Mowser! Russell Beattie Is Back!
Sounding for all the world like a mobile application for Scooby Doo and Shaggy is long time mobile blogger and commentator Russell Beattie. Not surprisingly, his project is based in the mobile space. It’s the Mowser website- a combination of HTML parser, transcoder, keywords and mobile directory.
The Mowser Blog picks up the story on what the initial capabilities are, and I can see a lot of what Russ was preaching a year or two ago are in this project. Carlo Longio has some more details:
Mowser’s transcoder is a bit more stout than a lot of existing ones. For instance, if a user requests a site that uses handheld stylesheets, Mowser will display that. He’s also built in support for AdMob ads, so that if users simply include the relevant meta tag on their site, Mowser will automatically insert AdMob ads, and start generating them some revenue… It’s cool that Mowser encourages people to build handheld style sheets, rather than just creating the impression that it can chew up their sites, spit out a mobile-friendly version and that’s that.
Link: Mobhappy
With all the best world, I’m looking forward to breaking this – because that’s how it’s going tobe driven forwards. Lots of testing, lots of problems an dhitches, and at the end something that works, is platform independent, and makes the mess of the real web usable on a mobile.
Ewan!
Thanks for the support! Please by all means, beat on the site, and if you find problems (which you will), definitely email, call, IM, or add an issue in the forum (at the bottom of the page) and tell me and I’ll get on them ASAP!
:-)
-Russ
I wouldn’t slap each other on the back too hard… take your ads off our content, Russ!
http://kevinperkins.wordpress.com/2007/04/20/mowing-your-content-down-with-mowser/
Kevin, thanks for your comment – i’ll point out that I’m happy that Russ is back but I’m not involved with the Mwser project. Nevertheless it’s an interesting pont youraise (and one I see fromthe other side as a publisher and writer at All About Symbian and The Podcast Network) and the short answer is that there isn’t a short answer. I may well write up a bit more on this over the weekend.
Well, we grappled with this many years ago… that publishers ultimately can’t be abused like the way Mowser’s doing it. Trust me, there’s no business model there if you’re co-opting other’s content without their permission!