WapReview

Google's Places mobile web based local search has added a number of features that make it my favorite local mobile search engine. Here's are some of them:

• Location enabled - Google local on Android and the iPhone have been location aware for a while, now location support has been sort of extended to all platforms. How is that possible given that only Android, the iPhone, BlackBerries and Windows Mobile devices with Gears installed support sharing your location with browser based services? Google's not saying but it seems to be tied to your Google account. I've granted Google permission to use my location on my Android phone. When I log into Google Places in the Nokia browser or Opera Mini on my N95, my Android phone's location is displayed and used as the default starting point for local searches on the N95. If I had Google Latitude running on the N95, I wonder if Google would use my L attitude location? You can also manually enter your location.

• Category Browse - Below the search box, Google Places now displays a series of categories; Restaurants, Shopping, ATMs, Banks etc.. Click a category to see relevant nearby business.

• Starred Places. You can click a star icon in desktop Google Maps results to tag a business or address as a favorite. Your Starred Places show up as your first category on the mobile local site for easy access.

Other features of Google Places for mobile that are retained from previous versions include zoomable maps, driving directions, user reviews and links to business' web sites.

I said at the start that the new features could make Google my new preferred local search site. It's great to not have to type in your location, the categories are handy and save even more typing and the Stared Places provide an easy way to share locations between desktop maps and local.

Unfortunately, in spite of these great features I found the new Google Places site less useful than it could be. The biggest problem is that results can't be sorted by distance. This makes the them far less usable then they could be. For example the Japanese Restaurants category's top result was a place four miles away, with an excellent one only a mile away buried on the third page. With Google able to locate your phone precisely it would make sense to have an option to see the closest businesses first in results.

I also had a strange problem with a specific search for a car dealer, "Mini of San Francisco", which is San Francisco's only Mini dealer. A explicit search using the name of the business failed to return any results! I had to use Google Web search to find the address and retype it into Places! If a business' site is indexed by Web search shouldn't it also appear in local?

In comparison, both Bing and Local.com's mobile search results are sorted by distance and both found the Mini dealer with no problems.

A local seach engine with a simple, efficient user interface. It understood addresses in every format I tried and 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. Other features include maps, driving directions and "click to call" phone number links. See Local Search Shootout, my post comparing local search sites where Local.com got top honors.

Bing (formerly Live Search) has a very good implementation of Local Search which remembers your most recent entries and has the clearest maps I've seen on the mobile web. Maps scale to fit your phone's screen unlike Google and Yahoo's small fixed sized maps. Results are sorted by closest first. In my Local Search Shootout, which compared local search engines on the basis on the quantity and relevance of results and the efficiency of their UI's, Live ranked second, a scant one point behind the winner, Local.com.

Yahoo's Local search is location aware. Enter a type of business name or type of business and  results sorted by rating or distance. There's an option to enter an addreess for devices without geolocation support.

Top level results include star rating, address, distance, cross streets and a click to call number. Drill down into individual listings to see hours of operation, a map, user reviews and driving directions.

Local search from Nokia Maps. Results include address, a small map and click to call phone numbers

Geo-location enabled mashup that lets you see nearby places and get info about them from Facebook, Google and the Russian search engine Yandex. Works with browsers that support HTML5 geo-location including the iPhone, Android, Samsung Bada or Opera 10.1+

A new geolocation enabled mobile mashup from Dmitry Namiot that creates a user forums for discussing local points of interest. City Forums uses you phone's location to get a list of places from Foursquare.  Tapping a place name opens a Discus forum where you can read and leave comments on the place. Works with mobile browsers with geolocation support (iPhone, Android, Samsung bada, Opera Mobile 10.1, etc.)

Mobile Discussions is a mobile web app for getting local answers to local questions.  It uses the browser geo-location API to connect users with local online forums. Built with Google Fusion tables for data, Disqus  for forums

Mobile edition of Yalwa, a local business search engine for all major cities in the United States. Not many listings yet but adding your business to Yalwa is free, which should help Yalwa grow.

The site has some easily fixed usability issues including phone numbers that aren't click to call and a default results sort by date added to the directory rather than alphabetically.

A neat Google maps mashup the uses the Geolocation JavaScript API to create a map showing nearby parking lots. Green and red icons indicate free and paid lots, respectively  Although the developer calls it an "iPhone WebApp" webapp it also works well with the Android browser, Samsung's Dolfin and Opera Mobile 10.1! Source: PC World

This is a handy mobile webapp for finding the best prices for parking nearby. It lets you search for the cheapest and and nearest parking garages and lots in 30 cities and at 79 airports.. According to the publisher the app saves users an average of $16 everytime they park.

You can either choose an airport from a list or select a city and either enter an address or pick a neighborhood. You tell BestParking your arrival time and how long you intend to park and it returns a list of open spots and prices at nearby parking lots and garages. Results are displayed on a map and sorted by distance with the best prices highlighted. You can also sort results by price. Clicking a result in the list brings up a page with hours, click to call number and a detailed map.

BestParking requires JavaScript. It works with Opera Mini and smartphone browsers but not with most basic feature phone browsers.

