The mobile web dead pool. Sites that are down for good, no longer have a mobile or resposive version or are so broken as to be useless.

Warning: the desktop version of this page isn't paginated and is huge. Don't go there if you have a slow connection or an expensive metered one.

What's This?

F1 Live

Content: 1/2  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wap.en.aladdino.com/wap.asp?TYP=CLG&SEARCHCHN=f1&CID=F1LIVE&HREF=CLG (wml)
Hasn't been updated since Feburary 2003!
What's This?

WapJag

Content:  Usability:
Last seen at: http://www.wapjag.com/ (wml)
Down since 09/04
What's This?

SqueezeNet

Content:  Usability:
Last seen at: http://www.squeezenet.com/pcs/default.hdml (hdml)
)
Down since 9/04
What's This?

Switchboard

Content: *****  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://wap.switchboard.com/ (wml)
White and Yellow pages. Reverse phone number lookup. Driving directions.

27-Oct-2008 - No longer a mobile site.
What's This?

Zagat

Content:  Usability:
Last seen at: http://wap.zagat.com/ (wml)
Down 02/05
What's This?

ZDNet News

Content:  Usability:
Last seen at: http://zdnetnews.vitalstream.com/ (wml)
Down since 12/04
What's This?

Mobone

Content:  Usability:
Last seen at: http://wap.mobone.com/ (wml)
Not a wap site anymore 2/18/05
What's This?

WXTC IP Tools

Content:  Usability:
Last seen at: http://wxtc.net/tools.wml (wml)
None of the tools actually work!
What's This?

Toilet Locator

Content: **1/2  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://www.rovenet.com/master/toilets/ (HTML5)
Only covers 10 cities but when you gotta go this may help. Down since 6/17/2005.
What's This?

Wapdows

Content: **  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://www.geocities.com/whiteflagz/icebaby.wml (wml)
A small directory of links.

Down 03-Oct-2008 - Returns a GeoCities 404 Page
What's This?

Symbian Diaries

Content:  Usability:
Last seen at: http://www.symbiandiaries.com/index.wml (wml)
Hasn't been updated since 06/12/04
What's This?

J2ME Software

Content:  Usability:
Last seen at: http://www.j2me-software.com (wml)
Mobile edition down 2/16/05
What's This?

GuruBooks

Content:  Usability:
Last seen at: http://www.gurubooks.com/wap/menu.wml (wml)
Down 02/18/05
What's This?

MyPNA

Content:  Usability:
Last seen at: http://www.mypna.com/ (HTML5/wml)
Down 02/18/05
What's This?

UFN

Content: ****1/2  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wap.hofoufn.com/ (wml)
A major Nextel user forum and download site. To use it, you must first register at www.hofoufn.com Down since 3/05.
What's This?

MobileWeb

Content: ****1/2  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://www.palmzone.net/modules.php?name=MobileWeb (HTML5)
links to around 300 Handheld Friendy sites divided by catergory

08/18/2006 Site Down!
What's This?

WapBlogger

Content: ****1/2  Usability: XXXX1/2
Last seen at: http://wap.ubique.ch/wapblogger/index.wml (wml)
Post and edit your Blogger or LiveJournal blog from your mobile. Down 5/14/05
What's This?

Translation

Content:  Usability:
Last seen at: http://wap.efacec.pt/dic/ (wml)
Dead 12/11/04
What's This?

Mobdex

Content: *****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobdex.com/ (xhtml-mp/wml)
Huge collection of eBooks including many classics. Down 3/08/05
What's This?

Connected Mobiles

Content: ***1/2  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.connectedmobiles.com/ (HTML5)
Windows mobile news (updated infrequently) and forum. Down (domain parked) 1/22/05
What's This?

DJJeffA.com

Content: ****1/2  Usability: XXXX1/2
Last seen at: http://djjeffa.com/vb/wiforums/ (xhtml-mp/wml)
iDEN user forum. Tutorials, downloads, questions and answers. If you have an iDen phone and want to get the most out of it, this is a great site. Registration required, you can register on the WAP site or on the web at http://www.djjeffa.com/ http://djjeffa.com/vb/wiforums/

Down 03-Oct-2008 - Returns a PHP error
What's This?

WiMatt Forums

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX1/2
Last seen at: http://wirelessmatt.com/wap/ (xhtml-mp/wml)
Another good iDEN (the cellular protocal used by Nextel, Boost, Telus Mike, Southern LInc, etc.) site. Discusions, tutorials, downloads. Lots of interest in harware modifications and customization of this forum. Before you can use the WAP site you must register at http://www.wirelessmatt.com/forum/ using your PC.

Down: 06-Aug-2007
What's This?

London Taxi

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wap.london-taxi.co.uk/index.wml (wml)

Information about London taxis along with phone numbers of various cab companies.

No longer has a mobile version


What's This?

Times Avantgo

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://partners.nytimes.com/avantgo/main.html (HTML5)
Apparently intended for offline reading using the the Avantgo.com service. Unlike many Avantgo sites this one has a public url, making it usable on devices that don't have an Avantgo client. It's actually pretty good, if limited - consisting of the full text of about twenty top stories from the News, Business and Technology sections.

Gone: Redirects to NYTimes.com - 12-Dec-2007


What's This?

Times by Unified Mobility

Content: *1/2  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://206.130.125.128/mobile.php?UMPG=index (HTML5)
This is one of the "Mobilized by Unified Mobility" sites that I wrote about in Wow 31 New Mobile News Sites! This was a good site for a while with the full content of hundreds of articles from over a dozen sections. I bet this was a demo put together to try to sell The Times on using Unified Mobility's services. It must have been no sale as most of the headline links currently lead not to stories but to a registration required type message. Unfortunately, there's no way to register or login through the Unified Mobility site.

6-Jul-08: Site is dead, nothing but a blank page.
What's This?

Times WAP

Content: *  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.nytimes.com/wap/ (wml)
Launched in 2003, this is a strange caricature of a news site. The "stories" on this WAP1 (wml) site are a single sentence followed by the words "For full story visit www.nytimes.com." I guess someone who is paying by the KB and just wants to scan headlines might find this useful but why not at least provide a link to the full article!

Update 22-May-2007: Redirects to mobile.nytimes.com which delivers both wml and xhtml
What's This?

Nextel Homepage

Content:  Usability:
Last seen at: http://uphpgen.adc.nexteldata.net/servlet/homepage (xhtml-mp/wml)

Nextel's homepage is only available from within the Nextel network using a phone with a Nextel account.

The Nextel network and this site have been shut down.


What's This?

Go2 Entertainment Awards

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://oscars.go2.com/ (xhtml-mp)

If the official site doesn't have live updates there is an alternative. Go2 Oscars SiteLocal search site Go2.com has been diversifying into mobile content and their latest effort is Go2 Entertainment Awards at oscars.go2.com. Right now the site only has a couple of short stories about the Oscars, lists of nominees for the top awards. For each of the awards you can vote for your favorites actor or film, not that it will effect the outcome. Anders Wright from Last Blog on Earth is doing the Oscar reporting for Go2 and has some predictions on his (non-mobile) blog. Live coverage is promised when the show kicks off at 5PM Pacific Time.

It doesn't look like Go2 is covering the Oscars in 2009, the show is two days away but the page is still showing 2008's nominees.


What's This?

Mogg

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.mogg.mobi/oscars/2009/nominees (xhtml-mp)

A collection of trailers from nominated movies at mobile video sharing site Mogg. Mogg offers the option of streaming or downloading each video, however only the downloads seemed to work on my phones.

5-Mar-2010 Page is gone.


What's This?

London 2012

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.london2012.com/ (xhtml-mp)

The Official Website of the London Games with latest news and photos, daily schedules, a searchable database of athlete statistics, photos and bios, ticket information, an online Olympic memorabilia shop and a dedicated page for each sport with information about rules and venues, schedules, results and bios of a random selection of the sport's athletes.

May-2013: Redirects to non-mobile site


What's This?

Ski Report

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.infospace.com/info.avant/redirs_all.htm?pgtarg=funski/ (HTML5)

Ski Report HomepageInfoSpace Ski Report - If you're not in Europe and the state of your personal economy precludes jetting to Courchevel for a week of skiing, InfoSpace's Ski Report can help you keep tabs on ski conditions closer to home. The site covers all the major resorts in the US and Canada plus a good selection of the better known ones in Europe, Asia, South America and Australia. Listings include current snow depth, number of open and closed runs and lifts and projected season closing days for each resort.

Something essential that is missing from Ski Report is weather reports.  There are links to AccuWeather.com on most pages but they link to the Accuweather home page rather than to the appropriate forecast page for the resort or region.

Although the site only scores a three out of five on the Ready.mobi test,  I had no trouble using it on any of my phones.  Page sizes are small (under 10KB) and there are few images so it loads quickly even at GPRS speeds. Usability is generally very good but, as with My Slopes, would be even better with the addition of Access Keys.

Infospace no longer offers this service.


What's This?

sno.mobi

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.sno.mobi (xhtml-mp)

Ski, snow and weather forecasts,  general and transportation information, guides to dinning and drinking establishments and user ratings for hundreds of ski resorts around the world.  Source: Tappity

Redirects to non-mobile site.


What's This?

Quicken Mobile

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: https://m.quicken.com (xhtml-mp)

The mobile edition of Quicken's free online personal finance management service lets you view all you bank accounts in one place. It shows balances and transactions and tracks earnings, expenses and payments. The site also has an ATM finder.

Intuit no longer offers an Intuiy mobile web app.


What's This?

Player23

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://player23.mobi (xhtml-mp)

Rugby news, results, live scores and schedules. Premium content including videos, wallpapers and memorabilia for sale. Source: Mobility.mobi

Parked domain.


What's This?

ROK Comics

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wap.rokcomics.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Large selection of comic strips in English and Hindi including many favorites like Andy Capp, BC, Popeye and Robin Hood. The dropdown list only shows a subset of the available titles so if you don't see your favorites, try using the search. Source: Taptu Touch Web Report (PDF)

12-Jul-2013: no longer has a mobile webapp, only Android and iOS native apps.


What's This?

Squeakyspoon

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.squeakyspoon.com/squeakyspoon (xhtml-mp)

Dine at the squeakyspoons and avoid the greasyspoons. View health department inspection reports for restaurants in major California, Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, Texas and Washington cities

Shut down.


What's This?

Untappd

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.untappd.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Untappd - The Pub

Called "A Foursquare for Beer Lovers" by Mashable, Untappd is a location aware mobile web app where you check-in with a beer.

You can get badges for when and where you check-in and for each different beer you check-in with. Users can add new beers including homebrews and keep a beer wishlist of brews they want to try. Untappd uses the Foursquare API for location support and works anywhere in the world where there's beer.

Other users can see your check-ins in their timelines and in a public timeline that Untappd calls "The Bar". Check-ins, badges etc. can be shared on Twitter, Foursquare, Gowalla or Facebook. You can also make your check-ins private so that only your Untappd friends can see them.

What sets Untappd apart from Foursquare, Gowalla etc. is that it's also sort of a reviews and recommendations site for beers.  When you check-in you're required to name the beer you're drinking and you can also give it a 1-5 "bottle" ranking.  Beer names are clickable and lead to a page with some information about the beer along with its cumulative rating and recent user check-ins and comments on the brew.

Untappd uses some HTML5 features and currently supports the Android, iOS, WebOS and BlackBerry OS6 browsers only. I tried a few unsupported browsers and found that it also seems to work in the bada browser but not with Opera Mobile 11 or Mini 6 or the pre-Anna Symbian^3 browser.

Untapped no longer has a mobile webapp


What's This?

MeeGo News

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://meegonews.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Dhruv Bhutani's MeeGo News covers the latest news aboutthe MeeGo OS. The site is operated in collaboration with Steve ‘Chippy’ Paine from CarryPad.com and Christopher McFann from Symbian-Freak.

Apr-2012 redirects to CarryPad.com


What's This?

Inside Sprint Now

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://insidesprintnow.wordpress.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Frequently updated news blog covering US CDMA operator Sprint/Nextel. Written by an anonymous Sprint customer care representative it's an excellent source of breaking news about new Sprint products, plans and policies.


19-Jun-2012 Shut down by Sprint DCMA takedown notice.


What's This?

iGoogle

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.google.com/m/ig (xhtml-mp/wml)

iGoogle on Android

Google's personal homepage/portal comes in two flavors; a basic WAP page for legacy browsers (bottom image)  and a much richer version that's served to iPhones and Android devices (top image). The rich version consists of mobile formatted versions of all your desktop iGoogle widgets except those that are Flash based. Each widget appears as a large button initially, which when tapped expands to reveal its content.

On my Android phone, iGoogle works great, it displays all the tabs and compatible widgets that I’ve defined in the desktop version. It doesn’t seem to possible to specify that specific widgets appear only in the mobile or only in the desktop version. All the widgets I tried; Twitter Gadget, Google News, Mail and Calendar and Ping.fm worked well.

iGoogle on Nokia N95

The basic version of iGoogle that's served by defaullt to all devices except iPhones and Anoid devices doesn't use content from your desktop iGoogle widgets. Instead it lets you add add and arange content from a predefined list of widgets including, Gmail, Google Calendar, News, Bookmarks, Stocks, Movies and Top Search Trends plus news feeds from about 50 non-Google sources including the Onion, Economist, NPR, PC Magazine and E! Online.

You can force the iPhone/Android version to display in any browser by using the URL google.com/m/ig?uipref=6 In most cases won't look or work well with unsupported browsers.

31-Jul-2012 Shut down by Google.
What's This?

WeatherOnline

Content:  Usability:
Last seen at: http://inumnum.com/wap/weather.wml (wml)
Down 02/18/05
What's This?

NY Review of Books

Content: *****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://www.nybooks.com/mobile/ (HTML5)

Book reviews from the prestigious New York Review of Books. Each edition contains 7 or more well writen indepth reviews of the latest fiction and non-fiction.

No longer mobile friendly


What's This?

Google Reader

Content:  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.google.com/reader/m/view/ (xhtml-mp)

  Google Reader Mobile  Six months ago I posted a piece entitled All I want is a good WAP RSS Reader comparing all the mobile web based rss aggregators that I could find at that time. Last week Google released a mobile version of their Reader. Here's my take on the latest entrant in mobile feed reading wars.

First of all, the main advantage that web based aggregators have is that they maintain the state of your feed reading experience across devices. If you read something on a web based reader on your PC it won't pop up as unread on the mobile edition of that reader. So what I really want is a reader that has a great mobile version and a great full web version as well. As I wrote here, I'm willing to put up with the glaring defects in Bloglines Mobile simply because the feeds in it are synchronized with the excellent desktop version. So if you don't like Google Reader on the desktop then there isn't much reason to use it on your mobile device. A lot of people like the "big" Google Reader but at least as many hate it.

I think there are several reasons that opinion on Google Reader is so polarized. The main one is that Google Reader  Google Reader Mobile   uses the "River of News" paradigm - where you see the titles of the latest items from all your feeds mixed together in the order received. Personally, I'm not a fan of the "River...". Certain blogs I like to read first, Russell Beattie was like that until he quit posting. Now my favorites are Michael Mace, Martin Sauter and Carlo and Russell at MobHappy. If one of them has a new item I want to read it first, before the latest press releases on Engadget or some phone review.

Google Reader on the web has a glorious looking UI with lots of Ajax magic. I'm not so sure it's actually as usable an interface as the clunky Bloglines one. Google Reader is also a beta, even on the desktop, and there is missing functionality - no way to mark all the items in a feed or in all feeds as read, for example. I hear people complain about bugs too - one glaring one is that if you unsubscribe from a feed, it doesn't remove that feed's unread items upstream in the "River", you still have to visit them to make them go away.

Incidentally, Google Reader has two defaults that you will probably want to change.   Google Reader Mobile  I had to change the sorting to "date" - the default sort of "auto" seems to sort items in totally random order. I think it's supposed to sort items with more "authority" higher but it just seems broken to me. You probably also want to set read items as hidden. Note that you can only change these defaults on the desktop - not on the mobile pages.

But enough about Google Reader on the desktop, lets look at the mobile version. The opening screen (top image) shows a list of the 9 most recent items from your feeds. The list is compact with just the item title and the name of the feed. Clicking the title or the numbered access key takes you to the item (2nd image). Unlike Bloglines mobile, Reader puts only one item body on a mobile page. Bloglines sends the full text of all unread items from a given feed to you as a single page. That can be 100's of KB's for a high volume, image-heavy feed - more than most mobile browsers can handle.

You can also read all the items in a particular feed by clicking on the feed name in the list of   Google Reader Mobile  items. Of course, you might have to go through several screens of items before you find one from any particular feed - but that's the way River of News works. When you go into a feed this way, you again see a compact list (third image) of the first nine titles along with the first sixty characters of each entry.

Mobile usability is pretty good in Reader. Access keys are used extensively. The lists of items all have access keys so you can just hit a single numeric key to go to an item. At the bottom of each item are links to the next un-read item, to the full item and back to the list of all items (bottom image). These links have access keys too.

Images in feed items are displayed full size rather than compressed, which could be a problem with feeds that include big images. All links in feeds are retrieved using the Google transcoder - which does resize images. There is a link to the full item on the originating blog, which also uses the transcoder. Although transcoding is a touchy subject with many bloggers, transcoding the full item does provide a mobile-friendly way to read partial feeds.

I was not able to launch Reader Mobile in my favorite Palm OS browser, Xiino as the pages are sent with the mime-type of application/xhtml+xml which Xiino doesn't support. This is likely to be an issue with other PDA browsers, particularly old ones. Google really needs to do browser detection and only send xhtml to devices that can accept it. Most other browsers including Opera Mini work fine. You can launch Google Reader by going to http://www.google.com/reader/m/ or by just going to google.com on a mobile device and choosing personal home page and then Reader.

