We are making a phone version of a web site we have developed.  Looking around it is pretty amazing what people are getting away with. 

One of the primary vendors for reworking your current web site to a phone-enabled/mobile version will convert your site and charge you a monthly fee to maintain/host the mobile site starting at $250 per month!

So, how much work is involved in doing this?  I imagine a set of scripts flips through your site and strips out all the ‘bad’ mobile things – big pictures, css, javascript and produces a site where humans go in and tweak to make things look and behave in a mobile-friendly manner.  But, once it is done, where is the forever fee per month coming from?  Sounds like something ripe for Far Eastern outsourcing groups to come in and destroy pricing.

Another company produces an phone emulator package that you can use for later testing.  While interesting and cool again we have outrageous pricing starting in minimum of 6 minute increments for using their emulator!  If it weren’t so sad it would be comical.  I know emulators have been around for quite a while.  What is stopping some freeware place from doing the same thing on a shareware basis?

I am usually a Capitalist Republican but I have no empathy for these rip offs.