I spent the last week vacationing in Barcelona – great food, people, architecture and art. I had a good time and will post more about it soon. In the meantime the mobile web continues its furious growth. Here are the latest sites I’ve added to Yeswap.com and the WapReview.com directory.
Reference
LEO (pda.leo.org/?lang=en) An online German-English/English-German dictionary. Very comprehensive results pages which list related phrases and have links to .wav files for punctuation can be over 40 KB – too large for some mobile browsers.
Entertainment/Mobile Video
Cinee (wap.cinee.com) presents a new mobile video clip every Thursday. The videos are relatively small around 150 KB and 176×144 and are mpeg4/amr encoded so they should be compatible with most video capable phones.
MyWaves (www.mywaves.com/m) is a major new and well funded mobile video sharing site featuring thousands of videos organized into channels. The content is very YouTube like – a blend of user-submitted amateur videos and professional offerings from the likes of ABC, CNN, Nike, MTV and HBO. If you register, which requires a mobile phone number, you can create your own public or private channels. Registration is not required to view any of the thousands of public channels. If you are wary about giving out you real mobile number any 10 digit number seems to work. MyWaves also has a Java Me application which can be downloaded at www.mywaves.com/p/d – however all it does is launch the MyWaves mobile web site in the phones default browser!
Search/Local
MasterCard Nearby (wap.mcnearby.com) features an ATM locater for US locations and a list of current discount offers available on purchases made using MasterCard.
Entertainment/TV
The History Channel (www.thehistorychannel.co.uk/text_only/home/) The UK edition of The History Channel has launched a mobile site featuring their broadcast calendar with promotional descriptions of upcoming shows and a This Day in History feature.
News/US Local by State/IN-NV
St Cloud Times (m.sctimes.com/) Local newspaper site for St Cloud, Minnesota’s daily paper. News, Sports, Business and Editorials.
RSS/Blogging
Vox (www.vox.com) is a free personal blogging/social networking platform from Six Apart, the company behind TypePad, LiveJournal and MoveableType. Vox has some nice features, WYSIWYG editor, video and audio support and integration with MySpace and Flickr but best of all like MSN Spaces, every Vox blog has a mobile edition. There are no mobile specific URL’s, browser detection is used to deliver the mobile edition to supported handsets. There is an unofficial Vox Mobile support group at goingmobile.groups.vox.com/. VOX was suggested by reader and Vox Blogger, ofirdav (ofirdav.vox.com)
Technology/Mobile/Mobile Social
Mobleo (mobile.mobleo.net) the mobile social bookmarking site I reviewed in February has received a significant update. You can now manage (edit, delete, create and sort) your Mobleo bookmarks right on the mobile site. The Mobilizer transcoder seems more robust and now recognizes and doesn’t alter true mobile sites other than adding a Save to Mobleo link. More details about the updates on Mobleo’s blog.
Technology/Mobile/News – Reviews
Fierce Wireless (m.fiercewireless.com) Text-only mobile edition of a well know mobile industry news blog.
Search/Traffic
MN/DOT (dot.state.mn.us/tmc/trafficinfo/mobile/) Minnesota Department of Transportation’s mobile site is one of the best traffic sites I’ve seen with traffic maps, incident reports and lots of cameras.
Technology/Mobile/Mobile Social
Twapper (m.30boxes.com/twapper) “Twitter for WAP” lets you follow what people are saying on Twitter using the mobile web instead of SMS. Test drive it with prolific bloggers/twitterers Steve Rubel, Dave Winer and Scoble m.30boxes.com/twapper…
Travel-Transit
Travelosa (www.travelosa.mobi) is a mobile travel portal with links to airline, hotel and other travel sites.