Posts Tagged ‘Mobile Internet’

FactCheck.Org on the Mobile Web

Monday, April 26th, 2010

Curious to learn just the facts about the health care bill or the 2010 census? m.factcheck.org might be a good resource while you are on the run.

Factcheck.org is a nonpartisan, nonprofit “consumer advocate” for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. They monitor the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews and news releases and then report on it on this site.

I have found this site particularly useful during elections when the mudsling is in full effect. They break down the topics in a digestible way and appear to give both sides.

The easy to use Search feature allows me to just find what I need and I can even email the editor questions or read the weekly FactCheck Mailbag to see what others are interested in.

The gubernatorial elections are coming up in many states this June. I’ll be checking back into this site before I go to the polls.

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Posted in Political | 1 Comment »

Content Is King

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

Today I just wanted to give a shout out to my favorite site on the mobile web, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, easily found at www.mcsweeneys.net from your mobile browser. It’s literary, it’s funny, and mostly just very entertaining. Simply put it’s my favorite source of content on the mobile web.

Now I’ve been a fan of the web verion of this site for years and years. Only very recently – by following @mcsweeneysbooks on twitter – did I discover the wonderful mobile verion of the site. My 40-minute ferry ride commute hasn’t been the same since.

Not only is the content good, the user experience is similarly awesome. There are no ads or even graphics on McSweeneys so the content is really perfect for surfing on a mobile device. On my Blackberry Curve the articles load faster than any other site, the font size is nice and readable, and navigation is all very simple and link-based.

But a little more about McSweeney’s and why you may want to check it out. McSweeney’s is actually a publishing house founded by author Dave Eggers and in addition to publishing books, DVD’s, and periodicals, they also maintain this site which Wikipedia describes as a “daily updated literature and humor site.” The content is primarily fiction in the form of short essays and narratives, but there are occasional articles of non-fiction and other general randomness. It’s mostly funny and only occasionally serious.

I think the content can best be described as eclectic and best discovered for yourself, perhaps on your commute home tonight. I only hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

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Posted in Entertainment | No Comments »

WiFi surfing on the HTC Touch Pro

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

The HTC Touch Pro is a powerful device. As a touch screen smartphone, it is the essential mini windows computer in your pocket. And because it’s WiFi capable, you can even get broadband speed data connection just like on your laptop.

Say you are:

  • Traveling abroad and you want to use your phone on your trip where you wouldn’t necessarily be able to have phone service.
  • You don’t want to incur a huge international data roaming bill but you want to check email and be able to map where you are traveling in google maps.
  • Make low cost international calls using Skype
  • Sitting at home or work or a cafe and you want really fast connection speeds – much faster than on a cell phone network

Here’s how you setup WiFi:

  1. From the top left corner of the home screen select start -> settings
    This will bring up a menu of options and select the connections tab at the bottom of the screen.
  2. Select the WiFi icon on the screen and look for a WiFi network to connect to and select the Connect soft key in the bottom left corner of the screen.

  3. You’ll need to enter in a network key if the connection requires a password. Select Finish to finish setup and establish the connection.

Once setup, it should remember the connection settings so that once you return to your house or your workplace, you will have instant broadband connection.

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Posted in Productivity, Reference | 1 Comment »

Yelp’ing on my FishPhone

Friday, June 26th, 2009

I’m addicted to sushi. But good sushi places can be hard to find and even when I do find one I’m never quite sure what to order. Hence the following, handy mobile tools:

When on the go and looking for a good restaurant (sushi or otherwise) I turn to mobile.yelp.com, the mobile version of the trusty peer recommendation site many of us have grown to know and love.

Once I’ve located a place and scanned the menu, I turn to the FishPhone from Blue Ocean Institute. This cool tool lets you text in any type of fish and returns a score (green, yellow, red), plus an alternative if you’ve made a bad choice. To use, text “fish (+ your fish selection)” to 30644.

Here’s how it works:

My text to 30644:
fish yellowtail

Response from 30644:
U.S. farmed (YELLOW) some environmental concerns; Japanese farmed (RED) significant environmental concerns

So a few Saturday’s ago I used both of these cell phone apps. Not only did I find a killer sushi place right around the corner I also changed my order to something more environmentally sustainable. By the way, aside from standard data and text charges both of these services are free (and the salmon roll at Sushi Ran is Sausalito is really good).

Itadakimasu!

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Posted in Green, Travel and Maps | 3 Comments »

NPR’s “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me” on your Cell Phone

Friday, June 12th, 2009

Test your skills on the go with this free daily quiz from NPR’s popular show. Getting to the quiz via your phone is easy – guessing the correct answer might be another story.

A recent example from the NPR mobile site:
“This just in from the Canadian Athletic Marketing desk: In an effort to better promote the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, Canadian officials are allegedly planning to do what?
o Hire Fashion Models as Judges
o Issue Olympic athlete lingerie calendars
o Add more macho figure skaters
o Double the potency of Canadian beer

Play along from any phone with an Internet Browser, simply type in m.npr.org into the browser’s URL box right after the http:// .

If you’re a CREDO Mobile customer getting to NPR is even faster since you can link directly from your phone’s Mobile Internet home page. Simply click the “News” then “NPR” links.

Local stations also have sites. My home station of San Francisco is found at m.kqed.npr.org .

Find your local site online at http://www.npr.org/services/mobile/mobilewebandmobilevoice.html
NPR Mobile site is loaded with local and national news, the story of the day, a station locator so you can find NPR while traveling and much more.  Check it out and let us know your favorite NPR mobile feature.

PS – still wondering about that quiz? Well… It’s hard to do a triple axel when you are crushing a beer can against your head.

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Posted in Fun and Games, News | 2 Comments »