Author Archives: Dennis Bournique

Frog – Training Wheels for the Mobile Web

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Only about 15% of US mobile owners actively use the mobile web. The most common reasons given for not using it are that it’s too hard to use and that it’s hard to find mobile web sites worth visiting. Startup GetFrog.com, is trying to fix both the usability and discovery issues. Clearly aimed at users who are new to the mobile web, Frog is a personal mobile home page that features extremely simple navigation. The front page, which is practically … Continue reading →

Find Song Lyrics with Your Phone

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Song Lyrics (lyrics.twilightwap.com) is neat little mobile web application that lets you look up the lyrics to popular songs. It’s hosted on Twilightwap.com, a mobile portal that claims to be the world’s largest with 7 million daily pageviews! The Song Lyrics site has lyrics for 320,000 songs. 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 … Continue reading →

Carnival of the Mobilist’s #75

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This week the Carnival is at VisionMobile Forum hosted by Andreas Constantinou. I’m honored that my Local Seach Shootout piece was chosen Post of the Week. Thank you, Andreas. My own favorite post in this Carnival is by SkyDeck‘s Jason Devitt, titled the xPhone Concept. The xPhone works on any network, anywhere. Read why it’s needed and technically feasible but currently impossible because of politics. Great piece, read it and then sign the petition – I did. Carnival of the … Continue reading →

Northwest Airlines’ “Full” Mobile Site

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US air carrier Northwest Airlines has rolled out a new mobile site that includes virtually all the functionality of their desktop web site. The new site (mobile.nwa.com) supplements rather than replaces the airline’s existing and more limited mobile site at wireless.nwa.com. The new site really does include all the functionality of the desktop web site. You can book flights – including award travel, enroll in the frequent flier program, do online check-in and even browse Northwest’s Investor Relations page! Mobile.nwa.com … Continue reading →

Bank of America – Mobile Banking

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Here’s another sign of the fantastic growth of the mobile web. Even the big commercial banks are getting into the act. Bank of America, the largest US bank has launched a mobile site. Some small banks in this country have mobile sites but this is the first one I’ve seen from one of the big nationwide banks. Citibank’s mobile banking is a Java ME app, not a mobile web site. For mass adoption these things should be on the web … Continue reading →

Google Calendar for Mobile

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Google’s launched a mobile version of Google Calendar. The mobile url is google.com/calendar/m. It’s elegantly simple both in ease of use and functionality. The default (and only view) is of one month starting with today. Prev and Next links jump a month back or forward. Of course the mobile and desktop web versions of Google Calendar are always in sync. The Quick Add feature, which is also part of the desktop web version of Calendar, is very slick. Google recognizes … Continue reading →

Local Search Shootout

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This piece started as a review of Local.com‘s new mobile site (mobile.local.com). It’s got a simple, efficient user interface, understood addresses in every format I tried and it 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. I wanted to quantify what I was seeing and came up with some simple metrics for comparing local search engines. The things … Continue reading →

Carnival of the Mobilists #74

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The latest Carnival is up at Martin’s Mobile Technology Page. Martin Sauter has pulled together over a dozen great posts for this week’s edition. If you want to keep up with what’s happening in the mobile field, these Carnivals are a must read. Visit Carnival of the Mobilists #74 at Martin’s Mobile Technology Page.