Can you imagine your favorite internet browser sized down to fit your cell phone screen. I can’t. A squished down firefox is not my idea of easy reading. In today’s iMedia Connection article on “Widgets”, it’s suggested that internet browsers are on their way to extinction. The reasoning does make some sense.

However, when I think about it, halfway across the Sound on the Bainbridge-Seattle ferry run, at about the Alki parallel, there’s a dead zone. There, cell phones go dumb and disconnect, and internet WIFI slogs down to impossibly sluggish. I begin fidgeting. So we revert over to desktop applications continuing to chase the American dream. Oh, how I love my laptop.

Say we only had a cell phone at that point. No laptop, no connection, little local memory on the cell phone, no applications of any significance, maybe a calendar. Will I turn my laptop in for a cell phone under those conditions? Not me.

It seems likely internet browsers will be replaced by some other better thing, more compact, less resource demanding, but there’s got to be a few other changes, too, before my laptop gets retired for the likes of an iPod!

These conveniences I do like — a cell phone that is a barcode reader, serving as a credit card that can be swiped over a product and purchased without me standing in line!! A cell phone that is a digital key to my car and home, that also is able to display my auto registration, insurance information, public transportaton passes, and can function as a radio, recorder, and bank access. All the size of an iPod. I’ll go for that.