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by Scott Frangos

Are you ready for the Mobile Internet? Maybe you are, but your website isn’t. Well, you better make the necessary modifications, because if research by Juniper Inc. is right, you’ll miss out on a huge market if you don’t. How big? 24 billion by 2013. Let’s take a look at what’s happening now, and a list of five recent plugins for WordPress BlogMasters and WebMasters.

the paradigm is shifting… if people are surfing while “mobile”, then how can you serve them web and blog pages while they’re moving around? Think ipod. Think podcast. Think… a new plugin for WordPress that allows your pages to be “read” to them…

Consider this: The Washington Post reported earlier this year that there are more than 3.3 billion cell phones for 6.6 billion people on earth… and this has happened in about 26 years. And you know that most new phones can surf the web. So is the mobile web a real business opportunity? Google thinks it is. They’re offering $10 million in prizes, in a competition called the “Android Developer Challenge“, for people who build the best software to enhance the company’s upcoming mobile phone operating system. What is Android? “a software stack for mobile devices that includes an operating system, middleware and key applications.” Wouldn’t ecommerce provide some incentive for those key applications? Of course.

But a phone is mostly a social device (as we know it now), and Google is on that concept too. Their first suggested focus area under the list of suggesting applications is, “Social Networking.” And when you pair eCommerce with Social Networking, you get a good idea of what’s to come. Consider what the folks at Juniper Inc. have to say about that:

“Combining the power of the social network map - namely: ‘who I know, how I know and where I know’ - with that of mobility, presents the greatest opportunity for revenue generation of any of the applications as defined within Juniper’s Mobile Web 2.0 framework,” states Ian Chard, Juniper Research Analyst and author of the new report. “The phone is carried with us most of the time and contains a huge amount of personal data, making it a logical extension for the social network and a host of other collaborative Web 2.0 applications being mobilised.”

The troops are being mobilized right now, it seems. And, the paradigm is shifting… if people are surfing while “mobile”, then how can you serve them web and blog pages while they’re moving around? Think ipod. Think podcast. Think… a new plugin for WordPress that allows your pages to be “read” to them…

So how do you get your sites mobile ready?

Above, Odiogo promises to give voice to your blog — it’s technology can speak what you’ve written.

We’ll concentrate on a short list of plugins for WordPress Mobile Content Management Strategy (MCMS… a new acronym?). You will also find some help in a recent article here on, “Is Your Website Mobile Ready?“.

Five WordPress Plugins for Mobile Users:

• “Mowser” plugin for WordPress reroutes mobile users through the Mowser browser (MObile brOWSER — Mowser).
• WP Mobile Edition (by Alex King) - creates a PDA friendly interface for WordPress Blogs & CMS sites
• iPhone-Mobile Admin - adapts your admin. area to be more friendly on mobile devices
• WP-WAP (by Lester Chan) - Browse your WordPress’s blog entries on a WAP enabled mobile phone.
• Odiogo Plugin… reads your content to mobile users. Huh? Yup… the new paradigm is here. This plugin displays a ‘listen’ button underneath the title of each post.

You’ve probably noticed that we focus on WordPress here for a lot of suggested solutions. I like it best for ease of use, superior SEO structure, and social marketing strenghts, but most good CMS (Content Management Systems) are probably looking at mobile functionality right now too.

The last plugin listed above, Odiogo, requires a free membership to get the plugin… so, I’ve got to go sign-up now. The future is coming, it’s big, and it doesn’t wait for stragglers.