Make Us Better

[Robert Levy]

Smartphone Thoughts has been live for just over five months. I like to think that we’re doing a pretty good job at providing a top-notch watering hole where Smartphone enthusiasts come to stay up to date, exchange opinions, and help each other out. We’ve had the scoop on a lot of huge stories, our traffic continues to grow faster than expected, and our forums are getting busier and busier. But we want to become even better. To do that, I’m asking for your help:<ul><li><b>Send us news.</b> There’s a “<a href="http://www.smartphonethoughts.com/submit.php">Submit News</a>” link up on the top right corner of every page of the site. If you run across something that other Smartphone Thoughts readers might be interested in, please do not hesitate to let us know using that form. If you fill in your name, we’ll even give you credit for the find!<li><b>Send us feedback.</b> There is only so much we can do with a small staff of volunteer editors so I’d like to make sure that we are focusing on the type of content that best serves our readers and keeps you coming back several times a day. Let us know what want to see more – and what you want to see less of. Industry news, developer articles, software announcements, software reviews, hardware reviews, editorials and opinion pieces, giveaways and contests, rumors and gossip… here’s your chance to shape Smartphone Thoughts. Please take a few minutes to post a comment below with your thoughts on how we’re doing and how we can improve. If you want prefer to send feedback privately or anonymously, feel free to use the "<a href="http://www.smartphonethoughts.com/contact.php">Contact</a>" form and pick my name from the drop down list.<li><b>Participate.</b> Have a question to ask? Have an opinion to share? Please do! <a href="http://www.smartphonethoughts.com/forums/profile.php?mode=register">Register</a> a username, post in our <a href="http://www.smartphonethoughts.com/forums/index.php">forums</a>, and discuss our front page stories. It’s free and it’s fun.</ul>

[dh]

Well here's a funny thing. I've never really thought that MS Smartphone was a product I'd be interested in, but I find myself more and more attracted to the idea. Probably because I'm just not seeing anything in the Pocket PC world that is getting me excited.

So here I am.

Anyway, to get on topic, you asked for suggestions and I would suggest some carrier specific forums. When I'm looking for phone information I tend to go to howardforums and I find the carrier forums to be really helpful. Entertaining flame wars too, better even than Palm vs PPC :D

Carrier forums would be good places to discuss future offerings, deals on voice and data plans and whines about poor customer service.

I'm a Sprint customer and would love to quickly find out what is going on and when smartphone models are likely to be available.

Having said all that, I would also like to see smartphone and PPC information all on one site since they are variations on the same theme.

Anyway, that's my thought. If I stay in this smartphone frame of mind I might be around more often. And I must admit, I do rather like that Treo 600. It would be nice if smartphone has a decent way to enter text. I realize it's considered more of a viewer for data and yes, I could get a PPC Phone Edition but I want a phone that looks like a phone.

Cheers!
David

[Robert Levy]

Forums for mobile operators: Done (http://www.smartphonethoughts.com/forums/index.php?c=7). I'm worried that people will get confused between things like the Samsung forum and the Verizon forum, but it's a good idea so we'll see how it goes.

Pocket PC and Smartphone on one site: This isn't feasable on our end for a variety of reasons but if it's really important to you, here's a solution... both sites expose an RSS feed that you can subscribe to using an RSS aggregator to pull content from both sites into a single place. The one our team uses is NewsGator (http://www.newsgator.com), but there are lots of free alternatives.

Thanks for your input! What's next?

[Mike Temporale]

Are we going to see Mobile Forums??

Of course it would be great if it can be optimized for a smartphone, but even something a little more PDA friendly would be nice. :wink:

Otherwise, I like the site the way it is. I don't know if there is much that needs to change. :way to go: Of course as the market grows so will the traffic. :D