The Google Mobile site has been upgraded. Specifically the Web search for WAP2 phones. This lets you do a search of the web for regular desktop websites (there is also a Mobile Web search for finding WAP sites – which hasn’t been updated and works very well). The Web search function has been around for a while and has always allowed you to browse the sites it finds. What’s changed is that before the version of the web site sent … Continue reading
I’ve made an addition to the Reviews section of this site. It’s a fairly new online forum for cellular enthusiasts, GeckoBeach. This is the eleventh mobile cell phone forum listed on the/Home/Technology/Mobile Phones/Forums page. GeckoBeach is a Canadian based site and has an emphasis on Canadian providers. There is plenty of interest to non-Canadians on the site including phone reviews and experiences of travelers roaming or using local pre-paid sims around the world. The site is quite active, although nowhere … Continue reading
FAST MSearch is a WAP search engine that is not usually available on a public url. FAST prefers to sell their search technology to mobile carriers (I’m not sure which carriers). It is a shame that FAST is not more widely available as it is THE best WAP search engine I have seen. It seems to have a database of WAP sites that is more complete than even Google’s and doesn’t return the duplicate hits that plague Google’s mobile search. … Continue reading
The International Herald Tribune is a 117-year old Paris based English language daily newspaper. Owned by The New York Times, the paper is targeted at expatriates and travelers. The IHT has both WAP1 and WAP2 mobile sites. Both contain the full text of dozens of articles from the paper’s web site. The WAP2 version has about twice as may stories as the WAP1 version and also has small photos at the top of most stories. While the sites aren’t flashy, … Continue reading
Update: It looks like Vodafone has blocked access to this site for non-customers. Just in time for Sunday’s Brazilian Grand Prix, I’ve discovered a great Formula One auto racing site, PLANET-F1. It’s an ‘exclusive’ on the Vodafone network, but fortunately it’s a public url so anyone can use it. Content is provided by a major F1 web site, PLANET-F1.com and for the WAP2 edition consists of the full text of the ten most recent stories from the News section of … Continue reading
The BBC generally does an outstanding job with their mobile web sites and the BBC’s F1 racing site WAP pages are no exception. With several original stories every day and live lap by lap coverage of both qualifying and races, the BBC site makes an excellent companion to Planet-F1 (see previous entry). The BBC doesn’t have a WAP2 (xhtml) edition yet, but they do have both WAP1 and PDA versions. The PDA version works well on just about any WAP2 … Continue reading
I saw on MobileRead Networks (a great site BTW where I often find the earliest reports of new mobile content) that Yahoo has launched a beta Mobile Shopping site. You can read what Yahoo has to say about it here. I tried the url Yahoo gave, http://shopping.yahoo.com and got 404 (Not Found) on my phones. I then tried on the Openwave, Netfront and Sony-Ericsson WAP emulators, which all support WAP2 which is required according to Yahoo. Only the Netfront emulator … Continue reading
I like the idea of being able to find and book hotels with the browser on my phone. It should be much easier than making endless rounds of phone calls to hotels that turn out to have no rooms available and without the language barrier in places where you don’t speak the language well. The major hotel chains are starting to get mobile too – so today I’m looking at a couple of new hotel WAP sites. A start is … Continue reading