6. RSS And More

You don't want to be typing in URLs on a smartphone; either create a Web page with links on it that's set as your home page, or mail them to yourself to speed up being able to bookmark your favorite sites on your phone. Use ActiveSync to send favorites from Internet Explorer to your Windows Mobile, or look at ways of getting information from the Web directly onto your phone without browsing.

If your mobile browser doesn't support RSS feeds directly, there are mobile versions of many RSS aggregator sites like Bloglines and Feedburner. If you subscribe to feeds in My Yahoo! or Google Reader, you can see them on the mobile versions of each site, if you log in.

RSS is an efficient way of reading Web stories on a smartphone; choose between free simpler tools, and pay-for clients like NewsGator Go!, which shares the feed list you read on your desktop.

If you prefer to download feeds to read in a client on your phone, Litefeeds is a free client for Windows Mobile, Symbian and BlackBerry; NewsBreak is only available for Windows Mobile, and you have to pay for it, but it supports podcasts and vidcasts. If you use NewsGator on your desktop, the NewsGator Go! software for BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Symbian phones will only show you stories you haven't already read; even better, what you read on your phone won't show up on your desktop. WidSets lets you turn RSS feeds and Web services into widgets that are downloaded to the free WidSets client that runs on Windows Mobile, Symbian and BlackBerry smartphones.

Instant Messaging

MSN instant messaging is naturally built in to Windows Mobile smartphones; the Live Messenger version will be out this summer, adding group chats and file send and receive. RIM has free IM clients for Yahoo! Messenger and Google Talk (plus tools for Lotus SameTime, GroupWise Messenger and Microsoft Live Communication Server); you can also send free messages to other BlackBerry users directly.

IM can be cheaper than SMS - and you can stay in touch with the same people as on your PC.

If you use several IM services clients like Agile Messenger (for Windows Mobile and Symbian), IM+ and Mobile IM (both Windows Mobile, Symbian and BlackBerry) let you send messages on all the main IM systems. Watch out for IM clients that use SMS to notify you of incoming messages, though, as this can quickly get expensive.