The bottom line is: You are better off using a website instead of an iPhone app. Unless you are using a made-for-iPad app you should use your browser instead of these applications. Running regular iPhone apps on an iPhone is pretty lame.

Here is what you get when you display this on the 1024×768 iPad:

And here is what the corresponding website looks like on the iPad:

Which version would YOU prefer?

What would Google do? What did Google do? Go mobile.

On Tuesday between 2pm and 4pm you’ll have the opportunity to get some free one-to-one consulting on mobile marketing and mobile advertising. You will be able to find me in the expert surgery zone. Details can be found on the a4uexpo blog.

Mobile Space podcast on GeekCast.fm

I’m convinced that the mobile web will experience a great gain in popularity and importance in the next years. To all those of you who still believe the wired internet will rule the world forever, you’re gonna be dead meat in five years.

Well, not quite. But outdated distribution channels like over-the-air television or old-school business models like CPM advertising are slowly but surely going to die out. Mobile internet usage is definitely a new trend and I’ve decided to jump onto that train. So wish me luck.

The crowd of attendees and speakers was quite international. So I ended up hanging around with the German crowd. You guys were fun to be around, especially during the Thames cruise and the drinks at the Novotel afterwards. What happened to Michael? I hadn’t seen him all morning.

I enjoyed a4uexpo a lot and recommend anyone to go. It costs a little bit of money but the investment is definitely worth it. If you’re a beginner it’s really worth attending the sessions. Otherwise you can also hang out in the conference area and get to know new people. Everybody will get something out of the show.

Matt announced that a4uexpo will be expanding to the continent. The first non-UK a4uexpo is going to be in Amsterdam. You should consider Munich or Berlin too.

I’m sure there will be more blog posts, photos and videos published soon. But here are a few pictures from the trade show and the parties:

Internet Explorer

The current version 7 of IE blocks all third-party cookies by default. That means that pages loaded via frames cannot drop cookies at all if their domains are not equipped with a proper P3P policy. Many advertisers haven’t taken care of that, so all the iFrame affiliates will have more and more difficulties.

Internet Explorer 8 is going to introduce a private browsing mode. Cookies are not rejected right away but are treated as session cookies and deleted when the user closes the browser window. Some people refer to it as the “porn mode” but it was originally designed for the use of the internet on somebody else’s machine. Another new feature is giving users the ability to delete all cookies except those of bookmarked websites.

Mozilla Firefox

The current Firefox does not block third-party cookies. But it’s very easy to tell the browser to delete all cookies on closure. And a lot of people actually do this. Also, there are many plugins that filter out banners and cookies today already. The funny thing is that sometimes these impressions are still counted by the delivering ad networks even though nothing is being displayed.

Google Chrome

This sucker is quite ironic. It allows users to switch to a “stealth” mode making it difficult for ad networks to re-target ads and track conversions. However, the browser software itself collects data and passes it back to Google. As a result Chrome only allows Google ads to work, the other ad networks can be blocked. In my mind Chrome is the biggest spyware ever, nicely packaged I have to admit. I hope they’ll get sued over this.

Solution for Online Advertising Networks

For many years the effect of rejected/deleted cookies has been unkown. Now we finally have a profound data basis. AffiliateFuture, an affiliate network based in the UK, observed a 7% increase in tracked conversions after they introduced flash cookies. I think with the introduction of new browser generations the effect will be much higher.

Online advertising networks can’t rely on traditional browser cookies alone anymore. They must also incorporate technologies such as finger-print tracking and the use of flash cookies. Not one of these methods alone will work. They have to be used simultaneously.

Mobile Tracking

A lot of browsers on mobile phones do not support cookies, Javascript and Flash. So none of these methods can be used to track well on the mobile internet. That’s why for example Google’s conversion tracking is useless for mobile ad campaigns. The way to go on mobile is server tracking on the side of the advertiser and batch imports to the ad network.

I’ve been thinking about it for a while now because I hate being dependent on WLAN hotspots. First of all, you have to know where exactly you will be going and how you get an internet connection there before you leave. Locating WLAN hotspots while being offline can be a challenge.

Secondly, even though I’m paying them enough fees already, airports or hotels usually require you to pay extra for a lousy internet connection. And then it takes you ages to get going there because you will have to follow an order process first. Nope, been there, done that, got rid of it.

For 25 euros flat fee per month you can get real UMTS mobile internet access with BASE or E-Plus in Germany. It’s a 24-month contract but who cares. You can’t beat that price. I’ve been thinking about going with Vodafone because their coverage is a lot better in rural areas. But they were a lot more expensive. So BASE is it.

The Huawei E800 card works just fine with my Vista laptop. When you insert the card the computer also recognizes it as a CD-ROM drive. So there is no separate CD, the software is on the card itself. I’d never seen this before. Anyways, after two minutes of driver and software installation I was ready to go online. I have no clue if this card and the software work with Linux. But I really doubt it.

So, if you’re in an urban area in Germany and want to mobilize your office, feel free to click on the affiliate link below and get it yourself

These days roughly half of the browser handset in use do not support cookies. If you were Google, how would you know which keyword and ad triggered the conversion without cookies? Exactly, you simply wouldn’t know. Yes, as mobile phones get replaced regularly more phones will support cookies. But as pay-per-click is often a narrow-margin business Google’s conversion tracking becomes useless for mobile.

The Javascript in the Google conversion code might be another hurdle. But firing the pixel in the noscript image tag is enough to transmit the conversion to Google. It seems to me that the Javascript code is there only to display a Google ad and to collect more user data. That’s why they make the full code mandatory (see their terms & conditions).

But what’S the solution to the problem? Either Google offers their advertisers a batch-tracking service. Or the advertisers will have to use a third-party tracking service that records the click and conversion data and matches them through the AdWords API.

Have you ever wanted to log onto your server without having a computer? Here is a cool way to do it from your mobile phone. MidpSSH is an SSH client for mobile phones. It’s a Java application so it runs on most modern handsets. It’s only a few hundred kilobytes small and available for free download at http://xk72.com/wap.

Granted, running the Midnight Commander on your cell phone screen doesn’t really make a lot of sense. But being able to start and stop services or the whole machine from almost anywhere is still a big plus. Today my Postfix email server died on me and I restarted it while shopping in the supermarket.