I’m a fan of scaled-down sites for portable devices, (RSS is nice, but it’s overkill for my infrequent mobile browsing habits.) Sometimes when I’m out I’ll pull out my T-Mobile Sidekick and browse the news.
However, I often have trouble finding the scaled-down version of a news site, especially when I don’t have a full computer to look for it. In fact, last night I had a tough time remembering the URL for the mobile version of Poynter Online (www.poynter.org/avantgo).
So I have a proposal. We can work out the particulars in the comments to this post, if needed.
I propose that news providers develop a subdomain standard for their portable products.
For instance, at Poynter we are going to set up the subdomain mini.poynter.org to handle our portable site. It would be great if one day you could type in mini.nytimes.com, mini.sptimes.com, or just insert “mini” in front of any news provider’s URL to access the portable version of a site without the hunt.
What do you think? Please comment below.
