Guardian finally launches mobile website

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I read newspapers on the bus in the morning. Not on paper – that’s expensive, wasteful and a bit of a hassle – but on my humble Nokia N95. I start with mobile Techmeme, then hit up Google News for the big stories, then over to the New York Times, because their mobile site is one of the best there is.

If I was forced to pick up a paper copy of the newspaper, it’d probably be the Guardian. Their website’s second only to the BBC for me, when it comes to online, too. That’s why it’d be nice to get the paper’s editorial perspective on my phone. And now I can!

Well, that’s a bit of an overstatement, actually. I could if I was on Three. Guardian News & Media has launched an initial version of its mobile site on the Planet 3 portal. Following a period of exclusivity with 3, and then another period of exclusivity with Vodafone, the general public will finally get access later this year.

It won’t be a moment too soon. Although phones are starting to get better at displaying the full internet, it doesn’t take much to slim down your page load times and shrink the photos, and many people won’t have full-internet capable phones for a few years.

What’s your experiences with mainstream media on mobile devices? Share them in the comments.

NOISE GATE: Napster 4.6 – the return of Napster?

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Ahhhh, Napster. Back in 1999, I sat there for days, on a 56kbps connection, downloading music. As a result of that, and Audiogalaxy, I became an enormous music fan and I’ve spent thousands of pounds on music over the years that I’m very convinced that I wouldn’t have spent if it hadn’t been so easy to ‘try before you buy’.

Today the news broke that Napster’s relaunching in the UK. Of course, it’s not the real Napster – it’s what was formerly Roxio – a DRM-based subscription service. The company has just released version 4.6 of its player, which purports to allow subscribers to access and play their music on any internet-connected computer, without downloading any software.

Happy Birthday, Google Chrome – 1.0 today

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The browser the world didn’t demand has come out of beta today, with Google releasing a “1.0” version of its Chrome web toy for a largely disinterested world to not bother with once again.

You’re probably reading this in Firefox or Internet Explorer, so it won’t mean much, but the few Chrome users out there will be pleased to know that Google reckons Chrome is now less buggier, up to 1.5 times faster at loading Java…