 10 page HTML work-up of a site idea.

Of course, later in the bubble when web applications began to take hold, ecommerce became the “big thing”… and the emergence of a reinvented EDI model redirected the industry’s focus bit. It went from content and browser/server applications to platforms where servers could talk to other servers using web protocols. And leverage not only the dedicated function of uniform services, but take advantage of a common business model as well–reducing costs for everyone. Ultimately, when a new and disruptive concept comes at the end of a bubbly cycle, I believe it causes the bubble to burst. Of course 9-11 and a down-market cycle didn’t help either. But you get the idea.

So, today I was reading about Glu Mobile announcing lower-than-expected earnings for Q308. Unlike the Web 1.0 burst, there are a lot fewer public companies–thanks to Sarbox and other regulatory policies. (How ironic, given the talk lately about not enough regulation). However, a down-market combined with the credit crisis is creating a similar effect as it did in 2001. What does this mean for mobile content companies? Well, we’ve seen a similar content push in the genesis of this industry (making stuff), followed by a “buying of apps and ringtones” cycle (ecommerce), and now we’re seeing a platform-ish phase where mobile ad companies are inserting themselves into the mix to help these companies monetize on a standard set of ads and formats.

Sound familiar at all? If you agree with my premise and listen to what Glu had to say, then one can easily deduce the mobile content industry bubble is about to burst. The question now becomes, how many business will be fail because of this burst? Do you believe the analysts’ predictions when they say, “The Mobile Advertising Industry will be worth _____ billion dollars in 20__”? If there are no content companies around to serve ads… and less ad platforms to provide ads… and less consumer spending to buy things… and less businesses advertising to get consumers to buy things… then this burst seems inevitable.

Posted by Kevin Perkins

Skweezer wins in the Pocket PC: Web Compression Service category of this year’s Best Software Awards.

IRVINE, Calif., September 15, 2008—Skweezer, Inc. today announced that Skweezer was chosen as the winner in the “Pocket PC: Web Compression Service” category and was also a finalist in the “Smartphone: Web Browsing category” of this year’s Best Software Awards hosted by Smartphone & Pocket PC magazine.

The annual Smartphone & Pocket PC magazine Best Software Awards helps users select software that best suits their Windows Mobile Pocket PC and Smartphone needs by honoring companies that produce outstanding software. Pocket PC and Smartphone experts from around the world help select the nominations and determine the award winners. The panel of over 100 judges included prominent Microsoft MVPs, support forum moderators, and Smartphone & Pocket PC magazine contributors.

“We have been doing this for 8 years, and the nominee’s list is the most comprehensive and accurate list yet,” said Smartphone & Pocket PC Executive Editor and Publisher, Hal Goldstein. “Congratulations to the winners and finalists, who are mostly from small independent companies who have worked so hard to deliver great software to Windows Mobile users.”

Skweezer is a free service that optimizes Web pages and searches for use on PDAs and cell phones. Mobile Internet users access Skweezer by visiting www.skweezer.com, then use the portal as a “wireless gateway” to browse and search the Web. Skweezer compresses and reformats content being downloaded, so that it loads faster, looks better, and is easier to navigate. Skweezer has introduced many mobile browsing innovations, including the first: pagination system that splits large Web pages up for viewing on cell phones, mobile Web page translation feature, “find in page” search, and portal-based mobile RSS reader. Skweezer is completely platform-independent and can be accessed from Pocket PC, iPhone, Palm, MS Smartphone, Blackberry, Symbian, PSP2, and WAP 2.0 compliant devices. Skweezer is also available as a “private label” solution for wireless carriers, search engines, and content providers.

About Smartphone & Pocket PC magazine:
Bi-monthly Smartphone & Pocket PC magazine is a print publication also available in Zinio Digital format, written for users of Windows Mobile PDA’s and Smartphone devices. Each issue includes hardware and software reviews, user profiles, practical tips, plus an “Enterprise Solutions” supplement. Its companion Web site, www.smartphonemag.com, is updated each day with news, hot downloads, Web sites, reviews, and tips; and also contains archives, a directory of the best Windows Mobile Web sites, and an Encyclopedia of over 5000 third-party software and accessories products. Subscriptions include the annual Buyers Guide and The Ultimate Smartphone and Pocket PC How-to Guide, plus free access to the subscriber VIP web site.

