Category Archives: Site Reviews

Is AOL’s New All In One Mobile Search an Improvement?

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AOL has released a new version of AOL Mobile Search (wap.aol.com/portal/searchindex.do). All the major search engines have revamped their mobile search pages in the last 11 months. They all basically did the same thing too. Instead of separate searches for news, local, images, the web, etc., the new fashion in mobile search design is a single search box which delivers results from several of these categories in a single results page. Microsoft did it first with a revamped Live Search … Continue reading →

HooQs – Mobile Video Channels

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HooQs (m.hooqs.com) is another new mobile video and music site. This is a crowded field and HooQs is trying to distinguish itself with the concept of channels. A channel is a collection of audio and video content with a common theme like a band, new movie release, “how to do it instructions”, UFOs or a major news story. There are many predefined channels and Hooqs can create a custom channel for you based on your interests. Or you can build … Continue reading →

NewsGator Mobile – So Close, Yet So Far

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I read RSS feeds on my phone and on the web – a lot. I’ve never been 100% happy with any of the mobile web news readers. I’ve been been using Bloglines forever even though it has three “features” that I find really annoying. The worst is that Bloglines Mobile’s style sheet changes all links to black, the same as plain text. Opera Mini doesn’t underline links so I miss following a lot of interesting links because I never see … Continue reading →

Clusty – Mobile Meta Search

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Clusty is a meta search engine meaning that it submits your query to multiple search engines like Google, MS Live, Yahoo, etc. and returns the top hits from all the engines. There are lots of meta search engines including Dogpile, Hotbot and MetaCrawler. Clusty claims their meta search is better because it groups similar results into Clusters. But what makes Clusty interesting to me is that it has mobile edition. Clusty doesn’t search the mobile web which is unfortunate as … Continue reading →

Marriott’s Mobile Site Gets Better

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Marriott International has updated their mobile site (marriott.com/wireless/default.mi) . When I last covered Mariott’s mobile site in September, 2005 I gave it a rather bad review. The redesigned site is much more usable. The biggest problems with the old site were the excessive scrolling and huge number of clicks required to do a simple search and also that results were not listed by distance from the airport or city center entered. The redesigned site has much better navigation and the … Continue reading →

Mobile Sites For Pilots

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A reader tipped me about a couple of good mobile web sites of interest to pilots and air travelers. Thanks, Mike. AeroPlanner is a flight planning tool for pilots. Registration at aeroplanner.com is required before you can use the mobile site. There are various levels of membership from free to $250/year. Even the free membership includes full access to the mobile site which has charts, flight plan viewing, detailed aviation weather reports, aviation calculators and a comprehensive directory of airports … Continue reading →

ELLE and ELLE girl on the Mobile Web

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I found a couple of nicely done mobile sites from ELLE and ELLE girl magazines on the Boost Mobile portal. They are on public URLs so they are accessible from phones on any carrier. ELLE‘s (boost.elle.com/) a leading women’s fashion and entertainment magazine. The ELLE mobile site features book reviews, short articles on fashion trends, shopping, health and beauty along with entertainer profiles and interviews. There are also many photos on the site but only one per page so as … Continue reading →

MyFox

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MyFox (wap.myfoxlocal.com) offers mobile news sites for 24 Fox TV network local affiliates. I’m a little disappointed by these sites. They are text-only and many of the news stories are just headline teasers. Here’s an example from the Los Angeles site, this is the whole “story”. “Music Producer Helping Foster Kids Through Music They’re L.A.’s toughest cases… Foster care kids since birth. Tony McEwing report on how a veteran music producer and former foster kid is stepping up to give … Continue reading →