Geesh — one company dies and industry pundits (here<\/a> for example) are declaring that the mobile web is finally<\/strong> dead. <\/p>\n

What<\/strong>? Although my phone finally supports 3G in those areas of the country that have 3G service — I’d hardly say that my Windows Mobile 6 phone web browsing experience is anything but barely adequate. I was never bothered by AT&T EDGE speeds — mainly because the web pages rendered so poorly as to be barely useable. I don’t fault web sites for not considering my use to be a prime candidate for optimization and development. It’s a lot of work just to make a web page work on the various full-sized browsers such as IE, Firefox, and Safari. Then, they must consider the actual frequency of mobile users — near 0.1% I’m sure before deciding to create an optimized mobile web version. <\/p>\n

Amazon has a mobile<\/a> site though — and it’s perfect for my needs. Fast, simple, and renders perfectly. The other day in a local store, I did some price comparison’s with Amazon to verify that I should buy some of the stuff locally and wait to buy a few items when I got home from Amazon (I didn’t feel the need to try to buy something from Amazon while in a physical store). <\/p>\n

I frequently use mobile versions of news (CNN, MSNBC), weather (weather.com), and Google Reader.<\/p>\n

Why do we still need mobile then? <\/p>\n

I hear people talking about the ideal experience that is available on the iPhone\/iPod touch for browsing the web. I’m using a beta of SkyFire which attempts to emulate some of the experience of the iPhone browser on my WM6 phone. It’s not bad — but what I really don’t care for is all the zooming in and out and panning. It’s slow and sloppy. I’m disappointed when I need to use it. It’s solving a problem that we ideally shouldn’t have to deal with.<\/p>\n

I’d be skeptical that you’d ever find a piece of PC\/Mac software that emulated that zooming and panning experience on your monitor\/LCD and enjoy it (imagine if your current web browser worked that way). (And no, mapping software doesn’t count!<\/em>) Instead, you’d want something optimized for the computer and display. Lots of the better web designers and web sites get this and create optimized web sites for phones (I’ve seen mention of quite a few for the iPhone for example). I for one, hope they continue and don’t declare mobile web to be dead. For most applications, it’s a reasonable experience that is zero-install and "good enough." It also targets the most phones — whereas doing custom development for the various phone platforms takes time, effort, etc. <\/p>\n

Do you have a data plan? Do you use your mobile phone’s web browser? What are your thoughts?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Geesh — one company dies and industry pundits (here for example) are declaring that the mobile web is finally dead. What? Although my phone finally supports 3G in those areas of the country that have 3G service — I’d hardly say that my Windows Mobile 6 phone web browsing experience is anything but barely adequate. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[5,3],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd5QIe-1W","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1933,"url":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/archives\/1933","url_meta":{"origin":120,"position":0},"title":"Fitbit Flex, dead and won’t charge?","date":"August 30, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"My wife and I both pre-ordered a Fitbit Flex. While it\u2019s not a life-changing device, it\u2019s been generally fun to wear. I\u2019m always interested in the sleep tracking when I travel \u2026 \u201cAwake 16x, slept 5 hours.\u201d Last night though, my wife\u2019s Flex had stopped working. The lights wouldn\u2019t show\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":401,"url":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/archives\/401","url_meta":{"origin":120,"position":1},"title":"iPhone 2nd Generation … too much for me and my budget.","date":"July 8, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I had thought of buying a 2nd generation iPhone. However, thanks to Apple and AT&T, I definitely won't be. Here's the simple reasons: $30 a month for \"high speed\" unlimited data is ridiculous. Text messaging is now extra. Exchange support is an extra $15 a month! Still no replaceable battery\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1749,"url":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/archives\/1749","url_meta":{"origin":120,"position":2},"title":"Nest Update #12: Software at 3.0 with New Features","date":"October 3, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"As the blogosphere exploded yesterday with news of a second generation Nest thermostat and a new major version of the software (for the thermostats and the controllers such as the web site and various SmartPhones), I wondered what impact the new software and hardware would have on average users, like\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Recommendations"","img":{"alt_text":"IMG_0630","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/IMG_0630.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1340,"url":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/archives\/1340","url_meta":{"origin":120,"position":3},"title":"Nest Thermostat Review, Update #1","date":"December 27, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"After a few weeks of using the Nest thermostat, I\u2019ve got a few more comments that I\u2019d like to share. (Here\u2019s my post about the installation). The learning feature honestly hasn\u2019t been very useful in the first few weeks. It\u2019s apparently easily confused by days that you're home unexpectedly (for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","img":{"alt_text":"image","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/image_thumb3.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1508,"url":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/archives\/1508","url_meta":{"origin":120,"position":4},"title":"Nest Thermostat Review, Update #9","date":"January 22, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Summary\/Index When I woke up this morning, I decided that I\u2019d use the remote features of my Nest Thermostat to increase the temperature of the first floor as the normal schedule hadn\u2019t started yet. Here\u2019s what I saw on my iPad: Basement: ? First Floor: ? When I tapped the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","img":{"alt_text":"image","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/image23.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":222,"url":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/archives\/222","url_meta":{"origin":120,"position":5},"title":"Sun’s JavaFX, Take 2.","date":"May 9, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I wrote about JavaFX last year about this time. It's back again with an all new, AJAX-heavy, marketing web site. One thing that I hope inspires Microsoft is this: \"JavaFX Desktop for desktop browsers and desktop applications (available fall 2008)\" I ask (appropriate) Microsoft representatives almost every time I talk\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Coding"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/05\/image-thumb15.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/wpjson\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/wpjson\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/wpjson\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/wpjson\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/wpjson\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/wpjson\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/wpjson\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/wpjson\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/wpjson\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}