Even though the Nxxx series have good browsers, sites designed for mobiles / tablets can be of benefit, eg when you have low bandwidth.

Gmail can be formatted for small screens using

https://mail.google.com/mail/x/gdlakb-/gp/

also betfair.com with http://lite.betfair.com

Does anybody know any 'shortcuts' to tablet friendly versions of websites etc?

I just go with m.website.com in most cases, such as

m.nytimes.com
m.washingtonpost.com
m.latimes.com
m.cnn.com

There have been some other threads along these lines. For instance, please see "IPhone friendly websites? wtf." and "We now have an unlimited number of games!". Additionally, threads such as "Access hidden iPod Touch/iPhone websites" are loosely related.