Some impressions, in no particular order, from the day:

1. There was friction between some of the vendors represented; you could detect this particularly between the content-adaptation guys and the browser guys. The former offer a server-side solution, the latter client-side, and obviously each believe their approach to be superior.

2. The underlying idea of all this is to grow usage of the mobile Internet - that's a very worthy aim, and one worth remembering when we get mired in the inevitable politics of an effort like this. Despite differences in emphasis and opinion, every speaker and panelist was obviously getting behind this.

3. Chris Yanda gave some fantastic stats. 28% of WAP users only use the BBC WAP site - they don't visit the web site. That's 250,000 exclusive mobile users - most impressive. And the graph he showed of BBC WAP usage growing was interesting too... That said, the cynic in me is wondering how much effort is required to grow usage of the mobile Internet if we're at such a steep gradient in the curve right now. I'm looking forward to seeing the consumer research which .mobi are conducting and putting into the public domain too.

4. It is clearly compulsory to have one slide in any presentation referencing the "long tail".

5. After an initial gut reaction against .mobi which involve no small amount of retching (DNS does that to me - commercially, politically and technically), I'm actually not so against the idea now. It seems to me to be more of a marketing effort than anything else; as Jo Rabin said, it's about trust challenges not technical challenges. And I can't see what the downside of providing standards and support for mobile and web developers is: if it doesn't work out, doesn't get used, or isn't worthwhile then it won't have pissed on anyone elses chips.

6. I still don't understand what "one web" means.

7. I'd like to understand a little more more how the working group which may end up building an open database of handset capabilities will work alongside the existing, successful and well-deployed WURFL project. There wasn't much mention of the WURFL (though admittedly they only touched on the notion briefly) from speakers or panelists, which surprised me - because "in the wild" it's an valued tool for all sorts of folks... many of whom were in attendance at MWI.

Comments

[ocasta]

The open database of handset capabilities was only mentioned in the first few slides. It was notable by its absence after that.

I'm not generally a conspiracy theorist, but the companies with the most invested in their own propriatary device propety databases are the content adapters that appeared at the MWI. I don't foresee any rapid progress in this area.

Right now WURFL really isn't good enough for content adaptation use and the people with the information to make it good enough don't seem to be interested. If you hunt around the web you will find that the W3C position seems to be to push improved UAProf over WURFL.

[Tom Hume]

Martin: WURFL is represented by Luca and Andrea in the group, but it does seem that there's potential for a conflict of interest here (though I've had it explained to me that WURFL effectively raises the bar and grows the market for all the commercial vendors, a view that the Mobile Research guys share iirc).

I'd disagree with your assertion that WURFL isn't good enough yet: it's good enough for services on all the UK operators, the BBC, and many others. We've been using it for over 3 years now, it's excellent and there isn't any open source alternative.

[ocasta]

My experiences with WURFL have been different than yours. I'm not saying its of no value - clearly it hasn't been for your developments. However there are many and varied uses for device databases and WURFL needs more work.

As you say there isn't an open source alternative to WURFL and I too would like to see it succeed and be supported by developers and manufacturers.