Welcome to the Wap Review Blog. I would like to begin by defining what WapReview.com and the Wap Review Blog are. First and foremost, Wap Review is a directory of WAP sites. What are WAP sites? Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is a series of standards for Web access from handheld devices like mobile phones. Initially WAP was oversold by it’s proponents and many users expected using WAP to be like surfing the Web on a PC. When those users discovered that there was very little content, that early wap-enabled phones had three line text-only screens which took up to a minute to load a single page and that they could easily double their phone bill if they even tried to use WAP – there was quite a backlash. Ironically, today WAP is finally living up to the early hype with QVGA color screens, near-broadband speeds and hundreds of thousands of sites with useful and even compelling content. streaming media. Perhaps because of the initial failure of WAP, most people in the field now prefer to use the term “Mobile Web” rather than WAP. That’s kind of a shame, as WAP is certainly easier to write and say than “Mobile Web”.

Why is the Mobile Web important? In my opinion, the mobile web will soon be as big a part of our lives as the World Wide Web already is. Imagine that your mobile phone, which you carry with you everywhere, allows you to quickly tap into all the power of the Web. When you are away from your computer, your phone is what you use to get driving directions, plan trips on public transit, book airline flights and hotel rooms, compare products and prices, find people and places, make purchases, re-fill your medical prescriptions, keep up with news and sports. In fact you can already do most of these things with the mobile web on the majority of existing phones BUT their are still usability issues and costs can be high on some carriers. As phone and network capabilities increase and prices drop, mobile browsing will get better and better. There are over 1.8 billion mobile phones in the world today compared with only about 900 million people with access to an Internet-connected personal computer. In a few years, I expect mobile devices to generate more web hits than PC browsers.

The primary purpose of WapReview is to provide a catalog of what’s available on the mobile web today along with a description of each service and 2 numeric ratings, one for content quality and the other for usability. By pointing out what’s good and not so good with various mobile sites, I hope that WapReview will become a force for the improvement of the By mobile browsing experience.

The Wap Review Blog is where I will rant on the current state of the mobile web and try to make suggestions for it’s improvement. This blog also serves to announce new and updated sites as they are added to the directory.

Dennis