WapReview

Owned by Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner, US Magazine is a weekly celebrity news and gossip print publication. The magazine's mobile site is focused on photo coverage of Entertainment and media stars  Key features are the "Fashion Police" and "Hot Pics" photo sections.  There's also a bit of celeb news and gossip. Source: Modny73

---

Screenshots

One of AOL's few recent success, TMZ is the second most popular celebrity news and gossip blog on the web (after PerezHilton.com) according to Alexa. As reported by MocoNews, TMZ now has a mobile edition. I'm not exactly a big celebrity follower but was I impressed by TMZ mobile.

The site features the text and images of the last 20 items 0n TMZ's PC site in a mobile format that should work on almost any phone. Images are sized to fit the widths of various devices based on browser detection and there are streaming or downloadable videos, at least for phones that TMZ Mobile recognizes as being video capable. The video detection isn't perfect though, TMZ didn't make any video's available to Motorola's "Multimedia Powerhouse" the Z8, which is very definitely video capable. All the videos seem to be in 176x144px format even on phones like the N95 that can handle QVGA video.

Video detection issues aside, TMZ Mobile is a well designed and highly usable site. Although TMZ is owned by AOL parent Time Warner and the site carries an AOL logo, the mobile site is actually the work of Boston based Quattro Wireless. I took a look at Quattro CTO Eswar Priyadarshan's blog and Quattro's approach is quite interesting. If I understand it correctly they produce mobile sites from web content using a combination of transcoding, mobile web "widgets" for things like login screens and video that don't transcode well and a rules engine that allows the mobile designer to pick, choose and rearrange bits and pieces of the transcoded content. It seems to be working for TMZ and other clients Quattro has built mobile sites for including wap.stupidVideos.com, NBA.mobi, wap.NFL.com, The Palm Beach Post and mobile.Boston.com

Celebrity gossip blog Perezhilton.com dubs itself "Hollywood's Most Hated Web Site". The site is loaded with photos and descriptions of celebrities acting dumb and looking bad. Perez' catty remarks and the crude captions he adds to most of the photos set the site's tone. The guy just loves to dig up and dish dirt on the rich and famous and it seems to have worked out very well for him. At least it has if legal fees defending the frequently sued site haven't eaten up all the profits.

The site consistently appears in lists of top blogs and celebrity sites and claims some amazing (and often disputed) traffic numbers. Regardless of the true numbers, there is no doubt that PerezHilton.com is extremely popular.

Until recently Perez' fans who wanted to view his uniquely outspoken style on the go had needed a rather powerful smartphone and a 3G connection to handle the site's big, image laden pages. No more, today Perezhilton Mobile launched at m.perezhilton.com.

The mobile site is by Crisp Wireless and uses a simple but usable design. The front page showcases the five latest Perezhilton posts with excerpts, thumbnail images and links each full post. Next and Previous links let you go back and forward through the archives more or less indefinitely. If you are looking for something specific there is a search box. The site works well and ably carries Perez' trademark hot pink styling to mobile.

Having or giving yourself a name resembling that of a celebrity seems to be the key to success for gossip bloggers. First there was Perez Hilton, then came Necole Bitchie who focuses on the music industry with an emphasis on black artists.

Of course success requires much more than a memorable name and Ms. Bitchie clearly works hard at her trade, updating the site frequently throughout the day. And now thanks to a new mobile view created with Mobify you can easily follow NecoleBitchie.com on your phone.

The mobile edition of celebrity gossip blog JustJared.com, the site features the latest photos, news and gossip in pop culture, tv, movies and entertainment.  The site's namesake, Jared Eng, is known as the "nice guy" of gossip bloggers and his kinder gentler approach has made him the number two celebrity blogger after the mean spirited Perez Hilton. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Update: 17-May-2010: Just Jared's mobile URL (m.justjared.com) is redirecting to the desktop site! Use Gossip Bucket's mobilized JustJared RSS feed instead.

The "iPhone" edition of Yahoo's celebrity gossip site features celebrity news, gossip, photos and videos. The site uses but does not require JavaScript and has an average page size of 80 KB. It works well with most smartphones, Opera Mini and the more capable feature phone browsers. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

The mobile edition of Nick Denton's celebrity, media and NYC gossip blog includes all items with read-only comments.

"The Young, Black and Fabulous", is a leading black celebrity fashion and gossip site with over 13 million monthly visitors. The site's mobile view, created with Mobify, contains all the articles, items, photos and interviews from the desktop site.

Spin Magazine's mobile site. Spin is an entertainment news and gossip monthly. The image rich mobile site showcases selected articles from current and past issues. Mobile view by Mobify.

Billing itself as "The Cutting Edge about Celebs, Stars & Artists", Canada's biggest celebrity site offers celebrity news, photos, games, gossip, and drama about and from your favorite stars and personalities.

 

Another new site from MobileInfocenter, publisher of MobilityBeat, Tech News Tube and Mac Hash. Like the other MobileInfoCenter sites (review), Gossip Bucket is a topic-specific feed agregregor. The topic is celebrity gossip and the content is pulled from sites like Perez Hilton, Gawker, E! Online, Defamer, People, TMZ and several dozen more. The one page site carries a constantly updated list of headlines, clicking a headline lets you view either the original or a transcoded copy.

News and celebrity gossip from Hollywood and the pop music world.  There are literally thousands of stories on News Showbiz. The "one size fits all" site uses small image and page sizes. The site is usable on low end phones but users of more advanced devices may find the aggressive pagination annoying. The search link doesn't work. For a site with so much content a working search would be really useful.