Real time transit information is something that is a natural for the mobile web. It’s huge in Japan where it’s often combined with QR Codes for almost instant access. Check out the graphic below from Forrester Research via ZD Net’s Russell Shaw to see how it works. Here in the West, using 2D codes for this purpose is in it’s infancy. There’s a pilot project in Paris but widespread adoption seems years away. The big thing holding back the use … Continue reading
Mobile social bookmarking site Tappity (review), seems to be getting pretty popular – at least its users are adding new sites at a rapid clip. I still use del.icio.us for bookmaking with an Opera Mini bookmarklet. I’d like to switch to Tappity but there’s still no way to add a bookmark from Tappity’s mobile site and no way to get to the PC edition from a mobile browser – the site always redirects mobiles, even those using Opera Mini, to … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
This weeks Carnival of the Mobilists is at Michael Mace’s Mobile Opportunity and it’s a great one. Michael has highlighted Daniel Taylor’s piece about the recent Blackberry service outage as post of the week. Michael liked it so much he made it part of the title of his Carnival post. I agree that it is the best post of the week but hardly the only great one. I especially liked Jason Devitt’s explanation of why the prepaid MVNO business model … Continue reading
Found on the Mobile Web lists sites recently added to the yeswap.com mobile portal and WapReview.com directory as well as sites that have received recent significant upgrades. Technology/Mobile/Downloads Free Ringtones (wap.free-ringtones.ie) This site claims to be the largest free ringtone site. I don’t know if that’s true but it does have 250,000 free ringtone downloads. No personal information or phone number is required to download from the mobile site or the web site, free-ringtones.ie (for sideloading). Tones are in mp3 … Continue reading
On my vacation in Spain last week I used a prepaid SIM from a new operator called Yoigo to keep up with the mobile web. Yoigo is a 3G operator with attractive rates for both voice and data. Voice calls are € 0.12/minute within Spain to both landline and mobile numbers and international calls are € 0.30/minute to anywhere except Cuba, Somalia and North Korea. Best of all data, both WAP and web, is € 0.0012/KB and data charges are … Continue reading
Mowser.com is Russell Beattie’s latest mobile site. It combines search, a transcoder and a mobile site directory with over 500 links, a directory of over 2000 feeds, chat room, forum and Russ’ new blog. It’s an impressive mobile portal. In brief testing the transcoder worked well. The search results are high quality, I tried to figure out which major search engine Mowser is using by trying the same queries in Mowser, Google, Yahoo and MSN Live. It looks like it’s … Continue reading