Wap Review

A local seach engine with a simple, efficient user interface. It understood addresses in every format I tried and was very good at determining what I was searching for and returning relevant results. Most importantly, Local.com seems to return more results for my queries than other local search engines. Other features include maps, driving directions and "click to call" phone number links. See Local Search Shootout, my post comparing local search sites where Local.com got top honors.

Bing (formerly Live Search) has a very good implementation of Local Search which remembers your most recent entries and has the clearest maps I've seen on the mobile web. Maps scale to fit your phone's screen unlike Google and Yahoo's small fixed sized maps. Results are sorted by closest first. In my Local Search Shootout, which compared local search engines on the basis on the quantity and relevance of results and the efficiency of their UI's, Live ranked second, a scant one point behind the winner, Local.com.

 

Google updated their mobile web based local search yesterday. There are a number of enhancements that combined could potentially make it my new favorite local mobile search engine. Here's what's new:

• Location enabled - Google local on Android and the iPhone have been location aware for a while, now location support has been sort of extended to all platforms. How is that possible given that only Android, the iPhone, BlackBerries and Windows Mobile devices with Gears installed support sharing your location with browser based services? Google's not saying but it seems to be tied to your Google account. I've granted Google permission to use my location on my Android phone. When I log into Google Local in the Nokia browser or Opera Mini on my N95, my Android phone's location is displayed and used as the default starting point for local searches on the N95. If I had Google Latitude running on the N95, I wonder if Google would use my L attitude location? You can also manually enter your location.

• Category Browse - Below the search box, Google Local now displays a series of categories; Restaurants, Shopping, ATMs, Banks etc.. Click a category to see relevant nearby business.

• Starred Places. You can click a star icon in desktop Google Maps results to tag a business or address as a favorite. Your Starred Places show up as your first category on the mobile local site for easy access.

Other features of Google local for mobile that are retained from previous versions include zoomable maps, driving directions, user reviews and links to business' web sites.

I said at the start that the new features could make Google my new preferred local search site. It's great to not have to type in your location, the categories are handy and save even more typing and the Stared Places provide an easy way to share locations between desktop maps and local.

Unfortunately, in spite of these great features I found the new Google Local site less useful than it could be. The biggest problem is that results can't be sorted by distance. This makes the them far less usable then they could be. For example the Japanese Restaurants category's top result was a place four miles away, with an excellent one only a mile away buried on the third page. With Google able to locate your phone precisely it would make sense to have an option to see the closest businesses first in results.

I also had a strange problem with a specific search for a car dealer, "Mini of San Francisco", which is San Francisco's only Mini dealer. A explicit search using the name of the business failed to return any results! I had to use Google Web search to find the address and retype it into Local! If a business' site is indexed by Web search shouldn't it also appear in local?

In comparison, both Bing and Local.com's mobile search results are sorted by distance and both found the Mini dealer with no problems.

Keyword search for local businesses anywhere in the US. Listings include hours, address, click to call number, description, map, directions and a link to the business' (not always mobile friendly) website.

Mobile edition of Yalwa, a local business search engine for all major cities in the United States. Not many listings yet but adding your business to Yalwa is free, which should help Yalwa grow.

The site has some easily fixed usability issues including phone numbers that aren't click to call and a default results sort by date added to the directory rather than alphabetically.

Skweezer's new local saerch is one of the better ones..  It has click to call phone numbers, Yahoo maps and sorts results by distance from your location which you enter as an adress, zip code or city/state.  Seems to be US only though. Source: @microflash

Glocut is one of the nicest local mobile search web apps I've seen yet. What sets it apart from all the others is its deceptively simple but effective user interface. 

When you launch Glocut the first time you will need to enter your location. It's not very fussy about  formatting; a full street address, city, country, postal code or a landmark like "Times Square"; they all work .

