WapReview

eBay (m.ebay.com/) At MobileCampSF I met Henri Moissinac, head of eBay's mobile operations. Henri showed me the new version of eBay's mobile web site which is very nice indeed. For one thing searching for items is now smarter, the query "Nokia E61", for example, will list phones rather than the first results will be phones rather than accessories first in the results. The site provides access to My eBay including watch lists, current bids and won items for buyers and items offered and sold for sellers. Of course, you can bid on items from your phone. There's even a message reminding, "If you buy this item, you can pay for it with PayPal on your phone". The site uses content adaption to optimize the experience for different handsets. It ran equally well on the i855's built in Openwave browser, Opera Mini and the N95's Webkit.

Launched as Froogle Mobile, a beta release which came out in August, 2005, it was initially a simple price comparison tool. Merchants could submit products to Google for inclusion at mo charge

In May, 2007, Google renamed Froogle to Google Product Search.

In May, 2012, Google Shopping Search was replaced by Google Shopping, Listings are now based on a combination of search results and paid placements.

UK price comparison and shopping site. Registered users can review products and rate other user's reviews. 

For some products, review authors can earn between 0.5p and 2p when another member rates their review as "helpful", "very helpful" or "exceptional". Members can also win prizes and money by participating in marketing surveys and by inviting friends to join Ciao!.

Microsoft acquired Ciao! in 2008 for $486 million and re-branded it as "Ciao! from Bing".

Yahoo's paid placement product search and price comparison site. Works well with Android and iOS Browsers but browser detection is broken and a large non-mobile formatted page is served to most other mobile browsers.

The mobile edition of the comparison site NexTag helps find the best online prices for computers, gadgets, financial services, travel, automobiles, education and more. Search by keyword or SKU. Android and iOS devices get a special "Touch" version of NexTag that you can use on other devices by visiting advanced.m.nextag.com.

FindTheBest is a product and services comparison engine that promises unbiased, data-driven comparisons of everything from dog breeds and law schools to diaper services and smartphones. It's fun to browse and make feature comparisons although I take the algorithmic "Smart Rank" ratings with a grain of salt.

Search hundreds of online retailers for the lowest price.

Shopping search engine and price comparison tool for Canadian shoppers with iPhone or Android phones. Brain dead browser sniffing displays "We are very sorry but RedFlagDeals.com is not compatible with your mobile phone's browser"in other mobile browsers even advanced ones like Opera Mobile or the Nokia N9 browser.

Mobile interface into the shopping.com low price search. Find the lowest prices for products available from online retailers.  Results are listed in order of bottom line price, lowest first which I like. However "Buy" links lead to vendors full website which isn't very mobile friendly. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

User reviews of Canon products including cameras, printers, binoculars, copiers, scanners and fax machines.

Free local classified ads for US cities. Post ads for free. Find local deals by zip code or city and state or using geo-location on the iPhone and Android.

Over one million classifieds and coupons for restaurants, cars for sale, pets, jobs and more. Share ads and coupons on Facebook and Twitter. Create search alerts for new listings in a specific neighborhood.

Mobile edition of a big but strangely named South African classified ad site.  Much like Craigslist but limited to South Africa, Junk Mail lets you place free ads or search ads by category, city and keywords. Source: MobiThinking

Local classified ads for US locations. A mashup of listings hosted by Recycler.com and ones from oodle.com Attractive index pages include thumbnail images, seller's city and a brief description. Recycler hosted item pages have full description, larger photo and click to call number and/or email contact form.  The oodle.com item pages are not mobile optimized.

Craiglist clone with a global reach and a mobile version.  Free classified ads for thousands of cities worldwide. To purchase items you need to contact the seller using a non-click to call phone number! Source: @andrewjb

Here's a new mobile site that helps you find the lowest price for any book. It's a mobile friendly version of bestbookbuys.com. Visit m.bestbookbuys.com and enter the 10 or 13 digit ISBN code found on the back cover of most books and the site will return a list of retailers and prices.

BestBookBuys gets several things right that other mobile price comparison sites seem to stumble with. Prices are prominently displayed in the initial results listing, not buried several clicks deep and include the all important shipping cost.  Results are listed by price from lowest to highest with separate listings for new and used books.