In summary, I think that Google Reader Mobile is the best mobile-web based rss reader yet when only the mobile piece is considered. Compared with Bloglines mobile it has a much better UI that won't overload your browser. It doesn't have as big an advantage over Feedlot UI-wise but it does support Atom feeds which Feedalot does not. If you are using Bloglines or Feedalot on the desktop, I don't recommend switching unless you can also live with Google Reader on the desktop.

1-July-2013: Shit down by Google


What's This?

TamsPalm

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://tamspalm.tamoggemon.com/?theme=lesbar (xhtml-mp)
  TamsPalm  TamsPalm-the Palm OS Blog is an interesting blog by Palm developer, Tam Hanna. The site is updated several times a day by Tam and a number of contributors and includes Palm OS tips and secrets, product reviews, general musings on the future of the handheld scene and the process of software development along with a number of technical pieces replete with code examples. Tam's the guy who wrote the utility that lets the Netfront browser (which normally only works on Sony Clies) run on Palm branded devices.

Tam is using a Wordpress theme called Lesbar to create the PDA version of the blog. Lesbar strips the blog down to a single column containing just the blog items along with a search box at the top and a form for writing to the "shoutbox" at the bottom. In general, Lesbar does it's job allowing a mobile user to read sequentially through the blog starting with the most recent post. Like CoolSmartPhone, the pages are big - so you need something like a Palm Treo or Opera Mini to fully appreciate the TamsPalm site.

Update: Tamspalm no longer offers the Lesbar theme and worse yet the current theme is terrible for mobile users. The best way to read TamsPalm on your phone is with an RSS reader like Bloglines Mobile.
What's This?

DiggPad

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wampad.com/digg/ (HTML5)

Diggpad (wampad.com/digg/) is the work of Shawn Mccollum of Wampad. It takes a little different approach to Digg.com than the other mobile Diggs. Wampad is a mobile meta-search site so not surprisingly Diggpad lets you search Digg.  DiggPad Image Below the search box there are eight links that take you to the latest from Digg's seven topics or "All". Unlike the other mobile Diggs, Diggpad only displays the top nine diggs for the category or query you entered. Nine titles fills up my mobile's screen and exploring nine Dugg sites certainly keeps one busy for a while. Still, It bothers me that I can only see nine Diggs. I'd like to see a more link at the bottom of the screen to bring up the next Diggs. When you on click a headline in Diggpad you go first to a landing page with a fuller description and a link to the dugg site transcoded by Google. Using a landing page adds a click but it lets you scan more titles without scrolling - a good trade off for the small screen. Accesskeys also add usabilitity to Diggpad.

25-Apr-2009 Site is down.


What's This?

B'way Mobile

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://bway.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

A guide to New York City's Broadway theater scene. Brief plot synopsis, theater addresses, cast list, curtain times and theater phone numbers (not click to call!) .

Parked domain.


What's This?

BlackBerryTrade

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.blackberrytrade.com (xhtml-mp)

BBTrade Tips and Tricks ForumA relatively new BlackBerry news blog, user forum and download site. The mobile edition of BlackBerryTrade  doesn't include the blog , only the downloads and forums.  The download selection is pretty limited at the moment with just four applications and 19 themes.  The best part of the BlackBerryTrade is the forums, especially the "BlackBerry Tips and Tricks" section.  It's one of the best collections of  beginner and advanced BlackBerry tips I've seen. There's some great stuff there; like how to use the Storm on AT&T or T-Mobile and an easy way to backup the 3rd party apps on your device.

Parked domain


What's This?

Lightning Radar

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.lightningradar.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Lightningradar.mobi shows recent lightning strikes overlaid on a map of Europe.

Now a "Health & Fittness Magazine" with no weather related content.


What's This?

CTIA2009

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.ctiamobileapp.com/ (xhtml-mp)

CTIA Mobile App

If you're at the big CTIA WIRELESS I.T. & Entertainment® show this week in San Diego or just want to keep on top of news from the event, the CTIA has a mobile website at ctiamobileapp.com with:

  • Alerts (currently empty)
  • Schedule of sessions where you can also vote on yea or nay on each one
  • Searchable Directory of exhibitors with booth numbers and clickable contact email addresses and phone numbers.
  • CTIA news feeds from WirelessWeek and Unstrung
  • @CTIAShow Twitter stream
  • Latest posts from the official CTIA Blog

The same information is also available in native application form for the iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile and S60. Download links are on the front page of the mobile site. All versions are by UNITY Mobile Source: @andrewjb44

Site is no longer available.


What's This?

Yahoo! Olympics

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.yahoo.com/olympics (xhtml-mp)

Yahoo and Google's Olympic sites both popped up on the eve of the games. Yahoo gives most smartphones, touch devices and Opera Mini users a slick tabbed interface with news, schedules, athlete profiles, medal counts and dedicated pages for each of the major Olympic sports. Feature phones get a mostly text version of the site with most of the same information. Source IntoMobile

Dec-2010: Site is gone.


What's This?

Fast MSearch

Content: *****  Usability: XXXX1/2
Last seen at: http://fastdemo33-16000.fastsearchdemos.net/msearch (wml)
wml imageFAST MSearch is a WAP search engine that is not usually available on a public url. FAST prefers to sell their search technology to mobile carriers (I'm not sure which carriers). It is a shame that FAST is not more widely available as it is THE best WAP search engine I have seen. It seems to have a database of WAP sites that is more complete than even Google's and doesn't return the duplicate hits that plague Google's mobile search. It's not perfect however, many searches fail with a compile error on OpenWave 4.n browsers. This link may not be around for long as it appears to have been set up to demo FAST MSearch - possibly to a prospective client. I find these links occasionally and will post them whenever I find them. These demo links usually stay up for two or three weeks. Enjoy it while you can. Update: down 6/17/2005 Update: Back up at a new url 10/01/05 Update: down 2/4/2006
What's This?

TV Guide

Content: ***  Usability: XX
Last seen at: http://wireless.tvguide.com/ (HTML5/wml)

TV Listings for your market including broadcast, cable and satellite. Brief descriptions of each show.  Requires you to "register" with a mobile mobile number and receive and enter an SMS validation code before you can view the TV listings which strikes me as unnecessarily complex and a potential privacy issue..

TV Guide no loger hasa mobile Webapp, only iOS and Android native apps.


What's This?

CitiWiz

Content: ****1/2  Usability: XXXX1/2
Last seen at: http://wap.citiwiz.com/ (wml)
Guide to Hotels, Shopping, Entertainment and Travel in hundreds of cities all over the world. Each catergory is sub-divided by price, type, etc. and consists of a simple list of establishments with address, phone number, estimated room price for the hotels and a few word descriptions.

Down as of 2006-08-19
What's This?

Google Classic

Content: *****  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://www.google.com/m?pref=s&uipref=1 (xhtml-mp)

Img. 1 Img. 2

The WAP2 version of Google has four modes:
1) "Web" searches the main Google index for primarily desktop sites. The Web search function has been around for a while and has always allowed you to browse the sites it finds. It used to be that the version of the web site sent to the phone was striped of images, forms and most text formating which is fine for static information sites but no good for any site that requires data entry. Plus, the web without images is pretty dull. All that's changed now, Google now returns the page with images and forms intact. Well, actually forms on secure sites like banking and airline sites come up as read-only but on non-secure sites forms work well.

Google has a neat feature that I haven't seen anywhere else. If Google's transcoding engine finds something that looks like a typical navigation menu (bunch of links without any text between them) it hides the menu and replaces it with a plus sign icon and the first few letters of first menu item. You can see this in the second image. When you click on the plus sign, the menu expands (third image) and the icon changes to a minus sign, allowing you to collapse the menu block. Clearly the idea is to let you focus in the site's content.

The other thing I like about Google is that they understand that you can't send 50KB html pages to a phone. Large sites are broken up into multiple < 10KB pages with Next and Previous links to navigate between them. Img. 3 Most of the other mobile transcoding web to wap sites like IYHY, Phonifier or MobileLeap send you the whole site without any regard to whether you phone's browser can handle that much data (most WAP2 browsers have trouble with anything much over 10KB) or if you can afford to pay for so many bytes.

Unfortunately, the Google's transcoding engine is not so smart about images. No image resizing occurs, so very large images can get sent to the phone with the same issues of capacity and cost. Google allows you hide images but only after you have already loaded the page with the images! For that reason, I prefer AOL's mobile search which does resize images.
2) "Images" searches for and displays small 'thumbnails' of images from the web.
3) "Local" is a mobile version of Google local search with maps.
4) "Mobile Web (Beta)" is simply wonderful. It is the first decent WAP2 search engine which returns mobile links, both wml and xhtml in great quantity and quality.

Update:The Google "Classic" search interface is no more. It was retired in early 2008. There's now only one basic version which is at google.com/m


What's This?

All About N-Gage

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX1/2
Last seen at: http://www.allaboutngage.com/mobile/ (HTML5)

Site devoted to Nokia's game deck.

Replaced by ovigaming.mobi


What's This?

ZeroIndex

Content: ***  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://www.zeroindex.co.uk/wap/index.php (wml)
Download free games.

8/4/06 The games are gone, replaced by marketing blurbs for a mobile development house.
What's This?

MyTreo

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX1/2
Last seen at: http://mobile.mytreo.net/ (xhtml-mp)

MyTreo Downloads I don't have any Palm OS devices anymore and hadn't visited MyTreo in quite awhile. I was pleasantly surprised when I dropped by the site yesterday and discovered that they now have mobile versions of everything; the news blog using Alex King's WordPress Mobile Plugin, two mobile versions of the Forum (Regular and Lite) and a mobile version of MyTreo Downloads. The download store is particularly impressive. It's a searchable database of thousands of open source, freeware, shareware and commercial Palm OS and Windows Mobile games and applications. There are screenshots and user reviews for almost all of them. They even have the hard to find, now that Palm has abandoned it, IBM Java run-time needed to use Opera Mini on Palm devices.

Shut down


What's This?

Skweezer

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.skweezer.com/ (HTML5)

 New SkweezerAll the buzz about Opera Mini must be frustrating for the 84 million users on US BREW carriers like Verizon, Alltel, US Cellular, Metro PCS or Cricket. Phones on these networks can't run Java applications like Opera Mini, the amazing free browser that lets you use any website on mainstream phones.

Using a mobile transcoder offers a viable alternative to Opera Mini and works on any data enabled phone that has a browser. Transcoders take big web pages designed for PC browsers and split them up into multiple smaller pages. Images are resized and a lot of extraneous stuff, like most ads, gets striped out. The end result isn't as pretty as browsing with Opera Mini but it does let you get at the content of most websites. About the only thing you can't do with a transcoder is access secure encrypted services like online banking and the checkout at e-merchants.

 WapReview in SkweezerOne of the best mobile transcoders, Skweezer (skweezer.net) released a new version Monday. The update makes a big improvement in Skweezer's ability to adapt pages for specific mobile browsers. For example, when using my Motorola i855, Skweezer used to deliver text-only pages, the new Skweezer includes all the images resized to just fit the browser's 176px width. The second image shows how th PC version of this blog looks in Skweezer. The new release also seems better at reducing bandwidth. Images can still be turned off if you want to further reduce it for speed or cost reasons. You can also adjust paging (page splitting) on a preferences page. Choices are to split at 5, 20 or 50KB or not at all. All the Skweezer pages have been redesigned with a cleaner, simpler look and usability is improved with the addition of accesskeys - numeric short cuts to common functions. Skweezer also offers web search using Ask.com's index.

If you haven't tried Skweezer recently, check it out. It's one of the top three transcoders in my book, the others being Google and Mowser. I still think Google is the best because it has something equivalent to Opera Mini's content folding - emphasizing main content by replacing navigation menus and less important parts of the page with a plus sign which can be clicked to show the hidden elements.

Feb-2013: Skweezer's free service has been shut down

 


What's This?

PCS Intel

Content: ***1/2  Usability: XXXX1/2
Last seen at: http://www.pcsintel.com/modules.php?name=AvantGo (HTML5)
Another news gosip site covering cellular networks and phones in the USA. The first pictures of unreleased phones often appear here. They also announce when Sprint has a new firmware upgrade for one of their phones which is something that Sprint itself never publicizes.

7/31/2006: No longer a mobile site
What's This?

ABQJournal

Content: **  Usability: X1/2
Last seen at: http://www.abqjournal.com/palm/defaultavantgo.htm (HTML5)

Mobile edition of the Albuquerque Journal daily newspaper. Only the first six or so stories at the top of the main page are readable without a subscription. Clicking on any other link will lead to a mobile-unfriendly sign up page.

Hasn't been updated since 2011


What's This?

Planet-F1

Content: *****  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://wap.vizzavi.co.uk/idserver/!-u_2Fcae_2F3pi_5FwrappedML_2Fdisplay.do_3FnodeName=bw_5Fsports_5Fmot_5Fplanet (xhtml-mp/wml)
wml imagewml imageA great Formula One auto racing site. It's an 'exclusive' on the Vodafone network, but fortunately it's a public url so anyone can use it. Content is provided by a major F1 web site, PLANET-F1.com and for the WAP2 edition consists of the full text of the ten most recent stories from the News section of the web site. There is also a WAP1 version which only shows only the top four stories with the stories themselves abbreviated. The stories include interviews with drivers, team owners and directors, post qualifying and post race press conferences, practice, qualifying and race reports, the official press statement that each team usually releases every day during race weekends. In other words just about every thing you can read on the major F1 web sites. The only things missing are pictures and live lap by lap coverage of the races and qualifying. For those - go to the BBC's F1 site.
Update: 23-Feb-2006: The site is down.
What's This?

Official FIFA Site

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.fifa.com/e/wc (xhtml-mp)
  Yahoo FIFA   The Official FIFA World Cup mobile site, hosted by Yahoo, is attractively designed and makes good use of color and images. Both layout and image size vary depending of which browser the site detects. It's strictly a WAP2 site, there is no official support for wml-only devices. I've put wml links to this site and several other WAP2-only sites on wml.yeswap.com - follow the menu to Sports/World Cup The html to wml conversion is via a little transcoder I wrote. You can also use the Google transcoder to view the official site. Currently on the official site, there's a front page of general news articles, complete schedules of the matches and a page for each team with team roster and team-specific news articles. If you have a Yahoo account, you can login and customize the site by selecting your two favorite teams and two favorite players. If you do the customization thing, the Teams page shows just your two team's schedules and the two player's stats. You can still click an All Teams link to see the default teams page. Other features are a shop where you can buy World Cup themed ringtones, wallpapers and Java Games, a daily poll, a signup screen to receive SMS alerts and another page where you can send a link to the site to your buddies - also by SMS. Best of all ,the site has a (currently disabled) Live link - it looks like they will be providing live coverage of at least some of the matches.

Site is down 09-Dec-2006
What's This?

Htcfans

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://d.htcfans.com/ (HTML5)

 DHC Image Htcfans.com is a news site and forum for users of the Windows Mobile devices made by Taiwan's HTC the company that makes almost all the WM phones and PDA's sold by carriers under their own names like the T-Mobile SDA and Cingular 3125. The Htcfans forum is a Simple Machines Forum so it's mobile friendly. The digg through htcfans.com site (lets just call it DTH) ( d.htcfans.com) is similar to Diggriver showing about 15KB of digg front page headlines and descriptions. (bottom image) The difference is that clicking a headline takes you to the Dugg site through Skweezer's transcoder. There is no landing page - the description is right on the main page under the title/link to the Dugg site. You can see in the screenshot how much more scrolling is required to scan all the Diggs than with Diggpad on a typical phone screen. This is less of a problem on most Windows Mobile devices which have QVGA screens and page-down controls.

Update: 25-Apr-2009 - Site is badly broken. All links lead to the Skweezer.com homepage and excerpts are full of garbage characters and bits ot JavaScript code.


What's This?

SpacePDA.net

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.spacepda.net/mobile/ (HTML5)

This mobile site features NASA and industry news and press releases plus profiles of aerospace companies.

Gone.


What's This?

VeloNews Live

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.velonews.com/live/ (xhtml-mp)

VeloNews.com's 2008 live coverage of Professional Cycling.


Based on the events Velonews covered last year, expect to see live reports from the following events:
Tour of California / Feb 17-24
Tour of Georgia / April 21-27
Giro d'Italia / May 10 - June 1
Tour de France / July 5-27
Vuelta a Espana / August 30 - Sept. 21
World Road Championships / September 27-28
Coverage of European events starts at about 3AM US Eastern Time (GMT -5). Tour of California coverage begins as early as 7AM Eastern Time.

Update 19-Feb-2009 - Velonews live coverage has been mobed to the main Velonews mobile homepage mobile.velonews.com


What's This?

Oscars.com

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.oscar.com (xhtml-mp)

Oscars.com Mobile

The official Oscars site at m.oscar.com was created by Netbiscuits for The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and ABC, Inc., the official Oscars broadcaster in the US. It lists all of this year's nominees and promises to have live coverage starting at 8 PM EST on Oscar night. It's not clear if the live coverage will be streaming video or text, but I suspect the later.

While you're waiting for the show to start you can view hundreds of photos of stars on the runway from the last five years of Oscar or read a detailed history of the Academy Awards.

The site also has 35 videos including a multi-part "Road to the Oscars" piece, explanations of the science behind some of the nominees for technical awards and video interviews with nominees, hosts and writers.  Unlike last year, there don't seem to be any trailers from the nominated films.  The videos are served in a variety of formats and should work on any video capable device ranging from basic feature phones to the iPhone. 

You can also sign up on the site for live text alerts featuring news about the nominees, information about special promotions, and live updates throughout the show (standard text messaging rates apply).

Offline


What's This?

Alexandria MN Echo Press

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.echopress.com/m/ (xhtml-mp)

Mobile edition of a bi-weekly print newspaper published in Alexandria, MN. The mobile Echo Press includes local news, sports, weather and classified ads. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Feb-2010: Mobile version is no longer offered.


What's This?

