Geogad has always had a mobile focus since it is heavily focused in delivering timely travel information. Making this information available to everyone, everywhere, all the time is our goal. Sadly, the mobile Internet is still a work in development.

Just this week, Mowser, a mobile website transcoder that you may never had heard of, is shutting down. Mowser translates full-blown web pages into stripped down versions viewable over mobile phones. Its purpose to existing seems to have been a band-aid between the Internet and the mobile Internet as it will one day exist. While everyone believes that the mobile Internet will be just good as the wired Internet, no one is sure when this will happen. Technology predictions are always saying that we will get the technology that we dream of in “…just a few more years…” Rarely does it work out that way. And the predictions for Mowser did not work out either.

Russell Beattie, the developer who created Mowser, has come to believe that the mobile Internet that he envisioned will never arrive. I have to agree with him. After you are used to the regular Internet over a high speed connection to your browser with all of its great plug-in programs, would you want to try to run Internet and Web 2.0 pages without a high speed connection, a full screen monitor, comfortable keyboard, and all those lovely plug-ins and Javascript/Ajax that make those pages come to life? You may be thinking, “I could handle it”, but would you want to? That is the key to a good customer experience, not something that you do because you have no other choice. I was frustrated just trying to “surf” the Net over a 64k modem connection after getting used to my high-speed connection.

Current mobile websites are not great places to visit yet. And the iPhone with its clean, cool browser really puts that into perspective. The iPhone makes people realize how much the entire mobile web community from carriers to content providers are just kidding themselves. People want the Internet, not some stripped down version. They don’t understand CDMA and GSM, and they don’t see any reason that they should learn. The people have spoken, and they are right.

Technorati tags: Mowser, mobile Internet, iPhone