Apr 27 2009
Speed up the mobile web
By Jon Gales
It seems that we’ve been on a bit of a mobile kick lately here at MacMerc, so when James asked me to pitch hit this week I decided to continue the trend. Part of my duties at MobileTracker have me checking out mobile data services (from email, to IM to web browsing). There’s way to much of this topic to serve up in just one article, but I’m going to share with you my favorite ways to speed up the mobile web.
Often when you’re on the go and need some data, you need something very specific. Maybe it’s an address or a price, but odds are you’re not just looking for something to do. Most phone carriers offer a portal page that tries to make the job of finding this data easy, but often what you want isn’t there (or it’s 6 menus deep).
Here are the tools I use to get what I want and get it fast.
- Google SMS – Did you know that you can access Google’s local search via a simple text message? You can and it works great on big US carriers. Yahoo recently launched a very similar service, but it supports less carriers.
- Google Local – When a quick text message won’t do, you can head to Google and get more complicated results, including a map!
- IYHY – Down and dirty little service to strip out the cruft of regular pages so that they are easier to download on a slow mobile connection. It’s also ad free which is key for a proxy service.
- Bloglines Mobile – Bloglines is my default RSS reader and since it’s web based the mobile version is always in sync with my desktop. I can catch up on the news while on the go.
- Flight Tracking – I whipped up this service to get a bunch of details about airline flights. If I have to pick up someone this is a great way to see if they have landed.