Sprint Gurus Forums

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://sprintgurus.com/forum/ (xhtml-mp)

SprintGurus is an active forum for "Sprint users who "...enjoy tweaking their Sprint phones and account." Currently this is one of the top sources for Palm Pre information and rumors. Mobile browsers are auto detected and served a "lite" vBulletin theme. Some pages may be a little large (up to 100KB) for basic phones.

May 2010: Parked Domain


What's This?

BeerGuide

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.beerguide.mobi (xhtml-mp)

Mobile version of Gallaghersbeerguide.com. It is a reference and flavor guide to the different styles of beers and lists recommended food and beer pairings.  Also lists alcohol percentage and calories of popular beers. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Parked domain


What's This?

ABL Boats

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.ablboats.com (xhtml-mp)

Mobile edition of American Boat Listings, the largest US "For Sale By Owner", site. Listings are free and ABL charges no commissions to buyer or seller. Search is by zip code and is US only.

Jan-2011: Mobile edition is gone


What's This?

ShellsuitZombie

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://shellsuitzombie.mobify.me/ (xhtml-mp)

Blog showcasing outstanding work by students and recent graduates in the fields of design, illustration, photography, fine art, art-direction/copywriting, music, fashion and product design. Mobile view by Mobify

4-Jan-2011 No longer a mobile site

 


What's This?

WebMD Mobile

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://www.webmd.com/m/ (xhtml-mp)

WebMD Mobile

WebMD.com is the leading US based health and health care information site based on Comscore's anaultics.  The mobile version of WebMD features a free Symptom Checker iPhone app  along with a drug database, interactive pill identifier and comprehensive First Aid reference, all of which are web based. Provided you have a suppored handset WebMD is an good resource for on the go medical information.

The right handset part is my main annoyance with this site. WebMD's mobile product manager as clearly been sipping the iPhone Kool-Aide a bit much.  Not only is the site's marquee feature a single platform app but the web based features requires JavaScript. There are other cross platform issues too, the site's First Aid and pill identification pages come up blank in the WebKit based Nokia N95 browser.  With Opera Mini and Mobile the site has some minor formatting issues but is at least usable. On the plus side everything, except the iPhone App, does work perfectly and look great in the Android 2.0 browser.

WebMB is the sort of mobile web app that really should work across virtually the entire range of mobile browsers.  Javascript based AJAX is great for improving performance and usability on advanced platforms but it really doesn't take much extra work to provide html-only fallback for more basic browsers.

I'm a little disappointed with WebMD's pill lookup feature too.  It lets you search for pills by size, shape and color but presents results as a just a list of drug names with no images. For a mobile pill identifier, that includes images and works on all devices, take a look at Drugs.mobi

Source: Taptu Touch Web Report (PDF)

May-2013: No longer has a mobile wepapp


What's This?

Posterous

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://blog.posterous.com/announcing-the-posterous-mobile-theme (xhtml-mp)

Posterous Mobile

Posterous, the popular lifestreaming and instant blogging service,has mobile enabled all Posterous blogs using an attractive, one-size-fits-all mobile theme.

Posts include comments, which are displayed on the same page as posts. It doesn't seem possible to leave a comment with the mobile version.

The single-column mobile layout has an average front page size of 38 KB which should work with most phones.  However, the individual posts are not paginated and images are not re-sized so post pages can get quite large. Source: The NextWeb

30-April-2013 - Aquired by Twitter and shut down.


What's This?

Asian Correspondent

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://us.asiancorrespondent.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Calling itself a  "Huffington Post for Asia", the Asian Correspondent is collaborative news site aggregating the reporting of thirty-five top news bloggers from thirteen different Asian countries. The site focuses on progressive Asia with an emphasis on green issues, new media, politics and economics. The contributors, who are paid a monthly salary, have been chosen for their relevance, writing quality and local popularity. Sources: Online Journalism Blog, journalism.co.uk

Mobile edition discontinued


What's This?

Android Community Forums

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://androidcommunity.com/forums/index.php?styleid=7 (xhtml-mp)

Mobile friendly forum for Android users.  The forums are part of the Android Community news and reviews site which doesn't currently have a mobile optimized version.

Android Community Forums have been discontinued and main site still isn't mobile formated or responsive


What's This?

LIFE

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.life.com (xhtml-mp)

Before TV and the Web, LIFE Magazine was the biggest thing in mass media.  The large format pictorial news weekly was the best selling magazine in the US with a weekly circulation of over 13.5 million in the 1940's.

LIFE was largely responsible for the development of the craft of photojournalism and published many of the best photographers of the 20th Ccentury including Alfred Eisenstaed, Robert Capa, Margaret Bourke-White, Andreas Feininger, Dorothea Lange, Gordon Parks, W. Eugene Smith and Edward Steichen.

Unable to compete with television, LIFE ceased publication as a weekly in 1972. It resumed several years later as a monthly and published its last issue in 2000.

In 2009, LIFE's parent, Time, Inc., launched LIFE.com as a joint venture with Getty Images. The site draws from the LIFE and Getty photo archives of over 10 million images to create a revolving gallery of some of the best current and historic news photos on the Web. The image archive is also searchable.

LIFE's mobile site is more of the same in a smaller scale., It includes image search and a rotating gallery arranged by topic.  Formatted for a minimum screen width of 320 px and with page sizes up to a megabyte, LIFE Mobile works best with smartphones browsers or Opera Mini on large screened feature phones.

No longer a mobile or responsive site


What's This?

Google Reader Touch

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.google.com/reader/i/ (xhtml-mp)

Enhanced mobile version of Google Reader server by default to Android, bada, iPhone, WebOS and Firefox Mobile browsers. Also works well in Opera Mobile if the URL is specified. It's usable in Opera Mini but slow because expanding items requires a server round trip

1-July-2013: Shit down by Google


What's This?

Places To Visit UK

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://www.places-to-visit.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

A guide to the UK's major attractions and places to visit. Listings include descriptions, photos, address, phone numbers, maps and links to nearby dinning, lodging and transportation listings. Seems like a useful site although the phone numbers in listings are not click to call and the auto-playing audio track on the home page is very annoying.

No longer mobile friendly.


What's This?

Wall Street Journal

Content: ****  Usability: XX
Last seen at: http://wap.wsj.com/ (wml)
Business News. Navigation poor except on Openwave browsers. The Wall Street Journal has discontinued free public wap access. Available as a paid service using a J2ME application.
What's This?

America West

Content: ***1/2  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://www.awtimetable.com/ (HTML5/wml)
Flight Status and schedules
Down: America West merged with US Air and no longer exists.
What's This?

Treo Central

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX1/2
Last seen at: http://treo.treocentral.com/ (HTML5)

News, reviews and forums for Palm Treo users. Updated daily.

12-2011, Mobile site is down, desktop site hasn't been updated in 6 months.


What's This?

Variety

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.variety.com/index.asp?layout=channel (HTML5)

Venerable Entertainment Rag. Some stories written in a unique style that may only make sense to industry insiders.

No longer has a mobile or responsive web design version


What's This?

Bloglines

Content:  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://bloglines.com/mobile/ (HTML5)

  Image 2    Image 1  Bloglines is a great web based aggregator on the desktop. It has a lot of potential as a mobile browser. Unfortunately, Bloglines Mobile has one critical flaw - it lacks an item index page. By index page, I mean the list of items for an individual feed. Index pages provide a drill-down capability that is essential to managing the volume of information in an RSS feed on a small screen. To me, a mainstream phone has a 128x160 pixel screen. Sure, smartphones have at least 176x208 and feature phones like the RAZR are starting to use that size as well. But most Nokias have 128x128 screens and the entry level Nokias are only 96x65. If you want your site to have mass appeal you have to aim at the mass market devices. The first image in the Winksite review shows an example of an index that works on small screens. Feedalot and Bloggo use the same design. Bloglines dispenses with an index page altogether and dumps you into the full text of all of a feed's current entries one after another as one giant page To get to the second entry you have to scroll through the full text of the first entry. That could easily be 15 screenfulls on a 128x160 phone. That's OK if you sequentially read though every post in every feed you subscribe to, but I read far too many feeds for that. I want to be able too scan the entry titles and read the ones that sound interesting and then maybe go back to the titles and read a couple more entries that sound interesting. Blogline's design might works on something like a Treo, Danger Hiptop/Sidekick or Nokia 9300 which has a large screen and dedicated page-down keys. If that's the target device, fine. But those aren't the mainstream phones that predominate today on the mobile web.

In spite of the above criticisms, I use Bloglines every day. Why? In a word - synchronization. I want my mobile reader to only show me items I haven't read already on the desktop and vice versa. Along with a million or two other folks, I use Bloglines on the desktop, it's simply the best aggregator around. As I said above, the problem with Bloglines Mobile is that it shows all the unread items for a feed on a single page. This doesn't work well with commercial feeds like Slashdot or Engadget which have dozens of new items daily. But Bloglines allows you to specify which of your feeds you want to see on your mobile (It's under Edit Subscription on each feed's index frame in desktop Bloglines). I set up Bloglines to just display sites on my mobile that only update every day or two (like most personal blogs). It turns out that these are the sites I tend to really read most of the articles instead of just scanning the titles to see if there's anything interesting. So when I'm on the train I read through all the items posted by a few of my favorite bloggers on my phone. When I'm back at my desktop, I skim through the busy commercial sites.

Note: if you are using the WAP1 version of Bloglines, you need to hit the Refresh link after logging before you can see your feeds. This is not a Bloglines bug, it's a limitation of the YesWAP html to wml transcoder.

Dec-2010: Bloglines was acquired by Merchant Circle who immediately shut down the mobile edition.


What's This?

Yahoo Mail (old)

Content: *****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://wap.oa.yahoo.com/raw?dp=mail&src=mail1&Referer=yahoo (xhtml-mp/wml)

  Image 1  I been looking at the various mobile web based email providers. Previous posts covered Gmail Mobile and Microsoft's new Live Mail Mobile. Today it's Yahoo's turn.

Yahoo has had mobile email since 2000. The current version has been around for at least a couple of years but it's a good design and is aging well. There are both WAP2 and WAP1 versions of Yahoo Mail. The interfaces of the two versions are almost identical. The screenshots show the WAP2 version. The only difference I've found between the two, is that you can add the sender of an email to your address book with a single click on WAP2 but not on WAP1.

The Yahoo mobile mail interface is simple and intuitive. The first time you connect to mobile mail you will have to login. Yahoo saves a cookie on your device so future logins will be automatic . You can also log out if you concerned about security should you phone fall into the wrong hands.
  Image 3    Image 2   After you log in, the initial screen lists your mail folders showing the number of unread messages in each. Numeric access keys (which are used throughout Yahoo mail) make selecting a folder a single click operation. In the list of messages only the message title is shown. This a trade off, by not showing the sender's name more of the title can be shown. It would be nice if you could choose between displaying sender, title or both in the list but that option is not available.

Once you open a message, the sender's name, title, time and date is displayed above the message body. WAP2 users can click the sender's name to add the sender to their address book. This is handy but there is no obvious way to get back to the message from the address book other than the browser's "Back" key. The "Options" link lets you reply, forward, delete, move the item to a folder or view headers. The "View Headers" option is unusual in a mobile mail app and shows the reply-to field, other recipients and the full sender address.   Image 5    Image 4  

At the bottom of every screen in the Mail application is a menu (last image) which allows you to compose a new message, create folders and check other POP mail accounts (which must be set up in advance on the desktop). Composing a message is straight forward - pick recipients from the address book, key a title and body and hit "Send"

While there's nothing flashy about the Yahoo Mail mobile UI, it is efficient. The underlying Yahoo Mail feature set is one the best of all the web-based mobile mail services. Unique to Yahoo is Free Intellisync software to keep your Yahoo address book in sync with Outlook, Outlook Express, Lotus Organizer, ACT! and Palm and Microsoft PDA's. The software can also sync most of these applications with your Yahoo Calendar and NotePad. You can make phone calls or emails directly from the address book on your phone which makes the synchronized Yahoo address book particularly useful if your phone can't synchronize with the desktop or if you have hard time keeping your contacts up to date across multiple phones.

You can also set up Yahoo Mail to pull mail into your Yahoo inbox from external POP servers. SSL connections to POP servers aren't supported so this won't work with Gmail.

I really like Yahoo's mobile alerts. An alert is a SMS sent to your phone when new email arrives. You can set filters to only send SMS's for emails meeting certain criteria - such as a specific word in one or more of the fields; sender, to, subject or body. Hotmail and Live Mail Mobile also have mobile alerts that work similarly. Gmail doesn't but you can get the equivalent functionality by setting up your mail to be forwarded (unconditionally or based on a filter) to your phones email-SMS gateway address AND also selecting the option to keep a copy of the mail in your inbox. I find that mobile email alerts give me an almost Blackberry like email experience on even the most basic phones. The SMS is my "You have new mail!" indicator - telling me to go into mail on my phone's browser and read the new message. It's really pretty cool. I do have free incoming SMS, if you have pay for SMS and get much mail you will want to use filters so you only get alerted for the really important emails.

Yahoo, Live Mail and Gmail are all good mobile email services. Yahoo stands out for it's desktop address book synchronization and the access to email on POP servers, Gmail for it's awesome speed, huge email storage limit and the ability to view many attachments on the mobile and Live Mail has a fresh and powerful new UI. To me the most important feature of a mobile web site is it's speed and Gmail is the speed champ by a wide margin which is why it's my top pick.

Update 16-Sep-2007: This describes an old version of Yahoo Mail which no longer exists.


What's This?

SeatGuru

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.seatguru.com/ (xhtml-mp)

  SeatGuru.com  SeatGuru.com now has a mobile site. Thanks to Kevin Tofel at James Kendrick's jkOnTheRun.com for discovering this site and sharing it.

SeatGuru, which has been on the full web for five years, tells travelers something they never know enough about until too late - airline seats. The site has tables comparing seat width and pitch and in-flight amenities for all the aircraft types in the fleets of 29 airlines. The best part of SeatGuru are the detailed seating charts which show the locations of power ports, restrooms and galley and give each seat a color-code; white for a typical seat, green for a particularly good seat - usually one with extra log room, yellow for a not so good seat that doesn't recline fully or is near a restroom and red for a truly bad seat which usually means one with multiple problems.

Mobile SeatGuru has the same color coded seating charts as the full site. It's easy to navigate: first pick your airline and then choose the aircraft from a list. A typical seat map page is about 1 KB of markup and 25 KB of images which just about any WAP2 browser should be able to handle. The charts themselves are 200 px wide. The site works well on QVGA devices or any browser that can resize images to screen width, like recent versions of the Openwave browser and Opera Mini. Even on the 176 px screen of the Motorola RAZR which doesn't resize images or support horizontal scrolling you can still see all the relevant information as the 24 pixels that are cut off are just white space and the right-hand border. If the images are to wide to display properly on your phone, the Google Transcoder does a great job with this site.

Emulator images courtesy Openwave Systems Inc. Openwave and the Openwave logo are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of Openwave Systems Inc. in various jurisdictions. All rights reserved.

SeatGuru no longer has a mobile friendly Webapp, only iPhone and Android native apps.


What's This?

Original Signal

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://digg.originalsignal.com/mobile (HTML5)

  Transmitting Digg Image SociallyGiven.com has posted a piece titled 7 Versions of 'Digg Mobile' Compared which is a nice wrap up with screenshots of some of the current mobile Diggs - including five I hadn't seen before. The nicest of the new crop seems to be Original Signal, Transmitting Digg, digg.originalsignal.com/mobile which shows a reasonable 10 headlines per screen with the links to the Diggs going through Google's transcoding proxy. Unlike the most of other new Mobile Diggs, this one has small enough page sizes to will work well on any mobile.

Aug-2012: redirects to apple.originalsignal.com/mobile


What's This?

GameJump

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wap.gamejump.com (xhtml-mp)

  GameJump Image GameJump is a mobile (wap.gamejump.com) and web site (GameJump.com) offering free downloadable ad-supported Java games. The site and service seems to be a raging success with 1.4 million downloads in it's first four months of operation. There are currently over 350 games available on GameJump. This success has not gone unnoticed with Greystripe, the company behind GameJump, winning Best in Show Overall at the Under the Radar Mobility Conference. In a comment to this MobileCrunch post, Andy Choi, Greystripe CTO, claims impressive 5-15% click through rates. Greystripe has also released some metrics where they report that the service is most popular in the US, UK, India, South Africa and Indonesia. It's pretty amazing that they can get that many off-portal downloads, particularly from US users who are notoriously reluctant leave the carrier deck. Also telling is the carrier breakdown with the largest US carrier, Cingular's 39% share barely beating much smaller T-Mobile's 30%. Could that be because T-Mobile charges $6/month for unlimited data compared with Cingular's $20. Yes, cheap unlimited data does drive mobile data adoption.

I gave the service a try and liked what I saw. First I downloaded a couple of games to my old Nokia 3650 from GameJump's mobile site. There is no registration required, you don't have to give GameJump any personal information, especially not your phone number so there are no worries about Text SPAM or premium SMS scams. The whole process was very smooth. GameJump correctly identified my phone but also allowed me to override and pick a device from a list if that was "Not my phone". Both downloaded games looked and worked well with attractive full screen graphics and good game play. When I launched the games there was a message to the effect that the game would occasionally use the phone's data connection to download new ads and I had to agree to allow this before I could start playing. I have an unlimited data plan so I was fine with this but I do appreciate the disclosure.

Next I downloaded a game from GameJump's Web Portal for side loading onto my Boost Mobile Motorola i855. I was pleased to see that GameJump lists games for all the Java capable iDEN phones all the way back to the i85. Unlike some sites, GameJump has both the .jar and the .jar files available for download, both of which are required by iDEN handsets. The game I downloaded for the i855 installed with no issues and again looked and played well. As with the mobile site, no registration is required to download games. You can register, all that's required is an e-mail address. Registration lets you review games and participate in GameJump's contests where you can win free phones.