It gets even better, Glocut has a tiny Java or Windows Mobile native app that you can download. All the app does is retrieve your location from the phone's GPS and launch the browser passing the Glocut URL with your latitude and longitude embedded in the query string. After launching the browser the app terminates freeing what little resources it was using. What a great way to GPS enable a web app. It works perfectly on my unbranded Nokia N95-3 and should work on any GPS equipped phone that supports the Java ME Location API and allows an unsigned application access to location data.

Once Glocut knows were you are it displays your location on a map and and initially shows Google Local search results for nearby hotels. Not looking for a hotel? You can enter a search query or click on links for predefined searches like  Restaurant, Bar, Bank, Café, Taxi, Pizza, Sushi or  Mc Donalds. Click on one of those and Glocut displays results centered on your location from the selected category. Glocut's truly a global application. It seems to recognize address anywhere in the world and the interface is available in 17 languages.

Glocut is more than just a better Google Local front end. There's a top menu that lets you choose from (Local) Search, Wikipedia, Pictures (from panoramio.com), Events (from last.fm) and Twitter (Tweets from people near you).The Twitter tab even lets you update your Twitter status and when you do it sets your location in Twitter

Glocut's really very slick and intuitive with short click paths and fast page loads.  I'm really impressed with how easy it is to use. OK, it's not perfect.  There are a few details that need a little work; the Panoramio and Wikipedia results link to full-web rather than mobile pages and there is no privacy policy that I could find, which might make people a little wary of sharing their location.

I had an email conversation with Glocut's developer who agreed on the need for a EULA and that the Panoramio and Wikipedia results need to be transcoded or point to a mobile version in the case of Wikipedia.  A fix for the non-mobile links and a privacy policy will be in place soon along with some other enhancements including local news, weather, YouTube clips and Flickr images.

Even with its few warts,Glocut is pretty amazing. If Google had built this everyone would be going nuts over how great it was and how Google really understands mobile.  But Glocut wasn't built by Google, although it uses some Google APIs for maps and local searches.  Glocut was created by Anders Johnard, a Swedish consultant and veteran of social networking site LunarStorm where he was responsible for their mobile site. Glocut is self funded although Anders indicated he might be interested in some VC funding eventually.    Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

 

Parking search for  New York City, Philadelphia and Boston.  Enter an address, arrival time and how long you intend to park and BestParking returns  a list of open spots and prices at nearby parking lots and garages.

A neat Google maps mashup the uses the Geolocation JavaScript API to create a map showing nearby parking lots. Green and red icons indicate free and paid lots, respectively  Although the developer calls it an "iPhone WebApp" webapp it also works well with the Android browser, Samsung's Dolfin and Opera Mobile 10.1! Source: PC World

Here's another find from  @andrewjb44 on Twitter.  KidsMealDeals is a mobile site for parents looking to some money when dinning out with their chaildren.  It lets you search by zip code or  city/state for "Kids Eat Free" deals and discounted children's meals at U.S. chain eateries. Thabks to andrewjb on Twitter for

Superpages which was primarily an U.S.only online phone directory has expanded their mobile offering to become a full blown local search engine.  The site which is owned by Verizon spinoff Idearc Media now provides business search by name or category, maps, driving directions, WiFi hotspot search, weather forecasts, movie reviews and showtimes in addition to phone number look up by name and location and a reverse phone number directory. It's still U.S. only, however.

The site gets the job done although it continues Superpage's tradition of quirky user interfaces.  There are "What" and "Where" fields at the top of the page along with a "Search" button.  Below that are icons for Maps, WiFi, Directions, etc.  The quirkiness is that you have to use the search form at the top of the page to search for something before the other icons will work properly.  If you just load the page and go straight to "Maps" you'll get a cryptic "No further information was provided" message, presumably because your location hasn't been set.  In this case Superpages should prompt you for your location but doesn't.

