Found On The Mobile Web #192

ToysRUs Mobile

Found on the Mobile Web is a weekly 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 2045 mobile sites.

Shopping/Stores

ToysRUs toysrus.digby.com/shops/web/toysrus Online toy catalog and store locator for ToysRUs and BabiesRUs stores in the US. Online ordering using your stored ToyRUs account information or you use a credit card (requires a lot of keying). A “Middle-Web” site for smartphones that is not usable on most feature phones. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory.
Content: **** Usability: XXX

IKEA m.ikea.us Store locator for US IKEA stores. Results include click to call phone numbers and driving directions.
Content: **** Usability: XXXX

IKEA USA Mobile

Shopping

dealdar dealdar.com Mobile deal site with a handy store locator. Dealdar appears to find most of its deals by scraping Twitter. Although dealdar claims the site will work on all mobiles, its large pages (50-130 KB) will not load on many feature phones. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory
Content: **** Usability: XXX

Spoofee Deals www.spoofee.com/mobile.php Mobile deals site with brief listings of hot deals. Lists hundreds of deals but could be better organized, there is no search or categories just an un-ordered list of current deals 10 to a page.
Content: **** Usability: XXX

Sports/Motorsports

Automobile Magazine Mobile

Automobile Mobile auto.kargo.com Mobile edition of Automobile Magazine features reviews and photos of high performance, luxury and “green” cars. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory
Content: **** Usability: XXXX

Business/News

Healthcare IT News Mobile m.healthcareitnews.com Mobile edition of a trade magazine for IT professionals in the health care industry. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory
Content: **** Usability: XXXX

Reference/Translation

HealthCare IT News Mobile

Tomisimo Spanish English pda.tomisimo.org A nicely done mobile Spanish – English – Spanish translator with a simple user interface and large dictionary. Source: Tappity
Content: **** Usability: XXXX

Travel-Transit

Gas Food Lodging gasfoodlodging.mobi A useful site for auto travelers, Gas Food Lodging provides a quick loading US only search for the nearest gas stations, restaurants and hotels. Results include address, map, driving directions and click to call phone numbers.
Content: **** Usability: XXXX

Travel-Transit/Hotels/Hotel ChainsTomisimo Mobile Spanish English Dictionary

Accor Hotels accor.iogw.com/?IO_LANG_ID=en_US Search and book book rooms at Accor Groups hotels around the world. This site covers the 600+ hotels in Accor’s mid-range and luxury brands; Sofitel, Novatel, Mercurie and SuiteHotel. It would be one of the better hotel booking sites except that searches often come up empty. A few minutes later the same search delivers dozens of results
Content: **** Usability: XXX

Ibis Hotels accor.iogw.com/ibis/?IO_LANG_ID=en_US Mobile search and booking for Accor Group’s economy Ibis brand which has 800 hotels, mostly in Europe. Nicely designed site although the search facility seems a little erratic often returning no results only to start working a few minutes or hours later.
Content: **** Usability: XXX

One thought on “Found On The Mobile Web #192

  1. Hi Dennis, thanks for your writeup of dealdar. If there are specific phones that you had trouble using our site with, please let me know, as we’re very interested in feedback and are continually improving the site.

    You’re right that the pages are larger than other mobile sites, but we wanted to offer newer phones a richer & more featured experience that would nonetheless degrade gracefully for older devices. A lot of the page size comes from non-HTML files that won’t be loaded by older phones, and we did some tests in the field on EDGE and found the site usable.

    Still, we care about performance, and you’ll be happy to know we just pushed out some improvements today that will shrink pages and improve speed significantly, including minifying js & css and switching analytics & twitter avatars to asynchronous/lazy loading.

    Anyhow, thanks again for the dealdar mention, Dennis!

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