As a number of you will have gathered by now (OK, so it should be all of you!), Sarah and I both have new phones…

Both of these phones have a feature that I am not sure how I did without… a WAP browser!!!

For those that aren’t up sure what this is, then this update probably isn’t a lot of use to you… yet. Wap is basically the ability to surf the web from your mobile phone.

Now for those of you that also have wap, then I’m sure that you probably use it very little in order to avoid cost (much like Sarah does). So I thought that today I’d give you a couple of sites that really give you bang for your buck! As an aside, I’ve actually been impressed at the cost of using Wap…

I mean not only can catch up with my daily headlines from wap.nzherald.co.nz/ for a lot less than the cost of a paper, but I can do it while Sarah is trying on clothes! Or, I can head over to www.vodafone.co.nz/wapmail and check both my Paradise and Woosh email accounts wherever I am (or more correctly, wherever I’m bored). And that brings me onto one of my favourite sites, and the reason for today’s update…

Or more correctly, it brings me to one of my favourite pairs of sites… so lets start with the basics.

www.google.com is probably a site that is common to a number of you… I mean, once your company name becomes a verb then you must be doing something right. Well I recommend you try it from your mobile. It gives you a number of invaluable features for browsing on a mobile phone! I ask you, what’s the biggest problem of surfing from your phone?

It would have to be the inability to browser all html pages (such as this one). Wap was originally designed for only .wml pages, however as phones become more advanced, they can access some html pages. Some phones (like the sharp GX30 I have at the moment) can see almost all pages, while others (like my normal phone) can only see some. Or at least that was the case…

Not only does the google wap site allow you to search, but it reformats html pages into wap, allowing you to browse pretty much anything! It has the ability to search for just wap sites, search the general internet, or go directly to a page (which it reformats). Naturally this brings me to the second page I was going to talk about.

Pricespy.co.nz is a great site… It allows you to look up computer bits, phones etc and search a huge number of suppliers for the cheapest price. The only problem is that it doesn’t work on a mobile (see where this is going yet?). But you can search for pricespy stuff via google…

So, by simply going to google on my phone, I can search for say a Canon A80 camera by putting “A80 pricespy”…

The first page the search returns is the pricespy page for Canon A80 cameras!

This mean that never again do you need to stand in a shop and um and argh while the shop assistant tells you how wonderful the prices is that hes offering. Now, you can turn round and tell him that you can buy the same camera two streets over for $50 less.

Shopping has never been so much fun!