Package-delivery giant UPS and insurance company Safeco Corp. are among the brands currently sponsoring National Public Radio?s new mobile Web site.

Mobile technology company Conmio has provided the software platform, design and audio services for NPR?s new mobile platform. Conmio claims that the redesigned and expanded NPR site delivers a much improved user experience, including better audio, navigation and interactive tools.

?The new mobile Web site is built on a platform controlled and hosted by NPR,? said Demian Perry, product manager of mobile operations at NPR, Washington, DC. ?When mobile was an experiment, we looked outside our building for expertise in this technology.

?As our mobile audience grows, we need to understand the technology ourselves,? he said. ?The target demographic is anyone with a Web-enabled mobile device.

?We?re particularly interested in reaching commuters.?

United Parcel Service Inc. is the world's largest package delivery company. Headquartered in Sandy Springs, GA, UPS delivers more than 15 million packages a day to 6.1 million customers in more than 200 countries and territories worldwide.

Safeco Corp. (Selective Auto and Fire Ensurance Company of America) is an American national insurance company. It has naming rights to the Seattle Mariners' baseball stadium, Safeco Field.

National Public Radio is a privately and publicly funded nonprofit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to 797 public radio stations in the United States.

Mobile public radio
The NPR mobile Web enhancements include a new station search feature.

Users are able to search for stations by ZIP code, call letter or city and state, and can flag multiple favorite stations, an improvement on the NPR iPhone application equivalent feature, which provides a ZIP code search option only.

Audio links can now be streamed directly within the device browser, a change from the former click-to-call feature, providing superior audio quality as well as availability in a wider range of formats?AAC, MP3, WMA and RM. 

Audio links to station live streams, podcasts, RSS feeds and newscasts are all available on the new service, a feature previously only possible via the NPR iPhone application. 

The mobile site now has station newscasts. All station newscasts listed in StationConnect will be available via the relaunched service.

Station newscasts added to StationConnect will propagate immediately and automatically, providing listeners with continuous access to the latest content.

UPS and Safeco are running graphical banner ads and interstitial audio ads on the mobile Web site and within the iPhone application.

NPR is getting the word out about this mobile Web site through house banner ads on NPR.org, NPR?s Facebook page and Twitter, an enewsletter to NPR listeners and its Inside NPR blog on NPR.org.

NPR is also providing custom URLs that stations can use to promote their mobile content on-air.

?The key to a successful mobile service is knowing your audience and delivering an optimized user experience tailored to each audience member,? said Tero Hamalainen, CEO of Conmio, Helsinki, Finland. ?Traditional methods of cataloguing device capabilities often fall short, as it is not only necessary to detect the device model but also its firmware and network capabilities, among other specifications.

?Conmio views the solution space as a multi-dimensional Rubik's Cube and success as a matter of solving this puzzle,? he said.

?In working with NPR to bring the best audio to the mobile platform, it's a balancing act between catering to each and every device while at the same time optimizing the digital delivery process to use the least amount of hardware and human resources as possible.?