Review: Consuming the mobile Intarwebs

So the Internet is increasingly mobile these days. With everything from Blackberries to iPhones tagging along with everyone, it seems like we can't unplug ourselves from anything. Don't feel guilty, neither can I. But mobile websites are good in other cases than for mobile devices. I'll explain.

To obey the rules of this post, I'm reviewing my internet connection at home. My wife and I wanted to save a bit of money this semester and go with a "cheaper" internet plan. Previously, we had an ISP called "SuddenLink". Clever word play aside, SuddenLink provided a decent connection at 6Mbps down and 1.4Mbps up. It was slightly overpriced at nearly $40 a month ($39.95). A little competition would go a long way in bringing down the price point here. $40 a month is what my parents were paying for cable internet nearly 8 years ago, so what gives?

Anyway, now Aubrey and I are with "Lindsey Communications", a subsidiary of our apartment management company. Providing mediocre service for the price of the "other" guys is their specialty. It's a 128kbps connection that's CAPPED at 1 Gig up/down per month. It's $19.99/mo (half the price for 1/50th the speed?) which makes me wonder how much the profit margins are given the distributed electrical cost for their obviously minimal equipment and 15 person payroll.

RATING: **

Regardless, now I have Internet that's...wait for it...TWICE as fast as dial-up. And it's coming in...over a cable modem. This leads me to my other use of mobile computing websites! Websites specifically designed for mobile machines usually contain all the same content of the parent site, but are stripped of a lot of the formatting and ads that normally appear. They are built to load much faster than their bloated counterparts. Here's a list of popular and personal favorite sites.

Popular:

• CNN.com's mobile site http://m.cnn.com
• Google tools in mobile form! http://m.google.com
• The BBC's mobile site http://www.bbc.co.uk/mobile/ents/index.shtml
• Flickr Mobile: http://m.flickr.com/

Personal Favs:

• Slashdot (nerd news) http://slashdot.org/palm
• USAA bank: http://mobile.usaa.com
• National Weather Service mobile: http://mobile.srh.weather.gov/

Anyway, this is just a taste to raise awareness that mobile sites can be used on regular computers for even faster access times to your favorites sites. A really good list of mobile sites is in the form of a mobile site itself (which I think is neat) at:

http://cantoni.mobi/

If all you need a is some quick info without wading through a lot of clutter, go mobile.