I tried the best I could to stay offline this weekend because it was so beautiful. Of course, I failed, but I did manage to not open up a laptop during daylight hours; instead, my mobile phone absorbed my Internet energy.

Here are some mobile phone applications that I regularly use to stay connected. For the most part, these are websites which can be viewed on any browser, not just mobile phones; so if you have an extremely slow Internet connection or a very small screen they might be good, too. I have tested them all on my Blackberry Pearl 8120.

A big list

This list of bookmarks to mobile websites is the one bookmark I keep to find all of the rest. It's a list which I have been maintaining since I first got a smart phone, updating it periodically as details change.

Websites designed for mobile phones are generally a compromise. They don't always have all of the features of the full sized web sites with their singing and dancing graphics, but they typically load quickly and provide the smallest screen possible that does the job.

Chit-chat with Twitter and Facebook

The mobile web edition of Twitter has been updated recently, giving it a few more features than the older one. Techcrunch comments on Twitter's move into mobile applications, noting that software developers looking at doing Twitter development need to always be cautious not to develop something that Twitter decides to copy.

The mobile web edition of Facebook is not the shiniest version of Facebook that you will ever find, but it gets the job done. Similar to Twitter, Facebook has a whole raft of applications written especially for mobile phones.

Both Facebook and Twitter have standalone applications for many mobile phones, some of which are fancy. My Blackberry Pearl has been fragile enough when installing third party applications that I considered ditching my smart phone when it failed repeatedly after I tried to install one too many programs.

Weather

The mobile web edition of Weather Underground works well for checking the weather, both to get a broad sense of what to wear as well as to calibrate just how fast to walk or run toward shelter.

The mobile web edition of weather.gov, the official website of the National Weather Service, provides the same data (or a bit more), but it's a touch more cumbersome to use.

My laptop warns me of severe weather, thanks to Weatherbug. I don't have a similar application that beeps me when weather's coming; there should be one, and Weatherbug has one, but they want $2.99 per month for alerts delivered by SMS.

Traffic and transit

Google Maps for Mobile is a downloadable application for a number of smart phones which provides real time traffic updates, presented as an overlay on your traffic or satellite map. The phone knows which cell tower it is listening to and thus can position you automatically. It's not as precise as a GPS, but it does do a good enough job to ensure that you can tell which city you are in and where the freeways nearby are backed up by an accident or construction.

One fascinating layer on the Google Maps application is the Wikipedia layer, which puts an icon on every location which has a corresponding Wikipedia entry. This allows you to have some extended situational awareness of what is around you. When I was driving up north for vacation a few weeks ago, using it made for a very peculiar new way of looking at a familiar landscape because I suddenly knew which township I was in.

For keeping track of where the buses are, Mobile RideTrak is what I use every morning. A simple screen gives you status of all buses on each route, with notes on delays for upcoming time points. It's not easy to use the first time you use it, but now that I have figured it out it's very helpful.

University of Michigan buses are tracked by Magic Bus. On the least smart of the smart phones, use the text only view to get an idea of when the next vehicle will be at your stop.

Gas prices

Gas Buddy to Go is the mobile version of Gas Buddy, a system for tracking gasoline prices at stations around the United States and Canada. It is a perfect mobile application which I only ever use in the car.

Don't text and drive

Michigan state law now provides a penalty for texting while driving. Most of these applications are best used either while walking, while parked, as a passenger in a vehicle driven by someone else, or while you are riding the bus.

Edward Vielmetti rides the bus for AnnArbor.com. Reach him at 734-330-2465.