View any site on a cell phone

One thing that is a pain is on many phones looking at a full Web page is painful. MSN has a neat little search feature that lets you look at a Web site reformatted specifically for viewing on a phone. Just go to MSN Mobile Search, put in the site’s URL that you want to visit, and click “mobile” next to the result.

For instance, TechCrunch really sucks on many phones (you have to scroll to see the content and the page takes a long time to load up). Sorry Mike, but it’s true.

Looking at TechCrunch this way makes it a lot nicer on a cell phone (although TechCrunch could help even more by moving its content DIV on top of its navigation DIV).

Published by

Robert Scoble

As Startup Liaison for Rackspace, the Open Cloud Computing Company, Scoble travels the world looking for what's happening on the bleeding edge of technology for Rackspace's startup program. He's interviewed thousands of executives and technology innovators and reports what he learns in books ("The Age of Context," a book coauthored with Forbes author Shel Israel, has been released at http://amzn.to/AgeOfContext ), YouTube, and many social media sites where he's followed by millions of people. Best place to watch me is on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/RobertScoble

Comments

  3. Robert, the Google site Steve linked to is much better for espn.com. You guys have got to get that one right if you want to hang w/Google.

  4. Robert, the Google site Steve linked to is much better for espn.com. You guys have got to get that one right if you want to hang w/Google.

  5. Error page displayed when using a
    Treo 650 blazer browser.
    I agree with Steve Rubel’s post, Google’s site
    is currently a better solution.

  6. Error page displayed when using a
    Treo 650 blazer browser.
    I agree with Steve Rubel’s post, Google’s site
    is currently a better solution.

  11. Robert, thank you for the link! If there is any way to avoid, in the future, having the word “techcrunch” next to the words “really sucks”, I’ll be your best friend forever.

    :-)

  12. Robert, thank you for the link! If there is any way to avoid, in the future, having the word “techcrunch” next to the words “really sucks”, I’ll be your best friend forever.

    :-)

  13. Commenting on the flaws of transcoding services will have me typing all night…

    TechCrunch has chosen to take control over it’s mobile environment, branding, and in the meantime actually reaching it’s audience on most any web-enabled phone on the planet.

    TechCrunch Mobile Address:
    http://winksite.com/techcrunch/mobile

    Web 2.0 Workgroup Mobile Address (mobilized via OPML):
    http://winksite.com/web20/workgroup

    This is the beginning, took about 5 minutes. More features to be launching soon. Feedback welcome.

  14. Commenting on the flaws of transcoding services will have me typing all night…

    TechCrunch has chosen to take control over it’s mobile environment, branding, and in the meantime actually reaching it’s audience on most any web-enabled phone on the planet.

    TechCrunch Mobile Address:
    http://winksite.com/techcrunch/mobile

    Web 2.0 Workgroup Mobile Address (mobilized via OPML):
    http://winksite.com/web20/workgroup

    This is the beginning, took about 5 minutes. More features to be launching soon. Feedback welcome.

  21. Mobile options: some links and reflectionshttp://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/01/14/view-any-site-on-a-cell-phone/trackback/

    Several things to play with and check out … Google personalised homepage — mobile: details here and here My Yahoo! mobile (old news! — March ’05): see here Tom Hume on Yahoo! Go Mobile: It’s a nice stake in the

  22. How many freaking times people gotta tell you before it actually sinks into your skull? The internet on phones looks HORRIBLE in Pocket Internet Explorer, get Opera Mobile for goodnesss sake, and then you won’t have to worry about such hoop-jumping tricks or special pages (well not as much, nothings perfect).

  23. How many freaking times people gotta tell you before it actually sinks into your skull? The internet on phones looks HORRIBLE in Pocket Internet Explorer, get Opera Mobile for goodnesss sake, and then you won’t have to worry about such hoop-jumping tricks or special pages (well not as much, nothings perfect).

  24. to David Harper (and others),
    maybe I’m being a bit dense and so forth, but can’t you link to a stylesheet with media=”handheld” and use that to format techcrunch.com nicely on a phone or other mobile device ?

  25. to David Harper (and others),
    maybe I’m being a bit dense and so forth, but can’t you link to a stylesheet with media=”handheld” and use that to format techcrunch.com nicely on a phone or other mobile device ?

  28. Is there some sort of emulator or something that developers can use to see what their website looks like on a mobile device?

    I don’t have a mobile device (and can’t afford one right now). But I would like to make sure my sites work well for the mobile audience…

  29. Is there some sort of emulator or something that developers can use to see what their website looks like on a mobile device?

