The panel entitled Demystifying the Mobile Web was another one in which I had a vested interest. There are days that I think that all the "traditional" web gizmos we're doing now are but an appetizer for the "real," primarily phone-based product.

(We do have a mobile product now, by the way. If you haven't yet, check it out by pointing any web enabled phone to mobile.texasgigs.com. Already getting a couple hundred visits and more than 500 pageviews a day.)

Really a techie crowd-- In the early straw poll, almost all use mobile web daily.

I'm not going to try to peg who says what since I'm sitting on the floor. In general, it sounds like they think that mobile web today is an ROI waste because of all the problems involved.

Someone says that we're really not far along on the mobile web yet -- the exemplar is that you can't find a movie on mobile web quickly. (Wait a couple weeks.)

Just as newspapers have made the mistake of just dumping their print products online without (much) respect for the differences of the medium, web services are doing the same with mobile editions. Example offered: When looking up a happy hour on the mobile device, the phone number should link and autodial. (Heh, heh.)

But mobile is the future. Stats: In the US, the average 12-18 year old has $4,900 in disposable income. (Shees! That's almost as much as I made last year.) They spend 4% of it on mobile. In China, disposable income is more like $85, but they spend 80% on mobile.

Lots of talk about resolution/bandwidth issues for mobile phone and how hard it is to translate from the robust computer web to the mobile web? Jeez! Is it that hard? Not on our site. Thanks Ellington!

Mobile is still a Tower of Babel. Every carrier has different issues.

There are 40-50 unique browsers on mobile-- But half are from Openwave.

Just when I reached my breaking point on discussion of Web 2.0, we're discussing WAP 2.0.

Is this another bubble/gold rush like the ninties?-- "This is worse."

Light version of Flash for mobile? God help us.It's being added to some phones. Now we can have slow, junked up mobile sites to mirror their web compatriots.

In the end, the major issue-- with no hard answers -- is what is the least common denominator of phone technology, versus what users demand? Indeed.