Author Archives: Dennis Bournique

Opera Mini’s Hidden Power User Menu

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This is another in Wap Review’s ongoing series of tips on getting the most out Opera Mini, the full-web mobile browser that works on most phones. Opera mini is quite configurable. Using the build in “Settings” menu (top image) you can: Set the default font size. Change image quality or turn off images entirely to manage memory and bandwidth use. Toggle fit-to-width “mobile view”. Switch the default view  between portrait and  landscape. Disable fancy sliding screen transitions which can be … Continue reading →

Compare Book Prices With Your Phone

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Here’s a new mobile site that helps you find the lowest price for any book. It’s a mobile friendly version of bestbookbuys.com. Visit m.bestbookbuys.com and enter the 10 or 13 digit ISBN code found on the back cover of most books and the site will return a list of retailers and prices. BestBookBuys gets several things right that other mobile price comparison sites seem to stumble with. Prices are prominently displayed in the initial results listing, not buried several clicks … Continue reading →

Carnival of the Mobilists 156

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Photo: Somerset : Voodoo : Carnival by Wurz Some Rights Reserved It’s Carnival Time! Welcome to the 156th edition of the Carnival of the Mobilists. But first, a special offer for Carnival readers.  Last month I wrote about delivr, a new way to share and promote many types of web content to both PCs and mobiles.  It’s a powerful combination of social bookmarking, micro-blogging, a short URL service and 2D barcodes and its free.  delivr registration is  normally by invitation only (although … Continue reading →

CES Impressions – Palm, Nokia, Skype

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I’m not actually AT CES but I’ve been following it on the blogosphere.  The big mobile announcement is of course the Palm Pre.  It’s the first device running the  long awaited (and twice delayed) Linux based, next generation Palm platform, which is called WebOS rather than Nova.  Very iPhonesque in appearance,  but with a slide out QWERY keyboard, the Pre features a multi-touch UI.  The few people who’ve been allowed to play with it have  found the user experience be … Continue reading →

Here and Now, Nokia’s New Mobile Portal

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Nokia launched a new mobile site yesterday called “Here and Now“. It’s a mobile portal emphasizing music news and movie reviews from Rolling Stone and also featuring news from Reuters,  gossip from US Weekly, game and  application downloads, videos and a small directory of 3rd party mobile websites.  Nokia claims Here and Now is targeted at 18 to 35 year olds.  That’s OK by me if it keeps the marketing pros at Nokia employed but I really don’t see how  … Continue reading →

TicketMaster’s Low Tech Solution to the Mobile Payment Problem

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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 … Continue reading →

The Symbian Blog Goes Mobile With A New WordPress Plugin

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I recently found Vaibhav Sharma’s site, The Symbian Blog.  The name is a little misleading as focus of the site seems to be mainly Nokia and S60  rather than Symbian as a whole.  There’s very little about UIQ and MOAP. But I suppose that’s OK as those platforms are likely to soon become history and Symbian will become  a synonym for S60. The site is updated daily and features product announcements, hardware and software reviews and tips for getting the … Continue reading →

Metro – User Generated Video Revenue Sharing

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Metro a free print newspaper distributed on public transit systems in the UK.  In the nine years since its launch, Metro has become the fourth largest paper in the country with over a million daily readers.  Metro is also on the web at metro.co.uk and on the mobile web at metro.mobi. The most interesting thing about Metro is its video section, MEviews. The video content costs 50p a clip to download and it’s all user generated. While this sounds like … Continue reading →