Gulliver

HOW can you determine if people's habits are changing? Look at what they do in times of crisis. Take this week's massive snowstorm that crippled travel and business across America's north-east. Thousands of flights were cancelled and others were diverted. Some travellers were stranded, while others didn't know whether they'd be able to even get to the airport. Everyone's travel plans were in disarray. So where did travellers turn? To their mobile phones, apparently—and they weren't making calls. Ina Fried's "Mobilized" blog explains:

The recent winter storms have sent a flood of mobile traffic to travel-related Web sites as those stranded scramble to reschedule flights and book hotel rooms from their phones.

Usablenet, a company that powers the mobile Web sites of various airlines, hotel chains and Amtrak, said that traffic to its travel-related sites was up 200 percent over the past two days. [N.B.: This was written on Monday, during the worst of the travel disruptions.]

Also of note, Usablenet said the most traffic came from iPhones and Android devices, marking the first time that more business travelers were using Android-powered phones than were on BlackBerry devices.

Travellers' habits really are changing. Instead of relying on long-shot phone calls and already busy airline employees in times of crisis, we're becoming increasingly dependent on the internet functions of our mobile devices. There's a good reason for that: the mobile web has been getting a lot easier to use. Companies like Usablenet make the mobile web, well, usable, and new iPhones and Android-powered devices are getting better and better at bringing us the web in a form that's useful and comprehensible on a very small screen.

There's no good reason to resist this shift. Why go through all the hassle of waiting in line for a ticket agent when you can change your ticket yourself from your phone? Why rush around looking for a arrival/departure board when you can have the same information in the palm of your hand? People do a lot of complaining about their friends and family spending too much time on CrackBerrys and iPhones. But we shouldn't let the addicts distract us from the fact that these devices can be incredibly useful. So next time you're stuck wondering if your flight is cancelled or worrying about whether you can score a last-minute hotel room, don't feel guilty about busting out that EVO or Droid X. After all, everyone's doing it.

More: Mobilized | NYConvergence