IMDB

You were, perhaps, my favorite site of all time. A movie lover’s wet dream. So central to the lives of myself and my friends that it came to be known simply as “the database.

We shared good times and bad. The lists we made and the bets won. (The actor/actress whose career plummeted the most from a stellar beginning? Diane Keaton.) The countless games of “Six Degrees.” You were the oracle for all our “who is that guy” questions.

I’d like to pretend that it’s not you, it’s me, but that would be a lie — it really is you.

In this age of iPhones and Android, you have no mobile version. If I want to find out what else Zooey Deschanel has been in, I have to go to your home page, wait for tons of poorly designed imagery to load, carefully enlarge the page without accidentally clicking on something, highlight the search box, type “Zooey,” wait for the search results page to load, carefully enlarge it, carefully click the correct link, wait for Zooey’s page to load, carefully enlarge it…

It’s too much, IMDB. Mobile Wikipedia can tell me what I need to know. It won’t be the same, but Mobile Wikipedia knows how to treat me right.

I’ll still visit you occasionally, IMDB. You just won’t be the database any more.

1. Buy an international roaming data package from AT&T
2. Use wi-fi networks whenever possible

Sounds simple, right? So I dutifully signed up for the 20mb for $25/month data plan on the AT&T site, set my phone to airplane mode, turned on wi-fi, and prepared myself for my dream of exploring Europe’s history and art with unfettered access to the web. Why buy a guidebook? I would have 2,000 years of human knowledge in the palm of my hand.

Sadly, Italy has never heard of wi-fi. I exaggerate, of course, but only slightly; in 14 days of travel (to Verona, Venice, and Florence) I found a grand total of six wi-fi networks, two of which were in our three-star hotel in Florence. All were closed, and the two I had access to seemed to go down when overtaxed by my attempts to, say, view a mobile wikipedia page.

Gone were all my fancy plans: the late nights reading up on the history of the Duomo, the cheap Skype calls to home. I was left with my measly AT&T data plan, most of which I’d used up using iPhone maps whenever we got lost, which was frequently, partly because I refused to rely on the maps app except in emergencies to save on data usage….

To make matters worse, I didn’t realize the international data package was pro-rated. I’d signed up in the middle of my billing cycle, so I actually used twice my data allotment in the first week. I was 10mb over my limit, which would be billed at $0.005/kilobyte for an added $50 charge. (If I hadn’t signed up for the plan at all the 20mb would have cost me $390, so there’s that.)

I hastily phoned AT&T to change the plan to the 50mb/$60 variety, which they helpfully back-dated to cover the data I’d already used. All told, in three weeks I spent about $100 for a few glances at the maps app, roughly 30 tiny emails home, and an occasional, tentative excursion to a site which I knew had a mobile version.

Lessons learned? Books are nice, as are paper maps. From a 2009 IT infrastructure perspective, Italy isn’t San Francisco. And without limitless data usage, my shiny little digital friend became a mere game platform for my kids while waiting in line to look at that statue of — what, exactly? My iPhone couldn’t say.

For AT&T’s somewhat oblique explanation of plans and benefits, click here.