Mobdex

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Sorry I haven't been posting much. I'll get back into more analysis in a bit.

Meanwhile, I wanted to throw this out there: Mobdex. It's a demo service I was showing around during my stint when I was looking for funding. It's not a business, just a concept to show that you can actually serve Real Content to mobile phones. What I did was import 600+ Public Domain eBooks from Project Gutenberg and I'm dynamically reformatting the plain text to be readable on the web and modern mobiles with WAP2 minibrowsers.

I was planning to do more with it, but as soon as it got to a demoable state I dropped it. But just tonight I decided to add one more bit and announce it. I had showed the service to Cory Doctorow back a couple months ago and we talked about ways to enhance this service and a new CC licensed book he's publishing in January. One of the ideas I liked was per paragraph permalinks so that people can discuss books and sections in their weblogs. So I added that in tonight by ripping off some JavaScript from Simon Willison and there you have it. Books online with permalinks.

Here's some good examples:

Wuthering Heights
Great Expectations
Around the World in 80 Days
The Time Machine
Howard's End

So check it out, both on the web and on your phone. It's totally Alpha quality, and lots of stuff dies horribly, pages aren't formatted well, and it's inefficient as hell, but I figured I'd get it out there before I move on to my next shiny thing: Mobile Multimedia baby. I want to Fill The Pipe of my new UMTS Series 60 phone!

Enjoy!

-Russ

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