Thank goodness for the Mobile Web. It saved my ass twice in London last weekend in situations where I’d have been quite stuck without it. Luckily I’d brought a Nokia E61 with me for data use and it really paid off.

Case 1: The weekend didn’t start too well as I woke up late on Saturday morning and had to rush out the door to make it to MobileCamp in time. However once I was on the London train I realised that I’d forgotten to bring any details of the Camps location with me. Not a problem when you have a mobile with you! I remembered that I had blogged about the camp and included a link to the Camps wiki. So i use Mowser to hit my blog and find the link which will also get transcoded by Mowser when I click through. I note down the location from the mobile-ready page and then hit http://mobile.google.co.uk to download the Google Maps Java application (I prefer it to their mobile-ready Website). Two minutes later it’s installed and the location has been entered, an easy walk from Oxford Circus tube station. If that wasn’t enough I was also on the #mobitopia IRC page, thanks to Mirggi, where Vero gave me step-by-step instructions on how to get to the camp from Oxford Circus.

Case2: After spending the rest of the weekend at Mobile Camp and wandering around London it was time to head back to work on Monday morning. I was staying at a friends place in Battersea and again had woken up late and was in a rush. I’d never driven out of London from this area before and I’d left the house without a map or any other form of directions towards the A3. Again, not a problem, I just pulled over, fired up Google Maps and entered the name of the street I was in. It then spat out directions to the Volantis post-code from my location and I was on the right road in no time at all.

It’s great when you can actually see the way the Mobile Web can help in day to day life but for me the best thing is that this could have been done on about 90% of modern mobiles. You can hit Mowser from any wap capable device or alternatively use Opera Mini which works on all J2ME devices as does the Google Maps application. In fact you could have done it exclusively through Google Mobile products by powering up your browser and hitting Google.com to search for the MobileCamp wiki (would get transcoded by Google to work on your phone). That kind of functionality, reach and accessibility is really what keeps me interested in the Mobile Web.