Back after the three-day weekend break and catching up on the CoM posts – which always make for worthwhile reading. This last week the CoM was hosted by Tarek El Ghazali over at Symbiano-Tek. (If you are getting a sea of black lines running through this post, then you can also check it out at an alternative page Tarek kindly created just for this post. Thanks Tarek!)

A great post from Tarek Abu-Esber at Volantis Open Source shows Web transcoding is not only a technical topic; it’s become an emotional battlefield. The post tries to make some sense out of the storm of comments that accompanies this recent interview with Jayanthi Rangarajan, Novarra President and COO, where she states that transcoding removes the need for developers to create mobile sites. (BTW: I can’t understand why the interview starts out rehashing the old news that Vodafone in the U.K. experienced issues when it implemented transcoding over a year ago. A lot has happened at Novarra and in transcoding since then, and I must question whether the writer took time to get up to speed on the company or the issues before the interview…)

In any case, the Volantis post gets to the heart of the matter to tell us what is really at stake. It’s not about Novarra; it’s about the mobile Web. His message: We can do better. Efforts to bring Internet sites to mobile lack imagination, and ultimately shortchange developers and ourselves.

As he put it: “It seems that Novarra feel that transcoders are the future of the Mobile Web and that the height of innovation in our industry will come when users can view the “regular” web on their phones. It’s a shame that they don’t have more vision.” The mobile Web, he stresses, will be chock-full of contextual services – such as location services, social networking, and other made-for-mobile applications that take advantage of the personal nature of the devices and our own demands for services in tune with our lives and lifestyles. “These services are mostly going to be pioneered by the same companies and developers who are leading the way with built-for-mobile services today. The same companies and developers that Novarra seem to think will be made redundant by their transcoding technology.”

I don’t doubt that these developers will play a pivotal role in shaping the sites, services and applications that will define our mobile Web experience. But I question the observation that transcoding is a temporary solution or significantly intrudes on the turf of content developers. Opera’s State of the Mobile Web: First Quarter, 2008 Report tells us that social networking sites are the main attraction (a confirmation that users do and will continue to demand applications aligned with personal mobility). However, the report also reveals the shocking news that full Web surfing comprises more than 77 percent of all traffic. Content on WAP and .mobi sites accounted for only 23 percent of mobile Web traffic. What’s more, this share continues to decline as more consumers become comfortable browsing the Internet on their phones.

Users obviously gravitate to Internet content, and will expect a great user experience when they access that content using their mobile devices. These factors combined create a de facto and sustained need for transcoding technology. (It is not my purpose to lobby here for a particular transcoding solution or vendor; I argue that a transcoding solution is a requirement if people everywhere are to access all things digital.)

We must also consider the patent difference between mobile and Internet content, and the needs of a user demographic for which the mobile screen is the only screen. The discussion about mobile content is long dominated by concepts such as “snacking” and “snippets”. The logic: Content on the go has to be bite size. Even advertising has to be shorter. (No wonder it’s ineffective – how compelling can a banner really be?) News also has to be more compact and punchier. (A reason I founded this site was to publish in-depth analysis. Designers have already warned me that my vision for MSG won’t translate well to the mobile Web.)

My chief concern: Creating content specifically for mobile may also force us to “dumb it down” to make certain it can be consumed using a mobile device. To be clear, the made-for-mobile content/services we are creating now benefit the next billion. (Indeed, I am encouraged by stories that mobile services are helping people find jobs, sell goods, and participate in the democratic process.) However, we should not be so short-sighted as to assume that made-for-mobile content can fully satisfy the information needs of the next billion. They have no PCs and therefore access to the wealth of content stored in the trillions of pages that make up the Internet direct on their mobile devices is critical. Transcoding technology can deliver them this breadth and depth and content, and ensure they have it all – now.

Another post that speaks volumes about the state of the mobile Web comes from Ajit Jaokar, in which he also treats us to a welcome preview of the arguments he will present in his new book, Open Mobile ecosystems: The disruptive potential of open systems and open source in the mobile environment.

Kudos for a thoughtful post that discusses the impact of Web Aggregators – a clique of companies that used to include Google and Yahoo and has since expanded to include social networks like MySpace, YouTube, and Facebook – on the telecoms/entertainment value chain. In view of this shift, he urges operators to be connectors (letting people communicate with each other and directly with content creators such as artists) rather than “blindly adopting the arcane business practices of the entertainment industry.” Yes, operators should become media companies – but Ajit makes it clear they can and must also do one better(!) …

CoM #124 counts 17 thought-provoking posts, so check them out! They range from a useful introduction to location services (via Andrew Grill and his new-look London Calling blog), which also explains why cell ID is a costly and unrealistic way to deliver location-based services, to an amusing critique from Mobile Opportunity of Nokia’s recent ad campaign, which unwittingly communicates that people who want/create software for mobile devices are freaks and morons who lack social skills.

Likewise, CoM #123, which was hosted by Bena Roberts at GoMoNews, provided us a brief summary of posts, including my analysis of Bango’s new release mobile analytics tool. Highlights range from Igor Faletski’s cool suggestion for a spot-on mobile service (“a passive, feed-based META-stream that alerts you of present and past events in your vicinity”) to two worthwhile looks at WiMax (Jamie Wells at Mobistance dissects the Sprint-Clearwire WiMAX mega-deal and Michael Mace at Mobile Opportunity gives a run-down of the winners and the losers.

The next CoM is at All About iPhone.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 at 11:01 am and is filed under Content Discovery, Local Search, Location-based services, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Research, Usability, Web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.