River of News Mobile is little thing that's pretty big

Michael Gartenberg | September 01, 2006, 11:04 AM

I'v been using mobile devices for years to consume all sorts of content. From email, to novels to newspapers. The experience for the most part doesn't work very well and you need to be motivated to go through the hoops to get something usable.

But, there's something fun that happens when a guy like Dave Winer gets a new device like a Blackberry. The rest of us get some really cool stuff to use. In this case, it's Dave taking his "River of News" concept mobile and it makes a big difference in how you can consume content on the go. I'm not a big fan of this format for reading on my PC but in the mobile space, it's perfect. Is the idea of reading news on mobile devices new? Of course not, I have whole set of bookmarks that are monile optimized. Some work like CNETs mobile stuff works pretty well. Some desktop sites work OK and some like the NY Times just don't work well at all. Take the NY Times and put it in a River of News format and you get this. Now if you look at that site on your desktop, it's not that big a deal. Look at it on a mobile device like a Blackberry or Windows Mobile and you get a whole different experience. Best part is that each story link takes you to the story formatted and optimized for the mobile experience.

This might seem like a small thing to some of you but trust me, this concept is pretty huge and has the potential to jumpstart the consumption of content by mobile consumers in leaps and bounds. That's a really important next step and does show how some of the great ideas appear really simple when executed but take a lot of work to get right.