Once you get past the issue with setting a location there are some nice touches to Superpages Mobile. Phone numbers in lists are click to call and there is an "Add to my contacts" link that uses the WAP wtai://wp/ap;number;name URI construct to add the listing to your phone's contacts. This works on most Nokias and BlackBerries, I'm not sure about other phone brands.

If you register, which can be done on the Superpages mobile site, you can save your favorite businesses, people, locations and reviews in "My Superpages".

 

Local search engine covering major cities in Europe and the U.S. Search for restaurants, bars, entertainment, services, shopping, and more.  Results are ordered by distance from the city center (except for Prague where you can search within a postal code) and include address, a Google map and phone numbers which are unfortunately not click to call. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

DexKnows is a local search engine listing U.S. restaurants, transportation, entertainment and shopping. It's from R. H. Donnelley, a major publisher of print telephone directories.  It's very complete listing 100 Sushi places in San Francisco. Unfortunately results are metro wide making it poorly suited for finding the nearest one. Listings include click to call numbers, maps and directions.  There's also a white pages based people search and a reverse phone directory.

US-only local search for restaurants, hotels, bars, etc with crowd sourced recomendations. Register at PC site: thesuggestr.com to get personalized recomendations based on your preference and to add Fire Eagle and Twitter integration.

Directory of tow truck operators in the U.S., U.K. and Canada with click to call numbers. Also tips on how jump start your car and change a flat tire. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Geospot is a new local search service for the US. The unique feature of Geospot is that it only shows establishments that are open right now or at another time you specify.  Results include click to call phone numbers and a map.

I wasn't too impressed with Geospot. The results of a search for "bar" returned some bars but also several gas stations!.  A query for "sushi" returned relevant results but missed many nearby places including my favorite. The site sets the body text font size to 8 px which is unreadably small on my N95's 320x240 screen when using the browser's default settings.

Finally a mobile Starbucks Locater that works - although only for US and Canadian locations, unfortunately. Enter a zip code, city and state or full street address to get a listing of all nearby Starbucks with address, click-to-call phone number links and a little wifi indicator for those shops that have it. Clicking a listing brings up a scrollable, zoomable map (from Microsoft's MapPoint) showing the latte shop's location with driving directions also available.

Register to receive special offers by text on the mobile website of US nationwide sandwich shop chain Subway which also features menus and a restaurant locator. Excessively large images slow page loads on basic phones. Source Mobility.mobi

SONIC is a chain of franchised drive in full service hamburger joints with carhop service. Sonic has over 3500 locations in the US.  The Sonic mobile site has a store locator and menus. Source: Mobility.mobi

Online ordering and store finder for U.S. Pizza Hut locations.  You have to register in advance on the dominos.com PC site to be able to use mobile online ordering!

Store finder and online ordering for Dominos Pizza in the U.S.  No advanced registration is required to place a mobile order.

Online ordering and store locator for Papa John's locations in the UK. On the iPhone the web app uses the phone's location to suggest nearby locations.  Source: Mobile Industry Review

Mobile site of the National Archives in London.  Hours, walking, transit and driving directions to the Archives, hours, news of new acquisitions, events, exhibits and publications.

Inspired by Ewan's coverage of  Papa John's UK's location aware iPhone web app, I went looking for its US equivalent. I found mobile.papajohns.com which delivers a snazzy Touch version of the pizza chain's online order service and store locator to iPhone's only.

Sadly, unlike the UK version it doesn't pickup the phone's location, you have to enter an address or zip code manually. Non-iPhones, including even Android phones, get a plain version with no eye candy whatsoever but identical features and functionality.  If you want to try the iPhone version on your lesser device the direct URL is mobile.papajohns.com/iphone.

A searchable directory of New York City public library locations.  Listings include hours, address, driving directions and maps.  Phone numbers are labeled as click to call but are not!  There's a separate directory listing current exhibits in libraries.  Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

I just found a link to the California Department of Education's mobile side over at the Oh! Mobile Directory. I had no idea the CDE had a mobile site, most state agencies barely have a Web site let alone a mobile one. The Education Dept site offers a searchable directory of public and private schools, school district and CDE offices. Directory listings include address, phone numbers (not click to call, unfortunately) and a link to a mobile Google Map. I can see this being used by substitute teachers to find their assignments and by anyone who does business with schools.

