Skweeze Me Please

Following my post on Sunday, the topic of mobile browsing and optimized content for the Treo has been on my mind throughout this week and I have continued to search for better and faster ways to access websites including Treonauts which I know some of you have found a little 'heavy' to browse while on the go.

I have finally found what I believe is the perfect solution.  Greenlight Wireless has launched Skweezer - a free web based service which automatically compresses and reformats any web pages and optimizes them for your Treo so that they're easier to view and load much faster (10% to 90% faster) because they typically have a smaller file size (see chart below). 

The beauty is that there is zero installation required to benefit from Skweezer as it optimizes the web content remotely before it is sent to your Treo and all that you need to do is point Blazer (or any other browser on your Treo) to Skweezer.net and you're ready to go.

Skweezer's homepage (image on the right) consists of 5 sections.

The first section allows you to input a) any web address that you would like to browse optimized or b) any keyword search (I'm not sure which search engine Skweezer uses for this but the results were generally poor and I found it annoying that it only displays 5 results per page).

The second section consists of fixed 'Featured Links' with Google and Yahoo search predominantly first as well as other news, ecommerce and information websites.

The third section consists of your 'Favorites'.  You have three options for adding your favorites: 1) you can create a new one by manually adding the URL and name (as a test I added IMDb where my searches are now massively improved as well as pdaPortal and the Treonauts blog...); 2) you can import your IE favorites or; 3) as your browse Skweezer-optimized websites you will see a tiny banner at the top of the page (see image below) where you'll find a star and clicking it will automatically add the website that you're browsing to your Favorites.  You also have the option to display each of your Favorites on the homepage or on another page by clicking 'More...'

The fourth section is for your 'Mail'.  Here you can access any POP3 email account and also have the option to show your Plaxo contacts if you use their service.

Finally, the fifth section is where you'll get to set your basic and advanced preferences as well as to view your account details.  Selecting 'Browsing' preferences is where you'll set your language (English, French, German, Italian or Spanish) and your 'view mode' where you can choose between Standard, PDA or Text (Standard being the least optimized setting and Text the most optimized one) - I chose English and Text for obvious reasons...  The 'My Account' link is where you can update your name, email and password while the 'Advanced' link will provide you with the option to allow JavaScript, Objects, Plug-ins and Stylesheets support (I haven't tested enabling these).

Below is a typical example of a website that has been Skweezed using text only.  At the top of the screen (left image below) you'll see the Skweezer banner with five icons that I mentioned before.  The first icon is the Skweezer logo and clicking it will take you back to the homepage, the second is the 'add-to-favorites' while the remaining ones are the three 'view modes' starting with PDA then Text and finally Standard.

At the bottom of every Skweezed page (right image above) you'll see a) two advertising links that Skweeze adds to every page (the service is free because it is ad supported); b) the Skweeze search box and c) a 'Skweeze optimization rating' which will indicate how much data their service has been able to 'save' you in download and how quickly it managed to do this.

Skweezer also offers a 'Pro' version of their service for $14.99 per year which features no ads, faster performance loading web content and unlimited e-mail support.

While there are certainly a few minor things that could be improved further (but what in the world couldn't be), Skweezer is an absolutely terrific service that every Treonaut should bookmark - I have now set it as my default Blazer homepage (sorry pdaPortal...).

Visit Skweezer to set up your free account or Greenlight Wireless for more information.

Treonauts improve daily...