Welcome to Found on the Mobile Web, a semi-regular feature at WapReview where we list, describe and link to sites recently added to the WapReview Mobile Directory and YesWap.mobi mobile portal. With these latest additions the directory and portal now contain 1209 mobile sites.
wap.geocaching.com – Geo-caching is a sort of geek treasure hunt where players search for hidden caches using Geographic Positioning Systems (GPS). The GPS coordinates of caches are published on the Internet. Each cache is a hidden container enclosing small prizes and a logbook. When a player finds a cache, he signs the logbook and takes a prize replacing it with an object of his own. Geocaching.com is the oldest and largest web resource for geo-cachers. The mobile version lists caches with coordinates, hints and Google maps. There is also a virtual logbook function that lets you log success (or failure) in finding a particular cache.
In Portals/WAP
Oh! Mobile (oh.dirlink.mobi) – a fast growing mobile portal with over 1500 quality hand picked mobile links. Oh! does not accept adult or gambling sites. Listings are organized into hierarchical categories and each includes a brief description of the site. Oh! Mobile is quite similar in size and purpose to WapReview/YesWap but with a different mix of sites.
Toci Mobile (toci.mobi) Another new mobile portal that covers all the bases: free ring tone downloads, song lyrics, phone reviews, music top 40 and other charts, chat rooms, forums and a news section focusing on entertainment and technology with a smattering of hard news.
m4u (m4u.mobi/n) Another large mobile portal. m4u is an extensive list of mobile links grouped in broad categories like “Handy”, “Tools” and “Popular”. You can also search by name or browse a more specific set of categories (click “Links” to find the category list).
The site is available in English and Dutch and carries links in both languages. Changing the interface language doesn’t seem to filter the link list to include only sites in the selected language, an advantage only if you are bilingual.
The site also has an iPhone version at http://m4u.mobi/iPhone. The iPhone version also worked well with S60WebKit and Opera Mini but other than a larger font it doesn’t seem to offer any extra features.
You are supposed to be able to create your own list of favorite sites but this feature did not seem to work. After selecting “Edit #Favs” an “F” to add the link to your favorites is supposed to appear next to each listing. However I never saw the the “F” link.
Fonet (fonet.mobi)
Another large mobile portal with a lot of features. Fonet combines a mobile web directory with a social network and a personal portal. Social networking features include profile pages, friends list, messaging, groups and blogs. The personalized portal provides users with an online phone book, to do list and their favorite links and RSS feeds.
In News
Elections 2008 (google.com/m/html/elections08.html) Google has created this custom page of news and information on the 2008 US Presidential Election. The site features links to Google News filtered to show election news, a preselected set of political feeds in Google Reader, links and click to call numbers for local voter registration information, pre-populated Google searches for “Obama” and “McCain” and a selection of YouTube videos from the candidates.
Typically Spanish (typicallyspanish.com/mobile) The latest news from Spain. National, regional and business stories arranged by tag.
NineNews (m.ninenews.com.au) A new Australian national news site. NineNews covers international and national news, sports. finance, technology. This site has lots of photos which are re-sized to fit the screen widths of various browsers. Still, the number of images pushes page weight over 40 KB resulting in slow page loads on GPRS networks and low end phones.
BeatTheTraffic (beatthetraffic.mobi) One of the better US traffic US I’ve seen yet on the mobile web, especially in terms of number of covered cities and depth of information. It covers about 60 metropolitan areas with traffic maps. estimated travel times and delays for popular trips in each region and a list of current incidents. BeatTheTraffic offers a subscription service ($20/year, one week free trial) that adds SMS or email traffic alerts and the ability to add custom routes along with a number of other (non-mobile) features. The main downside of this site is that the maps are much larger than they need to be (500px wide and around 85 KB each) which means that they won’t load in many mobile browsers.
The RetailBulletin, an online trade magazine for the US retail industry now has a mobile edition at retailbulletin.mobi. The site carries the full text of the last 30 or so items from the full web site. It’s frequently updated with industry news of interest to retailers including financial results, M&A activity and sales figures. Small page size and text-only format makes the site usable, if a bit dull, on most any web capable handset. Source: Mobility.mobi.
Hi Dennis,
A minor correction on Oh! Mobile.Oh! does accept gaming sites.Probably,you misspelt “gambling”.And number of links is up to 1501 with the most recent update.
Anyway,I see your review as a very positive impression for our team effort.You very fairly reflected the core idea behind the directory.Thanks a lot.I appreciate it.