For me, a “mobile device” is much more than corporate email and a cell phone. I interact with social media sites, read news, manage multiple blogs, get weather, check the status of computer servers, watch wildlife (via remote IP cameras), read books, enjoy a game or two, take pictures, record data, go shopping, yada, yada, yada.

My Blackberry(s) served me well and I’ve had many over the past 10 years. It is a great corporate email solution. But I need so much more than corporate email and a phone call.

Along comes Lotus Traveler and overnight, iPhones and Android phones become great corporate email devices. Plus, these “mobile devices” are a lot more. They easily do all the social, business, and fun things I do.

So which to choose ? That was easy. iPhone. Why ? For the same reason companies everywhere establish “standards” – it cut’s down on support. I have an iPhone iPod Touch, my mother has an iPhone, my niece has an iPhone, many of my friends have iPhones. Having an iPhone means I can provide suggestions, recommend applications, and be the family “tech support”.

If you use WordPress you should definitely install the WPTouch plugin and give your readers a great experience for their mobile device (iPhone, Blackberry, Android, etc.) Additionally, I am fond of the WP-Hashcash anti-spam plugin since it works well and does not require posters to read one of those CAPTHA images.

Unfortunately, out of the box, things do not play well together. The symptom is that comments that come through the WPTouch experience, will be flagged by WP-Hashcash as potential spam because it did not get a value generated key. There are a lot of background that is not important. There are two ways to make things play well. One has minimal changes but does not support AJAX comments. The other is more invasive but retains all the functions of both plugins.

Minimalist Solution:

WP_Hashcash requires two things in the theme – some JavaScript to be inserted in the header and a hidden field inserted into the comment form. The plugin uses hooks for each of these so the theme only needs to conform to the following.

WP Hashcash relies on the presence of two hooks in your theme, wp_head and comment_form. If your theme doesn’t include these actions, you will need to add them immediately before the </head> and </form> tags respectively.

source: Elliot Back, author of WP-Hashcash

Things are a bit spread out. If you have already enabled your normal theme for WP-Hashcash, then the wp_head() change is already done since WPTouch adds to your normal header. However, WPTouch provides its own comments page so you will need to edit that. It’s location is:

  /public_html/blog/wp-content/plugins/wptouch/themes/default/comments.php 

Just add the following before the closing </form> tag:

  <?php do_action('comment_form', $post->ID); ?> 

There is one more thing. In the plugin settings page for WPTouch, you will need to turn off AJAX comments.

Full Function Solution:

You make the changes described above but you do not need to turn off AJAX comments. You then need to make some code changes to both WPTouch and WP-Hashcash.

Back in the same directory as WPTouch’s "comments.php" there is the partner file called "comments-ajax.php". Edit this file in two places – adding one line (seen below in bold green) and appending to another (seen below in bold blue).

  $comment_author = trim($_GET['author']); 
  $comment_author_email = trim($_GET['email']);  
  $comment_author_url = trim($_GET['url']); 
  $comment_content = trim($_GET['comment']); 
  $wphc_value = trim($_GET['wphc_value']); 
  ... 
  $commentdata = compact('comment_post_ID', 'comment_author', 'comment_author_email', 'comment_author_url', 'comment_content', 'comment_type', 'user_ID', 'wphc_value'); 

Now edit the "wp-hashcash.php" file which should be in the root of your plugins directory. Near the very bottom of the file, there is a comment, "Check the wphc values against the last five keys". There are actually two instances of this comment and you will make changes for the one in the "wphc_check_hidden_tag()" function. The code only looks for the "wphc_value" field in the _POSTS data. If you are using WPTouch AJAX comments, the changes above have added this field to the compacted "comment data". Now you need to check both locations as follows:</P?

  $hash_value = $_POST["wphc_value"]; 
  if (!$hash_value) 
    $hash_value = $comment['wphc_value']; 
  $spam = !in_array($hash_value, $options['key']); 
   
  if($options['logging'] && $spam) 
    $comment['comment_content'] .= "\n\n[WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The poster sent us '".($hash_value)."' which is not a hashcash value."; 

I’ve become one of those "smoker bigots" – you know the kind … they quit smoking and *THEN* start preaching all the bad things that smoking does. My conversion was not that I was a smoker; it was the "mobile browser".

I am blogger and user of the web but until about 6 months ago I was mostly on my computer. I now read blogs, feeds, news, and more using my iPod and/or my Blackberry. I use if for Facebook, the weather, Twitter (a little), and most of my personal email. I realized my blog was not as friendly to these mobile devices as it could / should / and eventually would be.

So, I set about to add support for mobile devices and mobile users. It was easy for my blog since it uses WordPress and there is the WPTouch plug-in that makes it nearly automatic. It added support for the devcies I use most often and I even added support for the Androids of the world. (If you have a mobile device and it is not working with my blog, add a comment and I’ll do my best).

So, now I grumble whenever I hit a website that *does not* have special support for mobile devices. I realize I am being zealous but that has not stopped me from small internal unseen spurts of frustration. Oh well. I guess I could seek counseling.

Just a quit note to those readers with mobile devices. I’ve added the WPtouch plugin for iPhone support. Ive tested with an iPod Touch and a Blackberry Bold.

If you have issues with the mobile experience, please let me know.

Is the iPhone, Blackberry, or [an]Driod better for work ? The answer is easy. "What every your corporate policies supports."

You were expecting a discussion on features? Sorry. Features are irrelevant if you can’t get to them. So, unless you company puts in the effort to support your favorite device, you are going to have a much better experience with what ever device they DO support. Here is an example.

I work for a company that has had the Blackberry Enterprise Server connected up to our mail files and calendaring and corporate directory for years. I grab my Blackberry and go. I get my email. I have my calendar always up to date. I have my contacts and I can search the corporate directory. I even get access to company internal web sites. It all just works. The only effort on my part is the password protection screen on the device.

Compare that with my iPhone experience. I have a similar strong password requirement on the iPhone but the on-screen keyboard means a lot of mode changing to get to the numbers and special characters. Next, I have to setup a VPN on the device with it’s own ID and password. (Fortunately this only needs to be messed with every 90 days). Next, there is the ActiveSync setup with yet another ID and password (again, good for 90 days). There is also the issue of profiles and certificates. I should add that the VPN is non-persistent. You have to turn it on anytime the device sits idle for more 30 minutes (or something like that) in order to get a connection to the corporate servers so "push" isn’t really "push".

Yes, I like the iPhone better than the Blackberry because of the screen and the apps and lots of other stuff. Ask me to use the iPhone for work and give up my Blackberry ?! Not likely.

image: geardiary.com