Wap Review

Lots of tips and useful information for visitors to London. Guides to attractions, restaurants, clubs and services, all with click to call telephone numbers and the nearest tube stop. Also an extensive transportation section covering the Tube, taxis, airports and intercity trains and buses. A downloads section has maps and Java apps like an interactive Tube map, language translators and a few games.

A "Touch Web" guide to London history, events, sightseeing, shopping, nightlife and tours. Features click to call numbers, an interactive map and downloadable MP3 audio guides. Should work on most non-touch phones provided they can handle 200 KB pages. Source: Taptu Touch Web Report

Vegas Mobile Concierge is one of few mobile web booking sites I've seen that's actually easy to use. It's main function is  finding and  booking Las Vegas shows, something it does very well. You pick a show and are presented with the available times and prices, which include all taxes and fees so there are no surprises. Once you choose the number and type of tickets you want you are prompted to use a click to call link to complete the reservation with your credit card details.

Some day all phones will have a mobile wallet to make on device purchasing truly painless. But until then an old fashion voice call is far, far easier than using a web form in any phone browser to complete the tedious business of entering all the details that a credit card purchase requires. While the mobile versions of services like PayPal and Google Checkout are also fairly easy to use, relatively few Vegas visitors are likely to have an account on one of these services and have gone to the trouble of enabling mobile access. Just about everyone who can afford a Las Vegas show has a credit card.

I was rather impressed  with the quality of the Vegas Mobile site's mobile web implementation. I don't know who did it but they do clearly understand the both the opportunities and the limits of mobile web services. 

The site uses browser detection and adaptation to customize the site to make the most of each mobile browser's capabilities. iPhones, Opera Mini, S60 Webkit. Android phones  and most other devices with full-web browsers get a rich presentation with tabs and iPhone style 3D fade section headers (top image).  Openwave, Motorola and Nokia S40 "Services" browsers (bottom image) get a simplified design that manages to maintain most of the look and feel of the rich mobile version.  There's even a wml variant for old WAP1 phones

I did find a few things that could have been done better.  Some of the shows featured on the front page  turn out to be sold out when you try to book them. If there are no tickets available why even list these shows? The browser adaptation, while good,  is not perfect.  The site triggers an Openwave 7 browser bug that makes most of the text an unreadable beige on a beige background.  And the wml version has markup errors that will probably prevent it from working on most wml-only phones. In reality both wml-only phones and ones with Openwave 7 are relatively uncommon. Most mobile users will find the Mobile Concierge a very useful way to book the famous live shows when they visit Vegas.

Mobile Concierge is a service of Vegas.com, which is owned by publisher of the Las Vegas Sun daily newspaper and is the biggest booking agency and tour operator in the self-styled "Entertainment Capitol of the World".

Your mobile guide to interesting Tokyo neighborhoods. Turn by turn walking tours, each starting a different Tokyo Metro station. The tours average about 5 km in length with a separate page, which includes a photo, for each stop or point of interest. Tokyo Walks was created using Winksite, the free mobile site builder and community, and is an outstanding example of the capabilities of the Winksite platform.

User generated English language guide to Tokyo. Sunnypages is a searchable collection of over 4,000 word of month reviews of restaurants, museums, shops, services and hotels throughout Tokyo. Search and filter by name, district, train station and category.  Each listing includes address, name in Japanese and English, hours, click to call phone number, map and directions by train.  Many listings also have one or more user submitted reviews, star ratings and photos. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Prague travel guide by an English tourist who became a Czech resident. An insider's guide to the city with recommended hotels, restaurants and attractions and money saving tips for visitors to Prague. Source: Tappity

Visitors guide to Amsterdam from the Netherlands Board of Tourism and Conventions has extensive coverage of attractions, bars, gay and lesbian events and establishments, restaurants, hotels, museums and transportation options with loads of photos and an interactive map. 

Although billed as being usable with all mobile browsers, the site is clearly optimized for advanced devices like the iphone.  Page sizes are over 100 KB and the maps do not display in browsers without JavaScript support.

Travelers guide to Hong Kong with sightseeing, shopping and dinning listings and recommendations, an event calendar, directory of useful numbers and local weather forecast. Source Oh! Mobile Directory

 

Guide to Boston with museum hours and click call numbers and links to transit information, Special offer coupons for a few restaurants, attractions and shops. Source: Mobility.mobi

Blog style site with Hong Kong news and special offers of interest to visitors. Mobilized by Mofuse. Source Oh! Mobile Directory

Geogad.com is a Siicon Valley start up whose product is mobile travel guides. Each guide is  a walking tour about an hour in length presented using maps, images and audio. There are currently 15 tours covering San Francisco, Vancouver BC, Savannah, GA and New Orleans.  Initially the tours were available in two formats, on the web at Geogad.com or as a zip file containing a one page PDF walking map and about 50 MP3 audio clips. You load the MP3s into a play list on an iPod,other MP3 player or media player equipped phone, print out the PDF map and hit the streets to begin your tour.

Geogad's downloadable tours are available in a free ad supported format or without ads for $6.99 each.  I didn't find the ads in the free version obtrusive. The tours I tried had only two 30 second ads, one at the beginning and the other at the end of each tour.

I met Geogad co-founder, Georgi Dagnall at CTIA. Georgi briefed me on a new product the company was working  on, mobile web based tours.  That product is now available from Geogad's mobile web site at m.geogad.com. There you can find all the Geogad tours in a mobile browser friendly format.  Each tour is a series of linked mobile web pages, with each page containing a map or photo and a link to a downloadable MP3 clip with the narration about a single point of interest on the tour. If your carrier blocks audio downloads like Nextel does, or you don't want to wait for the audio to download on a slow connection, the full text of the audio clip also appears on the mobile web page.  I found the tours easy to use on my mobiles, with or without audio.  Each page is small (under 20KB) and images are re-sized to suit the screen size and page weight limitations of various mobile browsers. Navigation is easy, each page has three links, Next, Prev and Play Audio.  The only improvement I can think of would be to provide access keys for one click navigation.

At this time there is no way to purchase ad free tours on the mobile web site but any tours you have bought on the full site will render without ads on mobile.

Registration is required to get full access to Geogad's tours.  Registering is pretty painless, requiring only a verifiable email address and can be done on either the full or mobile Geogad sites.

The tours I tried were well done with high production values including crisp audio, useful maps and clear, lively, factual narration.  If you are visiting one of the covered cities I recommend Geogad's tours highly, they rival or exceed the quality of any commercial audio tour I've used.

Guides to major European cities in English and Dutch. For each city there are maps,  an overview description, transportation information and listings of restaurants, clubs, museums, sights  and events. Source: Mobility.mobi

Guides to hundreds of cites around the world. The site is offered in eight languages and covers Africa, Asia, Europe, the Americas and Oceania. That's clearly a lot of information here although usability could be better.

The guides are essentially lists of hotels, restaurants, shops, entertainment venues and travel and transport providers. The listings consist of the address, a click to call phone number and in the case of hotels a star rating. All good basic information but it could be organized better. For example, for San Francisco City.mobi lists over 500 hotels, five to a page, 125 pages total. The listings are city wide and there is no way to sort them or search for a particular hotel or location You can filter by star rating but that's it.

Another usability problem is that there are active links to unfinished parts of the site. An example is an "Events" link that leads to a "Coming Soon" page. This is classic garden pathing which wastes mobile user's time and money. If there's no content, the link should be removed or disabled.

Comprehensive guide to attractions, events, hotels restaurants and taxi service in Cincinnati, Ohio.  Searchable listings include, address, click to call phone number, hours, prices, what's nearby and links to Google maps and directions. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

The official Mobile Web site of the Nevada Commission on Tourism is a visitors guide which lists events, things to, hotels and RV parks and a six day weather foecast.  The site looks like an iPhone web app but page sizes are generally under 20 KB and the site works pretty well even on feature phones. 

A nicely done guide to Alcatraz Island, the famous maximum security prison in on a rock in the middle of San Francisco Bay. Shut down in 1963, Alcatraz is today one of the top Bay Area tourist attractions. The site has Alcatraz history, photos, weather and tour information and phone numbers.  Source Mobienthusiast

The California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, California is a world-class aquarium, planetarium and natural history museum with a 4-story rainforest. It's housed in a striking new environmentally sustainable building by Renzo Piano. The museum's mobile site has daily program listings, ticket prices and public transit, driving and parking information.

Tourist and travelers guide from the Chicago Southland Convention and Visitors Bureau which represents 62 suburbs South and Southwest of downtown Chicago. Covers hotels, restaurants, attractions, cultural and historic sites, golf courses, shopping and transportation.  Listings include addresses, hours and phone numbers which are not click to call, unfortunately. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Guide to Scarsdale, NY restaurants and hotels plus seven day weather forecast. Listings include address and click to call phone numbers. Source: Mobility.mobi.

Interactive mobile guide to Boston's Freedom Trail, a 2.5 red brick walkway connecting  14 historic sites from the Boston Common to Bunker Hill. The mobile site has maps, photos and a description, prices, click to call numbers, etc. for each site. Source: Mobility.mobi

A couple of guides for the beautiful Canadian Rockies resort towns of Banff. This well designed mobile site uses accesskeys and click to call phone numbers for usability and offers information of real value for visitors including weather forecasts, and ideas for things too do.

Guide to the Whistler, Canada resort area. Hotel, restaurant, attraction and services listings plus local weather forcasts make this a handy site for the visitor.

Louisiana Sportsman Magazine's mobile site features daily user-submitted Louisiana fishing and hunting reports, and articles on hunting and fishing in Louisiana and Florida.  There are also links to NOAA.gov weather forecasts and radar maps for the area along with a directory of fishing and hunting guides.

Louisiana Sportsman is certainly a good resource for area sportsmen, however the mobile site's usability could be better.  The biggest issues are that the phone numbers in the guides are not click to call and the 768×496 px,  280 KB radar maps are too large to be usable on most phones. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Tourist information for North Carolina's Outer Banks region with restaurant, event, shopping and real estate listings, movie show times and classified ads. Usability hurt by lots of "garden pathing" (time wasting links to empty place holder pages) and phone numbers that are not click to call. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Shopping, dining and events guide for greater Grand Forks, North Dakota from the Greater Grand Forks Convention & Visitors Bureau. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Guide to Sun Valley and  Ketchum Idaho from the local Convention and Visitors Bureau. Event calendar and lodging, restaurants, shopping and attractions listings with click to call phone numbers, hours, and addresses. Source: Mobility.mobi

From the Alpharetta, Georgia Convention & Visitors Bureau comes this guide to hotels, restaurants and shopping in the Atlanta suburb. The guide is basically just a list of establishments with click to call numbers there is no other information such as descriptions, street address or hours. Source: Mobility.mobi

Official site of the Pismo Beach Convention and Visitor's Bureau. Lists hotels, restaurants and RV parks with hours, price range and click to call phone numbers.  Pismo Beach is a well known Southern California beach town noted for clamming and surfing.  The mobile site includes weather, tides, surf report, surf forecast and wave heights and sets. Source Mobility.mobi

Guide to Leucadia, a neighborhood of Encinitas, California.  Leucadia has a quaint, artsy shopping strip and is home of Beacons, a well known surfing spot.  The mobile site has local  weather, an events calendar, surf report and listings of local businesses and services. Source: Mobility.mobi

Concise sightseeing guides to over 200 world cities.  The guides include a history and overview for each city and a description and photo of  top sights and things to do.  The content is good but the large page size (up to 70 KB) makes for too much scrolling and will cause out of memory errors in some mobile browsers.

If you idea of a perfect vacation is going fishing in a new place, this site's for you. It's a directory of over 800 US fishing charters, guides and outfitters sorted by state.

