Mobile Web: The Holy Grail of Technology

Yes, the Templar's treasure of the technology age: A Mobile Web that works! 

This is legendary myth spoken about by Ad-Venture Capitalists hoping to discover the proprietary mobile software platform that can provide this.

This the perpetual underlying goal that all the big smartphone/PDAs such at the iPhone, the Blackberry Storm, the G1 Android, etc are trying to give their users. If you build it, they will come - come and sign up for mandatory 3-year contracts, no less.

From the technologist perspective their are several hurdles that need to be overcome or addressed in order to make this a reality and give freedom to the Internet Kingdom. I have done some significant technology due diligence in this sector from research to direct company vetting. In order for a firm to be a good VC investment it should include or address some of the following issues:

Mobile Web Highlights for VC Investment:
  • Standardization: W3C Web Initiative is wrestling with this but a unification of mobi platforms is critical. A common attempt to relieve this issue is the creation of "light" languages such as WML, XHTML & the old timer - WAP. Now we are even seeing the Flash-Light allowing for video ala YouTube. The goal here is to render web pages on the mobile device as you would a computer, a firm getting this done is worth its weight in gold.
  • Development: Google introduced Android on the development end as a possible answer, anyone who can take the next step to allow everyone to create apps and use the mobile web together will be praised throughout the kingdoms.
  • Domain aggregation: the mobile web has the .mobi extension which separates it from the basic .com/.net which means there are incompatibilities if I try to open a forwarded URI link from one to the other. This needs to be addressed - we cannot continue to divide the land, one king must unite the kingdom once and for all.

People of the Web, I am out of medieval metaphors so all I can prophesize is that the VC who funds the company that can solve these problems will essentially be pulling the fabled sword from out the stone.

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