Many in this industry seem to think the Mobile marketing gold rush started 18 months ago. But Maureen Scott can tell you differently. She’s been in the game since the outset. The stories she could tell….

Remember how mysterious and confusing the travel industry used to be? Only the lucky few understood how flight details and hotel rooms were allocated. The rest of us were left outside this clique. So we were excluded from some of the better destinations and paid way over the odds for the few holidays we could afford.

But new technology disrupted this evil cartel of holiday companies and travel agents. Maureen Scott was at the vanguard of that revolution. She and Mike Jones worked on Executive Travelink, a system that widened the access to booking information, and catalysed the subsequent travel revolution that broadened our minds (and expanded our airports.) When they bulldoze a village to make way for a new runway at Stansted, remember Maureen Scott!

Scott then joined Psion, where she ended up taking charge of alliances. The strategy was to find content providers, because Psion was creating the world’s first smart phone portal. This was back in the 90s!

The Sony Ericsson R380 was the iPhone of its day, only years ahead of its time.  “It was the first touchscreen system, based on Symbian,” says Scott. “There was some fantastic content, but not enough devices.”

Scott then ended up being headhunted, and working for OpenWave, as the first browser for mobiles was launched. She spent seven years headhunting, sorting the wheat from the chaff in the WAP, Java and Microsoft development worlds. In short then, she has a long history in mobile and has forgotten more than I’ll ever know. And a proved track record of inventing technologies that transform industries.

Meanwhile her original technology collaborator was creating FT.com.

Now Scott and Jones have turned their attention to book publishing, another antiquated profession. These days, only celebrities get book deals, even though their stories can usually be covered in one chapter. So there are too few authors, given too much space to fill.

If only the economics of the publishing industry could change! If only they could, say, create shorter publications, which cost less to produce. If only more young people could be seduced into reading. If only there was a way to read books on your mobile phone.

This, in essence, is what Ether Books is all about.

But that’s not the most interesting thing about Ether Books. But sadly, I can’t tell you, as I told in confidence and am sworn to secrecy until Feb 15th.