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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Hey, this is very neat. Besides the obvious joy in something beisdes my browser having to know how to use the handheld css, the transcoder kinda just makes it happen. This will bode quite well for my visitors, and shuold make a ton of us developers who spend time in the handheld css tweaking all the time to get something that works great. Thanks for releasing this.
[...] 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 [...]
[...] [via Mobhappy] | Filed under: Mobile — at 2:49 am [...]
Mowser is a Command Line for Mobile Browsing…
Mobile-friendly versions of big web sites are becoming a lot more common. Most news sites have them, as do the portals. Edelman too has one that’s on a dot-mobil URL (one of our clients). Still, lots of sites don’t have…
[...] Via MobHappy, Russell Beattie is back on the blogsphere and with a new project Mowser. Very interesting! Alessandro These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]
[...] What about mobile link discovery ? Mowser has a blog to catch up with new features and Russell’s thoughts. Via MobHappy Mobile | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | # [...]
Nice insertion of illegal ads, Russ ….
http://kevinperkins.wordpress.com/2007/04/20/mowing-your-content-down-with-mowser/
[...] Enter Mowser. The site, which is run by mobile guru Russ Beattie, is a great home page for your your phone. You can enter any URL and it will shrink it down for you. Even better, if the site you want to view has a feed it will auto-detect it and present it in a very clean, efficient way that’s perfect for phones. For example, here’s Lifehacker as viewed through Mowser. A list of popular feeds can be found here. There’s also a directory of mobile sites. [...]
Kevin, illegal’s a bit strong, no? I know Skweezer got royally shat on for their heavy handed “splat ads over everyone else’s content” approach a few years ago. But, I can’t see anything that Russ is doing that’s illegal. In the few places where he’s inserting ads, yes he does display some content, but it’s only a snippet, it’s not a full copy, so (ianal) I’d have thought fair-use would apply.
It’s not like he’s copying a whole blog post like you do here - http://kevinperkins.wordpress.com/2007/04/23/mowser-arrogant-about-ads/
Hey, if you don’t mind them making money off of your content, then go ahead and celebrate. I know most publishers aren’t too thrilled by other people profiting over their hard work. And yes, we did take quite a bit of heat for this 3 years ago, and yes, we did change our business model to be friends with publishers.