If a user sets his Bluetooth enabled mobile phone to “discoverable,” Bluetooth devices within range of the phone can
request to connect to the phone and exchange messages and data.
This can be used to send location-specific marketing messages, such as discount codes in a shopping mall.
USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Services Data)
USSD (unstructured supplementary services data) is an alternative messaging system to SMS (short message service) and is available on most GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) networks.
Unlike SMS, USSD is a protocol that allows for a queryand-responsetype of action between the customer and a service center, where these transactions can be seen to be similar to a session on a Web site.
Mobile Web
As much as Web sites need to cater to a number of browsers, they now need to cater to a number of devices, as
more and more people are using their mobile phones.
However, visits from mobile devices are likely to be quite different from the visits from PCs.
Just as with PCs, mobile phones can have different operating systems and different browsers, both affecting the way that Web sites and Web pages are viewed and used.
More sophisticated phones and devices, and increasingly almost all phones sold are falling into this category, can use
HTML browsers that have been specifically designed for mobile phones.
These are pared-down versions of browsers that run on PCs or notebooks and have been specifically designed to take
into account the limitations of mobile devices. In particular, browsers need to accommodate both the low bandwidth and the low memory capacity of mobile devices.
Getting Users to the Mobile Web
Two-dimensional (2D)
Bar codes are similar to one-dimensional bar codes in that they can be scanned to access the information encoded, but 2D codes can contain a lot more information.
The Two-Dimensional (2D) Bar Code forhttp://www.quirk.biz
Mobile URLs
Applications
. Applications and widgets can be created that are specifically for the mobile phone.
For example, Google’s popular e-mail service Gmail can be accessed via the mobile Web, or Gmail users can download a Java application to their phone that gives them access to their Gmail account.