We've been hearing for years about how the mobile world will take over and be a huge business with all sorts of implications. I've never agreed with this. A mobile device is just too crippled in size and speed to be useful.

While I still believe we won't fully replace the desktop with mobile devices (or even 10% of the desktop's uses), I have just bought into the mobile hype. I finally get it.

Let's look at my last 2 hours:

I started by leaving my apartment, pulling out my Blackberry Pearl and getting directions to the airport -- with traffic information -- from mobile google maps.

I arrived at the airport, checked in, and passed security. I bought three magazines - Time (which includes an article on a UChicago prof you may have heard of named Barack Obama, as well as an article on Web 2.0 companies), Business 2.0 (The Next Disruptors), and Fast Company (the design issue).

Walking down the hall, I pass a group of very cute girls all wearing matching Univeristy of Oregon jackets. Took out the Pearl and opened espn.com and checked the football schedule of Oregon. Turns out they're playing Washington State tomorrow in Washington. Looks like I found the cheerleading squad.

Next I sat down and started reading Fast Company where I read a review about a book named The Starfish and the Spider. I had heard about this book before and liked the review. Out came the Pearl again. I figured I would pull up amazon and get a bit of info after scrolling through many screens of non-mobile optimized pages.

Instead, what I received was a fantastic site optimized for a phone. A simple logo, search box, and a couple links. I search for the book, it comes up quickly as the first result. I click to the detail page, stripped of everything but the title, price, and a buy now button. I click the buy now button, which returns a page to sign in and it will place an order for this book with my 1-click settings. Done.

Now I'm writing this post from the airport where I'm waiting for a flight to Los Angeles. Needless to say, I'm convinced. With GPRS EDGE we are finally at the days speeds that any and all of this becomes totally accessible.

I'm finally ready to repeat what I've been hearing for years: the mobile space will be the one to watch in the next 2 years. It may just be the next big revolution.

I installed Firefox 2.0 RC1 last night on my Apple laptop and in the past 10 minutes, three small, yet key features made the switch 100% worth it.

Unlike Firefox 1.0, v2.0 isn't an overhaul of the web browser. It's more of a refinement. The features it introduces aren't earth-shattering, but they are slick. Let's go through what I've used so far:

1. The new tab bar. The tab bar is overhauled, making it far more usable for those of us who like to open millions of tabs at once. First, each tab receives its own close button, which is really nice and makes it harder for the accidental double close. Second, the tab bar now has scrolling: if you open more tabs than easily fit onto the screen, you can simply scroll left or right to see those extra tabs. Third, there's also a little drop down menu to quickly jump to an off-screen tab (this behaves exactly like the drop down menu in the back button to quickly go back many steps). This new tab bar was awesome when I just had 25 tabs open. Really easy to navigate and still see what I was looking at with just a glance.
2. Spell checking. Seriously, why don't all browsers have spell check for form input? This is an amazing feature, especially now that my browser is my: email client, blogging tool, instant messaging client, etc. Now I have built-in, real-time spell check for Gmail, Blogger, and Meebo. Sweet!
3. Feed subscriptions. This is a huge feature. It probably took all of a day or two to implement, but it's huge. When a site has a feed and Firefox recognizes this, you can simply click the feed icon in the address bar to subscribe to that feed... in your favorite feed reader! So I set up Newsgator and then Google Reader to test this out and it works like a charm. Just edit your preferences with which feed reader you'd like to use, and then click away. Sooo much more simple to use than what I used to have to do (copy the URL location, switch tabs to the reader, click the "Add a feed" link, paste the URL location, submit, switch back to the other tab).
4. Session Saver. This is the one feature I'm still waiting to test drive. If Firefox ever crashes, it will reopen and restore the tabs you had open previous to the crash. That'll be a huge lifesaver for me, I imagine.

As far as other features, the new theme update is pretty nice but I don't care too much about that. Another feature which is nice but which I doubt I will ever see is phishing detection. Basically, if you're on a phishing page, Firefox will attempt to figure this out and let you know by graying out the page and giving you a warning message. That's pretty cool, but not something I expect to use often.

Lastly, I'm very excited to see if there's a substantial decrease in memory leaks over FF1.0 and FF1.5.

Overall, well done, Mozilla!

Tags: firefox, firefox+2.0, firefox2.0, review