BestBookBuys doesn't sell books directly but does link to the sellers' sites.  Except for Amazon, most online booksellers don't have mobile friendly order pages. BestBookBuys warns you that the seller's site may not work on your phone and provides the option to email  the URL to yourself.

The mobile site is ideal for college students who can visit their overpriced campus bookstore to retrieve the ISBNs of the books they need and enter them on m.bestbookbuys.com.  The site claims savings of up to 95% are possible compared with on-campus prices. I tried a few books and found more modest savings of 5 to 30% off the list prices of current technical books. The service is not limited to textbooks either, I was able to find everything from best selling novels to used copies of long out of print computer books on BestBookBuys' mobile site.

Book price comparison site. Search by keyword or ISBN. Results include both new and used books and sorted by button line price (including shipping)  from low price to high. "Buy Now" button links to bookstore sites, most of which are not mobile friendly.

I wish something like this existed when I was in school! Instead of paying outrageous campus bookstore prices, enter an ISBN to search 200 online bookstores at once. Results are sorted by price from lowest to highest with links to the title on each online bookstore.

PayPal (https://mobile.paypal.com) Not new but I realized I didn't have PayPal Mobile in the WapReview directory, now I do. This is the Paypal mobile account management site which lets you view your balance, change your pin and send money to any email address or mobile phone number. Paypal seems to be the best of the widely supported systems for off portal mobile payments thanks to it's huge number of users and all numeric login using your phone number plus a numeric pin that you choose.

Are your children's toys safe? This site helps you identify dangerous toys that have been recalled and find safe ones in the shops. The main feature is a searchable database of toys that have been recalled for safety issues. Just enter the name of a toy, like "Barbie", and get a list of all recalls listed with the US Consumer Products Safety Commission. There are also tips on buying safe toys and information on various country's labeling and certification standards for toys.

A recent dotMobi Site of the Week pick, RecalledToys.mobi is another site providing a mobile friendly front-end to the U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission's database of product safety recalls.  In spite of the name this one covers household and outdoor products and sports and recreation equipment in addition to toys. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

As the holiday shopping rush kicks off in earnest this week, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, an independent non-profit consumer activist organization, has launched a mobile web site, ToySafety.mobi. It offers tips on how to identify unsafe toys and a list of 16 toys that are unsafe due to choking hazards, excessively loud noises or toxic materials.

Shoppers do need to be careful when buying toys as the hazards presented by some of these products are very real, with the potential to seriously harm and even kill children. I think that it is great that the US PIRG has made this information available in mobile friendly format allowing shoppers to check products they are considering while they are in the store.

I also like Safetoy.mobi, which I covered last year. It's a mobile search engine that taps into the US Consumer Product Safety Commission's database of over 20,000 unsafe toys recalled since 2007.

This iPhone site from Parent's Choice, a US non-profit that reviews and recommends toys is quite usable in all mobile browsers that support JavaScript, including Opera Mini.  Search is by category, child's age and price.  Results include a photo, description and buttons to email the listing and to purchase the item from an online merchant, generally Amazon or Simon & Shuster.  The link's to Simon and Shuster go to the publisher's non-mobile home page rather than to the toy's item page, hurting usability. Source: Taptu Jan. Touch Web Report

Online shopping search and price comparison for New Zealand based brick and motor and online stores.  Purchase by click to call number or through a link to the merchant's web site which is often not mobile friendly. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Mogoso (mogoso.com) is a search site that simultaneously searches Yelp for stores and restaurants and also does an Amazon shopping search. The results link to reviews Amazon or Yelp reviews. It's a strange combination, while Amazon will sell you almost anything and you can review anything on Yelp, those sites specialize in books and restaurants respectively. I suppose I might want to simultaneously search for sushi bars and sushi cookbooks it doesn't seem very likely. Grumbling aside, I do find Mogoso's search interface and results pages cleaner and and easier to navigate than either Amazon's or Yelp's. For one thing, searching for restaurants by zip code actually works on Mogoso by returning results by distance, Yelp (review) first returns results sorted by rating from throughout the metropolitan area, you have to click a link and wait to find the nearest ones. With  Amazon, Mogoso includes excepts of reviews right on the initial results page rather making you click through to read the review.

24-Feb-2012: Currently broken, all searches return no results