First Asus released the EEE (you know, that tiny little Linux laptop), now netbooks are flooding the marketplace as other makers trip over themselves to compete. I love my new MSI Wind, but let's face it: 1024x600 doesn't give you a surplus of screen real estate. Here's what I've done to maximize my viewable area in Firefox without sacrificing much needed functionality.

Step one is to reduce what you can using the options Firefox provides out-of-the-box.

First to go: the status bar. While I know there are reasons to leave it visible, it's not really necessary for the bulk of the web browsing most of us do, and those are valuable pixels we can save. Next, head over to the toolbar menu click on customize. Switching from the default large to small icons will provide another small gain.

Now let's get rid of the bookmarks toolbar.

If you're not using an online bookmarking service yet, owning a netbook is a good reason to start. By using Google bookmarks and installing the GMarks addon, you're able to sneak all your favorites into the top main navigation toolbar. After you've installed GMarks, go back to toolbar customization and drag the GMarks Toolbar star onto the bar wherever you prefer it.

Though Nokia's Internet tablet, the N800, has been on the market for quite a bit longer than Apple's iPhone, we here at Download Squad have been thinking about the N800-iPhone comparison since Steve Jobs first demoed the iPhone back in January.

Indeed, there are a few things you can do with the Nokia product that aren't possible on the iPhone. Namely, you can make and receive VoIP calls using Gizmo Project and Skype, choose from a plethora of Debian/Maemo packages to run on the N800 (the N800 is Linux-based), listen to FM radio, and participate Google Talk video conferences.

Of course, the N800 isn't a cell phone, so in some way it seems almost silly to compare the two devices. The N800 doesn't do SMS messaging like Apple's phone. Nor does the N800 support phone calls without going through VoIP software. But both of these devices have great web browsers, newsreaders, and e-mail capability, so the comparison is natural.

We've put together a hands-on video with N800, which includes some tips for better e-mail, moving files to and from the N800 with Bluetooth, running Gizmo, and running Quake 2 courtesy of the open-source Quetoo distribution. You can view the video after the jump and decide for yourself whether or not Nokia's handy tablet is really an iPhone killer.

iPhone day is upon us. Much has already been written about the iPhone despite the fact that only a handful of journalists have used it. One thing that is common among all reviews is the AT&T's EDGE network is slow. Perhaps it is faster now but EDGE is still no 3G.

Earlier this month at WWDC, Jobs told Apple's developers to develop web applications for the iPhone instead of releasing a SDK. Again, much had been written about how developers felt betrayed by Apple, and that web applications are not really applications at all. Despite all these resentments, a few iPhone only web sites have sprung up since WWDC. Unfortunately, none of them are particularly impressive or useful probably because no one has gotten their hands on a real iPhone yet, which kind of confirms what the developers feared; that web applications will not be as good as proper iPhone applications. There are exceptions, of course. NewsGator's online feed reader allows users to read their RSS feed via the web anywhere and sync with their desktop apps when they get home. Similarly, the latest version of Google Reader does the same.

With all the attention on iPhone only web apps, I think people are neglecting the regular web sites. Just because iPhone's Safari can render regular web sites fully and allows the users to navigate/zoom around the site with their fingers, it does not mean it provides the best user experience.

My prediction will be that as soon as all the new iPhone owners get home and start surfing to their favorite news site/blog/message board via EDGE connection, they will find that -- although they can do almost everything on that smaller screen -- it is not as easy as on the desktop computer. They will be disappointed and lots will be written on the web this weekend about how web surfing sucks on the iPhone using EDGE. And I will agree with them. Can you imagine loading and navigating cnet.com on the iPhone using EDGE?

So what can be done to improve the user experience? The solution is a concept that has existed ever since cell phones were able to connect to the internet; mobile versions of web sites. The idea of a stripped down version of the regular web site for a mobile phone is as old as HTML4/CSS2 themselves. Some of the best examples that I have used are Fandango, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Vox. What is so good about specificly tailored mobile web sites? First, they are designed with cell phone in mind so the site is generally formatted to fit the narrower screens. Second, because of limited bandwidth mobile, they strip out all extraneous graphics, animations, AJAX menus and buttons, Flash, and the like. so the page will load quickly. Third, and the most important of all, because of the previous two reasons these sites always focus on what the users want to do on the site. Whether it is to find movie times on Fandango, updates your current thoughts/activities on Twitter or Facebook, or read/compose blog on Vox, these sites let users get there and do it quickly and pleasantly.