Online directory of over 5,000 US self storage facilities. Search by city, address or zip. Listings include maps, photos, prices, hours. Book a space online or click to call. Some facilities offer discount pricing for SelfStorage.com users.

Superpages which was primarily an U.S.only online phone directory has expanded their mobile offering to become a full blown local search engine.  The site which is owned by Verizon spinoff Idearc Media now provides business search by name or category, maps, driving directions, WiFi hotspot search, weather forecasts, movie reviews and showtimes in addition to phone number look up by name and location and a reverse phone number directory. It's still U.S. only, however.

The site gets the job done although it continues Superpage's tradition of quirky user interfaces.  There are "What" and "Where" fields at the top of the page along with a "Search" button.  Below that are icons for Maps, WiFi, Directions, etc.  The quirkiness is that you have to use the search form at the top of the page to search for something before the other icons will work properly.  If you just load the page and go straight to "Maps" you'll get a cryptic "No further information was provided" message, presumably because your location hasn't been set.  In this case Superpages should prompt you for your location but doesn't.

Once you get past the issue with setting a location there are some nice touches to Superpages Mobile. Phone numbers in lists are click to call and there is an "Add to my contacts" link that uses the WAP wtai://wp/ap;number;name URI construct to add the listing to your phone's contacts. This works on most Nokias and BlackBerries, I'm not sure about other phone brands.

If you register, which can be done on the Superpages mobile site, you can save your favorite businesses, people, locations and reviews in "My Superpages".

Local search engine covering major cities in Europe and the U.S. Search for restaurants, bars, entertainment, services, shopping, and more.  Results are ordered by distance from the city center (except for Prague where you can search within a postal code) and include address, a Google map and phone numbers which are unfortunately not click to call. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

DexKnows is a local search engine listing U.S. restaurants, transportation, entertainment and shopping. It's from R. H. Donnelley, a major publisher of print telephone directories.  It's very complete listing 100 Sushi places in San Francisco. Unfortunately results are metro wide making it poorly suited for finding the nearest one. Listings include click to call numbers, maps and directions.  There's also a white pages based people search and a reverse phone directory.

A searchable directory of New York City public library locations.  Listings include hours, address, driving directions and maps.  Phone numbers are labeled as click to call but are not!  There's a separate directory listing current exhibits in libraries.  Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

I just found a link to the California Department of Education's mobile side over at the Oh! Mobile Directory. I had no idea the CDE had a mobile site, most state agencies barely have a Web site let alone a mobile one. The Education Dept site offers a searchable directory of public and private schools, school district and CDE offices. Directory listings include address, phone numbers (not click to call, unfortunately) and a link to a mobile Google Map. I can see this being used by substitute teachers to find their assignments and by anyone who does business with schools.

There's also a CDE employee directory, agendas of upcoming state board of education meetings and education news.

It's a shame that the news about education in California these days is so dismal. The state's once great school system is being systematically destroyed by one funding cut after another so that the politicians can claim to have not increased taxes.

Realtime power outage information for customers of BC Hydro, the public utility which delivers electricity to 95% of the population of Canada's British Columbia.  The site also has electrical safety and conservation tips. The mobile view is powered by Mobify.

I think this is a mobile first.  Ameren, an electric power utility serving 1.9 million customers in Illinois and Missouri has launched a mobile website whose primary feature is a listing of all service outages.  You can search for affected areas by zip code or county.  The site also lets you report if your power is out and get real time updates on the progress of restoring power to your specific home or business.  The site also has customer service  phone numbers (unfortunately NOT click to call) and electrical safety tips. 

Nice idea, assuming the mobile site really is updated with status changes in a timely fashion. If the power is out then your desktop PC and WiFi access point and in some cases land-line phone service is going to be out too. Using the mobile site to report a problem or get a status update should be faster than holding for an overloaded telephone support center.  I think all public utilities including power, cable and land line phone companies should have a mobile site for outage reporting and status updates. 

Yellow Pages directory for Puerto Rico in English and Spanish. Categorized listings include address, map and phone numbers which unfortunately are not click to call Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Brabys is a searchable online business directory for South Africa. Listings include description, address and phone numbers which are NOT click to call! Source Media Update via Mobility.mobi

Search for businesses worldwide. My test queries returned a high percentage of non-local or irrelevant results.  Listings include description, click to call phone number, a form to send an email to the business and a link to the business'  non-mobile website.  Curiously, many listings do not include street addresses! Source Oh! Mobile Directory

Local business and job searches, TV program guide and movie theater search for South Africa.  Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

I've been pretty disappointed with attempts to offer online event ticketing via the mobile web. The sites I've looked at have been marred by pretty serious usability issues.  A lot of the problems are related to payment. There really aren't any convenient ways to pay for purchases on the mobile web that are also widely adopted.  The mobile versions of PayPal and Google Checkout are easy to use but don't seem to have caught on with consumers or merchants.  On the full web most purchasing is done with credit or debit cards. For mobile, purchasing with plastic is too complicated to be very practical.  You need to enter the 16 digit card number, full billing address, the card's expiration date and 3 0r 4 digit security code. Way too much typing.  Barely acceptable with QWERTY,  it's an intolerable pain with a standard 12 key mobile keypad.  Mobile commerce desperately needs some sort of seamless  payment system built into the phone or network.

