Recently, theMechanism has become more interested than ever in mobile web development. Dave and I were talking a bit about the possibilities after work the other day, and we got so excited we snapped up our first .mobi domain. Now that we had it, though, what to do with it?

While I’ve made a site “mobile friendly in two minutes,” heard of the .mobi domain, read a little about Flash Lite, and worked with semacode, I haven’t engaged in any serious, professional mobile development. So, as senior developer for theMechanism, it was incumbent upon me to do some research. Dave asked me to share my findings on the blog. So, over the next few weeks, I’ll be writing about mobile development here while working on themechanism.mobi (note—themechanism.mobi must be accessed by a mobile device or else you’ll simply be routed to themechanism.com).

Why mobile development?

Well, there are facts such as “internet-enabled mobile phones outnumber PCs four to one” [1]. Then there’s the dream/nightmare of ubiquitous computing—using semacode we can “build applications that combine aspects of the virtual world into the real world” [2]. Finally, it's (relatively) new (and therefore exciting) and, given the release of the iPhone, sexier than ever.

.mobi Domains

While a mobile site can be located anywhere (a domain, subdomain, or subdirectory) “.mobi is the first—and only—top level domain dedicated to users who access the Internet through their mobile phones. General registration of .mobi names began on 26 September and is now open to everyone.” [3]

mTLD Top Level Domain, Ltd. was appointed by ICANN as the official global registry for the .mobi top level domain [4]. To achieve their goal of a domain dedicated to mobile users, mTLD (known informally as dotMobi) has established three mandatory rules that registrants must agree to comply with when they register a .mobi name. mTLD tests all .mobi domains for conformance to the three mandatory rules once per quarter per domain, though this frequency may be increased for sites that have not been compliant in the past. Non-conformant domains will be suspended [5].

Mandatory rules for a .mobi domain:

1. You are required to use XHTML Mobile Profile 1.0 markup language for the home page of your site if your web application does not have the means to distinguish between devices, or, if your web application is able to distinguish between devices but does not recognize the current device.
2. The site must work with or without the “www” in the domain name
3. Frames are not allowed.

That’s it for now. Next time, I’ll talk about some tools to make mobile web development easier.

References

• [1] http://www.ipwalk.com/general/show_news/id/25
• [2] http://semacode.org/about/
• [3] http://mtld.mobi/domain
• [4] http://mtld.mobi/company/about
• [5] http://mtld.mobi/domain/policies/compliance

… but definitely a sick use of tables.

There's still room for one more!

The New York Web Standards Meetup Group will be meeting at theMechanism on 21 June 2007 at 7:00 pm to discuss search engine optimization [SEO]: separating truth from dirty lies!

Finding yourself working with so-called “SEO companies” and wondering why they exist in a world of Standards markup? Are you looking for ways to improve your Search Engine Rankings?

Founder and Creative Director at theMechanism, Dave Fletcher and Lead Programmer at theMechanism, Jeffrey Barke, will offer their thoughts about Search Engine Optimization with examples of good markup and directory structures, as well as things to look out for when dealing with so-called SEO Companies & Experts.

After the talk, we will open the floor to a monthly design critique. We encourage attendees to bring current or past projects they feel comfortable showing to get collective input from the group, as well as discuss topics and desired presenters for future Web Standards meetings.

There is no fee—and beverages as usual—will be provided. RSVP now!

21 June 2007 . 7:00 pm
theMechanism|eEmerge
440 9th Avenue 8th Floor
New York, NY 10001 [map]

Please contact us if you’d like to present at the July or August meetup.

If you're using the WordTube extension for WordPress , haven't been hacked yet, and haven't heard about the remote code execution vulnerability, then you're very lucky and should read on.

The Problem

The following critical problem affects every version of WordTube prior to 1.44. From Secunia:

M.Hasran Addahroni has reported a vulnerability in the wordTube plugin for WordPress, which can be exploited by malicious people to disclose sensitive information or to compromise a vulnerable system.

Input passed to the "wpPATH" parameter in wordtube-button.php is not properly verified before being used to include files. This can be exploited to include arbitrary files from local or external resources.

Solution

Upgrade to version 1.44 immediately!

Jeffrey Barke is senior developer and information architect at theMechanism, a maxi-media firm in New York City and London.

Adhesive is a WordPress plugin that allows one to easily mark certain posts as "sticky." Sticky posts always appear at the top of the page when WordPress displays several posts, but if more than one post is sticky, the post with the latest post time will appear topmost.

Adhesive was originally written by Owen Winkler and available at http://www.redalt.com/downloads/. Unfortunately, it is no longer available, and the last version by Owen doesn't play well with WordPress 2.1. So I fixed it and am making Adhesive available here.

Installation/Usage

Simply follow the download link below, unzip the download and drop it into your WordPress plugins directory. Then activate Adhesive via the plugin administration panel.

To make a post sticky, edit it and either check the "Sticky" checkbox located in the right column below "Keep this post private" or in "Custom Fields" add key sticky with a value of 1.

Please note that if you deactivate Adhesive, all posts marked sticky will revert back to regular status. To upgrade this plugin and preserve posts' sticky status, just overwrite the old Adhesive files with the new ones.

Download Adhesive

→ Adhesive 3.4.0 for WordPress 2.6.5. Last updated 29 November 2008. Release notes.

Adhesive has been tested under WordPress 2.6.5 in Firefox 3.0.4, Google Chrome 0.4.154.25, Internet Explorer 7, Opera 9.62 and Safari 3.2.1 running on Windows Vista. If something isn't working right, please leave a comment.

Jeffrey Barke is senior developer and information architect at theMechanism - New York, a multimedia firm with offices in New York, London and Durban, South Africa.