On the Net: Smartphone & Pocket PC magazine site: http://www.smartphonemag.com

About Skweezer, Inc.:
Skweezer, Inc. has been a key innovator of mobile content optimization technologies since 2001, creating award-winning solutions that have accelerated mobile Web adoption and consistently raised the bar in terms of users’ expectations and feature development. Skweezer Ads, launched in 2004, provides publishers and ad networks with desktop and mobile ads through a single ad feed and includes Skweezer’s optimization technology that automatically mobilizes site content for mobile visitors. Skweezer’s scalable, time-tested “carrier grade” content optimization and converged advertising products are relied upon by some of the largest wireless operators, search engines, ad networks, and enterprises in the world.

On the Net: Skweezer site: www.skweezer.com
Skweezer company site: company.skweezer.com
Skweezer blog: blog.skweezer.com
Skweezer RSS Feed: rss.skweezer.com

Posted by Monica Sato

Mobile search traffic on Skweezer has increased by half over the last five-month period.

IRVINE, Calif., September 9, 2008—Skweezer, Inc. today announced that Web searches on its Skweezer portal (www.skweezer.com), which optimizes Web content for mobile devices, has increased 52% since the beginning of Q2 2008.

The Skweezer portal allows visitors to enter either a Web address or search terms into the Skweezer Home page and then loads either the search results or the target Web page, which is reformatted for the mobile environment. While Web browsing traffic has grown consistently over the same period, users accessing Skweezer’s search platform has climbed dramatically since mid-April.

Skweezer’s search traffic comes from a diverse group of carriers, most of which are based in the United States. Customers from AT&T and Verizon generated the most mobile search requests from Q2 2008 to the present. Alltel and T-Mobile customers provided less search traffic than the top two referrers, however their search traffic on Skweezer grew that fastest over the same time period, up 45% and 39% respectively.

“Many carriers don’t offer a Web search feature that meets their customers’ needs, which creates a huge opportunity for companies like Skweezer,” said Skweezer, Inc. president Mark Sieve. “Skweezer monetizes its mobile search with sponsored listings and CPC ads, so we see this as a double-win in terms of increasing both revenue and customer base.”

A recent poll of Skweezer users focusing on mobile search found the following:

• 84% of users surveyed claimed to use mobile search on a daily basis
• 79% of the participants believed that being able to search the Web on a mobile device as “Very Important”
• 72% of users preferred to use Skweezer as their primary mobile search service because of the integrated content mobilization technology
• 69% of users surveyed complained that their “wireless carrier does not offer an adequate search platform”

Over 1,100 Skweezer users participated in the Mobile Search Survey, which was run between July 7th and July 31st, 2008.

Skweezer is a free service that optimizes Web pages and searches for use on PDAs and cell phones. Mobile Internet users access Skweezer by visiting www.skweezer.com, then use the portal as a “wireless gateway” to browse and search the Web. Skweezer compresses and reformats content being downloaded, so that it loads faster, looks better, and is easier to navigate.

Skweezer has introduced many mobile browsing innovations and has won several awards in 2007, including a Gold Star in the Mobile Star Awards and Best Web Compression Service in the Smartphone and Pocket PC Magazine Best Software Awards. Skweezer is completely platform-independent and can be accessed from Pocket PC, Palm, MS Smartphone, Blackberry, iPhone, Symbian, PSP2, and WAP 2.0 compliant devices. Skweezer is also available as a “private label” solution for wireless carriers, search engines, and content providers.

About Skweezer, Inc.:
Skweezer, Inc. has been a key innovator of mobile content optimization technologies since 2001, creating award-winning solutions that have accelerated mobile Web adoption and consistently raised the bar in terms of users’ expectations and feature development. Skweezer Ads, launched in 2004, provides publishers and ad networks with desktop and mobile ads through a single ad feed and includes Skweezer’s optimization technology that automatically mobilizes site content for mobile visitors. Skweezer’s scalable, time-tested “carrier grade” content optimization and converged advertising products are relied upon by some of the largest wireless operators, search engines, ad networks, and enterprises in the world.