There's also a CDE employee directory, agendas of upcoming state board of education meetings and education news.

It's a shame that the news about education in California these days is so dismal. The state's once great school system is being systematically destroyed by one funding cut after another so that the politicians can claim to have not increased taxes.

Yellow Pages, White Pages, Reverse Phone Lookup, Reverse Address Lookup, Neighbor Look-up, Mapquest Maps and Driving Directions

I think this is a mobile first.  Ameren, an electric power utility serving 1.9 million customers in Illinois and Missouri has launched a mobile website whose primary feature is a listing of all service outages.  You can search for affected areas by zip code or county.  The site also lets you report if your power is out and get real time updates on the progress of restoring power to your specific home or business.  The site also has customer service  phone numbers (unfortunately NOT click to call) and electrical safety tips. 

Nice idea, assuming the mobile site really is updated with status changes in a timely fashion. If the power is out then your desktop PC and WiFi access point and in some cases land-line phone service is going to be out too. Using the mobile site to report a problem or get a status update should be faster than holding for an overloaded telephone support center.  I think all public utilities including power, cable and land line phone companies should have a mobile site for outage reporting and status updates. 

Yahoo's Local search is integrated into their One Search product.  Enter a type of business and an city, address or postal code and Yahoo returns results sorted by rating or distance. Top level results include star rating, address, distance, cross streets and a click to call number. Drill down into individual listings to see hours of operation, a map, user reviews and driving directions.

Restaurant search for Italy.  Search by proximity, type of cuisine or restaurant name.  Results include  map, address, photos, description, average price range and rating and phone numbers which are not click to call. .  Registered users can make reservations with confirmation by SMS. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

As promised in May at Google I/O, Google has added a geolocation API to Gears. It supports IE, Firefox and Mobile Internet Explorer. When the latest Gears is installed on a compatible phone, the API provides JavaScript methods to retrieve the device's current location using Cell IDs and/or GPS. Gears provides a standards compliant way to share your location with mobile websites, opening up all sorts of possibilities for location based mobile web services.

The announcement is on the official Google Mobile Blog. It includes an interesting YouTube video of Google's Charles Wells demonstrating a new mobile restaurant finder service from LastMinute.com called fonefood (m.lastminute.com/fonefood/en) which uses the Gears Geolocation API to locate restaurants near you. fonefood works without Gears too, you just have to enter a location.

With or without the location feature, fonefood is an interesting service in its own right. It's similar to OpenTable (review) but focused on Europe. FoneFone lets you search for restaurants by location and cuisine in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Holland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK. Search results include a detailed description, approximate price range, "click to call" phone number and a Google mobile map. You can check availability and make reservations too. No credit card is needed to make a reservation, just your name, email and phone number.

fonefood has an attractive design and usability is quite good on the devices it works on, but there are some problems with the current Beta version; outside the U.K., listings seem limited, nothing at all in Antwerp and no seafood restaurants in the Montparnasse district of Paris.  The Submit button on the search form also requires JavaScript to work making fonefood unusable with the majority of current mobile browsers.

