Found on the Mobile Web is an occasional WAP Review feature listing newly added and updated sites on the yeswap.com mobile portal and WapReview mobile site directory. With these latest additions the directory and portal now list 967 mobile sites.

Entertainment/Music-Nightlife

Rolling Stone via Avantgo (avantgo.com/operamini4) My first experience with the web on a hand held device was 7 years ago on a Palm PDA using Avantgo. The company provided PC software that transfered “channels” from the web to the PDA when ever you synchronized. Later I browsed the channels off-line during my commute. Avantgo had hundreds of channels which were really simple html based mobile web sites. Avantgo is still around using the same basic business model except that the Avantgo device software now offers the option of downloading channels over the air on connected devices. I just discovered that Avantgo also has a mobile web client. It showed up as one of the default sponsored bookmarks in Opera Mini 4.0. Avantgo is normally a subscription service but the link in Opera Mini lets you sample 7 feeds including Rolling Stone Magazine without having to register. Rolling Stone is an Avantgo exclusive, it doesn’t seem to be available anywhere else on the mobile web. The Avantgo Opera Mini site works pretty well on other mobile browsers besides Opera Mini. You can register for Avantgo from the mobile site or from your PC to get access to all of Avantgo’s approximately 1000 channels.

Entertainment/Mobile Video

StreamingPDA.nl (streamingpda.nl) This site features 300+ links to streaming video and audio news and sports broadcasts from services like the BBC, Eurosport, Al Jazzera and CNN. About half the content is in English. The video links are 320 x 240 Windows Media format, the audio content is also mainly Windows Media but some of the audio streams are in more widely supported formats like MP3 or Ogg Vorbis.

Technology/Mobile/Sprint

rsWAP (gatebot.com/rswap/) – Free ring tones for Sprint phones. When downloading ringtones and images on Sprint, which is a US CDMA operator, the phone looks for a .GCD (General content descriptor) which is just a specially formatted text file containing information like the size, title and url of the actual audio or image file. Most generic content download sites don’t provide .GCD files so the downloads fail on Sprint phones. rsWAP has a large selection of tones and wallpapers complete with the necessary .GCD files. These downloads will only work on Sprint phones.

Shopping

eBay (m.ebay.com/) I met Henri Moissinac, head of eBay’s mobile operations, at MobileCampSF last week. Henri showed me the new version of eBay’s mobile web site which is very nice indeed. Searching for items is now smarter, the query “Nokia E61”, for example, will list phones rather than accessories first in the results. The site also provides access to My eBay including watch lists, current bids and won items for buyers and items offered and sold for sellers. Naturally, you can bid on items from your phone. There’s even a message reminding, “If you buy this item, you can pay for it with PayPal on your phone”. The site uses content adaption to optimize the experience for different handsets. It ran equally well on my Motorola i855’s built in Openwave browser, Opera Mini and the N95’s Webkit.

Reference

HandyFact (squeezenet.com/HandyFact/default.htm) – Handy Fact is an extensive database of useful information like zip and area code lookups, etiquette tips, a list of commonly mis-used words, birthstones wedding anniversaries and drink recipes.

Mail-IM-Talk-PIM

DialedIn ( dialedin.com/wap) looks like a mobile version of Evite. You create event listings and invite friends using SMS or email. Invites can respond with a message or picture. You can create and manage events completely from your phone or use the PC web version of the site.

Search

GasBuddyToGo (gasbuddytogo.com) This simple but effective site should be getting lots of traffic as gasoline prices head toward record highs. You enter a US zip code and get a list of the nearby gas stations with the lowest prices. Gas Buddy supports all phones with both xhtml and wml versions.

JiWire Wi-Fi Finder (iphone.jiwire.com/) Worldwide free wi-fi hot spot finder with listings of over 200,000 hotspots in 135 countries. You can restrict the search to free hotspots or search for both free and pay locations. This is site is billed as an iPhone web app but it works beautifully on Opera Mini. It’s usable in Nokia’s Webkit browser too although the bottom half of the last listing on each page is cut off. The built-in Openwave browser on my Motorola i855 can load all of the site except for one image but searches fail with a “Malformed URL” error.

Sports

Plusmo (sports.plusmo.com/nfl/wap/boxscore) which started out as a mobile widget platform, has expanded their focus to include the mobile web. This site, which unlike the rest of Plusmo requires no registration, offers NFL (American Professional Football) scores, live play by play reports, stats and news. Plusmo’s also added a mobile web interface to their widgets at plusmo.com/wap (free registration required).

Sports/Motorsports

Autosport (wmda.eu) is a slick mobile magazine covering mostly European motor racing including F1, F3, DTM, (the German Touring Car Masters series) and A1 Grand Prix. Results, news , driver and circuit profiles are free, streaming 3gp video is apparently available for a fee although I couldn’t find the rates or a way to sign up for videos on the site.