Three Bookmarklets for Happier Mobile Browsing

With smartphone sales soaring and Citigroup projecting year-over-year growth of 50-60%, it's a safe bet that a lot of you are increasingly surfing the web from your mobile devices.

Still, even with the iPhone, the mobile browsing experience leaves lots to be desired because of the bandwidth and reception issues. Enter bookmarklets. These utilities add one-click functionality to your mobile device and they're terrific time savers.

Here are three such links I use constantly on the go. Drag the first two to your bookmarks/favorites and sync them to your device and you're all set. For the final bookmarklet, you need to first visit each service to configure them.

Mobilize This!

Google, Mowser and Skweezer are mobile transcoders that take any URL you throw at it and strip away the graphics for faster browsing. I prefer to use Google's version since it also gives me the option to browse the feed. The next time you want to get to a page quickly and your browser keeps loading the page. Stop it mid-stream and simply tap your Mobilize This! bookmarklet.

Wikipedia This!

Need to settle a bar bet like the name of Boba Fett's dad? Wikipedia of course has all the answers. Access this bookmarklet, enter your search term and you'll be whisked away to the answer.

ToRead and Instapaper

The great thing about the mobile web is that it's always with you. The downside is that sometimes it's hard to read a long story. Enter ToRead.cc and Instapaper. Both of these sites help you bookmark articles for the future. In the case of ToRead, it will email you the full text of the page. Instapaper assembles a reading list you can access from anywhere.

Happy browsing, travelers!

Comments

[RogerC]

Thanks for the tips on the bookmarklets. Another mobile site I find useful on my Treo 750 is phonefavs.com. It has a mobilizing function as well as online bookmark storage, but made for mobile devices.

[dave Kebb]

Hi, Have you NEVER tried Opera Mini? I mean it is the ultimate ultimate free mobile browser. It makes your entire article irrelevant it is THAT good.

Speed yourself to the download site, matey.

Safe browsin'

DK

[Reginald]

I have used opera mini. I do not have any problems with it...slow...but hey that probably has more to do with my location.

Bookmarklet is new. This one I have not heard of. If it can compare to opera mini, then slow might end up being my only complaint again.

Anyway, it was an interesting post. I will check out this ‘bookmarklets’.

[Jeri Cartwright]

Where's the money? In reference to the Adage story, newsrooms being understaffed - I am one of those who left news and entered PR. But we have a problem here in Utah. The latest survey says PR doesn't pay well:

Read it and weep!

http://mediarelations.blogs.com/index/2008/02/pr-salariestoo.html

[Matt Womer]

Wow, I saw the title of this article linked from somewhere else, and said "Ah, I can finally recommend all of my cool mobile bookmarklets!". Sadly, you actually mentioned all the best ones!

Now one thing I'd like on the iPhone is a bookmark bar that scrolls with the title bar, etc, and that I can then store these bookmarklets in.

I haven't tried your exact WikiPedia bookmarklet, but the one I do use puts mobile Safari in portrait mode for some reason. I'll have to try yours soon.

Thanks for this post!

-Matt

[RIck Julian]

Here's the best list of iPhone friendly sites I've run across. Tons of bookmarks across lots of categories: news, entertainment, etc,

www.cantoni.mobi

I've got it saved as a bookmark on my phone desktop.

Best,

Rick Julian
QUO VADIS
www.quo-vadis.tv/

[Farhan Memon]

On the issue of mobile browsing I would invite people to try AOL Mobile Search the product that I manage. You can access it at search.aol.com on your mobile device or wap.aol.com/search.

On the topic of bookmarks we just launched a bookmark for AOL Mobile Search that a blackberry user can just put on their device's HomeScreen. The bookmark can be obtained by typing the word "blackberry" on AOL Search at search.aol.com on your computer. An SMS will be sent to your device.

I think one of the advantages of having bookmarks directly on devices is that users don't need to enter a long URL or scroll through bookmarks.

I think all major search engines need to transcode large web pages. On devices like the iPhone the experience is a little different because it's a full web browser but even there the connection can be slow if you're not on wifi