On the Net: Skweezer site: www.skweezer.com
Skweezer company site: company.skweezer.com
Skweezer blog: blog.skweezer.com
Skweezer RSS Feed: rss.skweezer.com

Posted by Monica Sato

Recently, dotMobi released a study that suggests end-users desire more practical mobile content rather than consumable (entertainment) content. Frankly, our company has known this for awhile as we’ve been analyzing the behaviors of general web use since 2004. Since then, one thing we quickly learned—which has helped shape our product over the years—is end-users want to access content transactionally. That is, users want to get to the part of a Web page that feeds their interest or activity. People, generally, don’t sit around browsing on their phones for the sake of browsing. Therefore, we’ve adopted the position that people are finding more on mobile Web than they are browsing.

This has helped us shape innovation “firsts” like our Find-in-Page™ feature, that jumps the user to the keywords they are looking for that are carried over from a search query. Hit highlighting is another “helper” to let people identify what they are looking for.  This also seems to be validated by the much higher-than-normal click-through rates from our mobile ads with search partners.

One of those transactional pieces that’s mentioned in the dotMobi survey is online banking. Unless the banking site has a mobile interface with SSL, most phone users would need a transcoding proxy to access the site in order to gain access. (This would be nearly 90% of the phones in the world, BTW.) As far as mobilizing 3rd-party Web sites go, Skweezer is the only transcoder that I know of (also since 2004, by the way) that keeps a fully SSL-encoded transaction from beginning-to-end on behalf of a user. Since Skweezer isn’t a gateway service hosted directly in an operator’s datacenter like Sprint, Skweezer can talk to any Web site—through SSL—and encode it from start to finish where it’s available.

For users using dotMobi’s recently acquired Mowser—or even the big guys like Google or Yahoo!… none of these services do that. Which is curious to me why dotMobi would bring up the notion of accessing anything securely. For example, if you wanted to check your Union Bank of California account online in Mowser, you would not have an end-to-end SSL connection. Notice that when you go to a secure page in Mowser, the Mowser protocol is “http” wrapped around Union Bank’s “https”…

Mowser Mobile Web Transcoder (Phonifier-adapted)

That’s scary. So, you enter all your personally identifiable info for the bank and it goes to Mowser as clear text before they securely send it to UBOC! Or in the case of Google, they just punt…

Google Mobile Web Transcoder

Google doesn’t even allow SSL connections on their transcoder. Whether they can’t surmount the 80/20 “wall” of transcoding state—or if their legal department feels that it’s somehow a liability—they just have a user go directly to the site, leaving the end-user hung out to dry. Yahoo! is similar, but they don’t even allow you to connect to them in the first place via SSL. Whether it’s Novarra (their partner) not being able to support it, or again, a business reason, users are left with no access to 3rd-party SSL sites…

Yahoo! Mobile Web Transcoder (Novarra)

If this isn’t quite clear, another way you can look at this is there are three parts to any given transaction: the end-user, the transcoding proxy, and the content site. The aforementioned proxies don’t have a secure connection between them and the end-user when the proxy is fetching secure information:

But Skweezer, on the other hand, does. And it does so with up to 256-bit encryption (depending on what your browser supports) to create an end-to-end SSL transaction of 3rd-party websites:

So, if you’re going to access content transactionally, i.e. your bank balance, etc, through a transcoder, be sure the information you’re providing isn’t being sent with just regular HTTP regardless of whether the intended URL is in SSL.

Posted byy Kevin Perkins

Skweezer technology can now be easily integrated into Web application “mashups”.

IRVINE, Calif., April 2, 2008—Greenlight Wireless today announced the release of the Skweezer Application Programming Interface (API), found online at www.greenlightwireless.net/developers, which assists developers with integrating Skweezer’s content mobilization technology into new applications.

Skweezer, a Web-based service that compresses desktop Web content for use on cell phones, has been integrated into a wide range of applications since its release in 2003. Installed mobile browsers, mobile Web site directories, and even Apple widgets are just a few ways that Skweezer has been integrated into the latest wave of Web application mashups.

“In the past, enterprising programmers needed to experiment with Skweezer parameters through trial and error,” said Greenlight Wireless president Mark Sieve. “The Skweezer API makes integrating Skweezer technology very easy and, once our advertising component is in place, profitable as well.”

