Wap Review

For many years the magazine has been using the free subscription service Avantgo as its sole mobile outlet. Avantgo started over 10 years ago as a service for side-loading web content to PDAs - which were not connected devices back then. That original purpose is reflected today in the requirement to create an account to use the service and limits on the number of pages that can be included in an Avantgo channel. Rolling Stone's Avantgo Channel is still around and is one of a handful showcased at avantgo.com/operamini4 that are available without the need to login.

Avantgo channels are not indexed by Google and Yahoo's mobile web crawlers so discovery is poor. Linking to items in them doesn't seem to work either (the links keep changing). Links are the discovery engine of the web including the mobile web. So it should be good news the The Rolling Stone is embracing the open mobile web at last. However, the new mobile site is rather disappointing.

Rolling Stone Mobile is at m.rollingstone.com. It has a completely different design than the Avantgo channel. There are a lot more stories too but there is also a fatal flaw. Unlike the Avantgo channel, articles on the mobile site are truncated at about 650 characters. The truncation is very obvious as it occurs at random points in the middle of a sentence and is followed with [Go to the rollingstone.com website to read more ]. That "rollingstone.com" is not even a link so even though I'm using a "full-web" mobile browser I can't easily "Go to" rollingstone.com. I would have to type in the url and then search around for the article - useless. This is a step backwards from the Avantgo channel, where the same stories are not truncated. All links are removed from articles on m.rollingstone.com too, including ones that could be internal links to other stories on the mobile site. Links to videos are replaced by static un-clickable images with a picture of a Play button and the words "Play Video" superimposed which is almost funny.

The official mobile site of the 210 Eurovision Song Contest has video clips of all the final and semi-final performances.There's also background information on the contestants.

Eurovision, which is televised live throughout Europe is hugely popular with 600 million people viewing the finals which were won this year by Germany.

The QVGA H264 streaming clips played well on my Symbian and Android handsets.

Vibe, the hip hop and R&B magazine founded by Quincy Jones which folded in June, 2009, has be revived under new ownership as a web only publication. It features music, style and entertainment news, photos and gossip with an emphasis on the hip hop, R&B, rap, reggae and soul musical genres.  Mobile view by Mobify.

Nokia sponsored Royal Artist club, which recently celebrated its fifth anniversary is a free blog platform for bands.  Sort of like MySpace but older and not nearly as big with about 50 bands represented currently. Source Nokia Conversations

idiomag is a personalized online music magazine offering the latest in music news, reviews, music tracks and streaming videos.

While anyone can use idiomag and get generic content, if you register at idiomag.com you can set you musical preferences and import your profile from last.fm Pandora, iLike, Playlist.com, MyStrands, MOG or Songza.  idiomag will then be personalized with music recommendations, tracks and videos based on your musical likes.

The mobile edition includes news, reviews and videos. It uses browser detection and adaptation to deliver a "lite" version to basic phones and a richer presentation to advanced handsets like S60 3rd edition phones using Webkit and the iPhone. Opera Mini only gets the basic version, unfortunately.

I'm a little concerned with idiomag's page size. The lite version is a surprising large 28 KB, too large for many low-end phones to display completely. The culprit is poor image optimization. A single 50x50 thumbnail is over 18 KB; By removing the EXIF header and increasing the jpeg compression I was able to get the image size down to 1,191 Bytes.  Can you see the difference? I can't - the optimized image is on the right.

Jambands.fm is aimed at live music collectors, traders, and enthusiasts. It's a registration required music bittorrent tracker for live recordings of artists who allow their music to be traded. The lively Jambands blog featuring concert and recording reviews is available as a mobile view created with Mobify.me

phling! (phling.com, phling.mobi) is a service that gives you access to the  music, podcasts, and pictures stored on your PC and allows you to share them with up to six friends. It's a lot like  a mobile-only, audio and images-only version of Orb.

To use phling! you need to download an application to your PC (Windows XP only, Vista "coming soon", Windows Media Player 10 or later required).  On the mobile side you can use the phling! mobile website or a downloadable player application which is available for many devices including Symbian S60 and many recent Sony Ericsson and Nokia S40 phones.

I tried the mobile web version of phling! and found it generally worked well.  By default it lets you view the the contents of the My Music and My Pictures folders on your PC, although you can change which folders are available using the the PC app.  Click the name of a song to stream it though your phone's media player.  There is also a "Shuffle Play All"  option.  phling! can handle MP3, DRM-free M4A (iTunes/Quicktime) and WMA (Windows Media with or without DRM) audio and .jpg images.

