Since the WSJ is currently having a 10-day open house, I can link to a recent article entitled The Next Tech Battle: Internet Searches on Cellphones (found via textually.org). It's all about operators and search engine companies partnering up to get internet searches on subscribers' screens. Quick read it while you can. Look for this part of the article, towards the bottom which I shall emphasize for your enjoyment:
Internet companies and cellphone service providers have been offering rudimentary search capabilities on phones for several years. Searching the Internet with traditional cellphones, though, has been unwieldy, with results often restricted to a limited number of Web pages that have specifically been formatted for phones.
But the experience is starting to improve, thanks to faster wireless Internet connections and bigger cellphone screens, which increasingly now are also color. And sales of a new generation of so-called smart phones, which can send email, surf the Internet and download software, are growing rapidly. [...]
Developments in software are also making it easier for cellphones to interpret Internet pages and extract only key information, such as focusing on text but ignoring large images or menus of options that often sit on the side or the top of Web pages. Meanwhile, companies are building mobile-friendly Web sites.
The article concludes with questions about the viability of advertising on a small screen. So on one hand, let's all wait for the mobile web to be built. Good luck waiting for that to happen. Or another idea: wait for phones and networks to get better and faster. What about now? Have they ever heard of Skweezer and Advertizer? I wonder what both sides are giving up to get these partnerships.
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