You have probably never heard of most of the games on GameJump but the ones I downloaded were of commercial quality - much better than what you typically find on freeware game sites like GetJar.com and Midlet.org. GameJump has games in many genres like sports, action, adventure, casino, puzzle and retro. I'm not much of a gamer but I do like puzzle games and downloaded three, a well done version of the classic Same Game, BubbleTrouble which combines elements of Bejeweled and Same Game and Magic Crystals - a Tetris variant with particularly nice graphics. All three were easy to play, fun "casual" games with no run learning curve - ideal for killing a few minutes while waiting for a bus ,- .

About those ads, I was pleasantly surprised that the ads are not at all intrusive. GameJump says that they only display ads when you start or quit a game so as not to disrupt the playing experience. In over an hour of playing the three games I downloaded I only saw one ad. When I quit Same Game an ad appeared offering a $5.00 off coupon for an oil change if I entered an e-mail address. The option to decline was a little hard to find (in a menu linked to the left soft key) but it was there and choosing it ended the game with no nagging. Overall, I was quite pleased with the GameJump experience. I think these guys will do well.

More on GameJump from:

20-Jun-2011 Gamejump is out of business.


What's This?

Weather Channel

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://xhtml.weather.com/ (xhtml-mp)

 The Weather Channel Traffic The Weather Channel's mobile site (xhtml.weather.com) has traffic maps for most US metropolitan areas. A traffic link appears below the current weather conditions if there's traffic information available for the area. The maps are resized to between 100 and 300px wide to fit the screen width of the phone you are using.

I think combining traffic and weather makes sense for mobile. The weather has a big impact on traffic and checking both before you go somewhere is a good idea.

The Weather channel, which aquired Beat The Traffic in 2011, no longer shows traffic information on weather.com


What's This?

Backstage

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.backstage.com (HTML5)

Live Theater industry news magazine with industry news, reviews and listings of casting calls.

Backstage.com no longer has a mobile formatted or responsive site


What's This?

Live Search

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.live.com/Search/RouteSearch.aspx (xhtml-mp)

  Live   Windows Live Search Driving Directions. A very nice implementation of driving directions which remembers your most recent entries and offers you the option of viewing overview or turn by turn zoomable and scrollable maps with traffic overlays. There is a nice hybrid map option which combines aerial photos with street and highway overlays.

I really like the mobile versions of maps from Microsoft's MapPoint division which are very attractive and detailed and I think easier to read than most of the competitions.

Bing (formery Live) no longer offers mobile driving directions


What's This?

CNN International

Content: *****  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://www.cnnmobile.com/ (xhtml-mp)

 CNN InternationalI've criticized CNN in the past for their policy of blocking users whose carrier is not a CNN "partner" or if they are using Opera Mini. It looks like that may be changing. CNN together with Ericsson have launched cnnmobile.com, a slick new mobile news site targeted at users in the NEMA (Europe, Middle East, Africa and Latin America) markets but seemingly accessible from any IP address.

Like the still restricted by IP address CNN US mobile site at mobile.cnn.com, cnnmobile.com has much more than just news. There are 5-day weather forecasts for over 1000 cities around the world, plus sports, entertainment, technology and business news. Also exciting is the inclusion of hourly two minute video news reports. The non-streaming 3gp videos run around 600 KB and should play on most recent phones.

The site design is good with lots of access keys and 44px wide thumbnail images that expand to full screen width when clicked. There's even a text-only wml version of the site for users with old or entry level phones that can't display xhtml

I really like the new CNN International site and not only because I can browse it with my preferred browser instead of my phone's slow and clumsy built-in browser. The coverage seems more balanced and less sensationalist than the US version. For example, one of the lead stories in the US edition is headlined "'State of panic' after car bombing" while the international edition's version of the same story carries the less subjective, more  CNN Video factual title "Baghdad car bomb kills 10".

CNN is also encouraging users to submit videos and pictures of breaking news from their mobile device by MMS or email to [email protected]. This user generated content will be featured in a special i-Report area on the mobile site.

Sports is one area where US users might find the international edition slightly inadequate. While boxing and tennis seem to get equal coverage in both the NEMA and US markets, basketball does not. On the eve of March Madness (US college basketball championships) there is nary a hoops story in CNN International. But that's what ESPN is for.

Update: CNN no longer has separate URLs for its US and International editions. Use m.cnn.com


What's This?

BostonSucks

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://bostonsucks.net (HTML5)

This popular blog covering the Boston Red Sox MLB team detects mobile browsers and delivers a mobile formatted edition to them.

Apr-2010 Site has lost its mobile edition and morphed into BleacherCreaters.tv


What's This?

RollingStone on Avantgo

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://avantgo.com/operamini4 (HTML5)

 Rolling Stone on Avantgo My first experience with the web on a handheld device was 7 years ago on a Palm PDA using Avantgo. The company provided PC software that downloaded "channels" to the PDA when ever you synchronized. Later I read the channels offline during my commute. Avantgo had hundreds of channels which were really simple html based mobile web sites. Avantgo is still around using the same basic business model. except that the Avantgo device software now offers the option of downloading channels over the air on connected devices. I just discovered that Avantgo also has a mobile web client. It showed up as one of the default sponsored bookmarks in Opera Mini 4.0. Avantgo is normally a subscription service but the link in Opera Mini lets you sample 7 feeds including Rolling Stone Magazine. Rolling Stone is an Avantgo exclusive, it doesn't seem to be available anywhere else on the mobile web. The Avantgo Opera Mini site works pretty well on on other mobile browsers besides Opera Mini. You can register for Avantgo on the mobile or from your PC to get access to all of Avantgo's approximately 1000 channels.

Avantgo shut down in 2009.


What's This?

rsWAP

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://gatebot.com/rswap/ (HTML5)

rsWAP (gatebot.com/rswap/) - Free ring tones for Sprint phones. When downloading ringtones and images on Sprint, which is a US CDMA operator, the phone looks for a .GCD (General content descriptor) file which is just a specially formatted text file containing information like the size, title and url of the actual audio or image file. Most generic content download sites don't provide .GCD files so the downloads fail on Sprint phones. rsWAP has a large selection of tones and wallpapers complete with the necessary .GCD files. These downloads will only work on Sprint phones.

13-Apr-2011 No longer exists.
What's This?

Wine Weekly

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wineweekly.com/?mobi (xhtml-mp)
Wine reviews and opinion in blog format. Mobile edition uses Andy Moore's WordPress plugin.

12-Jan-2008 Wine Weekly no longer offers a mobile edition
What's This?

InfoGin

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.infogin.com (HTML5)
InfoGin Home Page InfoGin (m.infogin.com) is the company that provides transcoder technology to AOL and Yahoo and several mobile opperators. I never use transcoders anymore, Opera Mini so much better than any of them. But if your stuck on Verizon with just that Openwave browser, a good transcoder can really open up the web for you.

I found AOL's transcoder increasingly unreliable when I was using it. The thing seemed to return an error rather than a page more often then not. Perhaps the errors were the fault of AOL's infrastructure rather than the core technology. Anyway, in my brief tests InfoGin performed well. All the pages I tried loaded quickly and web forms seem functional, I was able to post a comment on this site.

InfoGin has what I consider the two essential features in a transcoder, pages spliting and image resizing. There's also a primitive form of Opera and the Google Transcoder's content folding were menus and forms are hidden but can still be reached through a navigation menu.

One great feature of InfoGin that I haven't seen before in a transcoder is the Map function ...

More...

Down: 8-Oct-2008
What's This?

GrandCentral

Content: *****  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://grandcentral.com/mobile (HTML5)

GrandCentral (grandcentral.com/mobile) Google owned free call forwarding and voicemail service. I'm not going to describe the GrandCentral service in detail as it's been covered by thousands of articles and posts. Essentially it gives you a new phone number which you can set to ring any or all of up to 6 mobile, landline or Gizmo Project SIP numbers. There are loads of other features like call blocking and screening, custom voicemail greetings and temporary call diversion. GrandCentral's mobile web site gives you complete control over your GrandCentral number, you can change which phones your GrandCentral number rings, temporarily block calls or divert them to a new number, view call records, listen to voicemail by downloading an mp3 and manage and place calls from your GrandCentral phone book. The service has been in closed beta for what seems like forever but invites are pretty easy to get. In Fact I have 10 invites to give out. If you would like one just leave a comment.

Redirects to its successor, Google Talk.


What's This?

The Money Channel

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://money.askmenow.com (xhtml-mp)
The Money Channel which produces Steve Crowley's American Scene financial news and opinions show on Business Talk radio network and WallStreetCast on Bravo TV has added a mobile web site to their creative portfolio. The Money Chanel appears as the Finance section on mobile web portal AskMeNow and consists of 10 financial news items from Reuters and a ticker search that returns stock quotes and company specific financial wire items.

2-Dec-2008: Site is down.
What's This?

Mmegi (Botswana)

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://www.mmegi.bw (HTML5)

Mmegi Mobile HomepageThe mobile edition of Mmegi, the only independent daily newspaper in the African Repubic of Botswana. The site offers a nice mix of content including a half a dozen or so full stories from each of the paper's News, Sports, Editorials, Letters, Book Reviews, Business and Art/Culture sections. Most stories are illustrated with a news photo.; The mobile site even has a link to the paper's RSS feed, something more mobile sites should now that a number of mobile phones as well as Opera Mini have built in RSS readers.  Mmegi Mobile labels itself as a "test" site but it seems to be fully functional other than a broken link to the Comics section.  At 30KB the site might be a little large for some mobile browsers as reflected by its 3 out of 5 dev.mobi score.

27-Aug-2012: Mmegi no longer has a mobile or responsive site


What's This?

Cloquet MN Pine Journal

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.pinejournal.com/m/ (xhtml-mp)

Cloquet, Minnesota's Pine Journal's mobile site carries local news, sports, weather and classifieds. 

Feb-2010: Mobile version is no longer offered.


What's This?

Volvo Ocean Race

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.volvooceanrace.org/ (xhtml-mp)

Follow the 39,000 mile, nine month long round the world yacht race on your phone. The current Volvo Ocean Race started in October, 2008.  The race's official mobile site has news and videos from the race and a chart graphic displaying the current position of each competitor.  Source: Mobility.mobi

Jan-2011: Mobile edition is gone


What's This?

KeyToss

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://h.keytoss.com (xhtml-mp)

KeyToss Search Form

Feb 2011 - Hotel booking is no longer available with KeyToss

I've been pretty dissatisfied with most of the mobile hotel search and booking sites I've tried. I don't know what it is about this category but hotel sites always seem to have serious usability problems; unnecessarily complex search forms, illogically sorted results, listings for hotels that turn out to have no availability, "bait and switch" pricing or prices buried several levels deep making comparison shopping unnecessarily complex.

This week Keytoss launched a new mobile hotel booking service at h.keytoss.com. I've covered KeyToss before. It's a personalized mobile homepage similar to iGoogle or NetVibes. I like KeyToss, it's feature rich and enables adding a lot more types of content than the rather limited mobile versions of iGoogle and NetVibes. According to Keytoss their hotel site is "...the Most Advanced Hotel Booking Service on the Mobile Web". That's a bold claim and I approached the site skeptically but with high hopes.

KeyToss is location enabled as much as is possible with current technology. It tries to use geolocation to find you so you don't have to enter your location. Keytoss can geolocate on Android and Windows Mobile phones using Google's Gears, BlackBerry's with the BlackBerry browser's built in location support and on the iPhone with the help of Alocola, a free open source app.

KeyToss Search Results

Even without geoloacation it's pretty easy to use KeyToss. The search form has only one required field, your location. If it hasn't been prepopulated by geolocation it will accept your free form entry of a neighborhood, address, landmark, city, airport code, postal code or geo-coordinates. The rest of the search form is prepopulated with logical defaults; one room for tonight, rated at least two stars, under $250, for one person, for one night. All of those can of course be changed.

The results seem to be mostly sorted by price, from lowest to highest. There doesn't appear to be any way to change the sort to distance from your location, which given Keytoss' geolocation ability, would be a great feature for trying to find a room at the last minute in an unfamiliar city.

The listings include only available rooms with the lowest available base price for each hotel shown right in the initial listing along with a link to a map. Clicking on a particular hotel in the list of results will give the bottom line price, including taxes and fees, and considerable detail on each property; amenities, available services and pet and cancellation policies. KeyToss iteself does not have a cancellation charge but individual hotels often do.

Keytoss gets its inventory from Hotels.com and seems to have a huge number of properties available. A search for a room for tonight under $100 (which is considered very cheap) in downtown San Francisco returned 85 results including a $99 deal at a well located four star hotel!

KeyToss Hotel Listing

By default, Keytoss lists up to 100 results on a single page. These pages are large, about 200 KB when images are included. That''s fine for the iPhone, Opera Mini or even the BlackBerry, but is obviously too large for most feature phones. To deal with this and make the site work on all phones, Keytoss provides an option to paginate the results, 15 to a page, and another to disable images. Pagination reduces page size to about 40 KB and turning off images drops it to 9 KB. With both options I was able to use KeyToss Hotels on an old RAZR with Motorola's MIB browser and a couple low end Verizon LG phones running Openwave 6.2.3. However the Openwave 7.0 browsers of two Sprint/Nextel iDen Motorola phones claimed that even the 9 KB version of KeyToss was "Too large for available memory". Which is surprising as the same phones could load other pages as large as 30 KB. Which looks like an Openwave bug as Keytoss seems to be doing everything right here.

Booking a room with KeyToss is pretty easy too. If you have set up a profile with KeyToss in advance and included your credit card details you can book with just a click or two after signing in. If you haven't registered there's a click to call option. A discount code in each listing presumably insures that you will get the advertised price even if booking by phone. Finally you can book the old fashioned, non-mobile friendly way by filling out a typical 13 field form with name, address, phone number, card number, expiration date, security code, etc..

All in all, I think KeyToss lives up to it's claim as being the most advanced mobile hotel booking site. It's not perfect, I'd like to see it make better use of geolocation to identify the nearest hotels with vacancies and also use browser detection and adaptation to automatically deliver compatible results to all browsers. But the combination of a large inventory, ease of use and a format that encourages comparison shopping put it well ahead of the current competition.


What's This?

Maemo-Guru

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.maemo-guru.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Maemo-Guru Mobile Website

Ricky Cadden, the Symbian Guru, has expanded his coverage to include Nokia's newest smartphone platform with the launch of Maemo-Guru.com. Of course Maemo itself isn't new having been used in the Nokia N770, N800 and N810 Internet tablets.  But those were not phones. The next iteration of Maemo devices, the N900, is. With its 3.5 inch touchscren, WiFi AND 3G radios, slide out QWERY keyboard, huge amount of memory and a Mozilla based browser with Flash support N900 is positioned as Nokia's flagship handset.

Ricky is no stranger to Maemo, having previously published Tablet-Guru which he shut down after about a year citing Nokia's apparent lack of enthusiasm for the platform.  The N900 changes everything and it seems like a great time to bring back Tablet-Guru, complete with an updated name reflecting that Maemo is not just for tablets anymore.

The N900 is an exciting device and I'm looking on getting my hands on one, especially as it supports my operator of choice, T-Mobile USA's, oddball 3G bands.  Nokia's first Maemo smartphone is going to be a hot topic in the coming weeks and months.  I'm counting on  Ricky and Maemo-Guru editor Rita El Khoury (dotsisx) to give us some first hand impressions of the N900 hardware and software.

The mobile edition of Maemo-Guru is created using WordPress Mobile Pack which does a great job of making the site usable with any mobile browser.

Shut down, redirects to SymbianGuru.com


What's This?

Blackberry Leaks

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://m.berryleaks.com (HTML5)

Read breaking news and rummors about unreleased BlackBerry handsets, software and services.

Parked domain


What's This?

Hahlo4

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://hahlo.com (xhtml-mp)

An attractive "Middle Web " Twitter front end. Has an average page size of 350 KB and a dependency on JavaScript. Halo4 looks and works great in the iPhone, Android, Web OS, and Maemo browsers or Opera Mini or Mobile on a phone with a page width of 320 px or greater.

17-Jun-2013: Shut down, details .


What's This?

HYPY Chinese-English

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.roshisoft.com/hypy (xhtml-mp)

Mobile Chinese-English-Chinese dictionary.  Supports entry of English words and phrases, Chinese characters or Pinyin (phonetic representation of Chinese using Roman characters). Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Parked domain.


What's This?

PinStack

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://pinstack.com/ (xhtml-mp)

PinStack Mobile

Pinstack, one of the oldest (founded 2004) and largest (over 300,000 registered members) BlackBerry user forums has changed it's focus.  Sometime in the last year or so the site gained Android, iPhone, Windows Mobile, Palm and other smartphone sub-forums and changed it's byline from "Where BlackBerry professionals Connect!" to "Smartphone Professionals Alliance!".

PinStack has always been a very active and well run forum with many knowledgeable and active users, so as someone who is interested in all mobile platforms I welcome the diversification.  Still the majority of activity is in the BlackBerry forums and I think that PinStack will always be thought of first and foremost as a BlackBerry site.

The mobile versions of PinStack's news blog (pinstack.com) and forums (forums.pinstack.com) were redesigned last year. There are no mobile specific URLs, browser detection and redirection are used to route  visitors to the appropriate version. The new look reminds me of the iPhone optimized WPTouch Wordpress plugin but PinStack is a vBulletin site rather than WordPress.. At any rate the site looks good in full web mobile browsers from Opera Mini to the iPhone.  Page size (the pinstack.com mobile homepage is over 300 KB) will probably make the site a non-starter on dumbphones but that's not the target audience. The mobile pages are not at all "dumbed down" and contain the full content and functionality of their desktop equivalents including posting to the forums and marking posts as "trusted".