Yellow Pages directory for Puerto Rico in English and Spanish. Categorized listings include address, map and phone numbers which unfortunately are not click to call Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Brabys is a searchable online business directory for South Africa. Listings include description, address and phone numbers which are NOT click to call! Source Media Update via Mobility.mobi

Search for businesses in South Africa.  Listings include description, click to call phone number, a form to send an email to the business and a link to the business'  non-mobile website.  Curiously, the listings do not include addresses! Source Oh! Mobile Directory

Local business and job searches, TV program guide and movie theater search for South Africa.  Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Find family events, child friendly restaurants and stores in major US metropolitan areas. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

I've been pretty disappointed with attempts to offer online event ticketing via the mobile web. The sites I've looked at have been marred by pretty serious usability issues.  A lot of the problems are related to payment. There really aren't any convenient ways to pay for purchases on the mobile web that are also widely adopted.  The mobile versions of PayPal and Google Checkout are easy to use but don't seem to have caught on with consumers or merchants.  On the full web most purchasing is done with credit or debit cards. For mobile, purchasing with plastic is too complicated to be very practical.  You need to enter the 16 digit card number, full billing address, the card's expiration date and 3 0r 4 digit security code. Way too much typing.  Barely acceptable with QWERTY,  it's an intolerable pain with a standard 12 key mobile keypad.  Mobile commerce desperately needs some sort of seamless  payment system built into the phone or network.

I just ran across the US mobile website of Ticketmaster, the 800 pound gorilla of the online event ticketing business,  at ticketmaster.mobi and was pleasantly surprised.  I'm no fan of Ticketmaster's exorbitant service charges which can add 35% to the cost of already expensive concert tickets.  On the other hand, I have to give Ticketmaster credit for solving most of the usability problems  of mobile online ticketing.

Ticketmaster's mobile site is uninspiring visually but a model of simple effective design.  Enter an artist or sports team or choose from a list of categories and you are prompted for a zipcode or city and state.  You are then shown a paginated listing of matching events in chronological order starting with today.  Clicking an event brings up a page with event and venue details and a click to call number to order tickets.  The whole process can be accomplished quickly with a minimum number of clicks.  Making a phone call may be low tech, but it's still the easiest way to complete a complex credit card transaction with a mobile phone.

The site's not prefect, however.  Prices are not always listed and do not include those nasty fees. Ticketmaster conveniently remembers the last location you used if you entered a city and state but curiously not if you used a zipcode.

Tickets.com, a major online ticket broker owned by MLB.com (Major League Baseball)  has launched a mobile version of their service at mobile.tickets.com. Tickets.com handles tickets for events around the world ranging from chamber music concerts to professional wrestling.

The mobile site uses a two-level hierarchical menu with top level categories of "Sports", "Concerts", "Arts" and "Family Events" each of which is divided into a dozen or more additional categories. There's also a search box.

Mobile ticketing is something I'd be likely to use when, for example, I'm out with friends and someone gets the idea that it might be fun to go to a comedy club. Unfortunately this site has a serious usability flaw, especially for mobile. There is no way to filter events by location or date.  In the mobile context, you generally want something today and nearby.  Clicking one of the subcategories returns a list of all events of that genre anywhere in the world for the next two weeks. I don't see that as being very useful.

I tried to find a way to make it work for finding a comedy performance here in San Francisco, preferably tonight. I launched mobile.tickets.com and clicked on Arts (comedy IS an art) and found nothing, so I did a search for "comedy" and see that it's under concerts.  I go there and get a huge scrolling list of about 60 comics and venues, just their names.  I click a few and see that they are performing somewhere thousands of miles away or a week from now, not helpful.  A search for "comedy San Francisco" returns hits for the main comedy section listing the 60 comics and for the the San Francisco Giants, 49ers and Symphony.  A search for "comedy and San Francisco" returns nothing, again not helpful.

More...

Find and purchase tickets for concerts, gigs, events in the UK.

I was surprised to see that this site has very low booking fees, no fee at all for most tickets, unlike US online ticket agencies which charge exorbitant fees of up to 30% of the ticket cost!

LiveFizz gives you the latest "buzz" on nightlife and the local live music scene in major US cities as well as last minute ticket info for sporting and concert events in your area.

