Tech tip, browser for your mobile

For those of us who haven't forked out the big bucks for a iPod but nonetheless have a data plan for web access on our inferior phones, I found a cool tool, the Opera Mini web browser. Interesting enough, in researching it, I found numerous references to "Is this available for the iPhone?", so hmmmmmmmm. I digress.

Here's how it works.
1. You load the browser on your phone, go to http://www.operamini.com/ on your phone's browser. Click on the download button to load.
2. You open the browser.
3. You enter a URL (web address)
4. The web page is passed thru the opera web servers and rendered small for your little bitty screen on your mobile phone. Not only does this make it easier to see the web page, but it makes loading the web page MUCH faster, by passing thru the opera web servers, they strip it down for fast loading.
5. On the small web page, there is a zoom box, so you can zoom on a place on the page. This makes it much easier to see the context of the whole page before scrolling around



COOL! Browsing the web on your mobile still is not great, but it's much better than before. Here's a cool demo of it actually works, click here.

The other tip is to use the mobile version of websites when possible. For instance, Yelp! offers a version of their site, optimized for mobile devices Yelp Mobile. Click on the links, see how stripped down the mobile version is! Many other sites offer something similiar.

Happy browsing!