Welcome to Found on the Mobile Web, a semi-regular feature at WapReview where we list, describe and link to sites recently added to the WapReview Mobile Directory and YesWap.mobi mobile portal.  With these latest additions the directory and portal now contain 1223 mobile sites.

In News/International/Africa

Mmegi Mobile (mmegi.bw)  The mobile edition of Mmegi, the only independent daily newspaper in the African Repubic of Botswana.  The site offers a nice mix of content including a half a dozen or so full stories from each of the paper’s News, Sports, Editorials, Letters, Book Reviews, Business and Art/Culture sections.   Most stories are illustrated with a news photo.  The mobile site even has a link to the paper’s RSS feed, something more mobile sites should now that a number of mobile phones as well as Opera Mini have built in RSS readers.  Mmegi Mobile labels itself as a “test” site but it seems to be fully functional other than a broken link to the Comics section.  At 30KB the site might be a little large for some mobile browsers as reflected by its 3 out of 5 dev.mobi score.

In Search/People Search

WhitePages.com (m.whitepages.com) is a free, full featured mobile phone directory for the US and Canada.  The site offers Yellow and White Pages searches, reverse phone number lookup, reverse address lookup and zip code and phone prefix look ups.  Results include click to call phone numbers, street address, maps and driving directions.

In Business/News

GreenFaucet (greenfaucet.mobi) Mobile edition of GreenFaucet,com, a global finance and investment commentary and news site.  There’s  a lot of content on this site featuring a wide range of viewpoints. It’s a good read if your are interested in where the economy and markets are headed, and who isn’t these days! The mobile edition is usable but a little on the rough side with numerous bad links.  There’s a classic of bad user interface design too. When you click the link to leave a comment, you get a message to the effect that you need to be logged in to do so, yet there doesn’t seem to be a way to actually log in on the mobile site. Via: Mobility.mobi

The Economic Times (m.economictimes.com) Business news from and for India.  The site offers extensive coverage of world and Indian financial and business  news with dedicated pages for about one hundred different industries ranging from Advertising to Tyres.  A “Stocks” page offers quotes and charts for securities traded on the New York or Mumbai exchanges.  Registration (free) allows users to create and view personal portfolios.

In Sports

Phans (phans.mobi) is  a new mobile site for fans of all the Philadelphia sports teams, the Eagles, Phillies and 76’ers.  The site has a forum-like open blog where all registered users can post. There is also a photo gallery and links to sports news from ESPN.  With the Phillies in the World Series this year the site should be pretty lively.

Registration can be done right on the mobile site, a plus.  However, registration requires giving your mobile number.  As the site has no privacy policy and doesn’t give any indication what the numbers are used for I consider this risky.  Fortunately the mobile number doesn’t seem to be verified. I just registered using the number of a telemarketer who SPAMed my mobile. Via: MobiEnthusiast.mobi

In Entertainment/Gossip

News Showbiz (nsbiz.mobi) News and celebrity gossip from Hollywood and the pop music world.  There are literally thousands of stories on News Showbiz. The “one size fits all” site uses small image and page sizes. The site is usable on low end phones but users of more advanced devices may find the aggressive pagination annoying. The search link doesn’t work. For a site with so much content a working search would be really useful. Via: Mobility.mobi

In News/US Local by State/Alabama – California

SignOnSanDiego (signon.mobi) Mobile edition of the San Diego Union Tribune daily newspaper.  Content is somewhat limited, consisting of five stories each from the News, Local, Sports, Business and Entertainment sections.  The site is easy to navigate and should be compatible with all mobile browsers.  A couple of nice touches are the today’s weather forecast displayed at the top of the home page and a traffic section listing current conditions on major area roads. Via: Mobility.mobi

In News/US Local by State/Virginia – Wyoming

Casper Star Tribune (m.trib.com) Mobile edition of the daily newspaper in Wyoming’s second largest city (population 49,000).  The text-only site is very complete, I think it includes the entire text content of the paper.  There are hundreds of full length items including local and state news, sports, business, science, high school, college and professional sports, obituaries and editorials.  In spite of its depth the mobile site is quite easy to navigate with a well designed hierarchical menu structure and access key accelerators. Pagination keeps page sizes under 10KB for compatibility withe all mobile browsers. A fast and effective site search makes it easy to find items.

In Technology/Mobile/Smartphones/Blackberry

BlackBerryNews Mobile (blackberrynews.com) Blog covering new BlackBerry hardware and software releases and other Blackberry news. Updated several times a  day.  The mobile addition uses Alex King’s WordPress mobile plugin. Images aren’t resized which should be no problem for BlackBerries but could be for lesser handsets.

In Technology/Mobile/Forums

What Mobile Forums (http://forum.whatmobile.net/) What Mobile is a UK based print magazine for mobile enthusiasts. What Mobile also has a web edition which includes an active mobile user forum.  There are sub-forums for the major handset makers and each UK mobile network, The  forum automatically renders in mobile friendly format on phone browsers.  The text-only mobile edition is created with a “Lite” vBulletin template.  Page size is small so the forums should load on all phones although navigation will require a lot of scrolling.