WapReview

While it may have started as Arianna Huffington's blog, the HuffPost is now a major web news outlet with paid staff and constant updates covering breaking news.  The mobile edition by Crisp Wireless contains a selection of top stories from the full site

With the US presidential election year in full swing, CNN's political blog is jumping. The mobile friendly site is updated throughout the day with current US political news and analysis.

Irreverent US politics blog - "Middle Web" site may be too large to load on feature phones.

Politico is a three year old, politics focused daily newspaper distributed for free in Washington D.C. Its widely read by politicians, lobbyists and other D.C. insiders. The paper's website, politico.com has significant national readership an Alexa US traffic ranking of 287.

The mobile version of Politico is at mobile.politico.com (first image). It was launched in December, 2007. Mobile devices visiting politico.com are not automatically redirected to the mobile version. However, iPhones and only iPhones visiting the mobile URL are redirected to a special "Touch Web" version that can be viewed with other browsers by using the URL mobile.politico.com/iphone/. The second image shows the iPhone edition in the Android browser. Both mobile variants average 40KB, excluding JavaScript which both use but do not require.

Politco's mobile editions are somewhat limited. They do include, with one exception, the full text and photos from all the articles and sections on the main site. The exception is Mike Allen's daily "Playbook" column arguably the most popular feature on Politico and thus a strange thing to omit for mobile. Other limitations of Politico mobile is the complete absence of reader comments and the removal of all hyperlinks, both internal and external from within news stories. Politco's stories get hundreds of comments with the discussions often as interesting as the original article, so it seems strange to not include them, even if only in read-only format. The same goes for links, Politco's stories are loaded with links, almost entirely internal ones to related articles and background importation. I don't understand why Politico would want to strip out the internal links, which help keep readers on the site, from the mobile edition.

I applaud Politico for recognizing the mobile web's potential and providing attractive, well organized mobile sites with lots of content. But I'm however disappointed by the "dumbing down" of the mobile versions by the removal of critical features like comments, links and Mike Allen's column. Source: Taptu State of The Mobile Touch Web Report (PDF)

Lively and frequently updated blog from ex-reporter and professional gardener @melaniekv  looks at US politics,  pop culture and more.

From researchers at the University of Manchester’s Centre for Development Informatics, ICTs for Development  covers the use information and communication technologies to encourage socio-economic development.

Media Matters for America is a  not-for-profit, research and information site dedicated to  monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.

The blog of FAILFaire, a conference focused on learning from failed ICT4D projects.

ICT4D is an acronym for "information and communication technologies for development" which means using technology, especially computers, web and mobile, to enable and encourage socioeconomic growth and human rights. Examples include the One Laptop per Child Project and MedAfrica, which lets rural users connect to doctors and medical information using basic mobile phones.

Not all projects are successes. FAILFaire aims to help ICT4D professionals and participants learn how to succeed by understanding what doesn't work.