Unfortunately, the search results seem very limited with only a handful of listings for this weekend in both LA and San Francisco. There are also some usability issues. After you enter your zip code (required field) the site asks you to chose your city from a list of all cities!  There doesn't seem to be a direct mobile URL and site's browser detection doesn't work very well forcing my N95 to the full site rather than the mobile one. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

MizPee is a new mobile site that aims to help you find a place to go when you gotta go. The premise is simple, enter an address and MizPee will find the nearest public restroom. Toilets are user rated from 1-5, represented not by stars but by toilet paper roll icons. Hours are listed along with whether there is handicapped access, a baby changing table or a charge for using the loo. Listings are currently limited to New York, Portland, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Chicago, Washington, Atlanta, Seattle, Oakland and San Jose.

The mobile site is easy to use when finding a toilet. Of course it would be nice if it were GPS enabled but that is impossible without carrier cooperation which seems to be unobtainable for a mobile web app like MizPee.

Same concept as MizPee but for the UK. It does what it says, you type a city or town name and get a list of public toilets. Listings include the hours of operation, cost and in many cases a detailed description of exactly where the loo is in a building or park.

For best results when searching the larger cities, specify the borough, district or town within the city like "Camden" or "Ealing" rather than "London".

Live user generated reviews and updates on crowd size, male to female ratio, average age, entertainment, and drink value.of bars and clubs in Chicago and the Chicago area. Receive text messages when your friends are bar hopping also. Free registration is required to use the site. Souce: Chicago Daily Herald via Mobility.mobi

Local search for India. This is a new service combining local search, localized event listings and flight schedules for Indian domestic airlines. Currently in Beta and with listings only for Chennai, FindNearYou is slated to go live with coverage of all of India in January.

I've added Earthcomber, a new mobile web local search site to the WapReview direcctory and Yeswap.com mobile portal under Search/Local. For a search site Earthcomber is unusual in that it's menu driven - there is no search box. After setting your location, which involves keying in an address or just a zip code, you use a hierarchical menu to drill down to the category you are interested in. So to find a sushi place, chose, Let's Eat on the home screen and on the next screen Sushi. I was able to quickly find the nearest ATM and Starbucks. Movie listings tell you the nearest theaters with times and prices. There are hundreds of categories so some of the menus are rather long. The menu driven approach encourages browsing and may appeal to those who lack the mobile keying skills of a teenager. Still, I'd like to also see a search box for the times when I know just what I'm looking for.

Earthcomber (web site) has actually been around for a while with Windows Mobile and Palm OS 5 native apps which use maps synchronized to the device from a PC and support external GPS units. I haven't tried those apps as I don't have a compatible device. There are also some community features available only with the Palm and WM versions, users can add points of interest, comment on places and create sharable lists of favorites.

The mobile web site is new, as is a Java ME app. I've downloaded the Java version to my PC and if I can get it working on my Boost Mobile i855, which requires sideloading, I'll post about it. Sadly, it doesn't look like the Java app is GPS enabled.

Earthcomber's (US only) database seems quite extensive and the site also offers driving directions and maps which are sized to fit your browsers width. Some listings contain descriptions and reviews from CitySearch. The site supports named locations and remembers you have used previously. It's not necessary to register to use the service. Registration, which requires only an email address, offers the ability to access your saved location across multiple devices.

Upcoming (m.upcoming.yahoo.com) Mobile edition of the popular online event calendar. Search for events by zip code or address. Register to save events to your personal calendar.

Gasbuddy.com (GasBuddyToGo.com) Find the lowest prices for gasoline by US zip code.

Search for restaurants in the US by zip code, cuisine and distance.

Local restaurant search for the U.S. Listings include addresses (sorted by distance) and click to call number. Source Oh! Mobile Directory

Shopping and Yellow Pages search for the U.K. Search by business name and/or category. Features zoomable maps and driving or walking directions. Yell also has a Java client, downloadable from mobile.yell.com/uk, which supports a relatively small number of phones.

MasterCard Nearby features an ATM locater for US locations and a list of current discount offers available on purchases made using MasterCard.