Russell Beattie

Actually, I'm not going to give five new reasons, I just wanted a catchy title when I responded to this moron who has absolutely no fucking idea what he's talking about.

1) 3G is slow? Get a better 3G phone and then learn how to use it. My preferred mobile (an LG CU500) gets DSL speeds down, and my preferred browser (Opera mini) is as easy to use as a desktop browser, and just as fast.

2) Public Wifi is a Scam? No shit, Sherlock. You can't depend on WiFi outside your house or office. Again, get yourself a decent phone on a 3G network and you won't have this problem. I double-check prices inside Best Buy in seconds, chat on IM while having a coffee and entertain my kid with downloaded videos all via 3G networks, and I don't think twice about whether there's WiFi around.

3) Sites aren't formatted for small screens... Um, well, then those sites aren't part of the Mobile Web, are they? Even if you're talking about *accessing regular web sites while mobile* it's still a dumb-ass thing to bitch about as it just highlights one's inability to use a decent mobile browser and or the lack of effort to bookmark a site's mobile version. A couple years ago there might have been a dearth of mobile sites, but just about every major site out there now - from Typepad to Yahoo to Wikipedia, have m.* versions.

4) Mobile device screens are too small? Oh, well, that's it then! By this definition, the mobile web will never un-suck, because if you're looking at the web on a device that doesn't fit in your pocket, IT'S NOT MOBILE NOW IS IT?!? I guess we can all go home now. Someone call me when they've figured out how to put an 20 inch XVGA screen in the palm of my hand. What a fucking dumb-ass criticism.

5) Advertising gets in the way? Again, what the fuck? First, no ads means you'd be bitching about how everything on the mobile web costs money. Secondly, there's hardly any ads on the mobile web to begin with. Thirdly, are there any regular websites out there that don't have ads? Complaining about a website having ads is like complaining it's not 1996 anymore. Grow up.

Really, if someone wants to write a blog post with an inflammatory title like, "mobile web sucks", then they really should have a fucking clue what they're talking about first. I can talk quite intelligently about the things that suck about Web 2.0 sites, and modern web publishing, I expect the same sort of intelligence when criticizing the stuff I do for a living. That's fair, no?

Moron.

-Russ