Yesterday, dotMobi's friends at mobiSiteGalore introduced a new product that I think is just great: a mobile site builder for use on mobiles. The team at mobiSiteGalore have taken the guts of their PC-based mobile site builder -- the same site builder that powers http://site.mobi -- and put them into a mobile-accessible site at http://mobisitegalore.mobi so that anyone can build a .mobi-compliant mobile site on a standard mobile phone.
On a daily basis, I hear lots of items -- both positive and negative -- about mobility and the mobile web, but one thing I don't hear enough is how the mobile web is quickly transforming lives in developing countries where little traditional broadband infrastructure exists. In many places, the mobile web is the web, pure and simple. Just a few weeks ago, Vint Cerf reiterated a point that Microsoft's Eric Rudder made a while back, "In areas where wireline or WiFi access barely exists, many new users will first experience the internet through a mobile phone." (In fact, Cerf's complete editorial is well worth reading.)
The downside I've had with this argument has been that the power of the internet is its dialogue-based nature rather than the simpler one-way "conversation" that earlier media offered. Without a way to build a presence on the web, it's a one-sided experience. So, to that end, the ability of someone to build a web site on a mobile -- and not just look at one -- is a powerful tool.
I like even more that it was built by India-based mobiSiteGalore. In a country like India with wildly divergent technical infrastructure, mobiSiteGalore is acutely aware of what end-users need to do to build a site while knowing the limitations that come with building a site on a standard mobile. A high-end smart phone that might make the job easier is likely out of reach for many of the people whom this technology will best support.
So then, a big hurrah to mobiSiteGalore and to all the other developers who are making the mobile space the space for extending the power of the internet.
