Washington (dpa) — As more people are performing computing chores on their mobile phones, the search for useful apps is on. E-mail is usually covered adequately by smartphones, but how about instant messaging, forum reading, better web browsing, and tweeting? No problem. Read on for some suggestions.
Q: I’m addicted to instant messaging on the computer, but my iPhone doesn’t seem to have the ability to tie in to my Yahoo instant message account. Is there a cell phone app that will work?
A: If you use only Yahoo!, you can certainly do worse that downloading and installing Yahoo! for mobile. Just navigate to http://mobile.yahoo.com and type in your phone number. Yahoo will message you a direct link to the application’s download site. Or you can type m.yahoo.com into your phone’s browser, and you’ll get the same thing. The Yahoo! app will give you access to the IM client as well as plenty of other Yahoo! services, including e-mail.
If you need access to more than one instant messenger from your smartphone, though, try Beejive (http://www.beejive.com). This nifty little application can aggregate your IM account from multiple services, including Yahoo!, AIM, Google Talk, Windows Live Messenger, and more. Also available for BlackBerry, Beejive sports a very intuitive and easy-to-read interface, and with it, you’ll be able to keep track of multiple conversations from multiple services at once.
Q: I use my BlackBerry for everything except web browsing because the browser is so slow and hard to read. Is there a better browsing application I can use?
A: The web browser in the BlackBerry phone is indeed lacking. But there are options. Your first stop should be to http://m.opera.com on your BlackBerry browser. There, you’ll find Opera Mini, a free browser that does everything that the BlackBerry browser doesn’t. It’s fast, first of all. But just…