Getting Started

Traditionally, we get a web page from a browser by typing the web address (URL) into the browser address slot. This implies having a computer to run the browser.



Without a browser, you can still get the web page information by sending the web address to the email address "web@db4.us" as a short text message (SMS). web@db4.us will get the web page associated with the web address, convert the web page into text format, and send the converted content back to you.

Sending SMS to an email is just like sending to a phone number, except replacing the phone number by an email address. For instance, sending the text message "news.google.com" to web@db4.us is done as:



If you are using Tmobile or your mobile does not let you enter alphabet as the recipient, send a picture/multimedia message instead.
If you encounter any more problems with sending SMS to email, click here.
After the email is sent, web@db4.us will send back the news.google.com web page as:

The above screen can be scrolled down to display the remaining of the message. The resulting web page in text will be sent back by MMS, multimedia messages, as opposed to text messages, because a multimedia message can carry more text (thousands of characters, rather than 160). If you encounter any problem with receiving the MMS, click here.

The hyperlinks of the web page have been labeled with integers starting from 1. The above screen is showing the first 9 hyperlinks (in parenthesis) of the message. If the page consists of any image, the image link will be surrounded by braces "{}" rather than parenthesis.

This method of retrieving web pages is called the RAW mode. It can retrieve almost any web page, but the excessive number of parenthesis may make it difficult to read (too much scrolling).

We have enhanced the RAW mode page retrieval by creating the COOKED (customized) mode for a number of popular web sites: news, comics, MLIA/FML/Urbandictionary, etc. These are indicated on the left frame of this page. Here are the raw and cooked modes of the web site mylifeisaverage.com contents: raw and cooked

Obviously, cooked mode is easier to read with small screen phones. However, if your web site of interest is not available in the cooked mode, raw mode provides you a way to access web information with some extra scrolling effort.

To learn how to use the raw mode, click here.