Microsoft to Use InfoGin’s Transcoder

InfoGin announced today that they have signed an agreement to provide data transformation services for Microsoft’s Live Mobile Search. Microsoft had been using an in-house transcoding engine for Live Search.

InfoGin has one of the best of the current crop of transcoders. It partially converts Adobe Flash content by rendering Flash animations as animated gifs and allowing users to follow URL links within Flash.

What I like best about InfoGin though is that they do not alter the HTTP User Agent request header like most of the other transcoder vendors. Mobile content sites use this header to identify specific handsets and customize content for them. Modifing the User Agent can have disasterous effects on the usability and revenue of effected mobile services.

InfoGin was the first transcoder vendor to sign Luca Passani’s Rules for Responsible Reformatting: A Developer Manifesto which provides a set of guidelines to help transcoders coexist with the existing mobile ecosystem.

I spoke with InfoGin’s Eyal Rosen at yesterday’s Mobile Web MegaTrends and he told me that signing the Manifesto had helped the company close deals with carriers. Congradulations to InfoGin, the Microsoft deal is huge and validates InfoGin’s approach of working with rather than against the mobile web development community.