Solo Technology

I had some idle time today while enjoying the Packers game on TV. Dunno about you, but I can’t just sit and watch TV — I have to have something else going on as well. Usually I have a laptop with me, but lately I’ve been doing more and more on my phone’s browser (HTC Mogul running Windows Mobile 6). Today I was mostly just wandering around my usual “mobile” web pages, which inspired me to check some other sites I use as well.

Below is a list of the sites I frequently used before today, followed by some new sites I “discovered” today and expect to frequently use as well. I’m becoming quite amazed at how much I can get done with this phone and its little browser!

My Base List of Mobile Sites

I’ll start with my mobile browser’s home page and the one I use the most: Google Reader. The RSS reader I use the most. The mobile URL is www.google.com/reader/m and was first announced May of ‘06. There have been improvements since then and, generally, I find it to be one of the most elegant mobile sites around. Fast, simple and no real compromises for daily use.

Next up would be the mobile versions for my Google Apps hosted email accounts. I just use mail.google.com/a/domainName/x/ (the /x/ on the end there is the key) and it displays the mobile version of the Gmail client. Nice, easy and very useable.

The hosted calendar is similar and found at www.google.com/calendar/hosted/domainName/m (the /m is the key).

I’m on a weight loss kick lately and the mobile version of Calorie King has been incredibly helpful when I need to look up foods. It can be found at www.calorieking.com/mobile/ and is nice and fast for searches. In fact, I often will use the mobile version from a desktop browser just for the speed.

The mobile Google site is found at www.google.com/m and is where I go for web searches and to get a quick look at my free Gmail account, reader and a weather overview.

New Stuff Today

First off is probably no surprise based on my recent blog posts: Twitter has a nice and lean mobile site at m.twitter.com. It was announced in May of ‘07.

You can find me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/SoloTech.

Pownce announced their mobile flavor in December of ‘07 and I’m happy to say it works great. It can be found at m.pownce.com. I’m not on Pownce as often as I am on Twitter (at least, not at the moment) but I do still bounce over there from time to time.

You can find me there at http://pownce.com/HandySolo
(hrmm, I should rebrand that…)

I didn’t even realize that Netvibes had a mobile flavor until Mark left a comment recently mentioning it. I’m not even sure how long it has been around, to be honest. I found a post on their blog mentioning improvements from August of ‘07 but I’d think it was around before then? Anywho, the address is m.netvibes.com and it seems to work great. Netvibes is my start page on all my desktop/laptop browsers and it might become the start page on my phone as well now that I’ve found it.

On the Instant Messaging front, Meebo did a version for the iPhone, but there’s apparently no love for the millions of other mobile devices out there. A pity and disappointing.

I did find reference to http://www.meebo.com/mobile.html but I’m not sure what it is aimed at. Doesn’t do much on my phone. There are plenty of apps for mobile IM, but a web based one — sharing my contacts and history — would be awesome. C’mon Meebo!

Didn’t Make the Cut

This one is a bummer as I’m usually a big fan of Zoho and their products. But I gotta say, I’m pretty disappointed with the recently announced mobile access for Zoho Creator. Don’t get me wrong! I really like Zoho Creator and have a diet tracking app there that I use several times a day.

The mobile access to it, however, just doesn’t do much for me. To be fair, some of that is probably due to the limitations of the mobile browsers in general. For example, the views that I’ve created are nice data tables in a regular browser, but long repeating lists on the mobile. Well, I use these views to spot trends within columns of data. No columns? No trend spotting.

Another example? Well, here’s the deal-breaker: My little application has logic that is fired when food items are selected from a combo box. None of that logic can happen on the mobile, which makes the whole thing worthless.

Again, I understand it’s a limitation of the platform, I just find it a major bummer.

The recently announced mobile access for Google Docs and Spreadsheets is the same way. Do I really want a one column view of a spreadsheet - ever? Err, nope. Thanks, but I’ll pass on that one.

Closing

Oh, you noticed that I didn’t list any productivity or GTD sites, did you? While I love my little keyboard, I just don’t feel like I can type fast enough (and accurately) to make the phone a key part of my data gathering. Yet. But I’m pondering it more and more of late. For instance, the mobile interface for Vitalist is pretty slick (www.vitalist.mobi).

Are there any other great mobile sites that I should consider folding into my daily routine? I should check to see what flickr offers… what else is good?

8 Responses to “Toying with Mobile Sites”

1. Rich G. on January 12th, 2008 9:41 pm
   

   My most used mobile bookmarks are google, gmail, and wunderground for mobile got maps and lots of info for zip codes ( http://m.wund.com/ ).
   I’ve got a crappy keyboard, just a normal phone keyboard so I don’t do a lot with the phone because the typing’s so irritating. My next phone will be more surf-friendly.

2. Chris Kasten on January 12th, 2008 10:05 pm
   

   Ah, wunderground! Great one there, I’ll be adding it to the faves.

   Getting a “real” keyboard definitely changes the experience. That being said, there’s still some effort to adapt to the little keys, but I’m getting there…

3. Charles on January 13th, 2008 9:27 pm
   

   Hi Chris,

   I am Charles from Zoho Creator Team.

   We do have few limitations in Zoho Creator Mobile edition. We have balanced it due to the limitations of browser support in various mobile devices. What we have given is the basic version of Mobile Edition for Zoho Creator. We are already working on the next update on the mobile version. You will see a lot more features that will match to the desktop browser version. The challenge here to is to support multiple versions of browsers from various vendors. There are vast differences in terms of support of JavaScript, screen Resolution, etc in them. But looking ahead, mobile browsers will almost match the features that of the desktop browsers. And we hope to release the mobile version for every features that we support in desktop browsers through our continuous updates in the coming months.

   Regards,
   Charles

4. Chris Kasten on January 14th, 2008 8:22 am
   

   Hi Charles — thanks for dropping by!

   I can definitely appreciate the challenges with the mobile development and I look forward to the upcoming enhancements

5. bc on January 14th, 2008 12:53 pm
   

   Interesting thing about many mobile sites — they also work pretty well on the Wii web browser (which I believe is a version of Opera Mini). The size limitation of screen size and resolution makes too many ordinary sites difficult read, but mobile versions of those same pages work great.
   Now I just need a wireless Wii keyboard.

6. Chris Kasten on January 14th, 2008 9:33 pm
   

   Hey bc, that’s indeed a great use for mobile sites. Thanks for sharing it.

7. Simon on January 18th, 2008 5:54 pm
   

   Hey, I use heysan on my phone, it’s mobile web-based and is faster than both ebuddy and tjat. Their URL is http://m.heysan.com

   - Simon

8. Darius on June 18th, 2008 1:14 pm
   

   Heysan is really great, I love the program. Makes my mobile life so much more comfortable! Didn’t know about the other links though - nice summary!
   - Darius

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