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Travel - News - Sport - Weather - Technology - Reference - Communications - Shopping and Leisure - Package Tracking - Other

The Friendly Web

I present my (somewhat UK-centric) guide to mobile-friendly web resources and applications. In each case, the content is guaranteed ultra low-bandwidth, so you can access it directly on your PDA or smartphone over an expensive GPRS account.

Updated Nov 2007.


Travel

Good for both maps and routes is MultiMap.

Ultra-low bandwidth but not as pretty for street mapping is MapQuest's PDA version.

If you'd rather let the train take the strain, look up any train in the UK with Kizoom.

Here's British Airways mobile-friendly site.

A visitor to London? Not sure what to eat or what to do? Look no further than MoodMapper which offers somewhat random but interesting ideas. And here's the Transport for London WAP site, giving you real time status information on tubes and buses.


News

Here's the BBC's site, very comprehensive.

Or try The Guardian's mobile site, also recommended, or CNN, for a world view.

For money news, see Financial Times' market-watch section.


Sports

The BBC also do a Sports version of their news site, equally fully stocked. Or why not try Sky Sports instead, for a slightly more commercial take?


Weather

Try MetCheck

Or the BBC again, here's their WAP-based weather service, if your mobile browser can handle WAP pages.

Or the Weather Underground


Technology

If you'd rather read about worms and PDAs than wars and politics, try the Mobile Editions of:
AllAboutSymbian
My-Symbian
PalmInfoCenter
SlashDot
Wired

AfterDawn has a good feed of techy news and software releases, centred around the world of digital multimedia.


Reference

General

Wapedia gives a PDA view of the famous Wikipedia.

And here's another low-bandwidth version of Wikipedia.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (really)

Words

Merriam-Webster's Thesaurus is free and fast.

Food and Drink

Try BBR's Wine Encyclopaedia or DrinkBoy for cocktails.

Web searching

Did you know that Google has a special PDA-optimised version of its famous search engine? Give it a try.


Communications

Quick email

Your Psion or Communicator's Email application is more than enough for email fixes, usually. But just occasionally, it's nice to have direct access to your POP3 mailbox via the web, in which case make sure you bookmark Mail2Pda or World Wide Mobile Mail.


Shopping and Leisure

Stuff, Auctions

eBay has an excellent mobile version, for bidding, searching for things and for checking on your seller auctions. The only caveat is that it's designed for WAP-compatible mobile browsers.

Books, videos, DVDs, games

More or less the full Amazon shopping experience is also available in mobile form:
Full US site, text only - Go there now
UK official 'mobile' site - Go there now (mobile browsers only).

Ringtones

Gapsring is a good source of free MIDI ringtones, no need to go paying for them...

Films

Here's the Showcase Cinemas mobile showtimes site (UK), and the equivalent for the Vue multiplex chain.

Visit the InfoSpace guide to current movies and Metacritic.

Betting

Oddschecker does what it says on the tin.


Package Tracking

There are mobile tracking sites for FedEx, TNT and UPS.


Other

See also 'rival' PDA portals igloo and Purely Mobile. And Mippin makes many RSS feeds accessible.

As a last resort, there are some web site 'translators', which can help strip down complex web pages for which there's no mobile equivalent. For example, see Mowser, MobileLeap and Skweezer.


Other (Commercial) Mobile Sites
(Advertise on this portal page)

If you want to say thanks for maintaining this web guide page, please PayPal something to 'slitchfield AT gmail.com' and/or use the 'Other Mobile Sites' link above.

If you can suggest another site for the list, or if you find a broken or changed link, please get in touch with the PayPal address above!