But what about the mobile browser on your phone?

Mobile Firefox is the only major mobile browser to officially support extensions, and that is currently only for Maemo and Windows Mobile.

I’ve decided that’s not enough!

According to this man below, the mobile browser that accounts for most of our browsing is the iPhone’s Mobile Safari, so let’s start with that.

The technique for extending Mobile Safari makes use of bookmarklets, which are small snippets of javascript stored as a browser Bookmark. This does not require you to jailbreak your iPhone, and this does not require the latest iPhone hardware or software.

What extensions might be useful for your iPhone? According to Comscore, social networking is the fastest growing mobile activity, so I’ve focused on five extensions to make your mobile browsing more social.

There’s a whopping 55 million people using the Facebook iPhone app, and I suspect there might be demand from those people for some social extensions while browsing the web on their iPhone. So included below are extensions that allow you to Like or Share *any* mobile web page, not just the sites which have so far implemented Facebook Social Plugins. And there’s another extension that shows personalized Recommendations powered by Facebook.

Also, my personal use case: I often find myself wanting to tweet about the mobile page I’m reading. But some sites do not include any way to do this, and other sites do not make it easy, or use third party tools which require too many clicks or take me too far away from the page I am reading.

Figuring all that out on a mobile browser is not fun, so one of the extensions below is an easy, quick, reliable, always-opens-in-a-new-window extension to simply pre-fill the status box on Twitter’s own mobile site with simply the title and URL of the page you are reading. Simple.

And last but not least, there’s an extension for Google Buzz users too. Enjoy…

Like!

Whenever you want to Like a web page, this extension will display a Like button powered by Facebook Social Plugins. No more searching high and low for the Like button, and no more waiting for developers to add Like buttons to your favorite sites.

Go to http://mbx.hitching.net/like on your iPhone to add this extension.

Tweet!

To tweet about any web page, use this extension to open Twitter in a new Safari window. Your status will be pre-filled with the title and URL of the page, ready for you to embellish before tweeting. Long URLs will be automatically shortened.

Go to http://mbx.hitching.net/tweet on your iPhone to add this extension.

Recommend!

This extension displays personalized recommendations of content, powered by Facebook Social Plugins.

Go to http://mbx.hitching.net/recommend on your iPhone to add this extension.

Share!

To share any web page on Facebook, this extension will open a share page in a new Safari window, showing the title and URL of the page. You can choose an image from the page, and add a comment, before sharing with your Facebook friends.

Go to http://mbx.hitching.net/share on your iPhone to add this extension.

Buzz!

To post on Google Buzz about any web page, this extension will open Google Buzz in a new Safari window, showing the title and content from the page. You can add a comment before submitting your post.

Go to http://mbx.hitching.net/buzz on your iPhone to add this extension.

Clicking on those links from your web browser will launch a handy emulator if you want to pretend that you have an iPhone 3G.

MoFuse also makes it easy to migrate your audience from web to mobile; here’s the SMS widget (US cellphones only) and QR code:

I thought it might have been a form factor issue. I imagined the product meeting where an Apple engineer cuddles his fast but chubby 3G iPhone prototype, but is beaten down into submission by the Apple designer stroking his sexy but slow 2.5G iPhone prototype.

Then Steve Jobs claimed that it was actually a battery life issue. That sounds more credible; Moore’s Law doesn’t apply to battery life.

So I have been patiently monitoring RSS, waiting for rumours of a 3G iPhone release, and playing with my brother-in-law’s 2.5G iPhone in the meantime, to fend off my appetite.

Last night however, an interim solution was identified, on the sidelines of Mobile Monday Sydney‘s great iPhone “Hope or Hype?” debate.

I feel compelled to share, so here goes the instructions on how to mod your iPhone to 3G speed:

1. Put on your jacket. You’re going to need some extra pocket capacity.
2. Install JoikuSpot Light on your Nokia N95 to create your very own Wi-Fi hot spot.
3. Insert said N95 into said pocket.
4. Switch iPhone to Wi-Fi connectivity.
5. Wander around enjoying 3G data speeds on your iPhone.

Thank you Ben and Randal!

2G GPRS 0.025 Mb/s
2.5G EDGE 0.25 Mb/s
3G HSDPA 2.5 Mb/s
802.11b Wi-Fi 6.0 Mb/s