After reading Don Crowther’s blog, It’s Nearly 2010, Why is the Mobile Web So Frustrating?, I just had to chime in with my own thoughts. In fact, I was just railing about this very matter at lunch with Toby, a/k/a @gnawledge. This week-end, I wanted to buy a pecan pie for my sister’s dinner party. Knowing that Goode Co.’s pecan pie is the best one on the planet, I wanted to find the most convenient restaurant to my trans-Houston commute to Clear Lake. So, doing what I do, I pull out my blackberry and do a Google’s voice search for “Goode Company”. Note: if you don’t know what I mean by voice search, go immediately to Google Mobile. Now. Your searching life will be changed for ever. Anyway, I find the Goode Company web site on my blackberry and open the site. Now I am trying to navigate on their web site to find a phone number–any phone number. I know enough to hit my blackberry’s menu button to dial the number. Except what drives me bananas is that if the web site, in an attempt to be memorable, uses letters instead of numbers, I am screwed. Not only will my blackberry not read the telephone number, I can’t manually dial it because the number pad does not show the corresponding letters and I have to remember that A=2, 7 has 4 letters and o does not equal 0. Once I have placed my call, the restaurant manager gives me the phone number to the store that I want. Now I have to memorize the number so I can punch in the number once I hang up phone. I dial the number to the restaurant I really want and he gives me directions. Which I have to memorize. Its a good thing I know my way around Houston because if I needed to punch in the address into Google Maps, I would be dead by now from a car wreck. Yes, I was texting and driving. Sue me. Its not illegal in Texas. Yet. —- Note: 19 states have banned texting while driving: Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois (eff. 1/10), Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, New Hampshire (eff. 1/10), New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon (eff. 1/10), Rhode Island, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia