Wap Review

The US government's Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)'s innovative mobile site now allows disaster victims apply for FEMA assistance using their mobile phone.

FEMA's mobile site also provides information on emergency services in regions affected by a disaster and has general information on what you should do in the event of a hurricane, flood, tornado, earthquake, terrorist attack, thunderstorm, tsunami, wildfire or severe winter storm.  Source: Federal Eye

FactCheck.org is a non-partisan, non-profit project from the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.  It researches and debunks false claims made by U.S. politicians and political action groups in campaign materials, speeches and in promoting legislation.

FactCheck has played a significant role in recent U.S.elections.  In the 2008 presential campaign Factcheck.org flagged multiple falsehoods by both candidates, including Obama's statement  that McCain's Social Security proposal would cut retiree benefits by 50% and McCain's claim that Obama lied about his association with anti-war activist Bill Ayers.

FactCheck is available in a mobile formatted version at factcheck.org/mobile/.  I like that virtually all the desktop site's content is available in the mobile edition. However, the size of the pages (the homepage is 151 KB) means the site will not load on most non-smartphones.  In spite of the increasing  popularity of iPhones, BlackBerries and other devices with full web browsers, only 37.3% of U.S. mobile web page requests come from smartphones.  Devices like the venerable Motorola RAZR V3 or MetroPCS' entry-level Nokia 1006 account for significant amounts of traffic and can not handle pages much over 20 KB. Given that FactCheck.org's content is mainly text it shouldn't have been very hard for the site's designers to follow the example of news sites like CNN, the BBC and even small town newspapers like the Elmira NY Star-Gazette and built a mobile site that could accommodate all browsers.

Information on how you can reduce your personal energy consumption and production of greenhouse gases by making simple changes to your lifestyle, eating habits and transportation choices.  Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Angus-Reid is a public opinion research company specializing in politics, public opinion and policy. This site is the mobile version of the company's Global Monitor website which tracks elections around the world and publishes results and analyses of the latest Angus-Reid polls as a resource for  journalists, students, policy makers, and citizens. Mobile view by Mobify.

I got an email from Mark at Idea Earth suggesting I take a look at the mobile sites they have developed. Idea Earth's got a boatload of sites, but one jumped out at me as especially interesting and unusual was FbiMostWanted.mobi. It's just what the name suggests, a mobile version of the famous Federal Bureau of Investigation's 10 Most Wanted Fugitives List. The list has been around for almost 60 years and every American has no doubt seen the hard copy version of prominently displayed in Post Offices around the country. These days is online as well but the FBI hasn't had the foresight to create a mobile friendly version creating an opportunity which Idea Earth has taken the initiative to fill.

The FBI has supplemented the original 10 Most Wanted list with additional lists of the Most Wanted Terrorists, Most Wanted Sexual Predators, Most Wanted Murders, Most Wanted Robbers and Most Wanted Drug Conspirators and FbiMostWanted.mobi has all the lists too. The site also has links to the FBI's online form for reporting a fugitive and to a list of FBI offices. These links are not mobile friendly. It would be nice if Idea Earth linked to non-mobile sites through a transcoder like Mowser, Skweezer or Google's GWT There's also a click to call link to 911, just be careful you don't accidenly click it! Just a remainder, but if you ever do accidently call 911, stay on the line until the emergency operator answers and explain that you dialed 911 accidentally, otherwise you could wind up surrounded by emergency vehicles and possibly a fine for a false report.

FBIMostWanted.mobi was created with the free mobile site builder MobileSiteGalore which goes to show you that you don't need a big budget or impressive technical skills to create a compelling and useful mobile site.

The mobile edition of Article99.com Authors Club, a site where people who want to promote their business, website or reputation as a subject matter expert submit articles on any topic, a practice called Article Marketing.  There are actually dozens of Article Marketing sites on the web but this is the first  one I've seen that has a mobile edition. Article submission is free on Article99

As you might expect on a site dedicated to self promotion the quality of these articles tends to be pretty low,  but some of the articles are reasonably well written and useful.  Article99 has some fairly specific content and style gudelines and appears to moderate submissions to weed out the trash. There are over 20 thousand articles grouped into a couple of dozen main categories and over 450 sub-categories.  You can find anything from  dog training tutorials to web design tips on Article99. Unfortunately the Google powered site search doesn't seem to work making the site more suited to browsing than searching for anything specific.  Considering the quanity of content, Article99 is reasonably usable on a mobile thanks to the use of accesskeys and the hierarchical organization.

The Taptu folks, who also own Wapedia, the best mobile version of Wikipedia, have apparently mobilized a bunch of other wikis and  launched Wikizap, a wiki directory.  It features mobile versions of such weird and wacky wikis as the Muppet Wiki, Wookieepedia, the Harry Potter Wiki and NFL, hockey and baseball wiki.  And that's just of few of the mobile wikis on Wikizap.  There are over 30 wikis in all on the site in English, German, French, Spanish, Italian and Japanese. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Wapedia currently has the best mobile version of Wikipedia. It's fast, always up and does an outstanding job of adapting Wikipedia content to everything from five year old wml-only handsets to an N95 or Opera Mini. It works just like Wikipedia on a PC, to deliver the entire Wikipedia online encyclopedia including all images, charts and tables in your mobile browser. Wapedia splits pages and resizes images so that everything fits into the physical screen dimensions and the memory limits of just about any phone

Wapedia has a very fine-grained algorithm for splitting pages and resizing images. It sets maximum image width to anywhere from 91px wide for the Nokia 6230 to 310 px wide for the iPhone or G1. The same is true of pagination. Wapedia dynamically adjusts page size to fit handset memory. The N95 gets Wikipedia's huge Tokyo article as 9 pages while the old wml-only Motorola i85 gets 60 much smaller pages.

Wapedia has advertising, although it's pretty minimalistic, just a single text link at the top of each page. I hardly notice the ads, but if the thought of advertising on Wikipedia content bothers you, try Wikipedia Mobile.

Another mobile front end to Wikipedia. Very similar to Wapedia.mobi (above) Search based interface.

Wikipedia's official mobile site. How does it compare with Wapedia, my favorite Wikipedia mobile front end?

Both have a simple homepage dominated by a search box, not unlike what you see when you visit Wikipedia on a PC. Wikipedia Mobile gets points though for including the classic Wikipedia "puzzle globe" Iogo on the front page.

For a real test, I tried looking up "Tokyo" on both sites. The Wikipedia Tokyo page is big (814 KB) with many images and some double byte Japanese characters. It's a tough test for mobile front ends.

Both sites were up to the task of displaying the Wikipedia Tokyo page on mobile devices. Pages were split and images resized so that everything fit both with into physical screen dimensions and the memory limits of a variety of handsets. The double byte characters were passed though unaltered, they look like gobbledygook on most western handsets but will display correctly on phones with Japanese language support.

Overall I preferred Wapedia's presentation Some of the original page's content was missing in Wikipedia Mobile. Particularly noticeable was that the first few words of the article were missing so that the piece started with a comma! (2nd image) A table near the top of the page listing Tokyo's population, area, symbol, flower and other basic facts also did not appear in the Wikipedia Mobile version of the page.

Another thing I liked about Wapedia is that it has a more fine-grained algorithm for spliting pages and resizing images. Wikipedia resizes all images to a maximum of 128 px regardless of the phone's actual screen size, Wapedia alters maximum image width anywhere from 91px wide for the Nokia 6230 to 310 px wide for the iPhone or G1 which is certainly desirable unless you like squinting at tiny pictures. The same is true of pagination, Wikipedia Mobile uses two fixed pagination sizes, the Tokyo page is split into either 30 pages for WML-only phones or 18 pages for modern devices. Wapedia dynamically adjusts page size to fit handset memory. The N95 sees the Tokyo article in 9 pages while an old wml-only Motorola i85 gets 60 much smaller pages. Not only is Wapedia more likely to work on low memory phones but it's a lot faster and less annoying to press "Next..." nine times than 18 on a more capable phone.

One advantage of Wikipedia Mobile is that it's ad free, Wapedia has advertising, although it's pretty minimalistic, just a single text link at the top of each page. I hardly notice the ads, but if the thought of advertising on Wikipedia content bothers you, try Wikipedia Mobile.

Personally I plan on continuing to use Wapedia. But it's good to have alternative ways to get at Wikipedia's great content from handheld devices.

Mobile edition of Answers.com. Enter a word or phase and it will bring a dictionary entry or article from Wikipedia along with with additional links which vary with context such as a thesaurus entries or web links. Very useful site that is well optimized for small phone screens. Currently wap2 only.

Not to be outdone by WikiPedia, the venerable Encyclopedia Britannica now has a mobile site. The search works well and the well written articles cover most topics in considerable depth and are nicely organized for mobile with navigational links to sections of the longer articles.Content seems a little on the thin side though. I couldn't find many of the topics I searched for including "Nokia", "nonogram" and "PHP", all of which have extensive entries in Wikipedia. Source Taptu Touch Web Report (PDF).

Published by a British NGO, TheSite is a guide to life for 16-24 year-olds, offering advice on sex, relationships, health, drink and drugs, the Law, money, work, study and Travel plus a searchable directory of local help and support agencies. Source: dotMobi

Fuelly is an online auto fuel consumption site and social network for car owners interested in tracking their fuel consumption, comparing it with other drivers and viewing real world fuel economy figures for various makes and models of cars. The mobile site is strictly for recording fill-ups. To use it you must first register at www.fuelly.com, a PC site that is also usable with most smartphones. Source: Tappity

Look up acronyms.  Easy to use and returns a lot of results for business and organizational acronyms. For a service with 'Geek' in its name it seems to be missing most computer related acronyms. It didn't have SAN - "Storage Area Network", SAS - "Software As Service" or AJAX - "Asynchronous JavaScript and XML"!. For tech acronyms, I prefer m.all-acronyms.com

Want to find out what GAAP, HIPA and ARMS-PCR stand for?  This no-nonsense site will tell you in seconds.  Look up any acronym and get the words it stands for.