    I don’t have a mobile device (and can’t afford one right now). But I would like to make sure my sites work well for the mobile audience…

  32. To Martin (and others)

    Linking to a stylesheet with media=”handheld” would be ideal in a perfect world, and in no way am I suggesting that sites should not do that as part of their mobile solution.

    Unfortunately, not all 2 billion plus mobile phones in the world support XHTML MP / CSS, and the ones that do so offer varying support for those standards. There are also issues of a specific phones media support, screen size and network speed. Throw into that mix the notion that 1.) Perhaps browsing is not necessarily the best use case for mobile users and 2. ) Perhaps you wish to have your mobile site take advantage of the fact it is being viewed from a phone by interacting with phones’ inherent features.

    If anyone wants to explore this topic more, Cameron Moll has done a great job offering insight and options in this series he wrote on mobile web design:

    Mobile Web Design: Methods to the Madness (which contains a great chart comparing various methods)
    http://www.cameronmoll.com/archives/000428.html

    Mobile Web Design: Tips & Techniques
    http://www.cameronmoll.com/archives/000577.html

    From my perspective it is more than just publishing content to a mobile environment or automagically squeezing a Web site onto a small screen. It is about the individuals it engages, the people it connects, the dialogue that develops, the community that forms and the collective action that can result. Providing mobile solutions with this in mind requires more then stylesheets and transcoding services to get the job done.

    I’m simply glad to see the “Mobile 2.0” conversation beginning. It’s long overdue.

  33. To Martin (and others)

    Linking to a stylesheet with media=”handheld” would be ideal in a perfect world, and in no way am I suggesting that sites should not do that as part of their mobile solution.

    Unfortunately, not all 2 billion plus mobile phones in the world support XHTML MP / CSS, and the ones that do so offer varying support for those standards. There are also issues of a specific phones media support, screen size and network speed. Throw into that mix the notion that 1.) Perhaps browsing is not necessarily the best use case for mobile users and 2. ) Perhaps you wish to have your mobile site take advantage of the fact it is being viewed from a phone by interacting with phones’ inherent features.

    If anyone wants to explore this topic more, Cameron Moll has done a great job offering insight and options in this series he wrote on mobile web design:

    Mobile Web Design: Methods to the Madness (which contains a great chart comparing various methods)
    http://www.cameronmoll.com/archives/000428.html

    Mobile Web Design: Tips & Techniques
    http://www.cameronmoll.com/archives/000577.html

    From my perspective it is more than just publishing content to a mobile environment or automagically squeezing a Web site onto a small screen. It is about the individuals it engages, the people it connects, the dialogue that develops, the community that forms and the collective action that can result. Providing mobile solutions with this in mind requires more then stylesheets and transcoding services to get the job done.

    I’m simply glad to see the “Mobile 2.0” conversation beginning. It’s long overdue.

  36. Hey Robert,

    You can also check out http://skweezer.net

    MSNTV2 and WebTV users have found this site to a boon for accessing all sorts of pages that those boxes have problems with. I’m using it on my new PPC-6700 from Sprint and love the site.

  37. Hey Robert,

    You can also check out http://skweezer.net

    MSNTV2 and WebTV users have found this site to a boon for accessing all sorts of pages that those boxes have problems with. I’m using it on my new PPC-6700 from Sprint and love the site.

  38. MSN Search Mobile

    I’ve been deeply enthralled with my Windows Mobile 5.0 powered PPC-6700 from Sprint. LIttle pocket gizmos have come a long way since my hasty retreat from the nearly unusable Palm II. Even browsing the web is speedy enough because of…

  40. […] The other day Scoble wrote about MSN Mobile Search and that you could use it to “view any site on a cell phone” or any web-enabled mobile device for that matter. And then there was a mini-flurry on the blogosphere as people pointed to Google’s “mobilizer” being better, or how simple it was to do this using WINKsite, or the fact that Skweezer had already been doing this for ages. […]

  44. Also check out webxcope.com (similar to demo.mobileleap.net)

    I just learned of both of these and am amazed…

  45. Also check out webxcope.com (similar to demo.mobileleap.net)

    I just learned of both of these and am amazed…

  46. i was wondering if there were any other sites that were avaliable to be reached from your molible phone. I have tried http://www.google.com/gwt/n and put in the url but sometimes that does not work…so if anyone has anyother suggestions please let me know of them.
    thank you.

  47. i was wondering if there were any other sites that were avaliable to be reached from your molible phone. I have tried http://www.google.com/gwt/n and put in the url but sometimes that does not work…so if anyone has anyother suggestions please let me know of them.
    thank you.