Please note: The dot mobi idea
seemed like a good one when it was first developed but it has been
overtaken by progress in mobile phone technology such that most
modern mobile phones can perfectly easily load and display normal
web pages. As a result the use of the Happy Valley mobile pages
has never developed and has in fact fallen to zero in June 2009.
I have therefore decided to discontinue the pages with effect from
1 August 2009.
Some of the basic data from the Happy Valley web site is now available on your mobile phone or PDA hand held. Most modern mobile hand held devices have the facility to browse web pages. However, normal web pages do not display very well if at all - most pages are too big, too complex and contain too many pictures.
These problems are now being resolved by the introduction of .mobi sites. There are very strict rules and standards for these sites so that users can look at them with the confidence that they will display properly on their hand held device. I have registered bollington.mobi to provide specially designed Happy Valley pages for mobile devices.
World first!
As a matter of interest, these pages were put up on 21st October 2006. A check with Google on that day showed that there were 166,000 .mobi sites registered, just 12 contained pages, only 2 contained pages designed for hand held devices and only one had pages that were also properly formatted - bollington.mobi !! Happy Valley was the first on the planet with fully formatted pages complying with hand held device standards!
During 2008 we have seen the introduction of smarter phones with larger memories, such as the iPhone 3G and various Smartphones, which can cope much better with normal web pages. It is clear that these will eventually make redundant the kinds of hand helds that need minimalist web pages. When I first wrote this page in 2006 I suggested that .mobi pages would become commonplace. It is now clear that they will have a short life and may be history by, say, 2012.
How to access the pages
See note at top of page!
Every model of hand held phone or PDA has its own way of getting to web pages. If you have not done this before, check out the instruction manual or go through the basic menu looking for Web or Internet or something related. At some point it will ask you to enter the web site address that you want - enter bollington.mobi or, if it doesn't like it that short, try www.bollington.mobi or if it wants it in full http://www.bollington.mobi/ .
The information so far provided is mainly phone numbers. Many PDAs allow you to highlight a phone number and dial it directly. To enable this the numbers are always shown without spaces, hyphens or other punctuation.
Many service providers require the user to enable the online service prior to first use by phoning the call centre to have the service switched on. If your attempt to access the pages doesn't work, call them up and they will switch the service on for you.
Very Important! It is impossible for me to test the pages on every type of device. If you have problems please tell me so that I can find a solution. Thank you very much in advance for your help!
See what the pages should look like ...
Click on bollington.mobi
There are only a few pages at the moment containing phone numbers and some opening times for the frequently needed locations. Please tell me what additional information you would find useful on your hand held. The key limitations are that it must be possible to display the information on a very small screen, avoiding large amounts of data and pictures.