I did notice a small but annoying usability glitch with PinStack Mobile. The PinStack homepage and the forums aren't very well connected. At least I couldn't find a link from the forums to the homepage. Most of the items on the homepage point to forum threads but once you start navigating around the forums the only way back to the homepage seems to be by pressing the back button repetitively. And if you start at forums.pinstack.com there's no way to get to homepage at all. It's a minor thing but definitely makes navigation harder. All that's really needed is for clicking the PinStack logo at the top of Forum pages to take you back to pinstack.com rather than the top level of the forums as it does now.

May 2010 - Pinstack has replaced their mobile web edition with a downloadable reader app.

 

 


What's This?

Au Mode

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.aumode.net/ (xhtml-mp)

Fashion news blog covering trends, designers, the fashion industry and fashion retail trade.  Good photo coverage of major designer's runway shows. Source: Oh! Mobile directory

Au Mode no longer has a mobile site


What's This?

InfoSpace

Content: **  Usability: XX
Last seen at: http://kevxml2a.infospace.com/_1_300313__cinglr.wap/x/app/mls/index.xhtml (xhtml-mp)
Last seen at: http://www.infospace.com/wml11/index_direct.wml (wml)

White Pages, Yellow Pages and Reverse Phone directory. This site used to be the best mobile people search but lately it has become very slow and often fails to find listed numbers. Use Whitepages.com or SuperPages instead.

8-Sept-2009 Redirects to non-mobile InfoSpace homepage


What's This?

CitiBank ATM Finder

Content:  Usability:
Last seen at: http://www.vicinity.com/citihdml/index.hm (hdml)
)
Broken - never finds any ATM's
What's This?

ATM Finder

Content: *****  Usability: XXX1/2
Last seen at: http://wireless.mapquest.com/aolmq_wml/search/atm/default.asp? (wml)
Find the nearest ATM (any bank). Shut down some time before 3/26/2006. Use Go2 directory to find ATMs.
What's This?

Digg Lite

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://digglite.com/ (xhtml-mp)

An open source  "Touch Web" version of Digg, created by the Digg folks to demonstrate their API.  No JavaScript dependencies but it's not for feature phones due to front page size of over 200 kb and links to Dugg items that open non-mobile pages,

Dec 2010 - Shut down.


What's This?

Blazer Quickstart

Content: ***  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://blazer.handspring.com/blazer/EnglishUS/ (HTML5)
A PDA portal hosted by Handspring (I don't know how long this one will be around now that Handspring is part of PalmOne) It's gone as on 1/22/06
What's This?

apaWAPa

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.apawapa.com/ (HTML5)
Ringtone and wallpaper downloads. No longer a mobile tech site
What's This?

m-find

Content:  Usability:
Last seen at: http://m-find.com (HTML5/wml)
Dead 12/4-12/11
What's This?

Yahoo Cycling

Content: *****  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://wap.oa.yahoo.com/raw?dp=sports&lg=sc&ac=news (xhtml-mp/wml)
Timely coverage of professional cycling with an emphasis on American riders.

Update: 16-Sep-2007 Yahoo seems to have dropped Cycling from their mobile web sports coverage
What's This?

WAPMetros

Content: ***  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://wapmetros.com/ (wml)
Guide to hotels, events, nightlife and restaurants primarily in the USA and Mexico. Also covers Berlin, London. Descriptions are brief.

Down as of 2006-08-19
What's This?

Ranova

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wap.ranova.org/wap.wml (wml)
Download games, ringtones an wallpapers Site has been shut down.
What's This?

MS Mobiles

Content: ****1/2  Usability: XXX1/2
Last seen at: http://mobile.msmobiles.com/index.php (HTML5)

Occasionally controversial, always interesting MS Smartphone news site. Updated several times a day.

Jan-2010: Gone main domain redirects to WMPoweuser.com


What's This?

GSM Arena Forums

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://www.gsmarena.com/forum/index.php?s=mobile (HTML5)

Active mobile users forums. Forums for each major phone manufacturer, smartphones, buy-sell, software and several others. Your phone or PDA must support cookies or the site will revert to the desktop edition as soon as you go to a new page.

Jun-2011: GSMArena no longer has a Forum or a mobile site of any kind!


What's This?

Bloggo

Content:  Usability: X
Last seen at: http://bloggo.net/wap/Bloggo.py (HTML5)
Update: 4-Sep-2006: Bloggo seems to be down for good - too bad, it had the best UI of any mobile aggregator.
Bloggo is strictly an RSS reader. To me it would be the ideal mobile RSS Aggregator except for one thing - it's just too sloooow. How slow? On a PC with a fast DSL connection - it takes 90 seconds from the time I click the bookmark until the first text appears on my screen. That's with only three feeds, the more feeds you have the longer it takes. Admittedly, it doesn't take much longer on a phone - but my phone's browser times out after 30 seconds so I could never get connected to Bloggo until I discovered a work-around. If, after Bloggo times out, I wait or even go browse another site for two to three minutes and then go back to Bloggo, I get right in. Apparently even after I get the timeout error, Bloggo continues to download and cache my feeds. I don't wait too long however, after about five minutes Bloggo seems to expire the cache and I have to start all over again. It's it worth the wait? Probably not, but if you try it you will see an absolutely perfect mobile UI. The feed list shows you how many unread items you have in each feed and even sorts the list so that feeds with no unread items fall at the bottom of the list! The item index for each feed lists only titles - as is appropriate for a service targeted at phones. When you read a item you get the full item. The only faults other than the performance are that images are not resized and long items aren't broken into pages - both of which can be a problem on phones with page size or image limits. You can get around this by reading Bloggo through a transcoding site like AOL's which resizes images and paginates content.
What's This?

Forbes Mobile

Content: ****1/2  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.mdog.com/bookmarks/forbes/htmlsite/mobile.php?UMPG=index (HTML5)
Mobile edition of the bi-weekly Forbes business and financial magazine. Articles contain the full text content from the magazines web site.

Down 31-May-3007 No Content!
What's This?

Smartphone Thoughts

Content: ****1/2  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://www.smartphonethoughts.com/mobile/ (HTML5)

This news and review site is a companion site to PocketPC Thoughts . The site is updated frequently and is one of the very few mobile sites to do in-depth reviews of new phones -although these are generally limited to devices running the Microsoft Smartphone OS. Everything is on one long scrolling page which isn't ideal for phones but is manageable. Some links (including the one to the "Forums" and most of those in the "links" section point to the full web versions of articles.

Redirects to Windows Phone Thoughts which is no longer updated.


What's This?

Ovi Blog

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://blog.ovi.com/ (xhtml-mp)

The official Ovi Blog now has a mobile version created with WordPress Mobile Pack. The site has tips and tricks for using Ovi services, product release announcements, polls and contests to win free stuff. The current contest is for a trip to Nokia World in London. including accommodations and airfare from anywhere in the world!

Apr-2012 - Redirects to the non-mobile Ovi Maps Blog.


What's This?

Digg Mobile

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://mobits.com/digg/ (HTML5)

  Digg Mobile  Eugenia, the developer responsible for the awesome OSNews mobile site has created a mobile front end to Digg! The site presents the current top 40 on Digg in a compact format that displays nicely on any WAP2 phone.

The only thing I'm not fond of about this Digg mobile is that when you click through from the mobile page you are on the non-Mobile Digg item page which causes my phones built-in Openwave 7 browser to throw an out of memory error. If you plan on actually following the links to Digg and possibly on to the Dugg site you will need more than the average mobile browser.

I though I could just do a mashup of Mobile Digg and a transcoder like Skweezer. I tried running Digg Mobile though both Skweezer and the Google transcoder (www.google.com/gwt/n) and they both made following links on Digg Mobile possible in the built-in browser without errors. The Digg pages were pretty easy to navigate through either transcoder. I wasn't able to actually Digg or comment, however. Same with Opera Mini. It looks like the transcoders can't deal with all the Javascript that Digg uses.

It sure would be nice to have fully functional mobile Digg. Ideally it would be just for digging sites on the mobile web. You would need a way to digg a new site right from the phone. That's a problem as I don't think any mobile browsers support true bookmarklets. Very few even allow cutting and pasting urls. I'd like to see something like WapTags where you search and browse through a proxy that has a link at the bottom of each screen that does a Digg. Eugenia, are you up to building something like that?

04-25-2009 Site is Down.


What's This?

Diggriver

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://diggriver.com/ (HTML5)

Digg's first mobile site, the bare bones Dig River. a read only listing of the top Diggs.

Dec 2010 - Site is down


What's This?

CNN by mDog

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://www.mdog.com/bookmarks/cnn/htmlsite/mobile.php?UMPG=index (HTML5)
Alternate text-only CNN site built by mDog.com from CNN's RSS feed

7-Jul-2008: Runtime error
What's This?

Gizmodo by FeedM8

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://feedm8.com/wap/feed?u=http%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.gawker.com%2Fgizmodo%2Ffull (xhtml-mp)

Mobile edition of the famous gadget blog - from FeedM8. Small page and image sizes that should work on any phone.

FeedM8 is down


What's This?

CnWAP

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.cinwap.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Cincinnati, Ohio news portal. Links to five local news sources, Dailies The Enquirer and The Post, TV Channel 9 WCPO, Suburban weeklies Community Press and Recorder and event calendar CiN Weekly.

Shut down.


What's This?

Google Olympics

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.google.com/m/summergames (xhtml-mp)
Mobile Olympic LogoThe Google Mobile Olympics site (google.com/m/summergames). The front page presents a list of sports, clicking a link takes you to a schedule of upcoming events and links to news items on the sport from around the web. According to the Google Mobile Blog, results and medal counts will appear as soon as there is something to report. Also from Google, check out the Google logo celebrating the Olympics on the G's mobile search page. Google says this is the first time mobile search has featured a custom logo.

Down - 17-Oct-2008.
What's This?

Twapper

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.30boxes.com/twapper (HTML5)

Twapper Mobile Twitter Client Twitter for WAP" lets you follow what people are saying on Twitter using the mobile web instead of SMS. Test drive it with prolific bloggers/twitterers Steve Rubel, Dave Winer and Scoble m.30boxes.com/twapper/steverubel+scobleizer+davewiner

25-May-2013: Broken, displays no tweets.


What's This?

TapTap

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.taptap.net (xhtml-mp)

 TapTapTapTap (m.taptap.net/) is from AdMob. I linked to in Found on the Mobile Web #18. It's Digg-like in that visitors submit mobile sites and Tap (Digg) the sites they like. TapTap can also be used as a portal, searching and browsing sites by category like Sports, Ringtones, News or Local. Registration is not required to submit or Tap sites however the submission process appears to be moderated. I submitted Yeswap.com several days ago but it hasn't shown up in TapTap yet.

The TapTap front page lists the "hottest" sites with the number of taps each has received. I don't understand how hotness is determined. I'd expect it to be based on the number of taps but it's clearly not - there are sites with only a few taps on the front page and others with thousands buried of back pages. Speaking of buried, TapTap has no equivalent of Digg's bury. I'm not sure if that's good or bad. Burying is such a negative concept yet it's what gives users a way to deal with SPAM and excessive self promotion of sites by their owners.

Although it's not required, registration is worthwhile because it gives you a MyTapTap page which is a directory of the sites you've tapped and submitted. Registered users can also use TapTap's notes feature. You can create a note on TapTap's PC web site at www.taptap.net and it shows up in the My Profile > My Notes section on the mobile site. The notes would be more useful if the were also editable on the mobile site though.

TapTap is an interesting site but AdMob doesn't seem to be doing much to promote it. I like the openness (anyone can tap) but fear this is easily exploitable using bots, TapBots if you will, to drive spam and scam sites to the top of the rankings. There's no way to bury a malicious site or to report spam. The moderation seems to be working though as I haven't see any SPAM on TapTap.

June-2010: redirects to AdMob homepage.


What's This?

FlightAware

Content: *****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://flightaware.com/mobile/ (HTML5)

 FlightAwareFlightAware's a real-time flight tracking site with very detailed information including maps. FlightAware tracks both commercial and private flights as long as a flight plan exists and the owner of a private plane has not requested that tracking be blocked. Tracking is limited to US airspace.

The mobile version keeps the basic layout and content of the FlightAware PC site but removes the ads and resizes maps to 180 px wide instead of 400. The resulting pages work well on SmartPhone browsers and Opera Mini but are too big, up to 70KB, for the built in browsers of feature phones. Usability could be better too, in particular, some links are a hard to read blue on a blue background in the mobile version. The same links in the full version are white on blue - much better. Still, if this site works on your phone, it gives an awesome amount of detail including detailed listings of aircraft features and equipment, forums and even features on interest to pilots like runway diagrams and an IFR Route Analyzer.

Update 6-Mar-2009: Flightaware no longer offers a mobile version. Too bad, it was a useful service.


What's This?

Maxim

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.maxim.com (xhtml-mp)
Last seen at: http://maxim.opnr.com/maxim/ (wml)

Maxim magazine's mobile site. Features include jokes, dating advice, gadget and car reviews and lots of pictures of young women in bikinis. There are also videos to purchase.

No longer mobile formatted


What's This?

Bloglines Beta

Content:  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://m.beta.bloglines.com/ (xhtml-mp)

 Bloglines Mobile Feed ListThere's a public beta of the next version of Bloglines Mobile up at m.beta.bloglines.com . If you are Bloglines user give it a try.

 

I'm really excited about this. I live in the Opera Mini browser running Bloglines Mobile. If there is a new version of either Opera or Bloglines I'm like a kid in a candy store.

While Opera Mini gets updated often, Bloglines hasn't had a significant upgrade in years. Although I use it more than any other mobile site, there are a couple of annoying "features" that I have high hopes of finally seeing changed in the new version.

In fact, the more serious of the two is already fixed in this first beta. More...

Dec-2010: Bloglines was acquired by Merchant Circle who immediately shut down the mobile edition.


What's This?

Taptu

Content: *****  Usability: XXXX1/2
Last seen at: http://taptu.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Taptu is a new mobile search engine specializing in music search (songs, lyrics, artists, video and audio clips).  Taptu result - Wynonie HarrisTheir tagline is "A new kind of search engine for mobile phones which allows you to search and find really useful content in 10 clicks or less".

I had excellent results searching for relatively obscure artists. I tried a searching for half a dozen lesser know musicians spanning the last 50 years (Wynonie Harris, Harvey Scales, Tracy Nelson, Deanna Bogart, The Parrots and The 88) and Taptu found all of them except The Parrots, a new Japanese Beatles cover band. The results typically include MP3 music and 3gpp video clips, photos and if they exist; the artists homepage, MySpace page, Wikipedia entry and album cover art. Image thumbnails are featured right on the results page and each result is labeled as song, video. etc. which helps if you are looking for a particular kind of content. Taptu has really got pop music search down. I can't think of an other service on the web, let alone the mobile web, that does such consistently good job of finding content by and about musical artists. More...

Aug 2011: Taptu is now an iOS and Android native app only, the Taptu mobile webapp is gone


What's This?

Talkster

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://free.talkster.com/ (xhtml-mp)

TalksterTalkster is a VOIP based service that lets you make "free" ad supported phone calls between 22 countries (North America, most of Europe, plus Hong Kong and Israel) using any phone - mobile or landline. The ads are about 10 seconds long and are heard by both parties.

Talkster doesn't charge anything for the service but the calls aren't really completely free. You're making a mobile or landline call to a local Talkster access point. If you are using free night and weekend minutes or an unlimited landline then Talkster calls really are free. But even if you have to pay for the local call, Talkster will be much cheaper than a normal international call.

Using Talkster is a bit complicated. Say you want to call your friend in Spain. You go to the Talkster mobile or PC web site and enter your number and the number you want to call, Talkster texts you a new permanent local number that connects with your friend and also texts your friend a local number that connects to you.

More...

Aug-2011: Talkset no longer has a mobile site and has abandoned their voice calling service


What's This?

TiltSite

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://tiltsite.com/ (xhtml-mp)

TiltSite Front Page Do you have an ATT Tilt Windows Mobile Phone? Then you should know about TiltSite, a very active site dedicated to the Tilt. If the Tilt name doesn't ring a bell, it's the ATT branded version of HTC's Kaiser aka TyTN II, the latest in a long line of devices with a 2.8 inch QVGA screen and slide out QWERTY keyboard.

Tiltsite, which seems to be a spin off from .mobilitysite.com, is a news blog featuring the latest tips ,tricks and hacks for getting the most out of your Tilt along with software and accessory reviews.

The mobile edition of Tiltsite uses the WP-PDA Wordpress plug-in which creates a single column "middle web" site which is bigger (about 45KB including images) than a mobile site but smaller than a full-web one. WP-PDA is a good fit for the Tilt's Mobile Windows Explorer browser and the new breed of mobile full-web browsers from Opera and Netfront.

There is a Forums link on TiltSite's mobile edition which leads to the full (not mobile) version of Mobilitysite's HTC Kaiser/TyTN II/ AT&T Tilt message board.

Jul-2010: Redirects to MobilitySite.com


What's This?

Gizmo5

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://giz5.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Gizmo IM Networks

Gizmo5 has a new mobile web front end to their IP based Internet telephony and messaging platform. It's sort of the Swiss Army Knife of mobile web based communications. Gizmo lets users communicate by IM on nine different networks and by SMS, e-mail and voice - all from a single integrated contact list.

 

Gizmo5 is often compared with Skype. Both let you make free computer to computer calls and low cost calls to phones worldwide. Unlike Skype though, Gizmo5 is based around open protocols, SIP for VOIP and Jabber for IM. This has the advantage of allowing Gizmo to connect with other networks using these protocols including Yahoo, MSN,  AIM, ICQ, iChat, Jabber, QQ, XMPP, Gadu-Gadu and MySpace IM

More...


Acquired by Google and shut down 4-Apr-2011


What's This?

NationalsDailyNews

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://www.nationalsdailynews.com/mobile/ (xhtml-mp)

An independent, fan-created web site for news, information, and opinions about the Washington Nationals baseball club.

If you have a basic phone or pay by the KB, avoid cliking the headline news links under each story which lead directly to non mobile content.  The site's blogs are a little better but still have page sizes of up to 40 KB. Source: Oh! Mobile Directoy

11-Dec-2011: Sut dow. Read the site's obituary


What's This?