A rather basic tourist's guide to Lebanon in English, Arabic and French. Brief descriptions of the principal cites, list of public holidays and general information like population, area and phone prefixes. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Guide to New Zealand's remote and beautiful Bay of Islands. Information on accommodations and activities with click to call numbers and email contact form. Maps, reviews and photos. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Travelers guide to Wellington New Zealand.  Hotel, restaurant, bar, shopping  and attractions listings with prices, photos, maps and click to call numbers.  Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Visitors guide to Australia with information and pictures of cities, states and attractions, click to call numbers for tourist information centers and a directory of businesses. Source Oh! Mobile Directory

Tourist information for Australia's Boonah - "The Heart of the Scenic Rim", a foothills area noted for its natural beauty and its wines.. Accommodation, attractions, dinning and winery listings with maps, photos and phone numbers which sadly are not click to call. Source Mobility.mobi

Official site of the Namibia Tourist Board.  Information on entry and visa requirements, attractions and weather Source: Mobility.mobi

Guide to businesses, events and attractions throughout South Africa. Listings include click to call numbers and in some cases a description and address.

Fundi is a new site and businesses must pay to be listed. Consequently there are relatively few listings.This is understandable, but there are a number of links like "Wine Estates" and "Football 2010" that lead to empty pages with no listings at all, unnecessarily wasting the user's time and bandwidth. A better design would be to either hide these empty categories or to "seed" them with a few basic listings or an informational blurb. Source: Mobility.mobi

Guide to Surat, the second largest city in the state of Gujarat, India with a population of over 5 million. Surat is the "Diamond Capitol of the World" and 92% of the world's diamonds are cut and polished in Surat.  The mobile site includes a brief history of the city and photos and descriptions of Surat's top tourist attractions. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Visit India has facts about India and travel tips including recommended hotels and sights.  No links or phone numbers, though. Source: Tappity

Tourist information, tourism and travel guide for the Indian state of Rajasthan. Information on tourist attractions, forts, temples, festivals, wildlife, hotels and shopping.

Directory of hotels, home stays, houseboat rentals and transportation in the India state of Kerala. Notable for its beaches, historical sites and eco-tourism opportunities, Kerala is one of the most popular tourist destinations in India. Source: Mobility.mobi

InfoCapri (infocapri.mobi/en) This is the official mobile site of the Capri Tourist Board. It gives visitors to the Italian Isle of Capri ferry schedules and extensive lists of phone numbers for services, hotels, clubs and restaurants. The schedules are no doubt useful but the lists are just that, just the name of the establishment and the phone number - no addresses or descriptions and the phone numbers are not even click to call.

Information on events, attractions and other visitor services for the Mediterranean island nation of Malta.The site also has Malta and international news headlines and directory of shops, restaurants and clubs, a page of information about Malta and another with click to call numbers for emergency services

The directory of shops and services seems incomplete with, for example, only a single listing (a hairdresser) in Birkirkara, Malta's largest (population 21,000) town.  Most listings contain only the business name and address, but on some clicking a More Information link reveals a page with hours and click- to call numbers. All the information about an establishment could and should easily be on a single page.  The second click is a waste of time and energy on mobile where minimizing clicks is an important element of usability. Source: Mobility.mobi

The official website of leisure and business Tourism in the City of Valencia, Spain lists hotels, restaurants, museums, events and transportation information. But why are none of the phone numbers click to call?

Mobile guide to St Ives, a popular year round resort in scenic West Cornwall, England noted for its beaches and artists colony. The mobile site has background information on the town, descriptions of the beaches, a public transit guide, maps and listings of events, hotels and art galleries. Source Tappity

Guide to Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland.  Lists attactions, lodging and restaurants with click to call numbers but curiously, no street addresses. Source: Oh Mobile Directory

A slick "iPhone style" guide to history, events, sightseeing, shopping, nightlife and tours for Cambridge, England, home of Oxford University. The site includes click to call numbers, an interactive map and audio guides. The site works well on full-web browsers but page sizes of up to 175 KB make it a non-starter on basic phones.

Guide to Southwold, a town on the England's Suffolk coast that is noted for its natural beauty and historic structures including the 15th Century Church of St Edmund and historic pier, harbor, lighthouse and brewery.

The attractive, image heavy Pocket Southwold site appears to have been designed for the iPhone but also works well with other mobile browsers that are able to handle its 100 KB pages such as the Nokia Webkit browser, Opera Mini and even the "Services" browser on recent Nokia S40 devices.

The guide covers attractions, restaurants and lodging and includes weather reports,  bus and train times, interactive maps and 4-5 minute mp3 audio guides describing Southwold's highlights. Listings include address, click to call numers and maps.