New Site Added to the Wap Review Mobile Directory: SFist’s Responsive Magazine Style Design

New Site Added to the Wap Review Mobile Directory   Mobile Link: sfist.com Rating:Content  Usability  Doctype: HTML Transitional Home Page Weight: 4437 KB Category: City and Campus Guides Description: Part of the Gothamist network of city blogs, SFist covers local news, food, art, entertainment and events for San Franciscans. Like the other Gothamist sites, SFist has a magazine style front page that uses responsive design techniques to adapt on the fly to all screen sizes from mobile (left image) to PC (right image). It’s one … Continue reading

DublinBikes iPhone App Pulled, Here’s a Mobile Web Alternative

An iPhone app that helped Dubliners find available rental bikes has been pulled from the iTunes App Store.  For once it’s not Apple who is to blame but the bike rental company, JC Decaux. France’s Decaux, the maker of the famous Paris Sanisette automatic self cleaning toilets, is in reality a huge advertising business with billions of Euros in annual  revenue.  While Paris pays JC Deaux to build and maintain the Sanisette’s, the company has been very successful with a … Continue reading

Goodrec – User Generated Ratings in 160 Characters

Goodrec is another user generated reviews site somewhat like Zagat, Yelp and Boorah. Like Yelp, Goodrec is not limited to covering restaurants, users can rate and recommend anything; clubs, hotels, restaurants, services, products, etc. Goodrec differentiates itself from its competitors in a couple of ways. For one, Goodrec limits reviews (which it calls “recommendations”) to a concise and mobile friendly 160 characters and encourages users to submit them from their mobiles. In a video interview, Goodrec co-founder touts the ease … Continue reading

Mogoso – Search with a Split Personality

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 … Continue reading

Yelp Mobile

Yelp.com is a site featuring user generated reviews of businesses, services and attractions mainly in major US cities. Restaurants seem to be the main focus but users are free to review anything. There are plenty of reviews of clubs, hair salons, auto repair places and even cell phone stores. I’d never heard of Yelp until I read Oliver Starr’s writeup of it’s new mobile site. Apparently I don’t get out enough. It seems that Yelp is a genuine hit especially … Continue reading

Go2

Go2 is a site with great potential marred by a clumsy UI and somewhat slow response. Still if you are patient and learn it’s quirks it can be very useful. It’s location based search that since 1999 has worked on any phone. And it’s worked in spite of the mobile providers reluctance to expose their LBS data to mobile web developers or users. Of course, the reason it works is because it relies on the old fashioned method of the … Continue reading

wcities.com

A nice WAP2 guide for travelers. Wcities covers cities on all continents with listings of restaurants, lodging, bars, public transportation (bus, train, taxi) current weather and sights to see. Coverage of the United States is particularly extensive with 94 cities covered including relatively small places like Buffalo, Branson, MO and Sacramento. The listings of individual establishments are quite detailed with current prices and a brief description. The descriptions read more like something written the venue’s marketing person than an impartial … Continue reading