China has taken a very tough line against porn in general. Between jan 6th 2009 and Jan 20th 2009 it closed down 1250 websites and arrested 41 people. Then it decided to get tough on mobile porn (including sms messages).

While I respect the chinese governments right to determine their own culture and laws the following facts cannot be escaped.

• There are considerably more men than women in china thanks to the 1 child policies.
  
• There is a lack of sex education in china
  
• Any national filters/firewalls are pointless - see http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/opinion/555/1050555/why-national-filters-pointless
  

This is going to get very interesting over the next few years.

You would think that the best adult mobi names could be pocket goldmines and traffic centres but it looks like the best names have been picked up by get rich quick merchants as you can see below (As of 23rd Jan 2009):-

• Porn.mobi (sold for $120,000 in 2008 ) - No content - just says coming soon! and links to naked.mobi
• Naked.Mobi - No content - just says coming soon! and links to porn.mobi
• Sex.mobi - Registered but no site
• Babes.mobi - Just a page saying they are looking for a partner
• porno.mobi - Registered but no site
• adult.mobi - There is an actual mobile site with paid video content
• freeporn.mobi - Registered but no site
• sexy.mobi - Registered but no site
• nudes.mobi - a sedo parked ads site
  

Of course with the likelihood of dot porn, dot sex and dot xxx in the near future, these mobi domains may not be worth a lot unless they get developed soon.

As far as data size is concerned it is best to have the smallest size while still having good quality. Apart from that - it's all about width and length.

So ideally we should cater for 4 different sizes and serve the "right sized" content dependent on the users phone. There are 2 programs/scripts which will work out which device you are using - These are Device Atlas and the open source WURFL. Unfortunately some operators (shame on vodafone) block this device information so it may be best to allow users to enter the site like below: -

* Enter Below *
* (small screen) *
* (medium screen) *
* (larger screen) *
* (iPhone) *

Then allow users to move to bigger and smaller pages while on the site.

When it comes to thumbnails it seems that 48 by 64 is a good minimum size - pics are still visible and jpgs can be as small as 1.5kb. This works well at 2 across for 128 width, 3 across for 176 width, 4 across for 240 width and 5 (or 6) across for 320 width. Of course, there are many other site designs which could work well - if I come across good design I will highlight it on this blog.

Phones are not computers and the small screen and technology changes everything. Most websites don't get this - here's a few basic guidelines to making a good mobile website.

1) Use XHTML Basic so that most internet enabled phones can access the site

2) Don't try to do too much on one page - you can only have one column for content 

3) Don't use Javascript, Flash or Pop ups

4) Keep the file sizes small for all content - images especially

5) Don't have a big top banner - keep it text or maximum of 80 pixels height

6) Use ready.mobi to validate your content

7) Order the links so that the most important are first and keep the navigation simple 

Make user input as simple as possible

9) Add access keys so that users can navigate the pages using their keypad 

10) Try to deliver content that will work for all phone sizes or optimise for specific phones

Porn is mobile! - Some people estimate that mobile porn is already worth over a billion dollars and this will grow to many times that over the next few years. And seriously this is the biggest change in social sex habits since well .. the internet.

Yes the screen is too small but you can take it anywhere and turn it on or off without any issue. 5 mins of porn here - 10 mins there - any private space is your own personal porn booth.

There are many sites around to satisfy peoples tastes but unfortunately it can be a pain to find anything free worth finding and the big porn sites have not done a good job of converting their content for mobile. Not everyone has an iPhOne and people need pictures that work on at least 3 screen sizes, video in 3gp format and optimised to reduce its data size while preserving quality.

So where can you find some decent free stuff?

A couple of good sites to start from are Gal1 Mobile babes(great free pics) and http://wapworld.mobi (good directory). Over the next few weeks we will be reviewing sites, sharing technical knowledge and looking at ways that people are making money.