With the emphasis turned to mobile on the second day of Digital Media Asia, speakers shared a variety of good advice.

Mobile pioneer Cheryl Cheng of PHD told delegates that with new multiscreen options, “it’s not what you say, but what screen you say it on”.

Star Publications’ online editor Philip Goligai shared his enthusiasm for Storify, which the Malaysian site uses to provide live coverage of breaking news… and sometimes more: “On election night, our main site froze for two hours, but we were able to keep publishing through Storify,” he says.

The Philippines Daily Inquirer’s Javier Rufino had taken time out from directing his online team’s disaster coverage to tell how the paper supplemented coverage in remote areas with a tablet app, delivered through a subsidized scheme with a local bank. “In areas such as Cauayan City, the printed edition doesn’t get through until 9am on a good day, but app users can have the news hours earlier,” he says.

From the UK’s Financial Times, engineering manager Graham Hinchly urged, “Now is the time to come back to the web.” The publisher developed an HTML5 tablet version after Apple changed terms and restricted access to customer information.

From Vietnam, Thanh Nien Daily’s Truc Minh and Thang Tran backgrounded the newspaper’s mobile site which draws 93 million views a month, and was later to win an Asian Digital Media award. “We want to be the number online news platform in Vietnam,” Minh says.

Nuoki Onodera from Japan’s Mainichi Shimbun told the of frustrations of developing tablet and products with the country’s complex text; while things were more straightforward for the UK Metro, where an off-the-shelf AppStudio product was used as a base for its iPad edition. “It has only eight per cent of our digital audience, but delivers 38 per cent of digital revenue,” James Cadman says.

There was advice too from Phalgun Raju of independent advertising network InMobi, and Audra Martin, advertising vice president of The Economist Digital.

And Eamonn Byrne urged delegates to find ways of delivering products – such as video and Tweets – which might appeal to advertisers and agents: “There’s a mismatch between what excites clients and what delivers revenue,” says the business director of the Byrne Partnership. “integrate them – even with simple stuff – and everyone’s happy.”

The conference – at Kuala Lumpur’s Shangri-La hotel – concludes tomorrow with a focus on digital business innovations.

On our homepage: PHD’s Cheryl Cheng

Right: FT engineering manager Graham Hinchly