TheWerks

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://thewerks.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

German high performance and collector car market place.  Browse listings for everything from a $600,000 Mercedes 300SL Gullwing coupes to a $7,000 Porsche 912. Covers Audi, BMW, Mercedes and Porsche. Lot's of nice photos of the cars. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Domain has expired along as has its non-mobile counterpart thewerksregistry.com


What's This?

Hotel.mobi

Content: ***  Usability: XX
Last seen at: http://hotel.mobi (xhtml-mp)

Hotel.mobi listing

Hotel.mobi continues the tradition of mobile hotel search sites being useless and/or unusable. The company behind the site issued promissing sounding a press release:

"Hotel.mobi, a portal run by Quinv SA, a Luxembourg-based company that invests in domain names and high value web portals, has announced the official launch of its website, http://www.hotel.mobi a web directory enabling mobile users to find the hotels near their current location and call the hotels' booking desks in one single click." 

I had high hopes for hotel.mobi. When I visited the site with a PC browser i saw a non-mobile page promoting the mobile version: "Find hotels instantly in the city you are in then simply click to call to make a reservation." The promotional page goes on to say that the mobile site features "Geo Loacalisation", "The best and most recent prices" and Google maps.

All of which makes it sound like Hotels.mobi is the answer to travelers' prayers, finally an easy to use mobile site that actually lets you quickly find and book the best hotels deals using only your mobile browser.

So I went to hotel.mobi with my N95 and typed in "San Francisco".  I got a 115 results, basically just a  list of hotel names in alphabetical order; no prices, no address, no phone number and no indication if these hotels had any availability.  That's not a good start, to be useful for price comparison, prices need to be included in initial results and there needs to be a way to filter or sort by price.  You also don't want to see listings for hotels that are full and you need to have some indication of how far away each property is.

Not giving up, I clicked on several of the hotels to see if the promised features were buried a bit deeper.  When I clicked a hotel name I got a page with just the hotel's address and a "Display Details" link that led to yet another page  with  a description of the property and it's amenities. But there was no map, no prices and no click to call phone number, in fact no phone number at all, although a few hotels did list an mailto: email address or a fax number. I tried using Opera Mini and got the same results as with the built-in browser.

What a huge disconnect between what's promised and what's actually delivered.  I'm hoping that the advanced mobile site described in the press release and on the PC web site is just not quite finished yet and what I'm seeing is an old or placeholder version. I'll be watching hotel.mobi for the next few days and will update this post if the situation improves. For now at least, Hotel.mobi continues the tradition of mobile hotel search sites being mostly useless.

Even if hotel.mobi does eventually turn in to something great, sending out press releases and doing promotions on the web for something that isn't actually available seems like a bad idea. I'm sure few if any mobile visitors to hotel.mobi in it's current sorry state will ever return. Source: TMC.net via Mobility.Mobi

6-Jul-2011 hotel.mobi has become a desktop web site promoting an iPhone app


What's This?

Unleash the Phones

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://unleashthephones.com/mobile/ (HTML5)

Formerly ZOMGitsCj, Unleash the Phones covers (mostly) Nokia and Symbian news, reviews and tips from Clinton Jeff. 

 

10-Apr-2017: Redirects to spam and porn sites.
What's This?

SitePoint

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.sitepoint.com/ (xhtml-mp)

The mobile edition of Sitepoint.com from the tech book publisher has web design and development tutorials, articles and podcasts.  Source: Oh! Mobile Directory Mobile view by Mobify.me


Update 10-Apr-2012: SitePoint no longer has a mobile formatted or responsive site.


What's This?

ctvolympics.ca

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.ctvolympics.ca/ (xhtml-mp)

Canadian TV broadcaster CTV, which provides Olympics TV coverage in Canada has a first rate mobile Olympics site with news, results, medal count, photos and CTV Olympics broadcast schedule. Source: mobiThinking

Dec-2010: Site is gone.


What's This?

TweetMeme

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.tweetmeme.com/ (xhtml-mp)

TweetMeme is a new meme tracker that aggregates the most popular links on Twitter and organizes them into  categories. Listings include number of Tweets, a typical Tweet's message, title of the linked page and the link itself which generally doesn't point at a mobile friendly page. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

26-Sep-2012: Shut down


What's This?

The Nokia Blog

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://thenokiablog.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Mark Guim's blog features news, guides, reviews, previews and videos covering Nokia  devices and software.

Jun-2012 - No longer has a mobile formated version.


What's This?

Tube2Mp3

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://tube2mp3.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

This is an interesting approach to free music. Tube2Mp3 lets you search YouTube for videos and convert the audio portion into a downloadable mp3.  The only downside is that it takes several minutes to convert a file.  While converting the screen auto refreshes periodically to avoid a browser timeout.  Source: Mobility.mobi

Redirects to a warex site.


What's This?

Pbushx2 (Tracfone)

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://pbush14.wordpress.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Pbushx2's blog covers América Móvil's US based Tracfone, Net10 and Straight Talk prepaid MVNO brands. The site has phone reviews, service and phone tips and tricks and extensive, frequently updated lists of airtime promotion codes.

Offline


What's This?

Oprah Mobile

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://m.oprah.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Oprah's mobile site offers recent stories from Oprah.com on Health, Style, Relationships, Home & Garden, Food, Entertainment and Money.  The image heavy articles are aggressively paginated which makes them readable on low end devices but a chore to navigate on smartphones.

5-Feb-2012 No longer has a mobile site


What's This?

Alchemy Manga

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.iphonealchemy.com/m/ (xhtml-mp)

Alchemy Manga

IPhoneAlchemy, whose main product is selling manga as iPhone photo libraries,  has built this interesting free touch web manga reader. The AJAX bases webapp works a as well as any dedicated bookreader app with a tap on the left or right edge of the screen quickly flipping to the next or previous page respectively. With it's extensive use of JavaScript and CSS iPhone Alchemy is not for embedded feature phone browsers but works well the IPhone and Android browsers.  It's fully functional if a bit slow in Opera Mini too.

8-Dec-2010 - Site is down!

Although the web reader is slick the actual content is promotional and only the first chapter of each manga is available. It's a shame that the full manga's are not available to the users of non-iPhones devices that the reader works so well on.

17-Dec-2010 - Site is down


What's This?

Fast-Mobile

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://fast-mobile.com (xhtml-mp)

Online directory of sites that T-Mobile USA prepaid users can browse for free.

Parked domain.


What's This?

webOS | Getting started

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.hpwebos.com/us/products/software/webos/gettingstarted/mobile.html (xhtml-mp)

HP/Palm's Getting Started video tutorials and tips for new webOS users. The well made videos do a great job of demonstrating the largely unrealized potential of WebOS.

Redirects to a non-mobile page


What's This?

Ananova Cycling

Content: ***1/2  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://wap.ananova.com/sport/index/?keywords=Cycling (wml)
Professional bicycle racing coverage with an emphasis on British riders. Hasn't been updated since 2004!
What's This?

MobilComm Mail

Content: ****1/2  Usability: XXXX1/2
Last seen at: http://wap.mobilcomm.com/sendmail.wml (wml)
Send email, SMS and pager messages.

6-May-2006: Site is down.
What's This?

Windows Live

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.live.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Live HomeMicrosoft is in the middle of a massive roll-out of a new and revamped Live portal which they have dubbed Windows Live Wave 3.  Wave 3 is all about social networking.  Live users now have a  Profile complete with picture, status-like "personal message" and a "What's new with your network" feed of what your Live friends and contacts are doing.  The existing 30 million user Windows Live Spaces social network, which is especially strong in Asia and on mobile, is still around but it's looking a little neglected with many of it's features duplicated in the new Live portal.

The latest mobile Live has a subset of the features in the full Live Wave 3.  It looks nothing like the simple page of links to other Microsoft mobile web sites that has been at mobile.live.com for the last couple of years. Design wise it's quite simple and elegant with everything new contained in just four pages; Home, People, Photos and Profile.

More...

Dec-2012: Microsoft is dumping the "Live" name and has shut down the Live portal.


What's This?

OAG

Content: ****1/2  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.treosoftware.com/pqa/oag/ (HTML5)
Last seen at: http://www.oag.com/ (wml)
Timetable and flight status. Timetables include low fare airlines like Southwest and automatically suggest alternate airports.

Update 8/15/06: OAG no longer offers a mobile site
What's This?

mFinder

Content:  Usability:
Last seen at: http://mfinder.cellmania.com/Jsp/wml/mFinder.jsp (wml)
Dead 12/4-12/11 2004. 3/17/05 Main page comes up but links return 500 error.
What's This?

@FoxPop

Content: *****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.foxpop.co.uk/articles/default.htm (HTML5)
Successor to the long-time PDA site, FoxPop. The new incarnation is called @FoxPop and offers the same sort of original articles and reviews as the original, however the site is updated with a new article on an irregular schedule rather than in a monthy magazine format. @FoxPop articles tend to be lengthy, very well-written, thoughtful pieces which contain information you won't find anywhere else. Highly recommended.

Update: 7-Sept-2008: Site is down.
What's This?

Tiny Screenfuls

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.tinyscreenfuls.com/ (HTML5)
Wpdated 22-Apr-2007: Neither a mobile site or even much about mobile anymore.
General smartphone news and podcasts
What's This?

Palm Venue

Content: ***1/2  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://www.palmvenue.com/mobile/default.asp (HTML5)
Product announcements, reviews and forums

Site is down 09-Dec-2006
What's This?

TreoMobile

Content: ***1/2  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://www.treomobile.com/index.html (xhtml-mp)
The mobile edition of everythingTreo.com. Has access to the everythingTreo forums and a directory of mobile links.
31-Aug-2006 No longer a mobile site
What's This?

BlackBerry Club

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX1/2
Last seen at: http://wap.blackberryclub.com/forum.php (wml)
Discussion forums for users of the BlackBerry mobile email devices and smartphones.

27-Oct-2008 Dead Link, BlackBerry Club is now a non-mobile front end to BlackBerryNews.com, BlackBerryFAQ.com, and BlackBerryForums.com
What's This?

FlynnMobile

Content: ***1/2  Usability: XXXX1/2
Last seen at: http://www.flynnmobile.com/wp-wap.php (wml)
Mobile news blog. Read and discuss the latest news about phones, techology, software and the cellular industry.

Update 5/5/2006 Site is gone, Domain for sale
What's This?

SprintPCSInfo

Content: ***1/2  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.sprintpcsinfo.com/modules.php?name=AvantGo (HTML5)
News site covering Sprint PCS. New hardware and software product announcements, undocumented codes, tracks updates to BitPim an open source CDMA PC Sync tool.

Update 3/2006 mobile site combined with pcsIntel.com http://www.pcsintel.com
What's This?

Spud Link Recipes

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.spudlink.com/ (xhtml-mp)

A huge collection of recipes, over 38,000.  As the name implies, Spud Link is dedicated to the potato. However the recipe database is not restricted to spud dishes and includes recipes for every occasion. Source: Mobile Mammoth

31-Mar-2013: Expired domain


What's This?

MSN Spaces

Content: ****  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.spaces.msn.com/ (xhtml-mp)

  Spaces main page  The mobile version of MSN Spaces has really changed since I last looked at it five months ago. I'd say it's almost a complete redesign.

I'm sure you've heard of Spaces - Microsoft's blogging/social networking platform. Spaces can be used as a pure blogging platform but its social aspect sets it apart from traditional blogging platforms like Typepad or Blogger. The social part comes from tight integration with MSN Messenger and Hotmail (a link to your latest blog post can appear in your mail or messaging sig) and the fact that you can restrict various bits of content or your whole Space to only your mail contacts or Messenger buddy list. Spaces is an ideal platform for technophobes who want to create a personal journal, but the tools are also there to create a quite sophisticated blog with integrated music and video, custom html, feeds, trackbacks, advertising and the ability to ping services like Technorati. Hosting and everything else about Spaces is free although you have to subscribe to MSN Premium ($99/year) to remove the image ads that Microsoft puts your Space. There are restrictions on what you can name your Space and what you can post (especially if you live in China!) but probably no more so than with similar hosted platforms like Yahoo! 360 or Blogger.  Spaces item index  

Whatever you think of it, Spaces is turning into one of the web's big successes stories. Granted, with the Microsoft name and promotional engine behind it, Spaces was guaranteed to be pretty big. But I think even Microsoft was surprised at how much of a success it has become. While it's difficult to come up with hard data, most estimates put the number of Spaces blogs at over 30 million. That's huge, probably ten times bigger than Yahoo's similar 360 and approaching the number of "serious" blogs that ping services like Technorati.

So what's new with the mobile version of Spaces? A major change is that if you have a photo album on your Space it now also appears in the mobile version. Also new is keyword searching of all of Spaces. Search, which was added to mobile at the same time that the full web version got it, is helpful in finding blogs and items that match your interests and is also the easiest way to jump from one Spaces blog to another. The appearance of blog posts has been improved - more of the formatting is carried over to the mobile version. There are some very useful new access keys - press a single key to do any of the following:

  Spaces menu    Spaces blog item page   * - top of page
2 - Comments
4 - Add comment
1 - Previous entry/page/photo
3 - Next entry/page/photo
6 - Archives
7 - Delete
9 - This Space's home
0 - MSN Spaces home
# - Jump to the navigation menu

These access keys are consistent across the other new Microsoft mobile web products like Live Mail and Live Search. Speaking of the Live brand, Microsoft has announced that MSN Spaces will be renamed Live Spaces this summer.  Spaces photo album  

Mobile Spaces works very well on almost any WAP2 or cHTML capable device. It appears that user agent sniffing is used to customize page weight and image size to handset capabilities. Good usability and respect for the platform's limitations are two of the hallmarks of good mobile design and Spaces has both. About the only thing I can complain about is that mobile Spaces is rather plain looking. Granted, that can be said about most any current mobile site. There are a only a few sites that manage to combine usability, reasonably small page weight and a visually attractive design. It can be done though, take a look at OSNews, All about N-Gage, PocketPC Magazine and CNet. Spaces has some nice themes on the PC web version - how soon before we see mobile themes?

You can access mobile spaces using the same url as on the desktop, http://spaces.msn.com/blog_name. If a mobile browser is detected, it gets the mobile version. You can force the mobile version to appear even in IE 6 by changing the url to http://mobile/spaces.msn.com/blog_name.

In the some things never change department, most mobile Spaces don't work at all in Firefox or Opera, throwing an XML parsing error. Even desktop Spaces look awful on Opera and FF with truncated text in blog posts in Opera and overlapping text in Firefox. I didn't have any trouble running Spaces on my various phones and mobile emulators but those parsing errors make me suspicious that there will be problems with some handsets.

There are some interesting blogs hosted on Spaces. Two I like:

Hello Sonia The life story of a young, language challenged, British PHD candidate living and doing research in a small town in Japan.

Mike's Lounge is good read. Its the Space of a Microsoft Mobile Program Manager, Mike Smuga. He writes mainly on mobile development topics along with an occasional travelogue. You can find many other Microsoft employee blogs on Spaces as well. Just search from the Spaces homepage on "Microsoft development" or "Microsoft marketing", for example.

To me the single most significant feature of mobile Spaces is that every Spaces blog is automatically mobilized without the user having to do anything - a mobile site is created by default. I think that this is huge. It means 30 million more mobile sites and also that every user who has a Spaces blog now has the incentive to try out the mobile web - to check out their mobile site. Even more significantly it means that Microsoft is taking mobile very, very seriously. I'm not a big fan of Microsoft, in fact, I actually tend to use non-Microsoft products whenever a viable alternative exists. I don't do this because I think Microsoft's stuff is bad (it is generally quite good) or that the company is inherently evil (it's not, consider Bill Gates' philanthropy). No, my reason for avoiding Microsoft is that I want to see choice and competition flourish in the marketplace. Monopolies stifle innovation. We need Firefox, Java, PHP, MySQL, OpenOffice, Apple, Symbian, Palm and other all the other worthy alternatives, to survive and thrive. That said, MS is making some very smart moves in mobile these days. They obviously have a lot of bright, creative people working on their mobile stuff and deserve credit for their good work.

On the handset OS side, Microsoft is also looking very strong - Windows Mobile 5.0 is getting rave reviews and in the US at least, there's a far wider variety of WM devices available than either Symbian, Linux or Palm OS ones. The WM devices also tend to offer more bang for the buck than the competition. It's not unlike when MS-DOS first appeared on the market, 25 years ago. At the time, CPM and the Apple II ruled the desktop. MS-DOS 1.0 really wasn't very good and Digital Research, Apple and the leading vendors of CPM hardware like Kaypro and Osborne didn't consider MS-DOS much of a threat. Now it seems that history is about to repeat itself. Unless Symbian and Access/Palmsource start to compete much more aggressively in the handset market, the Redmond giant will soon be as dominant in mobile OS market as they are on the desktop.

In the mobile web space, I don't think any one player can ever dominate. That's due to the low cost of entry and the long tail - there are just too many niche areas to cover it all. Still, based on recent moves like Live Mobile Search and especially Spaces mobile I think that Microsoft is going to be an even bigger player in the mobile web than then are in the PC web. Mobile Spaces is great and I hope it will encourage MySpace, Friendster, Yahoo and Google, etc. to counter with some tasty new mobile offerings of their own.

Microsoft has shut down Spaces.  All former Spaces blogs were ported to Wordpress.com by Microsoft before the shut down.


What's This?

3G Wikipedia

Content: *****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://www.3g.co.nz/wiki/ (HTML5)
Yet another mobilization of Wikipedia. Very similar to Wapedia in design, but this one does break long results up into pages. Unless your mobile can handle long pages, I recommend that you stick to Wapedia.

5/28/06 Site is down.
What's This?

