Articles tagged with: mobile internet

It looks like the most computer-literate US President of recent times will have his electronic activities curtailed a little once he enters the Whitehouse. The New York Times is reporting that there are a number of laws that will prevent Barack Obama using, among other things, his much-loved BlackBerry, once he’s inaugurated in January 2009.

So the PocketSurfer2 didn't exactly blow us away with it's, er, 1 out of 6 rating, but hey, some of you must have been buying them because DataWind's gone and brought out a successor. The PocketSurfer2R (why this aversion to punctuation spaces?) is the same mini, GPRS-toting, web surfer we know and, um, love but with some nice added extras, like GPS, and nifty new service plans.

With the launch of Mobile Telegraph on Monday, the Barclay brothers' broadsheet joins the ranks of free mobile news services. With competition decidedly lacking, this effort jumps almost to the top of the pile, from a technical point of view at least.

An uncluttered front-page provides truncated summaries with links to full stories that load in less than a second on a 3G connection. News, sport and travel sections are readily accessible, and the site is a pleasure to read even on the modest 2in display of a Sony Ericsson K800i running Opera Mini.

In comparision, the ill-fitting Times mobile site and the convoluted sign-up procedure of The Guardian fall way behind, though the BBC's suite of mobile services continue to lead the way. However, we'd be hard pushed to recommend any dedicated mobile news site over a mobile RSS reader and your own favourite brand of impartial reportage.

[Mobile Telegraph]

The Official Google Mobile Blog (yes, there is such a thing) has news about some improvements to Google's mobile page. Loading Google.com on your phone should be a speedier process after your first visit as the page is now automatically cached in your phone's memory for instant loading.

The mobile version of the iGoogle personal home page is now also easy to access from a direct link on the Google.com front page. Read on for the improvements - and some dodgy Google home video.

Mozilla's Head of User Experience, Aza Raskin, has just posted a video walkthrough of some of the features making their way into the upcoming Firefox Mobile. Designed for touch screens there are some interesting new ideas the team's been coming up with. Gone are traditional tabs in favour of a scalable desktop where pages can be dragged around and rearranged - or resized to occupy the whole screen. No precious real estate has been used for the address bar and navigation keys, which are kept 'off screen' and brought into view with a simple drag of the page. Nice.

There's still some way to go till the final version emerges but this is an interesting early peak. Click through for the full video and more screenshots.

Browser underdog Opera has released a ‘State of the Mobile Web’ report that focuses on the way that people use the internet when they’re out and about.

Unsurprisingly enough, the report focuses on the use of Opera Mini, Opera’s own mobile browser, but it still serves up some interesting overview stats. For example, the data-gatherers reckon that 40% of worldwide mobile web traffic is in some way related to social networking. This figure goes up to 63% in some territories, including America and Indonesia. By contrast, only a quarter of mobile web traffic is directed to portals and search engines.

There’s an early review of Opera Mobile 9.5 over at ZDNet’s The Mobile Gadgeteer blog. Opera’s new and improved web browser for Windows Mobile hasn’t been released yet, but a beta version came preinstalled on an HTC X7510 sent in for review, and mobile blogger Matthew Miller has shared his impressions.

With web publishing now easier and cheaper than ever, virtually every company in existence has its own web site. Creating a mere website isn’t always sufficient in these days of multi-platform web browsers and any online presence worth its salt really needs a mobile website, too.

Creating a website that’s suitable for a handheld web browser from scratch is no mean feat, but Wirenode makes it possible to create a mobile-friendly web site in a matter of minutes – and it’s completely free,

Vodafone's lagged well behind the likes of T-Mobile and its Web'n'Walk service when it's come to mobile browsing and email data - charging either a £1 a day for up to 15MB or £7.50 a month for a stingy 120MB. Now it's revamped its offering, coming up with a free 'unlimited' service on all its new tariffs.

For 'unlimited' you'll need to see the 500MB 'fair usage' policy but it's still a huge step for Vodafone users who've had to put up with high bills for modest mobile internet use.

Plans start at £25 a month. A £40 plan will also throw-in a choice of unlimited texts, unlimited landline calls or unlimited calls to other Vodafone numbers. As an added bonus it's also offering to set up users email in-store start making advantage of the bundled data straight away.

The novelty of video calling may have done little to entice customers to the 3G networks that mobile operators paid so much for back in 2000, but the offer of ubiquitous fast internet access is proving more popular. Adverts for mobile 3G broadband are all over the place at the moment, but if the USB modems (or ‘dongles’) plastered across billboards and throughout newspapers all look the same, the deals from the different providers are anything but...