A year ago, Google enabled read-only access to your Google Spreadsheets from your mobile browser. Now the Google Docs team has added editing capabilities to Google Spreadsheets from popular phones, including the iPhone and Android phone. The excitement you feel at this announcement probably depends on how big of a spreadsheet junkie you are. For example I love the idea of tracking expenses from my phone using one of the many personal finance templates available at the Google Docs template gallery—but I was born at least a quarter spreadsheet junkie. If you’ve got your own killer use for a little spreadsheet editing on your mobile device, let’s hear it in the comments.
Add, edit, sort, and filter: Improved mobile access to spreadsheets [The Official Google Docs Blog]A few months back we gave you a sneak peak at Fennec, the innovative version of Firefox for mobile devices, and now it looks like the mobile browser could hit your Windows Mobile device as early as next week. On the first alpha release, Mobile Firefox will target the HTC Touch Pro, so it may not be up to snuff for most WinMo devices, so if you’re really aching to test drive Fennec, you can always install and test it on your desktop. [via Download Squad]
Windows only: BitTorrent super-host The Pirate Bay claims its ViO MobileConverter tool reduces nearly any video’s size by 20 percent and converts it for mobile devices faster than anything else. Let’s see about that.
There’s nothing more infuriating (or expensive) than a mobile phone that doesn’t stand up to the most everyday of activities, like being smashed by a hammer, dropped in a beer bath or strapped to a rocket. If you’ve ever found yourself in this situation, Sonim has a sturdy solution to your woes. Engineered for sports enthusiasts and those who work in harsh environments, the military-spec, Bluetooth and Push-to-talk enabled XP1 is shockproof, waterproof, dustproof, extreme temperature-proof and, considering the 3-year unconditional warranty, moron-proof. Despite having been on the overseas market for over a year, the indestructible mobile remains the only one of its kind in Australia and is available at Crazy John’s for $549 outright. The device is hardly pretty, but it is something to consider for any adrenaline junkie, drunk, klutz, brickie or astronaut on the lookout for the ultimate in non-breakable mobiles, this Christmas. [Christmas Gift Guide]
While you can load Google’s normal webapps in your iPhone browser, Google has iPhone-optimised versions for most of the popular ones. Google System compiled a list of URLs to bookmark on your iPhone for Google’s homepage, Apps, iGoogle, Gmail, Calendar, Reader, Docs, Talk and News. You can also use these on other mobile phone browsers, unless you have Windows Mobile and Mobile IE like I do. Want to see how the iPhone half lives? They’ll load just fine in Firefox as well.
Many web pages would load up a heck of a lot faster on the iPhone’s Mobile Safari browser if you weren’t stuck waiting for “LOWER YOUR INTEREST RATES NOW” and the like to push through on Mobile Safari. If you’ve jailbroken your iPhone or iPod touch, however, there’s a none-too-hard hack you can make to block a good number of ads from slowing down your page loads. Here’s the step-by-step instructions for doing so:
Vodafone has dropped the price of its entry-level mobile broadband plan, cutting its 1G a month offering from $34.95 to $24.95. (It advertises the service as $19.95 a month, but you have to pay $5 a month for the USB stick modem.) The plan still requires a 24-month contract, so it’s not ideal for super-ideal users, but it doesn’t have the trick conditions of most prepaid mobile broadband plans. Vodafone
Photo sharing site Flickr just activated an iPhone-scaled version of the site for anyone visiting the site with a mobile Safari browser. The menus are optimised to put the most-accessed activities—photo stream browsing, “Explore” mode, and recent comment activity—right up front, and your upload-by-email address is placed in the “More” section. Best of all, Flickr’s site pre-loads many of the iPhone-scaled thumbnails you’re checking out, so flipping between pictures often doesn’t require any kind of refresh. No slideshows for now, given the lack of Flash on the iPhone, but the site’s a nice alternative to pinching and pulling gigantic photos on the standard site. Flickr Mobile [via Webware]
You might think that Australian Idol is the worst thing to happen to the local music scene since Joe Dolce, but its producers are trying out an interesting experiment: free ad-supported video content for mobile users. Idol enthusiasts will be able to catch up on weekly performances, recaps and an exclusive video blog via the service. While there have been plenty of shows that have flogged online access for a fee (including Idol itself in previous years), this represents the first time that video content has been made available cost-free from a current TV project that I can think of. Of course, as with most phone content, it helps to read the fine print. Vodafone is sponsoring the initiative, so while Vodafone subscribers get the whole lot for nothing, Telstra, Optus and 3 users are still up for data charges — and as we all know, all-you-can-eat plans don’t exist in this sector. Even so, it does represent a slight shift from the walled garden/wounded bull charging model that has predominated in the past. Would you be more tempted to watch mobile TV if it was free, even with ads in it? Send us your thoughts in the comments. [Australian Idol]
According to Sensis’ latest e-Business Report, just 10% of Australians have a phone with email access incorporated. (Whether that’s because the data plans for them are so expensive is another matter.) Those of us who do have them seem to like them: six out of ten mobile email users never switch their device off, while roughly a fifth of us de-activate them at weekends to get some proper downtime. Doubtless these figures will be used at some point in the near future to argue that the BlackBerry has turned us all into work slaves — though, as Gina argued recently, such discussions never point out the productivity gains that can come with better access to work resources.