The phling! PC app runs as a background service on your PC.  With the basic setup you can only access your music if your PC is powered up, connected to the internet and not "sleeping".  phling! recently launched a new feature called MusicStash that lets you store up to to 4GB in the cloud with phling!. The music in your MusicStash can be played even when your PC is off.

phling! has a "Free Music" section where you can listen to tracks uploaded by musician's participating in phling!'s Mobile Music Promotion  program.  Artists  also get personal page where their fans can sign up to recieve promotional messages such as announcements of new releases or concerts from the band or artist.

So between Orb and phling! which should you use?  For video it's no contest as phling! doesn't do video. If your PC is running Vista it's also Orb for you as phling! doesn't support it yet.  But if you are still running XP, I think phling! has the edge for music. Orb has nothing comparable to MusicStash, your PC must always be on to use Orb on your phone. I also found the phling! mobile web site much more responsive and slightly easier to navigate than Orb's.  I didn't try the phling! app but theoretically at least it should provide an even better user experience.

Like Orb, phling! is free.  However, if you don't have an unlimited data plan, streaming audio to your phone can get VERY expensive.

Guide to Jazz clubs and concerts in Saint Louis Missouri. Streaming Jazz videos.  Source: Mobility.mobi

Mobile edition of AllAboutJazz.com features news, album and live performance reviews, player profiles and an international calendar of live gigs. The image heavy site is over 185 KB and may be too big to load on some mainstream phones.  Source Oh! Mobile Directory

Music News, Photos, Tickets, Videos, Forum, Reviews, Features, Festivals, Festival Guide and Festival line ups, Top 40 Bands, Venue Search, Band, Classifieds (band members wanted, etc.) Image heavy pages (100+ KB/page) may be an issue with basic phones and slow networks.

17-May-2009: Site is down (Error 500)

22-Nov-2009: Site is up again but with broken images.

News from the Hip-Hop music industry

Slick new mobile version of AllHipHop.com the leading web destination for HipHop music fans.  The mobile site has news, rumors, interviews, editorials and feature articles covering the world of hiphop.  There are videos too but they are embedded Flash content and do not work on any mobile phone I've tried.

This site is a nightclub portal that lists exclusive events in major US cities and lets you submit your name and your friends names to the guest list and reserve VIP tables. The "Touch Web" site requires JavaScript.

Singer/songwriter Tori Sparks' mobile site includes her blog, tour schedule, photo gallery,  videos, several free mp3 downloads and links to her albums on Amazon Mobile. Mobile site design is by When I'm Mobile.

The official site of the South by Southwest Music, Film and Interactive Festivals which start Mar. 13th this year. View schedules and download your choice of hundreds of mp3's and movie trailer videos in 3gp, mp4 and wmv mobile formats. You can also search for band appearances and movie screenings by SMS.

My taste in music doesn't run to HipHop, but if yours does you'll enjoy this site which features several dozen full length music videos from the likes of Little Wayne, Birdman, Soulja Boy, Sean Kingston and Nelly in streaming 176x144 H.263 format.

Searchable lyrics database featuring 450,000+ lyrics to songs by 15,000 artists. In addition to lyrics the site also has artist photos and news. The mobile view is by Mobify.

Song lyrics search site has simple straight forward user interface and an extensive database of popular song lyrics including current hits. Source: Tappity

When I first heard about this I thought that the way a lyrics search site should work is that you enter a snippet of lyrics and the site does a full-text search to find all songs containing that phrase.

I had this blues refrain, "feel like a ballgame on a rainy day" running through my head and wanted to find out who the artist was and get the full lyrics.

Unfortunately, Song Lyrics doesn't work that way, you have to enter the song title or artist to search for lyrics. Given that limitation the site works fairly well. You enter a full or partial song title or artist name, the site returns a list of matching titles and lets you read the full text of your chosen song's lyrics right on your phone.

Search capabilities are limited and a little buggy. But once you figure out the limitations it's a fun and useful site. Song Lyrics searches for titles or artists that contain any of the words in your search phase. Putting a phase in quotes doesn't change this. Searching artists for "Grateful Dead" returns all artists with either "Grateful" or "Dead" in their names. The Grateful Dead themselves appear 20th in the results.

Searching for titles has an additional wrinkle. Results that match your query appear first, which is good . But after the matching results, Song Lyrics keeps listing song titles that have nothing to do with your search. The irrelevant results seem to be the same ones every time - no matter what you search for. Usability isn't hurt much as long as you know to ignore any results not containing your keywords.