I just ran across the US mobile website of Ticketmaster, the 800 pound gorilla of the online event ticketing business,  at ticketmaster.mobi and was pleasantly surprised.  I'm no fan of Ticketmaster's exorbitant service charges which can add 35% to the cost of already expensive concert tickets.  On the other hand, I have to give Ticketmaster credit for solving most of the usability problems  of mobile online ticketing.

Ticketmaster's mobile site is uninspiring visually but a model of simple effective design.  Enter an artist or sports team or choose from a list of categories and you are prompted for a zipcode or city and state.  You are then shown a paginated listing of matching events in chronological order starting with today.  Clicking an event brings up a page with event and venue details and a click to call number to order tickets.  The whole process can be accomplished quickly with a minimum number of clicks.  Making a phone call may be low tech, but it's still the easiest way to complete a complex credit card transaction with a mobile phone.

The site's not prefect, however.  Prices are not always listed and do not include those nasty fees. Ticketmaster conveniently remembers the last location you used if you entered a city and state but curiously not if you used a zipcode.

Find and purchase tickets for concerts, gigs, events in the UK.

I was surprised to see that this site has very low booking fees, no fee at all for most tickets, unlike US online ticket agencies which charge exorbitant fees of up to 30% of the ticket cost!

Crowd sourced directory of free public toilets in Manhattan, New York City. Search for a restroom by address, cross street, zip, neighborhood, landmark or park.

Listings include a Google, map, address hours, walking directions from the establishment's front door to the loo for well hidden ones, ratings for privacy, cleanliness and accessibility, and in some cases a photo of the facilities.

I've added Earthcomber, a new mobile web local search site to the WapReview direcctory and Yeswap.com mobile portal under Search/Local. For a search site Earthcomber is unusual in that it's menu driven - there is no search box. After setting your location, which involves keying in an address or just a zip code, you use a hierarchical menu to drill down to the category you are interested in. So to find a sushi place, chose, Let's Eat on the home screen and on the next screen Sushi. I was able to quickly find the nearest ATM and Starbucks. Movie listings tell you the nearest theaters with times and prices. There are hundreds of categories so some of the menus are rather long. The menu driven approach encourages browsing and may appeal to those who lack the mobile keying skills of a teenager. Still, I'd like to also see a search box for the times when I know just what I'm looking for.

Earthcomber (web site) has actually been around for a while with Windows Mobile and Palm OS 5 native apps which use maps synchronized to the device from a PC and support external GPS units. I haven't tried those apps as I don't have a compatible device. There are also some community features available only with the Palm and WM versions, users can add points of interest, comment on places and create sharable lists of favorites.

The mobile web site is new, as is a Java ME app. I've downloaded the Java version to my PC and if I can get it working on my Boost Mobile i855, which requires sideloading, I'll post about it. Sadly, it doesn't look like the Java app is GPS enabled.

Earthcomber's (US only) database seems quite extensive and the site also offers driving directions and maps which are sized to fit your browsers width. Some listings contain descriptions and reviews from CitySearch. The site supports named locations and remembers you have used previously. It's not necessary to register to use the service. Registration, which requires only an email address, offers the ability to access your saved location across multiple devices.

7-Sept-2013: Site down

Find the lowest prices for gasoline by US zip code.

Shopping and Yellow Pages search for the U.K. Search by business name and/or category. Features zoomable maps and driving or walking directions. Yell also has a Java client, downloadable from mobile.yell.com/uk, which supports a relatively small number of phones.

Tickets.com, a major online ticket broker owned by MLB.com (Major League Baseball)  has launched a mobile version of their service at mobile.tickets.com. Tickets.com handles tickets for events around the world ranging from chamber music concerts to professional wrestling.

The mobile site uses a two-level hierarchical menu with top level categories of "Sports", "Concerts", "Arts" and "Family Events" each of which is divided into a dozen or more additional categories. There's also a search box.

Mobile ticketing is something I'd be likely to use when, for example, I'm out with friends and someone gets the idea that it might be fun to go to a comedy club. Unfortunately this site has a serious usability flaw, especially for mobile. There is no way to filter events by location or date.  In the mobile context, you generally want something today and nearby.  Clicking one of the subcategories returns a list of all events of that genre anywhere in the world for the next two weeks. I don't see that as being very useful.

I tried to find a way to make it work for finding a comedy performance here in San Francisco, preferably tonight. I launched mobile.tickets.com and clicked on Arts (comedy IS an art) and found nothing, so I did a search for "comedy" and see that it's under concerts.  I go there and get a huge scrolling list of about 60 comics and venues, just their names.  I click a few and see that they are performing somewhere thousands of miles away or a week from now, not helpful.  A search for "comedy San Francisco" returns hits for the main comedy section listing the 60 comics and for the the San Francisco Giants, 49ers and Symphony.  A search for "comedy and San Francisco" returns nothing, again not helpful.

More...