We have previously commented about the death of Symbian-http://blog.wapple.net/the-death-of-symbian-is-another-new-and-exciting-start-for-nokia/ may,ironically, give a boost to Nokia’s future, but is the spike in the company’s share price a blip or a sea-change in the handset behemoth’s fortunes?

Nokia certainly seems to think it’s good news for the company and rushed out a statement that ‘opportunities for the growth of Nokia’s smartphone business will be greatest with the Windows Phone”. We agree with them, because Windows Mobile 7 is a great platform.

Naturally there are all types of theories about patents with some going as far to say that Google’s deal makes Nokia more attractive as an acquistion for Microsoft. But Microsoft has patents of its own and that makes Nokia’s acquisition less attractive. But, enough already of acquisitions, let’s hear it for the operating systems, may the best one win (the greatest market share).

In-store payment on mobiles is simply not here yet. Maybe one day but have you even performed a contactless technology transaction with your new fangled credit card yet? No? Me neither. So based on that, paying for something on your mobile is some WAY off. Maybe a nice idea could be dreamt up – a mechanism for making it happen. But standardising the technology and then installing it in a number of retailers enough to achieve critical mass is a pipedream in 2011.

Mobiles are with you at the point of purchase. Sure, they are there when you make purchasing decisions. But that doesn’t mean we have to default to making users pay through their mobile devices. Why does mobile HAVE to become a payment platform to be judged a success? Surely a brand /retailer is happy if the consumer commits to purchase – cash, CC, hell – cheque! As long as mobile has contributed to that purchase then it played its part.

Maybe to take that point to the next level – when I watch an advert on TV and I like the product so much that the next day I go out and buy it then ‘Job Done’ marketing team. Well done. Just because I didn’t press the red button and have it posted to me a week later doesn’t mean TV failed. It worked. Really well.

Oh, and I never press the red button by the way.

The news of Mojiva’s funding was closely followed by the release of Google’s second-quarter earnings that rolled in at more than $9 billion, more than 32% up on 2011. According to many analysts, this rise in revenues was vindicated by the company’s $750 million purchase of AdMob as they cited Google’s mobile strategy as fundamental to the future of the company.

We are inclined to agree with these analysts. Google’s focus on mobile is allowing significant investment in companies such as Mojiva and other ad networks around the world. The ubiquity of smartphones and a mobile audience that is increasingly engaging with mobile and regards mobile advertising as integral to that experience augurs well for the sector.

So if someone hits your site but ends up on a URL they shouldn’t, you can now create a handy 404 page that might have links to your sitemap (or even a Sitemap chunk on it), a link to the home page, or anything you want.

You can edit your 404 page exactly the same way as you do any other page on your site – create some text, drop a graphic or two on it and you’re done.

If you want some inspiration for cool looking 404 pages, check out this link: http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/60-really-cool-and-creative-error-404-pages/ – there are some great 404 pages on there and if you create something similar, let us know and we’ll publish some of the best!

If you want to split a text chunk over a number of pages, just include [/pagebreak] in the body of your text and pagination links will split the text over multiple pages. Simples.

You can even control the text of the pagination links in the labels page of Canvas.

Just zip up your graphics and upload that file where you would normally upload an image file. Once uploaded, the zip file will be unpacked and each image will become its own site graphic. Whatever rules you set at upload will be applied to each site graphic, but be sure to either remove or replace the new site graphic name. Whatever is in this box will prefix the filename of the source graphic when the site graphic is added

What it allows you to do, is create a group with a name, then place your campaigns into these groups.

We’ve got some fancy new reports coming soon that will display your campaigns grouped together in a really nice way – but for now, start creating your groups and place your campaigns into them.

Well all these problems and more have been solved with the latest chunk to be added to Wapple Canvas.

It’s called the Bing Search Near Me chunk and is an integration with a number of technologies from those clever folk at Bing. It allows you to search for locations near to you – pizzas, restaurants, golf clubs, fitness centers – they’re all there ready to be searched for.

Lots of Bing

First of all, it integrates with the Bing Maps Search Service, which allows you to enter a location and keyword – and return relevant results. Tie it in with GPS lookups on a mobile phone browser and you’ve got something that will find you stuff right where you are!

We’ve also integrated the chunk with Bing Maps, so not only can you find locations near you, but you can see where they are on a map – very useful if you’re not too familiar with an area.

And finally we’ve used the Bing Maps Direction Service, so after seeing your nearby spots on a nice looking map, you get handy directions that show you exactly how to get there and how long it’ll take!

Some practical uses

If you want any kind of search on your site to find businesses, or shops, or restaurants or whatever, this is the chunk for you. It’s massively configurable, so if you want to allow your users the ability to click the link to phone the shop direct, or change walking to driving directions, you can.

It also has a setting for overriding the mode it starts in – so if you have an event and want to show the nearest 3 Sushi restaurants to your party in downtown Manhattan, set the mode override, specify the where and the what and let the chunk do the rest!

To demonstrate just how useful this chunk is – we had a guy at Wapple HQ needing to find a tyre in a hurry. He used the Bing Search Near Me chunk to find a tyre shop nearby, used the click to call functionality to check if they had one in stock, and followed the directions and map to get there to have his tyre fitted!

It’s all available in one chunk inside of Canvas – so log on and add a Bing Search Near Me chunk to your page to get your users looking for locations near them!

If you’ve got some ideas for using the chunk and would like to talk them through with us, drop us a line.

Sure, you could insert text at the start of the URL and create a shortcode to identify your site, but essentially, everything was managed and displayed with pretty ugly looking variables.

But that has all changed.

We’ve introduced a new feature into Wapple Canvas called Tidy URLs that allow you to configure, at a page level, the URL that page will have.

No variables, no mess, just a nice, pretty URL that you can let the world know about. If you want your URLs to have a .html, or .htm, or even no extension you can – it’s free text so you dictate how they look.

And by creating tidy URLs that match both your page title and the content inside, you should earn a few extra brownie points with the likes of Google and Bing.

If you’ve got your own domain pointing at our servers, you could get even more SEO friendly URLs, but it’ll work just as well with a Canvas short URL. Every page on your site can have a tidy URL – so if you have a specific campaign that you need to publish, create a new page and give it a user-friendly URL. Mobile Advertising and Mobile Marketing just became a whole lot easier!

Don’t forget to turn Tidy URLs on in Canvas – login and head to Site > Properties > Defaults – it’s the last option on the page.

Finally, we’ve updated our URL generator so that if your site has tidy URLs turned on, you’ll get nice URLs by default.

If you have any thoughts about this feature or would like to talk to us about mobile SEO, mobile advertising or mobile marketing, get in touch – we’d be happy to have a chat with you.

Everything has had an update looks wise, we’ve improved some JavaScipt (new date picker, new colour picker) and we’ve even added a check on every page so if you’ve made changes, it’ll ask you if you want to navigate away.

We’ve gone a bit world cup crazy at Wapple HQ so we’ve added some footballs inside of Canvas. We’ll be replacing them with something else once the World Cup is over so make sure you keep checking back to see what we come up with.

If you have a suggestion for any new themes, let us know and we’ll pass them over to our design wizards to see what they can conjure up.