Mobile Wireless Portal Evaluation of the Eweek

Mobile Wireless Portal

Evaluation of the eWeek Mobile Wireless Portal

The eWeek Mobile Portal combines an impressive amount of news and analysis on mobile devices, mobile operating systems including iPhone, Android and many others, and the integration of these technologies into enterprise strategies. Coverage of how mobile technologies are used in Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Sales Force Automation (SFA), and throughout direct marketing is included in the portal's contents. The benefits of the portal are the timeliness of its news and analysis, the depth of reviews of new mobile devices specifically designed for the enterprise, and the links to more advanced technical information as well. The disadvantages of the portal include its heavy reliance on advertising, which tends to clutter up the page and makes it difficult to navigate. Another disadvantage of the portal is the lack of direct access to the more interesting tests of wireless network performance. That data is hidden. A third disadvantage of the portal is the lack of consistent navigation throughout the entire interface; it is inconsistent in how it presents information.

Comprehensive Analysis

This is a portal supported by advertising revenue, the eWeek Mobile Wireless Portal presents a stream of continual updates and news items of interest to both the user of mobile devices and the enterprise buyer. The blending of content across the user and enterprise buyer is at times a little confusing as there is no demarcation in the navigation of the portal to explain where one type of content ends and the other begins. There is also a more tabular, less graphical approach to defining the key insights and research completed by eWeek Labs, who is among the best in the world at testing mobile devices, platforms and their uses throughout enterprises. Unfortunately, the links to the eWeek areas are buried beneath the second half of the page, which make them difficult to get to. The use of hypertext navigation makes it easier to get to on a tablet or smaller PC. The entire website however has been designed for someone reading it on a larger flat panel display or very large laptop screen.

The navigation across the top of the portal to other areas throughout the website are excellent however. The use of videos, organized to the right of the main section of the website, is also done well as they can be quickly accessed and reviewed. The content of the videos is mixed; there are purely informational ones that are excellent and provide useful information. .

One of the more useful aspects of the portal is the ability to get highly technical data from vendors on the leading topics on wireless networks and how to configure them for optimum performance. The white papers from Cisco on image transmission over Wi-Fi networks is interesting and aligns with recent research in this field by independent studies completed in academia (Boluk, Baydere, Harmanci, 2011). There are also white papers on how to transform legacy networks into green or sustainability-driven wireless networks that also corroborate with independent studies (Lorincz, Capone, Begusi, 2011). Another aspect of the portal is the coverage of emerging wireless network standards, including 802.11N. This is a high performance IEEE protocol that is designed to maximize performance of wireless networks. The white papers on the portal are a good introduction to the standard, which provide a strong foundation for further research on how this standard can accelerate performance of enterprise-wide networks (Li, Leith, Malone, 2011).

In conclusion, the portal is a useful information resource, yet is in danger of being overrun by the massive amount of advertising being done on it. The value of the white papers is excellent, yet one must dig into the eWeek Labs areas to get the most out of the content there. The streamlining of updates news down the center of the page is useful when reading this site on a smartphone, yet to get the full value of the site one must see it on a tablet, laptop or full monitor screen.