MoFuse Creates Mobile Version of Your Website
MoFuse is a new service that many publishers today have a need for. MoFuse stands for "Mobile Fusion" and it enables you to create a mobile version of your website. It's similar to Winksite, a mobile conversion and community service that counts BoingBoing among its customers. However MoFuse is simpler, in that it doesn't offer community features. If anything it's like "Feedburner for mobile", because all you need to do is provide your RSS feed and then MoFuse automatically converts it to a mobile version. Also like Feedburner, MoFuse is starting off by targeting blogs.
MoFuse is currently invite-only, but Read/WriteWeb has exclusive access to invites. Simply go to http://snapple.mofuse.com/register/RWWEB and enter your details. There are 200 invitations available, on a first-come first-serve basis.
Here is the mobile version of Read/WriteWeb: http://m.readwriteweb.com/. The screenshots below shows how it looks:
Homepage
Post page
The screenshots show a fairly simple layout, but it includes essential images and neatly displays content for reading on a mobile device. Essentially MoFuse cuts out all unnecessary images, formats the text for mobile, makes it easily navigatible -- and generally presents a much better reading experience for mobile.
You can customize the look of your MoFuse mobile site using an AJAX color picker, as well as uploading a custom logo/header image file. You can also make some money by implementing AdSense mobile onto the pages, if you wish.
Testing my MoFuse Page in ready.mobi
With help from Mobile Web expert Rudy De Waele, I ran my new MoFuse page through the ready.mobi testing tool - which "evaluates mobile-readiness using industry best practices & standards." The resulting test report was 4.95 / 5, or "Good". The 8kb download also puts the Web version of R/WW to shame!
ready.mobi report
MoFuse Admin
The admin part of MoFuse is slick -- and seems to be influenced by Feedburner's UI:
MoFuse admin screen
Conclusion
MoFuse is still in early beta, but already it's shaping up to be a very useful tool for bloggers. Winksite is pretty stiff competition though and I'm sure other startups will emerge in this space too. Indeed it's a service Feedburner itself should be providing, so it wouldn't surprise me if they get into the game soon too.
Let us know what you think of MoFuse and how it compares to similar services. Remember you can go to http://snapple.mofuse.com/register/RWWEB and get an invite.
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Good Screenshot. Seem's cool.
But, there's a trouble with these services like Winksite. It's very difficult to remember your mobile adress.
A good plug-in, like Andy Moore's Wordpress Mobile Plugin, is much more cool. Cause your mobile URL is the same as your homesite.
http://www.andymoore.info/wordpress-mobile-plugin/
We hear you Hubert.
Mobile addresses are difficult to remember.
...and yes,plugins (try this one - WordPress Ultimate Gamer's Pack - http://harper.wirelessink.com/?p=105) are cool but don't even come close to handling successful delivery of your content to any device/any carrier.
One of the problems many bloggers are unaware of are the many hoops a mobile site or "plugin" version is required to jump though to successfully reach it's intended audience.
Many mobile search engines and carrier gateways now intercept the mobile site a publisher provides and instead delivers to the subscriber an adapted version of the desktop site. This cripples the intended experience.
One example of how these transcoding services disrupt the mobile experience can be found here with screenshots that explain better then i can in words:
http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/vodafonerant/vodawsj/nigel.html
Those of us who provide mobilization/mobile site building services have a responsibility to the publishers who trust their words to our care to do everything we can to see to it that their content makes it through to their audience as intended.
Sorting out an seo-optimized, off-portal publishing system to deliver mobile device-specific 100% W3C mobileOK and .mobi standards-compliant templates is only part of the job. You also need to get on various white lists, provide mobile site maps, implement ‚ÄúCache-Control‚Ä? of ‚Äúno-transform‚Ä?, include rel=‚Ä?alternate‚Ä? media=‚Ä?handheld‚Ä? type links on the page template level, as well as a number of domain level tactics to signify "Hand's Off." A chunk of redirect code in your template or an "easy" address doesn't even get you close to ubiquitous reach unless these other measures are in place.
Winksite for one has established a platform that takes care of all this on behalf of the publisher.
The "trouble" you have with these addresses may well be worth avoiding the trouble the address overrides on your behalf.
...and as we add advertising and commerce options at the publisher level perhaps it will be clear why understanding the hidden issues is important. Thanks for listening.
Hubert,
We offer you ways of automatically detecting and redirecting your mobile visitors to your MoFuse site so your users don't need to remember or even know your MoFuse URL.
Thanks to 1 of the 200 invitations ReadWriteWeb offered, we’ve set up a mobile version of Gaffney3.com for testing using MoFuse. Comparatively speaking, if the community services provided by WinkSite aren't of value to you, MoFuse is equal.
I missed out on the invitation, can someone send me an invite?
Thanks
We added another 100 invitations, but they are going quickly. Good luck.