Frog – Training Wheels for the Mobile Web

Posted on June 1, 2007 by Dennis Bournique

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

Posted on May 30, 2007 by Dennis Bournique

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 →

Northwest Airlines’ “Full” Mobile Site

Posted on May 28, 2007 by Dennis Bournique

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

Posted on May 27, 2007 by Dennis Bournique

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

Posted on May 26, 2007 by Dennis Bournique

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

Posted on May 25, 2007 by Dennis Bournique

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 →

AOL Mobile Web – Part 2

Posted on May 18, 2007 by Dennis Bournique

This piece concludes the AOL Mobile review I started last month. Part one covered AOL’s search features. To recap, I dissed the web search because it doesn’t search the mobile web. AOL’s local search has some nice features but doesn’t sort results by distance or rating. I also found it slow. Lately the speed seems much better, still not a rocket but at least competitive. Shopping search was promising with product specifications, reviews, photos and ratings. Prices were given but … Continue reading →

Covering the Mobile Web From 2004 to 2014

Category Archives: Site Reviews