Introduction from Tim Berners-Lee (by video)

Our challenge is to create a web which is still "one web". It's important that we have one information space: if I give you a URI for something, it'll be the same thing for you that it is for me.

It's not about The Mobile Web as a separate entity, it's about making the web mobile.

We need to separate information from device type, by doing this now we insure ourselves against future devices.

BBC like MWI
- Inform, educate, entertain
- Anytime, anyplace, anywhere

See graphic of BBC WAP traffic

28% of WAP users use the BBC website only via mobile phone - not by desktop. That's 250k people!

Open standards mean better public value: less work for BBC, less worry about market distortion, less work for anyone wanting to use BBC content

Charles McCathieNevile, Opera Software

Demonstrated web version of presentation that other devices view diffently
Some things are important: XHTML, CSS
Opera want to ensure the fat tail still works. Displaying WAP on a modern desktop browser works; it's not beautiful, but it's accessible.
Opera mini is available for 700m deployed handsets (anything that runs Java)
Need to engage more with developers
Priority 1: web designers
- make the web mobile
- mobile web is service-based, let's bring this philosophy back to the web

Accessing the web on the move

Used to work for AOL in 1995, starting in a portacabin working on internet radio etc.
Doesn't think things have moved on very far since then.

Mobile: the fourth scren.
There are more mobile phones in the UK than people.
GPRS capable handsets exceeds 50% of those out there.

It's not just about technical difficulties. How can we work out what users want? Best practices aren't enough.

Sergio and I have wandered up to the W3C Mobile Web Initiative day. My notes from the various talks follow...