Applications for Wap phones (ie those with internet access) are starting to become more interesting and useful. It is a pity that connecting up is still very flaky unless you go through portals approved by service providers such as Vodafone and Orange, and even then you are hampered by the usual internet glitches.

If you want to set up a homespun five-page Wap site on your own phone then try www.buzzed.co.uk. This is a web, not Wap site, which offers a simple, almost idiot-proof, way of doing it - and it is completely free (apart from the usual call charges). You just type in what you want on an ordinary website and the site will do the necessary to make it appear on your phone. All you have to do then is to find some way of telling the rest of the world it is there.

Digitaloctopus has had the neat idea of putting Hugh Johnson's pocket book of wine on to Orange phones from this week: obtainable through its What's New menu. It enables discreet diners to check out the quality of the wine while the wine waiter isn't looking, or to browse before buying in a supermarket. There is a search facility as well. Digitaloctopus takes its cut by getting a percentage of the cost of the call - usually 5p a minute. Smart application.

Another useful service is www.curryhouse.net/wap which tells you where your nearest curry house is after you type in a place name. Best to get it via the wap portal www.waphq.com, which has bags of other things as well. When you get through, go to the Leisure section and hope that you don't get "connectivity" problems.

Search engines are starting to appear on Wap phones such as web-favourite Google but connectivity was spasmodic on the phone I was using (Nokia/Vodafone). And trying to navigate the main web through the small screen of a phone is like being lost in the jungle with only a magnifying glass.

Lots of mainstream web sites are now starting to introduce Wap offspring like www.multimap.com/wap. This is the wap offshoot, of the multimap.com website offering free maps that gets 1.9m unique users every month. Lastminute.com and Amazon.com also have wap sites - but again it is better (alas) at the moment to access them through an established portal because direct access is tricky.