Mobile Safari on the iPhone does an amazing job displaying web pages. However, I find that in the context of viewing some web pages on the go, that this view isn't necessarily the best way to read some pages. For example, even though the iPhone interface is awesome, I don't really want to waste time zooming and messing with a page to read the actual content. I'd rather just load up a page, read my content, and move on. (Of course, the best solution would be if web designers designed alternate "iPhone-optimized" views that would look great on the iPhone, but only a few mainstream sites do this as of the time of this post.)

I discovered back in my Treo days that Google has a page that translates web pages to "mobile-friendly" versions. I find that loading pages using this URL reduces page load time, and makes them easier to read on the iPhone. So, I created a bookmarklet that allows you to take the current page in Mobile Safari and run it through the Google page to display a mobile optimized version of the site.

Here's how:

1. Create a bookmark on your iPhone with the following URL:
   javascript:location.href='http://www.google.com/gwt/n?u='+encodeURIComponent(location.href);
2. Name and store the bookmark somewhere where you will have easy access from Mobile Safari on your iPhone. (I call my bookmark Google Mobilize or Open in GWT, and I store it in a folder called Hotlist (where I put my commonly-used iPhone URLs.)
3. Visit a web page on your iPhone that is painfully large and/or formatted to be seen on a desktop screen. (For example: http://abcnews.com/ or http://sfgate.com/.) Note: You don't have to let the page completely load; just enough so that the address shows up in the URL field.
4. While on the large page, open your bookmarks and open the new bookmarklet you just created. This will send and process the current URL through the Google mobile translation service.
5. View the page and get to the content quicker.

Another side perk is that Google GWT is sometimes smart enough to know if the site already has a mobile version, and direct you there instead. For example: http://nytimes.com/. If you load that up in Mobile Safari, you will get the standard page, and if you apply the bookmarklet, Google will direct you to: http://mobile.nytimes.com/ instead of translating the site themselves. (I also posted this on the Google Reader Discussion forum.)