Android, iPhone, iPad and WebOS  webapp displays the current time in every timezone in the world on a single large page.  Works offline using the HTML5 Offline Storage API.

English - Spanish, Spanish - English, English - French, French - English, English - Italian and Italian - English dictonaries. Well designed mobile site with a simple interface and small page sizes. Dictionaries seem quite comprehensive.

Helps you compare estimated cost of hiring a professional versus doing it yourself for over 350 common home improvement projects including carpentry, painting, tiling, plumbing and electrical jobs. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

A single purpose site that does one thing well; give the current time for every timezone in the world with a simple menu driven interface. 

Melissa is an online database of US demographic information. Enter a zip code to get information (location, population, number of businesses, average home price, etc.) . Other searches validate a mailing address and get general location information (not a reverse directory search) about a phone number or area code.

Quote of the Day and searchable database of over 30,000 quotes and sayings from history's greatest celebrities, authors and statemen. 

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.

The CIA World Factbook is a comprehensive reference document containing statistical information and brief descriptions of the history, geography, economy and politics of every country in the world. Considering its authorship, this site's comments on politics and current issues should not be considered unbiased. On the other hand, it is one of best sources of statistical and geographic information on the mobile web. This mobile version is transcoded to chtml by skweezer.net.

WhiteHouse.gov is the official web site for the White House and President Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States. This site is a source for information about the President, White House news and policies, White House history, and the federal government. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

An annotated mobile world atlas created with a mashup of Wikipedia and Google Maps. MobiLocation, which offers maps and background information on thousands of cities and towns around the world is available in 17 languages.  Source Oh! Mobile Directory

The US government now has an official mobile site. It's configured as a search engine with a search box at the top and a choice of several search categories below. You can do a global search of all government agencies and services or pick a category to do a specialized search for a weather forecast, images, members of congress or toll free numbers of government agencies which are listed as click to call links. There is also a directory of federal and state government agencies. Search and directory results pointing to non-mobile content are transcoded by a white label transcoder.

USGovXML usgovxml.com/mobile USGovXML is a collection of mobile mashups based on web and mapping services provided by the US government. There's a huge amount of information available using these tools which include the following services:

• Gazetteer: A geographic dictionary that provides latitude and longitude information for many places throughout the U.S..
• Proximity: Find the distance to the nearest wetland with map.
• Elevation: Provides the elevation of a particular point and a map.
• Station: Shows water quality monitoring stations within a geographic area on a map.
• CO-OPS: Tide, current, water level and other coastal oceanographic information.
• NDFD: Extremely detailed weather forecast data from the National Weather Service’s digital forecast database.
• UV Index: Predicts the next day’s ultraviolet radiation levels.
• Web Tools: Zip code lookup, address verification and the determination of which city is in a particular zip code.
• SBSS: Returns a firm's 8(a), HUB Zone and SDB certification status from the Small Business Administration's database.

The site is optimized for Mobile Internet Explorer but is usable in other full-web mobile web browsers including Opera Mobile and Mini, Webkit and Safari.

H2G2 - Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, "an unconventional guide to life, the universe and everything". Inspired by Douglas Adam's novel of the same name, H2G2 (stated in 1999) predates and is somewhat similar to Wikipedia - both are encyclopedias jointly authored by visitors to a web site. For H2G2, the site is www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/. Anyone can register on the site and contribute content to H2G2.

Designed for iPhones, the Touch Dictionary actually works very well on most phones. Source Oh! Mobile Directory

Well designed and nicely illustrated history of the British royal family from 1066 to today. Source: Mobility.mobi

Look up slang words and phrases with this version of the  Urban Dictionary designed for the iPhone and other touch smartphones. Javascript dependencies and page sizes over 200 KB make the site unusable on feature phones.

Dictionary and Thesaurus

Memidex is another free online dictionary and thesaurus with a large word list, cross-referencing, inflections, auto-correction of misspelled input and an adult filter.

Online English dictionary and foreign language phrasebook for 9 languages.

English language dictionary lookup.  Results include extensive definitions, part of speech, synonyms and antonyms but no punctuation. Source Oh! Mobile directory

An easy to use mobile thesaurus.  Enter any word and get a list of synonyms and a link to the word's definition at FreeDictionary.mobi.  Source:Mobilility.mobi

Html tag reference and glossary of web development terms. Glossary page is too large (4.3KB) to load on many wap1 browsers.

Answers to trivia questions in a variety of categories including Animals,Art, Literature, Christmas, Entertainment, Games, Geography, History, Language, Science, Sports and Time. Light weight fun to browse stuff.

For military history buffs, here's a site dedicated to the history and preservation of the sole remaining working example of the WWII German Tiger Tank.