Category Archives: Portals

KeyToss Mobile Portal – Better than iGoogle?

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KeyToss (m.keytoss.com) describes itself as a “Powerful, personalizable portal for smartphones“.  I think that’s a pretty good description.  The default KeyToss home page shows a search box offering a choice of search engines, current weather forecast, recent sports scores, stock quotes, a section of news headlines and about 20 well chosen links to frequently used information like movie show times and flight status. KeyToss is highly customizable.  without even registering, users can change their location and favorite teams, choose which … Continue reading →

The New Windows Live Mobile Portal

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Sometimes it’s hard to understand Microsoft’s Web and Mobile Web branding. There’s MSN and there’s Windows Live and I never know which one to use.  I think back in 2005 when Live was launched it was supposed to eventually replace MSN.  It was a full portal; Live Search, Live Spaces, Live HotMail, Live Messenger and a Live homepage with News and Sports. But Live as a replacement for MSN never really took off and it seems to be have been … Continue reading →

Mippin

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One of the presenters at last week’s Mobile 2.0 Event was Mippin. It’s hard to tell much about a service from a five minute presentation and Mippin’s left me pretty unclear on what it actually was. I’ve had time to play with Mippin so here’s my take. Mippin is a mobile portal built from RSS feeds. In itself that’s not new, Feed2Mobile. Mowser, FeedM8 and Winksite all offer directories of mobile formated feeds. They all have their own mix of … Continue reading →

FeedM8 – Create Instant Mobile Web Sites From Feeds

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I got an email from Ivan at Wattpad.com announcing his new mobile service, FeedM8. What it does is create a mobile site from an RSS feed. There are other services that do this. But the only ones I can recommend are Mowser (review), Winksite (review) and now FeedM8. I like these three because they are the only ones of the dozen or so I’ve tried that split long posts into mobile sized chunks and deliver clean and valid markup that … Continue reading →

TapTap, Mobilised and :bMarks – Mobile Digg Contenders?

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Social Bookmarking with popularity rating – what Digg does – but for mobile web sites is what TapTap, Mobilised and :bMarks are about. There’s a tremendous of interest in the mobile web right now with new mobile sites appearing daily. But discovery is a problem both for mobile users and publishers. There’s a need for a place were users can recommend sites and let the crowd vote to determine which ones are most worthy. TapTap (m.taptap.net/) is from AdMob. I … Continue reading →

MSN Mobile Redesign

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Microsoft has completely revised their mobile portal. The changes have been in public beta for the last four months and have gone through quite a bit of tweaking during that time. The final result is impressive. Most mobile portal’s start pages are a bunch of links and a search box. Microsoft is putting real content right on the home page. Users see News, Sports and Entertainment headlines with small 50px wide images plus a three day local weather forecast on … Continue reading →

Tribes – Mobile Web Channel Surfing

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I just discovered Alatto‘s Tribes (gb.tribes.cc/globalen), although it’s been around since at least June, 2005. It’s a bit like a mobile Slashdot but with a wrinkle. Actually, I almost gave up on Tribes when the first thing I saw upon entering the site was a confusing message warning that the site contains “explict” content and that I must be over 18 to view this content and did I agree with the “above conditions“. My first though was “mobile porn site“. … Continue reading →

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 →