Picture this:

You are sitting on the bus,  your commute is 45 minutes long so you whip out your iPhone and start browsing Twitter. Your friend posts a link to this awesome article on social marketing, you follow the link and then sit for the next 15 minutes frustrated with:

1. waiting for the page and all it's ads to load
2. not being able to read the content because you keep having to pan back and forth on the screen.

This tends to happen to me a lot. There are VERY few sites out there that seem to understand that today there is a need for a mobile version of a website. Sure, you can get an app for your favourite site on your iPhone, Android, Symbian or Palm powered phones but these apps usually don't offer the website content or experience. The modern mobile OS and browser technology allows most websites to load and operate just as they would on a laptop or desktop but the experience is poor. With limited screen real estate, I want to execute my tasks quickly and effectively. I don't want to pinch or zoom on anything other than a map!

Two sites that have provided excellent mobile versions are:

1. Amazon - who understands user behaviour better than the users themselves, provides a slick, easy to use interface which makes shopping a breeze
2. Wikipedia Mobile - utilizing a minimalistic design, Wikipedia provides quick, relevant information on the go, no matter what your screen real estate!

These are just a couple examples but there are countless businesses and website owners out there who choose to ignore the tremendous mobile market to be tapped. Wake up people, it's 2010!

I love my phone, it's an O2 XDA Orbit II (aka HTC Polaris, aka HTC Touch Cruise). It give me all the features I could want plus you can actually make calls! I was really excited today because I got a 4GB micro SD HC card for the phone. My first task was to load as much multimedia on there as possible! After copying copious amounts of music I slipped the card in and played some tunes.....it worked like a charm! I was happy. So off to the gym I went, phone in tow, no need to take my ipod today, I could just use my phone.

Since I'm in IT and always on call I need to have my phone with me pretty much all the time but I hate to have it ring at the gym or at the library or on the train. I don't like it to ring especially when I have my headset on since my ring tone is annoying (shouldn't it always though?) and the volume is set to high when I'm listening to music so I set the ringer to off. I get on the treadmill, put my music on and then begin to warm up to some Rage Against the Machine...one small problem....I don't hear anything! I think maybe it's my headset, but the radio works just fine! It get pissed and just play the radio instead! It takes until today for me to figure out what the problem was.

Apparently, the excellent application designers decided that if your ringer is set to off (i.e. phone is on silent or vibrate) you can't listen to your music using Windows Media Player! This to me is complete insanity. Firstly, what does one have to do with the other? Secondly, is this not a common thing for people to want the ringer off while still enjoying music?