To keep up with the rapidly changing world of smartphone technology, the University of Northern Iowa department of athletics and CBS College Sports have announced that they have launched a smartphone-friendly version of UNIPanthers.com which will deliver headline content (recaps and releases) and some associated content (box scores and bios of student-athletes).

"Smartphones have become increasingly popular and allow users to have information at their fingertips," UNI Associate Athletic Director Leon Costello said. "By partnering with CBS College Sports, UNI fans will be able to get the latest news from UNIPanthers.com at all times."

Due to their dynamic nature, schedule pages are not yet available in a smartphone-friendly fashion. However, it is CBS College Sports goal to do so as soon as possible.

How the Smartphone Version Works When a user visits UNIPanthers.com from their mobile phone (the front page or any sport page), an auto-detect script will determine what version of the site the user should receive. If a user is coming to UNIPanthers.com via a fully-enabled web browser, the mobile device will deliver the fully-enabled version of website. If the user is not using a fully-enabled web browser on their mobile device, then the device will deliver a smartphone-friendly version of UNIPanthers.com.

To see what it would look on a mobile device, you can visit: http://unipanthers.cstv.com/m

Special Note The appearance of the content is going to vary from smartphone-to-smartphone. CBS used the following in testing: a Motorola Q, a Blackberry, a Treo Palm, an IPhone and an HTC Touch. Each presented the content differently but in general, the results were very good. The IPhone actually boasts a fully-enabled web browser and therefore is delivered the fully-enabled version. It won't be long before this is the case for all and as a result, our development beyond schedule pages will be minimal. In addition to the variety of smartphones, there are many different browsers and browser versions. One of the Treo's in our office is running Palm Blazer v4.5. Next month, it could be Palm Blazer v4.6 and something that looked good no longer does, or vice-versa. Additionally, there are a variety of settings that can affect the presentation of the content. For example, the Treo Palm has different view options - Optimized and Wide - that produce quite different results.