views:

114

answers:

2

I am working on a photo site and one of more active users (the jon skeet of the site ;) asked about pushing content to cell phones. The site is built on django, and I was wondering if anyone knows a good way of allowing users to download and store content (images) on their cell phones?

As a side question... is it possible to accept payment for the content via the cell phone or would that have to take place on the site?

+1  A: 

Check to see if the User Agent of the phone(s) you wish to support is in request.META['HTTP_USER_AGENT']. If so, render mobile friendly templates.

Harold
+1  A: 

Hey Jim.

The best way to serve content to a mobile user would be to forward them to a mobile specific site. A lot of places do this by forwarding the user to http://m.mydomain.com/. You can tell if they're using a cellphone by checking against their UserAgent string as Harold said. Find more at: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/164427/change-django-templates-based-on-user-agent

In terms of downloading, this is pretty phone dependant. On my iphone, for instance, I don't know that I can save images directly from the internet. (This could just be my ignorance, however). I think you're going to run into a lot of discrepencies on the browsers between different mobile devices. How many offer photo downloads vs. not, etc.

For payment, I would suggest keeping it in browser. There is SOO much that could go crazy on a cell phone and money isn't one of those places where I like to take risk. That being said, you could likely look into some sort of sms micro payment system (sorry, I don't have any recommendations) or look at partnerships with carriers such as Verison. Beyond that, I'd say keep it in the App.

Hope it helps.

Justin Lilly