BackMaking it mobile
Making it mobile
Remember the early days of mobile Internet browsing? Before the iPhone, sophisticated browsers and clever mobile websites? I still remember the sheer amazement with which I’d watch an ugly page full of black text on a grey background load on my father’s Nokia phone. The screen no bigger than a large postage stamp. With approximately the same levels of interactivity.
Websites. On a mobile phone. Too much.
(Later, the data charges would come in the bill. Too much.)
Mobile browsers have a come a long way since then. Most newspapers, including this one, have a dedicated mobile website for people who must be connected always. Some media outlets even have multiple mobile versions to cater to all kinds of consumers and handsets: a basic mobile site, an iPhone optimized one, an iPad optimized one and then perhaps even a version in the form of an iPhone app.
Which might make you think that mobile browsing is now sheer technological ecstasy.
Far from it.
A couple of times every day I find myself gazing into my BlackBerry screen. And wishing I were dead. Either the device’s browser refuses to load a website. Or I inadvertently click on the link of some terribly heavy website full of Java script and audio and video, and the phone hangs.
Why do things have to be so difficult? Why can’t websites just realize that I am browsing on a phone and throw up a simplified version? Some sites do this. But most don’t.
So what do you do? How can you bring some sanity to the mobile browsing process?
First of all you could try using smarter browsers. Opera’s well-known mobile browsers are available across most platforms. The software first runs websites through Opera servers which compress data. This means sites load faster and data costs are cheaper. And in most cases Opera’s browsers offer many more features than the ones built into your device.
Another worthy contender is the Bolt browser that works on most Java-enabled handsets and the BlackBerry. Bolt also uses a combination of smart software and data compression.
If you are willing to venture a little beyond browsers, and install additional software, I highly recommend the Viigo app for BlackBerrys (older versions of Viigo are available for Windows Mobile phones too).
In which case you could try a few online tools. One great tool is Instapaper’s Mobilizer service. Instapaper by itself allows you to bookmark stories on the Web, and then later read them in a clean, distraction-free format. Instapaper does this by using a text engine that identifies the main text and images on a page and removes everything else.
And, but of course, you could use some Google services. The Reader service is an RSS reader, like Viigo, that works on phones. Alternatively, you could use the Google Mobile App that offers several services, including a search that usually throws up sites already formatted for mobiles.
Play Thingsis the official tech and time-pass blog of Mint. Drop in for a dose of cool tech gossip and online merriment
Write to us at businessoflife@livemint.com
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