ZeroRubbish (zerorubbish.com) is a comprehensive mobile portal which combines a mobile link directory, multi-search engine, chat rooms and forums with social networking features including profiles, guest book and shared personal link directories.  As the site’s name implies, submitted links pass through an approval process to eliminate adult and low quality content, non-mobile sites and other “rubbish”.

No registration is needed to browse the directory, follow links and use the search engine. Registered users get access to chat and forums and a personalized My Bookmarks section, public profile page and guest book.

The site is attractive thanks to good use of color. Page size is kept low for maximum compatibility with all mobile browsers by minimizing use of images (which can also be turned off entirely) and by pagination in chat rooms, forums, the link directory and guest books.

A couple of bookmarklets are supplied for quickly adding a personal bookmark or submitting a site. These bookmarklets enable one-click bookmarking and site submission in supported browsers including Opera Mini and Mobile and Mobile Internet Explorer. More information about bookmarklets.

Mobile search in general is not really what it could be yet, not even with Google.  It’s too difficult to enter queries and results seem limited and lacking relevance. It reminds me of the early days of the Internet, search wasn’t very good either. Two years before Google even existed, a little site named Yahoo started out and got big as a directory of links, latter expanding to a a full-blown portal and much latter, adding search. Similarly in mobile, directories currently work better than search engines for most users.

ZeroRubbish is one of the better of the current mobile directories with a good selection of quality links.  The site is expanding into the social bookmarking and social networking areas, which is a logical and smart move.  The new social features are still somewhat limited and immature. Some of this is due to the newness of these features, for example there are only a few posts in the forums and the chat rooms tend to be empty.  There also doesn’t seem to be any way to find other user’s profiles and shared bookmarks.  The only access to these features seems to be by clicking on a users name if he has posted to a form or is currently in a chat room.  Give ZeroRubbish a little time and I’m sure the social features will be fleshed out to match the robustness of the site’s directory.

Mobile Link: zerorubbish.com

Ratings: Content: Usability:

Filed in: Mobile Site Directory – Portals/WAP