Highlighting Mobile Internet

Once upon a time a mobile phone was simply a small (or not so small) device used for storing phone numbers, sending short text messages and calling people while you were on the move. With modern technology it's hard for us to remember a time when a mobile phone wasn't an all-singing, all-dancing multimedia centre that fits in your pocket. At one time, the internet and mobile phones were totally separate; one was used for communication, the other for finding out information. Now, though, the two have become almost inseparable, with a phone being no more or less than a downsized, portable modem/browser. Webmasters are realising that more people are using their mobiles to surf the net, and are designing mobile-friendly websites to reach a greater audience. With this in mind, software giant IBM is working on a Firefox add-on called Highlight, which enables users to 'clip' sections of their favourite websites and save these edited pages on another server, ready to access from a mobile phone.

The idea behind this is that many websites have a lot of clutter on their pages which is difficult to navigate on the small screen of a portable device. With Highlight, users will be able to choose which sections of a site they want to keep, effectively building their own webpage. There are worries that some websites will not like their data being 'copied' in this way, but if it's seen there is a demand for this service, more of them may come around to it. IBM is waiting to see what the possible demand would be before officially launching the add-on, but if Highlight does hit our browsers, shopping and surfing on your mobile phone could suddenly get a whole lot easier.