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There remains avid debate about whether it is theoretically possible to write one web site that will run usably on both desktop and mobile devices.

The "there is only one web" argument: if we could just get mobile user agents good enough, and site designers would use appropriate CSS, mobile devices could effectively display the same web content as desktop (or other) devices.

I disagree. In essence, the technology problem can be solved, but the content problem can not.

• Non-visual presentations - Content written for visual (text + graphics) display can not be automatically rendered by voice, and vice versa. While a good text-to-speech solution theoretically could be developed, the content would still need to be altered. People process information differently verbally and visually. Worse, they make navigation decisions differently when they have to remember everything compared with when they can see their choices.
• Content style - Style needs depending on medium as well as the content itself. For example, many good verbal presentations follow the "tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them" formula; good journalistic writing has the "inverted triangle" style with the big story first and revealing progressively less important details. Blog writing tends to have lots of links and be in either essay style (like verbal) or brief style. The needs of desktop and mobile device presentation are generally different.
• User context and needs - While your users may be interested in your marketing sheets, in spending half the day on your site, or in downloading large flash presentations while they are sitting at their desk, they likely won't be looking at this information while mobile. Further, the user is going to be in an environment where interruptions must be considered normal and frequent. However, the information needs to be presented in alternate forms. On the other hand, most of your desktop users will not be interested in downloading ringtones to their computer.
• Device features - You can ignore the fact that the phone has location, an excellent readily accessible voice connection, and quick messaging such as SMS or MMS, but why hamper your mobile web site like that?
• Response modality - If I knew that I could allow the user to respond using voice - something not always possible or desirable - I would design the site differently. For example, I would not have "Add to Cart" as the button labels, as that is what the user would have to say. The list would have to be designed differently. However, in a non-verbal browser this label is perfect.

Lots of people talk about the risk of fragmenting the web, or at least continuing the current fragmentation. I'm all for ending that. Let's get the fragmentation down to a minimum:

1. Large-screen displays
2. Small-screen displays
3. Large-screen displays with voice response
4. Small-screen displays with voice response
5. Voice display and response only

I don't think the list is going to get any shorter than that.

When you have a long text string, such as a URL, HTML page title, or file name with path, you need to consider how you display the information if you have limited display space. Consider right-aligning the data. Here's an example:

Based on this information, I have no idea what file I'm working on. It's fine if I only have one file in this folder open ... but I frequently have 3 or 4. This drop-down list is essentially useless to me. However, if it were right-aligned, I and pretty much most other users could use this effectively.

Another situation in which this problem manifests is when using tabbed browsing. Firefox left-aligns page titles in tabs; Safari centers the titles (making it sometimes very confusing). However, many sites use their site name before the page name when designing the page title. This practice makes a lot of sense for the two most commons uses of the page title: display in the title bar and display in bookmarks. It's not the fault of the sites that their titles do not render well in the software, it's the fault of the software. So, browser companies: please at least allow me to right-align titles in tabs.

Of course the challenge of how to display long strings of text applies even more on mobile devices. I remember one site where I had to choose between 6 items, all starting with the same initial 12 characters. The reason for this problem was that the company's branding department wanted consistency with their brand labels. (We fixed the problem by showing the branding department what their precious brands would actually look like on the phone - boastful gibberish).

For mobile devices, we recommend first and foremost to edit the data if possible. In the example of a file name, you can safely remove the left-most characters as long as you leave the right-most 40 characters or so. This will work both for people with deep file structures and people with shallow file structures.

If editing is not possible, try right-aligning the data. If your platform does not allow right-aligning along with text-wrap (times-square scrolling), you may be in trouble. Fortunately, the new ECMAScript phones will get you out of that problem - but more about that when the phones are broadly available.

A web design colleague of mine, Peter Merholz, recently wrote ask why people weren't excited about mobile technologies. He cited Janice Fraser's essay A Whole New Internet, describing trends such as Ajax, amateurization, social software, and so forth. He argued that nobody is excited about mobile, at least in the portions of the blogosphere

Of course, my UK colleague and mobilist Paul Golding would beg to differ. As would I. Paul's site is stuffed full of mobile ideas, and you'll find a few scattered on my site.

I think a lot of people are excited about a lot of the capabilities of mobile. Personally I am thrilled that Sprint has finally launched commercial location-based services, and I hope that they will soon turn on the J2ME MIDP2 location API.

There are a bunch of mobile dating services, allowing users to find who matches their profile and is nearby so they can go introduce themselves.

Camera phones are used for life caching, which are some interesting combination of photo sharing like flickr.com and blogging. In fact, mobile blogging in general is quite popular.

Personalization is huge, and only getting bigger. Already ring tones and wallpaper are huge hits; now things are going further. For example, operator-defined user interfaces could be branded by company (Coke phone), pop star (Jennifer Lopez), brand (Hello Kitty), sports team (Chelsea Football Club), sports figure (Tiger Woods), employer, or anything else.

Mobile phones are also starting to influence our daily lives in other ways. DoCoMo just took a 34% stake in a credit card company to support its mobile wallet business. In the US and Europe, PaperClick from NeoMedia is getting ready to allow us to use our cameraphone to integrate the physical world and the Internet.

There are many other exciting things in the mobile space, including new device types, new device keyboards, hard drives on phones getting ready for music phones, games, operating systems, and so forth. The amount of stuff is pretty amazing. Not only that, we will inherit anything useful that the larger internet community comes up with, leaving us with the best of both worlds.

The San Francisco Chronicle interviews Verizon CEO Ivan Seindenber:

Seidenberg, for instance, said people often complain about mobile phone service because they have unrealistic expectations about a wireless service working everywhere. Verizon Wireless, a joint venture of Verizon and Vodafone, is the state's largest mobile phone provider.

"Why in the world would you think your (cell) phone would work in your house?" he said. "The customer has come to expect so much. They want it to work in the elevator; they want it to work in the basement."

Seidenberg said it's not Verizon's responsibility to correct the misconception by giving out statistics on how often Verizon's service works inside homes or by distributing more detailed coverage maps, showing all the possible dead zones. He pointed out that there are five major wireless networks, none of which works perfectly everywhere.

I have one question: Can you hear me now?

The Verizon Wireless advertising campaign has had enormous impact on people's perceptions of Verizon's coverage. And if my neighbor can get a signal in his house, I find it reasonable to expect that I can get a signal in mine. And I can get a signal in one basement, why not another? Could it be because some buildings have interior networks?