Part of the Ticketmaster empire, Live Daily is a Pop Music news site. In addition to news, the site also lists upcoming concert dates and has music CD reviews.

17-May-2009 - Livedaily seems to have shut down their mobile site, this Mowser version of the LiveDaily RSS feed seems to be the best alternative.

Australians can now search concert and club dates on the mobile web with Moshtix which is part of Rupert Murdoch's News Ltd. empire. Users who have registered a credit card with Moshtix on the web can purchase tickets on the mobile site.

Once you have found your station, bookmark the page. Yes Mobile will remember your station and city but only if your provider sends a unique subscriber ID in the html headers. Not all carriers do and neither do Opera Mini's servers. I don't know why Yes doesn't use a cookie. It's true that in the early days of WAP cookies weren't well supported but the opposite is true today. Anyway, at least Yes creates a book-markable url that will always take you back to a specific station's page.

The actual page where the song is listed is clean and simple with the artist, song title and album (if any) at the top on the page, above the "fold" on most phones. Too bad Yes doesn't include a "Refresh" button or link. On some browsers the refresh function is buried. Like on the Openwave V. 7 browser on my Motorola i855 - to refresh I have to hold down the menu button for a few seconds to bring up the browser menu then choose "Advanced" and then "Refresh". Come on Openwave, you guys used to make the best mobile browsers with the greatest usability but the refresh thing on V7 is so screwed up. On this browser a short press of the menu key does nothing, so why do we have to press and hold the menu key to get a menu? And since when is refreshing the page an advanced feature - Opera Mini, which I'm liking more and more, makes refresh a hotkey function.

Yes has commercial tie ins with Amazon and iTunes. If you hear a song you like you can order the CD from Amazon and get a dollar off by doing it from the Yes mobile site. The iTunes integration is only available from the web not the mobile site, presumably because iTunes doesn't support mobile downloads.

Yes claims to cover 2500 stations which sounds like a lot until you consider that there are over 12,000 AM and FM stations in the country. Still, Yes covers most of the stations I listen too regularly so I like it. Set up a few bookmarks to your favorite stations and then when you think "that singer's voice sounds familiar but who is it?", just grab your mobile and get the answer with a few clicks. Yes.com serves both WAP1 and WAP2 versions of the site from the same url using browser detection to (hopefully) always serve the optimal version to your phone. Content is the same for both WAP flavors but the WAP2 pages are more attractive thanks to the use of color.

Nabbit ( m.nabbit.co) is a new service that reminds me of mobile.yes.com. Both sites tell you what's currently playing on almost any U.S.  radio station.  The key difference is that Nabbit has more features but requires free registration.

Registration lets Nabbit remember your location and favorite stations. The downside is that you can't just start using it right a way on your phone, you need to visit the Nabbit PC site to create an account and specify your preferred stations, which Nabbit calls "Presets".  Well actually you can register for Nabbit on the mobile site but you can't select any presets and without presets the mobile web version of Nabbit is useless.

Once your get set up, Nabbit is very easy to use with a dead simple one page UI which is just a list of your presets. Every time you launch Yes.com you have to search for your location and then choose the station from a long list of all the stations in the area.

Nabbit also lets you "Nabb" your favorite songs to create an online playlist.  The playlist is only available on the full web site.  From the online list you can search for the songs's video on YouTube; view the lyrics from lyricsWiki.com;  buy ringtones from MTV; get full track downloads from iTunes, Amazon, Walmart.com or Napster; or purchase concert tickets  from Ticketmaster or Ticketsnow.  Yes doesn't have a playlist , but it does let you buy the current track or album  on Amazon directly from the mobile site.

You can also Nabb a song by sending an SMS with the station's frequency to Nabbit.  But the ultimate way to Nabb is with a voice call using Nabbit's integration with Jott's voice recognition service.

So between Nabbit and Yes, which do I prefer? Although I generally dislike mobile web apps that require a PC to setup, I do find Nabbit  a little easier to use. So from now on Nabbit is my preferred  "What's that song" service.  But I'd really like to see Nabbit make their mobile web app self contained by adding the ability to add and edit presets on the mobile site,

A rather basic nightclub directory.  Search for US nightclubs by zipcode or city. Listing contain the club name, click to call phone number and a link to a non-mobile Yahoo map.  The maps pages are huge and require Javascript so they don't work on many phones.  The site also has drink recipes and nightlife videos. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Nov-2009: Site is down with a 500 error.