Go2

Content: *****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://wap1.go2.com/directions/ (xhtml-mp/wml)

  Go2    Go2   Go2 offers driving directions with a couple of unique features, My favorite is that you can use a phone number as a location. Entering a phone number on a phone is of course, much easier than entering an address. So if you know the phone number at your start point or destination input is really easy. When I'm lost in a business district, many of the stores have their phone number on their signs so I enter that into Go2 - much easier than typing the full address. Go2 even lets you do a white pages lookup for a person's name and use that as location, assuming that the person has a listed number. Go2 was also the only site that let you specify cross streets to identify a location. You can, of course, also use street addresses. Go2's driving directions module has a number of other features that enhance usability. Most links have accelerator keys. When entering a city, you don't even have to enter a state. Just enter the first few letters of the city name and Go2 will give you a list of all the matches from around the country (far right image).

There is another way to specify an address for directions in Go2. That is to start with the Go2 directory and then use the results of a directory search for a place of business as a starting or ending point. The directory is based on the telephone yellow pages and is a very complete list of business addresses. If you have a Go2 account, you can also use one of your saved locations or favorites as a starting or ending point. I covered the Go2 directory in a previous post. It's a very powerful but not particularly user friendly application that is well worth learning if you are at all interested in using your mobile for real world navigation.

Go2's results are from TeleNav and are the same as Google and Yahoo's. Go2 has both WAP1 and WAP2 versions of their pages, delivering one or the other based on browser detection. There is no way to specify which one you will get. In my testing, I always got the WAP1 version except with the Nokia 6230 emulator which received a WAP2 page. Unfortunately I was not able to use Go2 successfully on that emulator. After entering my start address, the emulator reported a parsing error, Go2 is probably sending some invalid xhtml. I had no problems using several other emulators and devices which however all received the WAP1 wml version of Go2. I could not find a direct link to Go2's driving directions that would work with all browsers. The best way to get to Go2's driving directions is by chosing the Directions link on the Go2 front page at go2.com.

Go2 no long offers driving directions


What's This?

WC'06

Content: ****  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://worldcup.areppim.com/ (HTML5)

 WC'06 I received an email yesterday from a gentleman named Eduardo Casais asking me to take a look his company's mobile World Cup site. The company is called Areppim AG and appears to be a web design firm in Berne, Switzerland. I'm rather impressed by the site and wanted to get this post up before tomorrow's Germany - Italy match. Areppim has come up with an unusual and interesting concept and an excellent mobile site from the standpoint of usability and compatibility with a wide range of devices.

The site, WC'06 is a World Cup statistics site with a unique twist. Statistics are presented on WC'06 primarily in the form of graphs. For each team in the tournament there are graphs of various statistics such as goals per match, relative time of ball possession, shots per match and number of red and yellow cards. There is a comparison feature that lets you can lay the graphs of any two teams on top of each other useful for making predictions and for bettors I would think. The coverage of matches is unusual too. They are presented as a time-line with various colored symbols on the line showing where each goal, card or substitution occurred. I don't know if the match time-lines are updated in real time but am hoping that they are. WC'06

The site worked well on all the emulators and devices I have at my disposal. Areppim is doing a great job of resizing images to match browser resolutions. The pages are small, under 5 KB including images so they load fast and aren't going to hit any browser limits. WC'06's user interface is well thought out too. The charts are grouped under categories like "performance", "strength" and "evaluations". You enter a group and choose a team or teams. You select a next link to cycle through the various charts in each category. Selecting exit at any point takes you back to the team selection level and pressing exit again takes you back up to the category selection page. I found the navigation very easy to use. I wish my Motorola phone's menus were as consistent and intuitive. I also found WC'06 fun and addictive to play with.

Down


What's This?

BBC River

Content: *****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://bbcriver.com (HTML5)

This is the same concept as the NY Times River but for the BBC, all the BBC news feeds gathered together on one mobile page, continuously updated. Great site for Opera Mini or smartphones on a 3G network. There are no ad landing pages on the BBC making this River a more seamless experience.

May-2010: Site is down.


What's This?

Cape Cod Times

Content: ****  Usability: XX
Last seen at: http://www.capecodonline.com/avantgo/ (HTML5)
The Cape Cod Times, is a Dow Jones owned daily from Massachusetts' well know summer resort area. The PDA style mobile edition features about 40 articles from the paper in text-only handheld form. All stories in all sections are linked off the home page which is about 35 KB - a little too large for some phone's built-in browsers
What's This?

Crash.net

Content: *****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://www.crash.net/avantgo/ (HTML5)
Crash.Net is a very extensive motorsports site with a sick name covering everything from NASCAR to Rally to F1 and MotoGP. It's an old-school text-only PDA site but features lots of in-depth well written stories
Down 14-Mar-2007
What's This?

Tailrank

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://m.tailrank.com (HTML5)

Tailrank tracks the web for the hottest and best stories. The site has a mobile friendly front page but also has links directly to non-mobile blog posts. Clearly the target is Smartphone and Opera Mini users rather than the great unwashed using the embedded browsers on their feature phones. Tailrank has sections for Breaking News, Politics, Tech and Entertainment.

17-Jun-2009: Tailrank has joined the deadpool.


What's This?

CM Click

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://iji.mobi (xhtml-mp)
News from the West African Republic of Cameroon. Interesting reading, too bad the page colors of gray on orange are unreadable on some devices!

Down 19-Oct-2008 - Site is displaying a MySQL error.
What's This?

NFL on Plusmo

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://nfl.plusmo.com/w/nfl/d/wap2/boxscore (HTML5)

Plusmo, which started out as a mobile widget platform, has expanded their focus to include the mobile web. This site, which unlike the rest of Plusmo requires no registration, which offers NFL (American Professional Football) scores, live play by play reports, stats and news. Plusmo's also added a mobile web interface to their widgets at plusmo.com/wap (free registration required).

10-Jan-2010 - Scores haven't been updated in four months!


What's This?

Ask (Voice Enabled)

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.ask.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Ask - Directions (m.ask.com/ddhome.jsp?form=dd)Ask Voice Enabled Driving Directions Ask.com's mobile driving directions site now features a clever voice recognition system that works with any web enabled phone. To use it you start at Ask's mobile search page, m.ask.com and instead of typing your origin and end addresses you can click on Directions (NEW! Voice Entry!) which places a phone call to dialdirections.com's voice recognition system where you say your starting and ending addresses. The service sends you a text message with a link to a mobile web page containing the directions. It's kind of low tech but very effective From: jkOntheRun

Ask no longer offers driving directions.


What's This?

Berry Bloglines

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://thebogles.com/berry/bloglines/ (xhtml-mp)

Berry Bloglines is another useful mobile web app from profilic developer of free Blackberry applications, Phil Bogle. Berry Bloglines is an alternate mobile web front end to the Bloglines RSS reader. Although designed for Blackberries, it should work on just about any web enabled mobile phone. External links are transcoded by Skweezer. Strangely, Berry Bloglines doesn't let you login with your Bloglines Blog ID, you have to use the email address associated with your Bloglines account which is a PITA for me as I signed up for Bloglines using an impossible to remember disposable email address!

Dec-2010: Bloglines was acquired by Merchant Circle who immediately shut down the mobile edition.


What's This?

Google Notebook

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://google.com/notebook/m (xhtml-mp)

Google Notebook finally has a mobile version. The mobile Notebook is rather limited, all you can do is view your notes and create a new text note by keying something in. The full web version is much more powerful thanks to Google's Notebook Extensions for FireFox and IE which lets you highlight text on any web page and right click to create an instant note. I'd really like to see Google create a mobile browser application ala Opera Mini with Notebook (and Google Maps, Reader and Bookmark) integration built in.

Update: July-2012 - Google has shut down Notebook.  Existing notes where transfered to Google Drive


What's This?

Radar

Content: ****1/2  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.radar.net/ (xhtml-mp)

Radar Radar is a photo sharing site that uses the closed network model like the original Facebook. Pictures are shared with your network of friends and no one else. Friends can comment and reply to each others comments and private messages (which Radar calls "Whispers") are supported. Your photos and your friends photos can be viewed on Radar's web and mobile sites or with a downloadable mobile Java application. There's also a Facebook app and AIM integration. Uploading is by MMS to an email address or by using Shozu . From: SMS Text News where it was picked as an "Application of the Week.

Parked page


What's This?

Sporting News College BB

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.go2.com/section/cbk/ (HTML5)

Hosted by Go2, The Sporting News'  text-only college basketball page has March Madness scores, standings, statistics, and news.

17-Mar-2010: No March Madness coverage on the Sporting News mobile site!!!


What's This?

AskMeNow

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://m.askmenow.com (xhtml-mp)
AskMeNow HomepageShut down March,2008

AskMeNow is a mobile search service which claims to "have all the answers" The site consists of a portal with news, sports, finance, entertainment, etc. sections each containing about 10 headline stories. Most of the sections also have a search box or two offering specific types of search relevant to the section's topic. For example, the entertainment section offers horosope and movie showtime searches. AskMeNow's homepage consists of links to all the sections and a Wikipedia search box.

I like AskMeKnow's approach to search, it's quite intuitive to chose what you're interested in and then either pick from a list of news links or a enter a tailored search.

skMeKnow does some content adaptation, images are resized based on screen size, but long news items are not paginated. One of the stories in the NASCAR section consists of a single page with 45 KB of preformated text, too large for many phones. And because it's preformatted and contains a wide table it requires extensive horizontal scrolling to read in Opera Mini.
What's This?

Twitstat

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.twitstat.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Twitstat Mobile Twitter Client Another mobile web front end to Twitter. Very similar to Twitter's own mobile version and to Twapper . All three let you post and read tweets from the Twiterers you're following. Twapper displays a lot more tweeks than the others and includes the Twitterer's picture with every tweet making it's pages a little heavier but still under 20KB. Like the other two mobile web Twitter clients, Twapper doesn't let you search for new people to follow which seems like a missed opportunity.

25-May-2013: Site is down, OAuth error.


What's This?

NY Times Olympics

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.nytimes.com/olympics (xhtml-mp)

The Times has a dedicated Olympics page with lots of coverage including dozens of full length stories and photos, a daily Olympics schedule, latest results by sport and a medal counter.

Offline until 2016


What's This?

Washington Mutual

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.wamu.com (xhtml-mp)

Washington Mutual, which was recently aquired by JPMorgan Chase Bank still operates under it's own name and URL.  The mobile site lets users find branches and ATMs, view balances and transactions, transfer funds between their accounts and receive SMS account alerts.

Redirects to chase.com


What's This?

Asylum

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wap.aol.com/asylum/ (xhtml-mp)

A Product of AOL, Asylum is a men's lifestyle site covering humor, weird news, fashion, sex tips, dating, style, food & wine, gadgets, tech, music, movies, events, health, fitness, entertainment and weirdness. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

AOL has shut down Asylum


What's This?

Taptu Buzz

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://taptu.com/home/ (xhtml-mp)

My favorite mobile search engine, Taptu, added a new option today - "real-time" search. So what is real time search and how is it different from plain old search?

Taptu Real-Time Search Form

Google is pretty quick at updating its index. I typically find that my own posts show up in Google within about an hour and searches for specific breaking national or international news stories return something relevant in Google as soon as the story hits major news sites. But that's not real-time search.

"Real-Time Search" is more of a Web 2.0 codeword than a metric of actual search engine speediness. It refers to searching the "Real-Time Web", which is another codeword that mostly means "Twitter". The idea is that people constantly Tweet about stuff as soon as they see or hear of it and that a 140 character Tweet only takes seconds to compose, unlike an AP news item, for example, that might take 15 minutes to write, edit and post to the wire. Recently Twitter, and to a lesser extent sites like Facebook and Digg, have been scooping major news organizations with the first reports of events like the Iranian election protests, September's Indonesian earthquake and the TWA Hudson river crash. The message is that if you want to find out what's happening in the world, follow Twitter not CNN.

Taptu is getting its real-time results from OneRiot which searches Twitter and Digg to find breaking news and buzz. Rather than linking directly to Tweets and Diggs, OneRiot looks for the most shared links within them. A OneRiot search result looks a lot like one from Google or Bing, a list of links to and descriptions of content from a wide variety of web sources.

Taptu Real-Time Serch Results

At least initially, Taptu's One Riot powered real-time search (labeled "Buzz") is only available on the iPhone and Android devices, at least officially. I found that Taptu's iPhone/Android start page can be accessed using any browser at taptu.com/home. It works very well in Opera Mini 4.2 (images above) and 5.0. It also works in the Nokia browser on my N95, with some minor layout issues. Taptu's real-time search enabled iPhone version, which has a page size of around 40 KB and doesn't require JavaScript, should be at least functional, if not pretty, in the vast majority of mobile browsers. It looks best on devices having good CSS support and screens at least 320px wide.

August, 2011: Taptu's mobile web version has been discontinued.


What's This?

Appetite for China

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.appetiteforchina.com/ (xhtml-mp)

A beautifully designed blog by a professional writer and cooking instructor, Diana Kuan covers the cuisines of China. It's full of recipes, restaurant reviews and reminisces of the author's experiences growing up in the kitchens of her family's restaurants. Mobile view by Mobify.

No longer has a mobile version


What's This?

NPCWireless Forum

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://npcwireless.com/forum/index.php?imode (xhtml-mp)

User forum for customers of US CDMA MVNO, PagePlus. Discussions cover technical issues and refill discounts. The board also helps users connect with PagePlus dealers willing to provide free activations, ESN changes and other services.

Jun-2011: Parked Domain


What's This?

Ovi Calendar

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://organiser.ovi.com (xhtml-mp)

Nokia Beta Labs have launched Ovi Calendar 1.6. While there will eventually be an app, Calendar 1.6 is currently available only on the mobile and desktop webs.  The major enhancements in 1.6 are support for multiple calendars and shared calendars. Other features include a To-Do List, Notes and the ability to organize calendar items by category.

Web access to Ovi Calendar is no longer available.

 

 


What's This?

tuitme

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://tuitme.tk/ (xhtml-mp)

A Twitter client based on the Dabr open source project. This one customizes the Dabr UI a little more than most Dabr implementations using an attractive theme and touch friendly menus. There are also some additional features including emoticons, auto text and support for tweets longer than 140 characters using twtmore or kanvaso.

Redirects to random full page ads


What's This?

Sushis.mobi

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://sushis.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Sushis.mobi, winner of the Mobi of the Month Award at mobility.mobi includes an extensive descriptions of sushi varieties, videos showing how to make and eat sushi, listings of sushi books and collectables on eBay and a search engine for finding local Sushi bars.

Parked domain


What's This?

E*Trade (WML)

Content: ****1/2  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: https://etrade.everypath.com/servlet/EPServlet?opt=etradewml (wml)

Stock quotes and online trading for E*Trade customers. Site is very full-featured but suffers from slow response.

6-May-2006 Site is down.


What's This?

Andamas

Content:  Usability:
Last seen at: http://andamas.com (wml)
Down 02/18/05
What's This?

PdaPortal.com

Content: ****1/2  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://pdaportal.com/ (HTML5)
Another huge (667 sites) PDA link directory.

08/18/2006 Site is Down.
What's This?

Vodafone

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wap.vizzavi.co.uk/ (HTML5/wml)
News, weather, sports, chat, downloads, trip planners, walking directions. Many features only available to Vodafone subscribers. Interface optimized for Vodaphone handsets may not work well or at all on others Dead Link: 2/4/2006 Site is no longer acceasble at leat from outside the Vodaphone network.
What's This?

PDAStreet

Content: **  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.pdastreet.com/wap/index.wml (wml)

PDA news and articles. Hasn't been updated since 2009

Now redirects to EnterpriseMobileToday's non-mobile site.


What's This?

Mobile Gadget News

Content:  Usability:
Last seen at: http://www.mpx200.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=AvantGo&file=index (HTML5)
Mobile Edition seems to no longer exist - 2/12/05
What's This?

TreoBits

Content: ***1/2  Usability: XX1/2
Last seen at: http://mobile.treobits.com/ (HTML5)

Treo forum and link directory and downloads

Parked page.


What's This?

AlterNet

Content: *****  Usability: XXXX1/2
Last seen at: http://www.alternet.org (HTML5)

In depth stories with an anti-establishment emphases.

No longer has a mobile formated version and not a responsive site.


What's This?

FoxPop Archive

Content: *****  Usability: XXXX1/2
Last seen at: http://archive.foxpop.com/ (HTML5)
Complete archive of FoxPop, the online outstanding monthy PDA magazine published from 1998 to 2004. Early one, Foxpop was devoted to the GeoFox, a short lived Psion OS handheld. After the demise of the GeoFox, FoxPop began to cover all aspects of mobile computing with sections devoted to Psion, Pocket PC and Palm devices and even laptops. FoxPop articles tended to be well written and rich in detail. FoxPop lives on today as @FoxPop which is non longer a monthly but is updated with a new article every few weeks.

Update: 7-Sept-2008: Site is down
What's This?

British Airways

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.britishairways.com/mobilezone/pda/omnisky/BA_Palm_Home.html (HTML5)
Flight departures and arrivals, check seat availability. Hasn't been working since 04/15/05.
What's This?

SprintPCSInfo Forums

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://sprintpcsinfo.com/wap/ (wml)
Wireless forum for Sprint PCS users. WAP access is read-only and no registration is required. Topics covered include phone and sprint store reviews, buy and sell forum and the unique firmware tracker (Sprint is one of the few carriers to offer free firmware upgrades at their stores, but you need to know when to ask for an upgrade). Update 3/2006 - Shut down.
What's This?

WineSquire

Content: ****1/2  Usability: XXX1/2
Last seen at: http://www.winesquire.com (HTML5)

WineSquire.com is for wine enthusiasts and anyone intersted in learning about wine. Features include wine reviews, Retailer Directory (Washington State US only), Party Planner (how much wine, etc. will you need for 100 guests), Cheese/Wine Pairings, Vintage Charts and Tasting Terminology.

No longer a mobile formatted site

 


What's This?

