Beattie Offloads Mowser

Russel Batty*, the man the mobile web doesn't believe in, has just cleared his debts selling his Mowser project on to .mobi, surely the spiritual home of badly thought out mobile web ideas (try typing .mobi on a phone's numeric keypad, and compare it even to .com. 'Nuff said).

Congratulations are certainly in order - we would never wish a struggling entrepreneur into debt, it's a nasty place to be - but it doesn't make the Mowser idea very good. The future of mobile services will be things you actually need on the move, delivered in the most pain free way possible, and that doesn't necessarily mean big web content mangled through a transcoder, whatever Sprint et al might wish.

Now Russell is back on his feet we'd suggest he concentrates more on doing some useful work and less on blogging during work hours, his voluminous outpourings whilst at Yahoo! being the thing which first drew him to our attention and even helped inspire this blog. For that, we owe thanks - cheers Russ ;)

* juvenile I know, but I still can't help but be amused by the rather strenuous complaints Russ had against (in particular) British people mispronouncing his name, insisting it be pronounced pretty much like (as any British person would know) the favourite insult of that American-ganster-wannabe from Staines, Ali G. I think the more you travel, the less you get worried about the mangling different countries do to each other's languages and names...