Some of the big players in the web are already there. Both Yahoo and Google have mobile version of their sites, allowing quick access to search, emails, and other features. BBC has a PDA version, so does CNN. As the battleground shifts from desktop to mobile computing, web sites need to start thinking about how their sites look on a restricted device (be it a UMPC, iPhone, etc.) because it is no longer just about providing content or services. It is about how easy the users can access these content or services.

My hope is that the iPhone will finally make web developers pay more attention to the mobile experience of their web sites. Even if iPhone 1.0 disappoints, at least other mobile web users will benefit from improved user experience.

SpeedScript is an innovative program (one of many) aimed at making it easy to enter text on mobile devices. With all the talk about whether the iPhone's lack of a physical keyboard is an advantage or a detriment, it's easy to forget that folks have been struggling with on-screen text entry methods ever since the days of the Apple Newton. See how it all comes full circle back to Apple?

Anyway, as we've mentioned before, SpeedScript is available for Windows Mobile devices for about $13. But SpeedScript is also testing tablet and UMPC versions of the software. And when we say testing, we mean if you download a copy today, they're not going to charge you for a year. That should be more than enough time to figure out whether SpeedScript actually saves you any time.

[via jkOnTheRun]

In today's mobile Minute, we'll take a look at some of the latest news and software related to Windows Mobile devices.

Silverlight coming to Windows Mobile

Microsoft's Silverlight technology is taking aim squarely at Adobe's Flash, which currently dominates interactive video on the web. But one area where Flash implementation has never been very good is mobile devices. It looks like Silverlight could be the platform of choice for interactive mobile web applications.

Check out this interview with .NET Compact Framework Principle Product Unit Manager Scott Holden for a look at a prototype of Silverlight running on a Smartphone.

Now that the excitement has died down, software products are starting to appear that are 'tuned' for the UMPC's form factor.  Yes, we know that Microsoft has made is a point to tell everyone who will listen that the UMPC's greatest appeal is that it can run any Windows XP application.  While that may be true, the smallish screen size of the UMPC made us wonder how we'd squeeze some of our favorite applications into such small digs.  While it looks like some applications from Microsoft (namely OneNote) will account for the new screen real estate, an entirely new cadre of applications are being readied to fill the (smaller) void.

One of the first applications to be released that is UMPC sensitive is abletFactory's abletFoodCalc.  FoodCalc is a nutritional calculator for keeping track of your eating habits while on the go.  FoodCalc comes with a large database of nutritional values for foods that will allow you to quickly accumulate your daily consumption habits with your UMPC.  This sounds interesting enough, although we're forced to ask one practical question:  Since input on the UMPC is mostly hand driven, won't our precious UMPC get 'all greased up' if we enter food data all day?  Well, it seems like a sure opening for another UMPC accessory, the UMPC sanitizer.

Hardware isn't really among our core competencies here at Download Squad, but since we keep getting comments on our previous posts about Origami, Microsoft's vastly successful viral marketing campaign slash upcoming "ultramobile lifestyle PC," I figure I ought to keep you up to speed. The other day Microsoft updated the Origami Project web site for "Week 2," which isn't much more interesting than Week 1 was. A hidden comment in the source code, however, says "Origami Project: the Mobile PC running Windows XP," which is a very dull way to confirm what we already know. The teaser says we'll find out all about it on March 9, which happens to be the first day of Germany's CeBit electronics show.

Oh, I suppose you're wondering what's up with the above photo. That's a tablet PC reference box that Microsoft showed off at last year's WinHEC, which our pals at Engadget say is closer to what Origami will look like than that chunky thing from the year-old promo video that's been going around. Engadget's sources say that Origami will run XP Tablet PC Edition. What's more, Engadget has divined that it will be running on Samsung and Intel hardware rather than anything built by Microsoft and that the Ultra Mobile PC tech Intel is set to unveil on Tuesday is one and the same.