Yesterday after Russell Beattie blogged about the closing down of Mowser, I noticed a few mobile web is dead posts going around.

I’ll let you in on a little secret, the Mobile Web isn’t dead. It’s not entirely understood and some folks are finding that out. Why? It’s a different space. Today, the Mobile Web is a light weight extension of the web and so rendering full blown web apps as they appear on the desktop browser is not really feasible on a light weight extension.

Call me crazy but I don’t believe that’s what the mobile web is going to evolve into. That’s where some over-estimation has occurred in my opinion. We’re just not going to see the entire web and the web sites as they exist today go mobile and why should we?

It has the potential to be the ultimate social network if someone would create the killer mobile social app. While it’s only a lightweight extension other huge advantages like presence of you and others, location and mobility all exist. These are different dimensions that don’t exist on the desktop.

Wouldn’t it be better to have mobile social web apps that let you connect to businesses and individuals based on your location while you’re moving or stopping in new places vs. a mobile version of a desktop based web site?

People want applications like that. They also want to talk to the app not just the device. When will we see voice activated mobile web apps? If I’m on a mobile site and looking at a product I’m thinking of purchasing I want to be able to issue voice commands to move through the process, not type or click:

• buy it
• sign in
• sign out
• call me for payment details

That’s why it’s different. The mobile web apps we’re seeing now are mostly mini versions of existing web applications.

The mobile device is capable of so much more and the startups that figure that out are gonna have themselves some over the counter painkillers.

Russell announced on his blog that he’s going to be shutting down Mowser. He doesn’t really say when and I don’t think it’s imminent. It looks like he could really use a buyer or investor that will hire him.

Mowser is pretty cool, it makes mobile sites on the fly. Heck, I might be interested in it…

I don’t know how much Russell has invested into this, though it sounds like he bet a lot on this project. In fact Russell sounds like he’s hurting so if you’re interesting in owning Mowser get in touch with Russell.

Tellabs has produced some mobile commerce videos if you haven’t seen these. In fact they launched a totally separate new website.

Honestly, I didn’t even know Tellabs was in the mobile space, did you? I know Tellabs from my job. At one time we distributed their equipment but it’s been a while, a long while in fact.

When Verizon did my FiOS install a few Months ago they terminated to a Tellabs Ethernet Media Convertor on the side of my house. So, chances are if you have a FiOS connection you might also have a Tellabs box bolted to the outside of your house. It’s a Fiber in Ethernet out device.

I found the series advertised on RCR WN. They shoulda just YouTube`d these things instead of paying advertising dollars to get the word out. Anyhow, here they are.

1. Driving Change in Mobile Backhaul Part One: Where Are We Now.
2. Driving Change in Mobile Backhaul Part Two: The Evolution and Promise.

You’ll also find a bunch of mobile podcasts and videos on the site too.

Amazon did. I haven’t made a purchase yet (I tried) but I started looking at the service tonight by Texting 245BW to 262966. Continue Reading

This San Diego mini mobile mashup has a Ron Burgundy style retro logo. That looks hand drawn to me, almost looks like a colored pencil sketch. I like the logo and the mobile site, it appears to be ad supported via AdMob and they’ve got some mobile community staples like:

• Mobile Search
• Traffic
• Directions
• Stock
• Current Weather Conditions

This site has one other killer feature that you won’t find on most other mobile community sites. Any ideas what that might be? Here’s a hint.

Mobile Surf Reports! Awesome idea. These guys have a mini Surf Report Drill Down, check this out.

Drilling into North San Diego gets you the Oceanside report.

It looks like the surf reports are actually widgets integrated from Surfline.com. I couldn’t see that getting mashed in real time. Same goes for the Traffic Reports, that’s got to be getting mixed in on the server-side in the backend. And though it looks like the Weather stuff is coming across the wire from Microsoft it’s not, I believe that’s the phishing url service check that the browser makes.

Hopefully, someone from sdca.mobi will see that above screenshot and get themselves a favicon file to fix that 404 faux pas.

Novatel Wireless, who makes a broad range of 3G PC cards and embedded modules has partnered with Autonet Mobile to integrate the Novatel Expedite E725 PCI Express mini card into the Autonet Mobile solution.

If you’ve rented a Car from Avis in the San Francisco area then you’re already familiar with Autonet Mobile, they’re the folks that delivered Avis Connect which enabled your rental car to become a wi-fi hot spot for $10.95 a day.

The solution is going to allow multiple users/devices to connect to the Internet from inside the car at 3G speeds. The E725 (datasheet) is capable of operating in the following spaces:

• EV-DO Rev A
• CDMA2000 1X 800
• 1900 Mhz networks

So what’s this all gonna cost? Well, Autonet Mobile hasn’t gone out of their way to demonstrate what their Products and Services cost, I’d challenge you to go find it on their site. You’ll need to dig deep; real deep… in fact, all the way down to this very first Press Release dated Jan 02, 2007. It indicates that the Autonet Mobile device retails for $399 and has a monthly service charge of $49. Whoa, $49 for 3G speeds? That’s 3.1Mbps if you get it. Compare that to your DSL Price/Speed or Cable Price/Speed. I’m getting Verizon FiOS into my house, 20Mb up and 20Mb down for $44.95 per month. $49 just doesn’t seem reasonable to me.

What do you think; would you pay $49 for this? You could be seeing it as an option in the near future on your next new Car purchase, Autonet is targeting the new car automobile industry in addition to OEM after market add-ons.

mocoNews covered it. The mobile url is m.tmz.com. I’m not a celeb-gossip nut so this doesn’t really excite me but I give TMZ credit for making this easy for their fans. I was able to reach the mobile site on my phone very easily and without subscription or opt in obstacles.

I tried both PerezHilton and People Magazine to see how they fared. Perez, who apparently has a blog worth nearly $50M doesn’t appear to have a mobile site. I guess it’s not a huge surprise either. Even though Perez appears to be running Word Press, he could use Alex Kings Mobile Plugin to auto-mobilize his wp blog. I’ll bet I can guess why he isn’t though… Pictures and Video! Perez posts lots of both and the images aren’t really ideally sized for the mobile user so everything would have to be re-worked to fit the mobile user.

People does sport a mobile site but I don’t see this being a huge hit for mobile content geeks, it’s third party hosted at limelife.com and the sign-up process is old-school. Mobile users just want to go straight to the URL don’t they? So I wonder how successful this is for People.

Once you figure out how to get there… you need to select your carrier:

Opt in by Texting to the short code or subscribing at the AT&T Media Mall… either way you’re paying $3.99 per month. I have no idea why that is, the stories appear to be free to read on the regular people.com web site. People should just mobilize that stuff don’t you think?

Oh and I’ll bet if you send the short code and your Carrier or Phone isn’t supported you’re still going into the Marketing Database… nasty trick huh? I wouldn’t advocate doing that. That’s gonna make for some very unhappy mobile users that won’t soon forget you in a bad way. I’m gonna try it and not sign up to see what happens.