Whenever I run across something new, cool and Web-based, I check Netcraft's "What's that site using?" to see if the site's servers are running on Linux. You can't always tell, and the results can be misleading, but it's a good first sniff test.

That's what I did with Mofuse (mofuse.com) and it passed. "Linux Apache/2.0.63 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.0.63 OpenSSL/..." it said.

What's cool about Mofuse is that it launders the layout complexities out of blog posts and turns them into simple lists of linked headlines. It does this free if you like, or you can pay for extra services, such as advertising revenue sharing and URLs that don't have "mofuse.mobi" in them.

Mofuse isn't alone, of course. Mippin.com has been doing similar stuff for awhile, and Netcraft shows them running Linux too (Red Hat in this case).

And Google, naturally, also has an interface that can turn any blog into mobile.blogname.whatever. Of course, that's Linux too.

In any case, the percentage of Web surfing via mobile devices is going to skyrocket, especially after the next generation of unlocked, uncrippled Linux-based devices start hitting the market. Formatting for the hand screen will shift from exception to rule.

- Doc Searls