The Skweezer API will shortly be integrated with Greenlight Wireless’ converged online advertising solution, which provides ads to both desktop and mobile traffic. This combination will allow programmers to add Skweezer technology to their application and at the same time monetize their mobile Web traffic with high-yielding cost-per-click ads.

Skweezer technology compresses and reformats content being downloaded, so that it loads faster, looks better, and is easier to navigate. Skweezer has introduced many mobile browsing innovations and has won several awards in 2007, including a Gold Star in the Mobile Star Awards and Best Web Compression Service in the Smartphone and Pocket PC Magazine Best Software Awards. Skweezer is completely platform-independent and can be accessed from Pocket PC, Palm, MS Smartphone, Blackberry, iPhone, Symbian, PSP2, and WAP 2.0 compliant devices.

About Greenlight Wireless:
Greenlight Wireless is a leading innovator of wireless technologies, providing mobile solutions for enterprise-level businesses, Web portals, and wireless carriers. Greenlight Wireless’ consumer-oriented Skweezer service optimizes Web content for handheld devices, providing a richer browsing experience and adding value to wireless data offerings. Greenlight’s Advertizer product is a cutting-edge advertising program for operators, search engines, and publishers who want to monetize their content in the mobile environment.

On the Net: Greenlight Wireless site: www.greenlightwireless.net
Skweezer Public API page: www.greenlightwireless.net/developers

Posted by Monica Sato

The days after Christmas see a dramatic increase in mobile Web activity.

IRVINE, Calif., December 28, 2007—Greenlight Wireless Corporation today announced that usage of its Skweezer mobile browsing service has dramatically increased since December 26th, which appears to support industry speculation that mobile handsets were a popular item under the Christmas tree.

Aggregated mobile Web traffic data from the Skweezer portal and Skweezer Private Label implementations indicate the following:

– An average month-to-month growth rate of 11% between January and November 2007
– A 21% increase in worldwide traffic from December 25th to December 26th 2007
– Traffic from North America experienced the highest post-Christmas increase in traffic at 28%
– Mobile Web traffic from Blackberries, iPhones, Blackjacks, and other “smartphone” devices increased 19%, indicating that high-end handsets received as gifts may be responsible for the increased mobile Web usage

While Skweezer traffic has been growing steadily month-to-month, this year’s post-Christmas spike is the most dramatic increase on record. Past years have seen a similar yet more modest average increase of 17% in Skweezer page views immediately following the holidays. While usage historically corrects itself after the initial spike in traffic, 71% of post-holiday traffic is maintained after the second week of January.

Greenlight Wireless has been accumulating and analyzing demographic and behavioral data from Skweezer users in over 175 countries since 2003 and there is historical evidence that trends uncovered in Skweezer closely mirror trends in the overall industry.

Skweezer is a free service that optimizes Web pages and searches for use on PDAs and cell phones. Mobile Internet users access Skweezer by visiting www.skweezer.net, then use the portal as a “wireless gateway” to browse and search the Web. Skweezer compresses and reformats content being downloaded, so that it loads faster, looks better, and is easier to navigate. Skweezer has introduced many mobile browsing innovations and has won several awards in 2007, including a Gold Star in the Mobile Star Awards and Best Web Compression Service in the Smartphone and Pocket PC Magazine Best Software Awards. Skweezer is completely platform-independent and can be accessed from Pocket PC, Palm, MS Smartphone, Blackberry, iPhone, Symbian, PSP2, and WAP 2.0 compliant devices. Skweezer is also available as a “private label” solution for wireless carriers, search engines, and content providers.

About Greenlight Wireless:
Greenlight Wireless is a leading innovator of wireless technologies, providing mobile solutions for enterprise-level businesses, Web portals, and wireless carriers. Greenlight Wireless’ consumer-oriented Skweezer service optimizes Web content for handheld devices, providing a richer browsing experience and adding value to wireless data offerings. Greenlight’s Advertizer product is a cutting-edge advertising program for operators, search engines, and publishers who want to monetize their content in the mobile environment.

On the Net: Greenlight Wireless site: www.greenlightwireless.net
Skweezer site: www.skweezer.net

Posted by Monica Sato