Russell Beattie’s been busy since he quit blogging last year, he’s just been a little more quiet about it. However, he’s announced a new project, Mowser. It’s a combination of a transcoder (so mobile users can visit full HTML sites), a directory of mobile-friendly sites, and keywords (delivering quick access to certain sites and information — for instance, “w Las Vegas” sends you to the weather.com page for Las Vegas).
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 (the usual disclosure about MobHappy’s Russell Buckley working for AdMob applies here), 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. There’s not a lot of info up on the site yet, but Russ has started a new blog for Mowser, and he’s also got a long list of features to add, so it will be worth keeping an eye on.
Update: Russ has posted a screencast that walks through Mowser’s features pretty comprehensively.
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