NBA Top 50

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://home.swbell.net/hartley4/pocketnba.htm (HTML5)

A basketball fan named Ross has created a fun NBA mobile page called All-Time NBA Top 50 (home.swbell.net/hartley4/pocketnba.htm). Basically it's an exhaustive list of the top 50 players all-time in a number of categories including points, rebounds, shots blocked, games played and about 15 more. There are also a couple of interesting articles by Ross on the site, one on how the 1998 strike keep some players from topping the record books and the other on the chances that anyone will ever break several notable records like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's 38,387 points or Wilt Chamberlain's 23,924 rebounds. If you're into bucket ball statistics, this is a fascinating mobile site.

Dec 2010 - Site is gone


What's This?

AOL Transcoder

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://yeswap.com/atran.html (xhtml-mp)

 Img. 1 Like Google's Mobile Web Search, AOL gives you typical web search engine capabilities (using Google's index). When you view the results of your search and click something you want to browse, AOL transcodes the site into a series of mobile friendly pages. AOL uses browser detection to vary the size of the pages it returns. Depending on the browser the maximum page size varies from approximately 3KB to 30 KB. Images are resized to from 80 x100 pixels to 640 x 480 px again depending on the browsers capabilities.

When it was first launched, I found AOL's transcoding engine to be fairly good, it seemed a litttle better than any of the others at preserving the original site's look and feel.  Img. 4 It kept the site's background and text colors and resized images in proportion to the mobile browser's screen size. Over the years, AOL's transcoder has changed for the worse. It no longer maintains the transcoded site's background colors - sites are the same dull black on white as in the other transcoders and AOL's transcoder seems to fail with an error quite frequently. AOL hides navigational elements such as the links to Reviews - Mobile - RSS - Archives at the top of this site. AOL's approach to collapsing content is not as intuitive as Google's. At the top on every page AOL puts a Find it Fast link, clicking this brings up a menu (second image) where you can choose Navigation Bar to get to those hidden links.  Img. 3 When I saw the Search link on the menu I hoped it would lead to a generic search of the current site - unfortunately it's just a link to the search form that is part of the blog. AOL's transcoder doesn't handle secure sites, I was not able to complete a booking on www.southwest.com, when trying to get to the secure page where one enters credit card information, I got the error shown in the third image.

Unlike Google, there is no way to directly enter a url to be transcoded. You can get around this by using a url like

http://mobile.aolsearch.com/lnk000/=http://yeswap.com/blog/

and replacing 'http://yeswap.com/blog/' with the url you want to transcode. Or use the form I created on yeswap.com to enter a url for AOL to transcode.

AOL's transcoding engine is provided by a third party, Infogin.

Apr 2012 - AOL do longer offers a mobile transcoding service


What's This?

Yahoo Classic

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://us.wap.yahoo.com/p/search (xhtml-mp)
Last seen at: http://us.m.yahoo.com (hdml)
)
 Y! Web Search Results Image Yahoo quietly released a major upgrade to their mobile web based search product last month. I'm surprised that there wasn't more buzz on this as I think it's a pretty big deal. I can't find an official Yahoo announcement and only one blogger, a Yahoo employee, seems to have written anything about it.

So what's new? The big change is that when you do a Web search, Yahoo now includes mobile sites in the results - Yahoo used to only search for desktop sites and returned a transcoded-to-mobile copy of site. The problem with that is that transcoded PC web sites are usually not very attractive or even usable on handheld browsers. To me, transcoding is a crutch that lets you get to data that isn't otherwise available in a mobile format. Someday we may have "one web" usable on both desktop and mobile but that will require both better mobile browsers and greater awareness of the needs of mobile users on the part of web designers. Lately the number of true mobile sites has been growing at an astounding rate and I want my mobile search to first and foremost find mobile sites. Only if I'm not satisfied with the mobile results, will I the transcoded desktop results.

 Y! Mobile Search results Image  Google has pretty much owned the mobile search space since they launched their mobile web search in 2001. There simply haven't been any other true mobile search sites. Oh, there are other sites that claim to do mobile search. I list a number of them in the Wap Review directory under Search/Web-WAP Search. But other than Google I don't think any of those sites actually have working web crawlers, they are just searching of a static local database of submitted sites.

Yahoo is offering the first real alternative to Google in mobile web search. In my trials it works pretty well. When you do a mobile search on Google you have to specify if you want to search the "Web" or the "Mobile Web". With Yahoo, you just do a "Web" search. The results page lists the 3 top "Web" results (top image) followed by the 3 top "Mobile Web" results (2nd image). Below the web results is a More Web Results link and below the mobile results there's a More Mobile Web Results link. Interestingly, if do your search on the UK Yahoo portal (uk.sushi.wap.yahoo.com/p/search), the mobile results come first before the web results while on Yahoo's US portal (us.wap.yahoo.com/p/search) the order is reversed. I don't know if this is a coincidence or if Yahoo believes British mobile users value mobile results more highly than we in do in the US.

When you visit a desktop web site from the "Web Results" group within Yahoo search the results are transcoded by Yahoo into a more mobile friendly form. Actually, Yahoo only transcodes results if it recognizes that your browser is not a full web browser. So if you try mobile search from Opera Mobile or Mini, any version of Netfront or Pocket Internet Explorer you'll get the full desktop version rather than the transcoded one. This is generally a good thing as the aforementioned browsers do a much better job of adapting desktop sites to a mobile format than any of the transcoders. I did note a problem with Sanyo's CDMA phones for Sprint which have a Netfront browser that is not a full web browser. These Sanyo phones need a transcoder to handle most desktop pages but Yahoo won't serve transcoded content to them.

 Yahoo Transcoder Image I found Yahoo's transcoder is rather limited. It does split large pages into multiple smaller ones and it tries to hide menus to emphasise the content "meat" of pages. But unlike Skweezer, and the transcoders connected to Google, AOL and Windows Live mobile search, Yahoo's doesn't re-size images to fit the mobile screen - it simply strips all images out. Here are some screen shots comparing Nokia Europe's main support page as it appears in the Yahoo (image right), Google (below left) and AOL (below right) transcoders. While the Yahoo transcoded pages work pretty well most of the time they certainly aren't very pretty. I did a 4 part post on the mobile transcoder landscape a year ago before Yahoo's transcoder was available. In those posts I tested each transcoder ability to render this blog and the Southwest Airlines site, www.southwest.com. The Yahoo transcoder did pretty with the WAP Review Blog. Long pages were split at around 8KB which should work on any device and the search form worked properly. The comment and contact forms didn't, failing with the message "Unable to adapt page for mobile browser". I got the same error on on a couple of other pages but when I retried it worked on the second try. The Yahoo transcoder did not do as well with the Southwest Airlines site test which consists of going through the steps of booking a flight. Only one of the other transcoders (Phonifier) was able to complete this task but Yahoo did worse than most - the first reservations page was unusable because it was missing all the entry fields like travel dates, departure and arrival airports and even the submit button - there was no way to event start the process of booking a flight! Compared with the other seven transcoders I looked at a year ago, I'd put Yahoo in the bottom half of the pack, behind Google, AOL, MobileLeap and Skweezer.

 AOL Transcoder Image

 Google Transcoder Image

While I'm not wasn't wowed by Yahoo's transcoder, I'm very pleased to see that Google finally has real competition in the mobile search field. Yahoo consistently returned more mobile hits than Yahoo for the searches I tried. In quality and relevance of mobile results I rate Yahoo and Google roughly equal although both returned a much higher percentage of irrelevant or duplicate hits than than the same searches of the full web. I think this is a function of there being so many more desktop web sites than mobile ones. Web searches are sorted by relevance so with fewer total results, the less relevant ones appear nearer to the top of the list.

Update 16-Sep-2007: Yahoo Classic is no more. This URL now redirects to oneSearch.
What's This?

Access Hollywood

Content: ***1/2  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.accesshollywood.com/ (xhtml-mp)

NBC TV's Movie industry Gossip and New Show now on the mobile web.

No longer has a mobile or responsive web design version


What's This?

PPC6700Users

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wap.ppc6700users.com/ (wml)

Mobile forum of PPC6700users.com a site devoted to extending the capabilities of Sprint's version of the HTC Apache Windows Mobile Smartphone. No registration is required to browse this friendly forum.

Down 20-Apr-2009


What's This?

PartyStrands

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.partystrands.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Real-time listing of what music is playing right now at bars and clubs in your city.

17-May-2009 - Shut down and incorporated into MyStrands.


What's This?

MyStrands

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.mystrands.com/ (xhtml-mp)

A music recommender that taps into the wisdom of the crowds. Submit your playlists to MyStrands and it will recommend music that other users with similar taste enjoy.

July-2009 - MyStrands shuts down.


What's This?

Reuters Olympics

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://uk.mobile.reuters.com/mobile/m/Category/eUK/COLYU (xhtml-mp)
Reuters Olympics MobileReuters UK has an Olympics page with results and stories from the games at uk.mobile.reuters.com/mobile/m/Category/eUK/COLYU. BTW, there ought to be a law against such long URLs on mobile sites, some people actually type these things in on the keypad! The site features lots of images, 40 of the opening ceremonies alone. The images are re-sized to fit the screens of different phone models and are shown one per page for fast loading even on slow connections.

Down - 17-Oct-2008.
What's This?

Vox

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.vox.com/?locale=en_US (HTML5)

Vox is a free personal blogging/social networking platform from Six Apart, the company behind TypePad, LiveJournal and MoveableType. Vox has some nice features, WYSIWYG editor, video and audio support and integration with MySpace and Flickr but best of all like MSN Spaces, every Vox blog has a mobile edition. There are no mobile specific URL's, browser detection is used to deliver the mobile edition to supported handsets. There is an unofficial Vox Mobile support group at goingmobile.groups.vox.com/. VOX was suggested by reader and Vox Blogger, ofirdav (ofirdav.vox.com)

Vox was been shut down by Six Apart 30-Sept-2011. Vox bloggers could transistion their sites to free TypePad.com accounts.


What's This?

NewsGator

Content:  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://m.newsgator.com/ (HTML5)

 NewsGator Feed ListNewsGator (m.newsgator.com) is a very promising mobile RSS Reader for users of full-web browsers like Opera Mini, NetFront and Nokia's Webkit. It's as fast as Bloglines and doesn't have Bloglines main annoyances.

Unfortunately NewsGator has one major bug. The Mark as Read link marks every item in a feed or folder as read - including ones that arrived while you are reading and you hadn't even seen yet. Sorry, that's unacceptable. I can't live with a reader that causes me to miss posts.

Read the full NewsGator Mobile review on the Wap Review Blog.

Jube-2009: Web and mobile Web versions of  NewsGator shut down.


What's This?

Mobilised

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobilised.net/ (xhtml-mp)

 MobilisedMobilised (mobilised.net/) is the third new mobile bookmarking site. Mobilised works like :bMarks (or Dig), anyone can browse and search the directory but you need to be registered to submit sites, Vote (the Digg equivalent), Bury or comment. The site's front page, labeled Published lists only sites that have received votes, although strangely they aren't in order of most votes. A link at the bottom of the page, marked Upcoming leads to a much longer list of sites that have been submitted but have not received any votes. There are a few categories and you can filter the results to sites submitted in the last day, week or month. You can also search Mobilised and there's a Tag Cloud. The cloud looks especially nice if your browser supports varying font sizes like the Opera Mini 4 Beta does.

Mobilised is full featured and visually quite attractive in a low key way. But I really don't get some aspects of the way it works. The separation of the Published and Upcoming lists for example. Or the fact that sites are not listed in order of most votes in any of the lists or results. What's the point of voting if it doesn't move the site I vote for up in the listings?

Offline since late 2012


What's This?

Zagat

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://zagat.mobi (xhtml-mp)

 Zagat Homepage The "wisdom of the crowd" concept where the averaged opinions of thousands of people is used to evaluate the worth of a product or idea is a certainly big part of today's web, think of Amazon Reviews, TripAdvisor.com or Digg. As much as it's a part of the current web 2.0 buzz it's not a new idea.

Zagat Survey has been applying the "wisdom of the crowd" since got it's start in 1979 with a New York City restaurant guidebook based on reviews submitted by thousands of reader volunteers. Zagat has since expanded to cover hotels, night spots, golf courses, entertainment and shopping in over 70 cities around the world.

Nowadays besides paper guidebooks, Zagat has a big web presence and offers mobile guide applications for Palm, Windows Mobile, Symbian and Blackberry devices. This week they launched Zagat.mobi on the mobile web.

The mobile site's coverage is limited to restaurants, hotels and night spots in 16 US and Canadian cites plus London, Paris and Tokyo. For the covered cites the mobile and web listings seem essentially identical. Like the web site, the .mobi one is free to browse without registration. However the Zagat ratings are only available to paying customers. To see the ratings you must join Zagat for 24.95/year or 4.95/month. Even without ratings Zagat.mobi is useful. The listings give hours of operation, details like type of cuisine and include click to call phone numbers and the ability to send a listing to any phone number or email address. One feature of the mobile site that's not available on the web is tyou can browse Zagat's top 5 picks for quality or price. You can even sort results by those criteria which is almost as good as being able to see the ratings. There's a handy Find Nearby feature for bar hopping or when the wait for a table is too long and you want to find another place in the neighborhood.

The mobile site is well designed with an average page size of 5 KB plus about 9 KB of images. It should load quickly and work well on most phones. Numeric shortcuts speed navigation by providing single click access to features and reviews.

One thing I noticed though is that if you go to zagat.mobi with a desktop browser or a mobile browser that Zagat's doesn't recognize you'll be rediected to the desktop page at www.zagat.com. The biggest, perhaps the only, advantage of a .mobi address is that it should always point to a mobile site. Browser detection is great when it works. The trouble is that it doesn't work 100% of the time. Every site that does browser detection needs to have a direct link to their mobile site on their desktop page and another link on the mobile page that always delivers a desktop page. That gives the user who is redirected to the wrong site a way to recover.

Apr-2013: Zagat no longer offers a mobile webapp.


What's This?

MalayDic Online

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://m.gcourses.org/ (wml)

Online Malay-English, English-Malay dictionary.  This is a WML site and doesn't work with phones without WML support like the iPhone or Android devices.

Site is gone


What's This?

Mobile Acid Test

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.jwtmp.com/a/ (xhtml-mp)

Mobile version of the Acid Test which checks a browser's compliance with CSS and xhtml standards.

24-Dec-2008: Tests all display a blank page


What's This?

heysan MSN, YIM, AIM, ICQ

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.heysan.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Heysan! ScreenHeysan (heysan.com, mobile m.heysan.com) was another of the startups which demoed at the Mobile 2.0 Event. It's a mobile web based IM client supporting AIM, MSN, Yahoo IM and ICQ - with support for GTalk "coming soon". Features include the ability to use multiple services simultaneously, a single buddy list across all services, threaded conversation view and auto refresh.

 

I'm not really much of an IM user but I wanted to get a feel for this service so I set up some accounts on AIM and MSN Messenger and played with Heysan a bit. I didn't bother trying ICQ. Does anyone still use that service?

Mobile IM (MIM) isn't very popular compared with either SMS or desktop IM. More...


Apr-2010: Aquired by Good Technolicies and shut down.


What's This?

Autosport

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wmda.eu (xhtml-mp)

Autosport (wmda.eu) is a slick mobile magazine covering mostly European motor racing including F1, F3, DTM, (the German Touring Car Masters series) and A1 Grand Prix. Results, news , driver and circuit profiles are free, streaming 3gp video is available for a fee although I could not find the rates or anyway to sign up on the site.

Site is gone.


What's This?

Windows Live Beta

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://mhome.live.com (xhtml-mp)
Live BetaSometimes it's hard to understand Microsoft's Web and Mobile Web branding. There's MSN and there's Windows Live and I never know which one to use. I think back in 2005 when Live was launched it was supposed to eventually replace MSN. It was a full portal; Live Search, Live Spaces, Live HotMail, Live Messenger and a Live homepage with News and Sports. But Live as a replacement for MSN never really took off and it seems to be have been repositioned as MIcrosoft's Search brand.

On the mobile web, the Live Portal concept lives on with MSN Mobile (mobile.msn.com) and LIve Mobile (mobile.live.com) existing side by side. MSN is more of a content site with News and Entertainment headlines and photos on the front page while Live is basically a list of links to all of Microsoft's Mobile Web properties.

Earlier this month Microsoft launched a new Beta version of Live Mobile at mhome.live.com. It's a complete redesign with a search box and link to HotMail at the top, and then your profile photo from Spaces and a What's New feed of updates from your friends' blogs. The links to Microsoft's other Mobile Web properties have been moved to the bottom but can be reached quickly by clicking the More link at the top of the page.

The Beta is certainly an improvement over the old Mobile Live page in that it has some content beyond just links. But I don't understand why the access keys (one-click numeric shortcuts) were removed. Access keys are a great way to reduce click distance, the single most important element of mobile usability.

It is a beta so it's not finished yet. Expect to see some fine tuning and maybe even some new features.

20-Dec-2008: The Beta has ended Visit mobile.live.com/ for the current version of Windows Live which is based on this Beta..
What's This?

Y!Olympics

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://us.m.yahoo.com/2008games/ (xhtml-mp/wml)
Y! OlympicsYahoo's Olympics site currently features a large countdown clock with days, hours and minutes to the start of the games. Yahoo seems to be focusing more on news and results rather than color features. The site is currently showing results from the in-progress US Olympic Trials updated every few minutes. Yahoo's site was created by German mobile development shop NetBiscuits which also did Y!'s March Madness site. The Olympics site has a look and color scheme similar to Yahoo's new mobile portal Beta.

Down - 17-Oct-2008.
What's This?

Tweete

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.tweete.net/ (xhtml-mp)

Tweete Mobile Twitter Client Tweete is a light weight (14KB) client that should work well on old or low end phones and/or slow networks. In spite of it's low page weight, Tweete manages to include a lot of features; quick action icons for direct messaging, replies, favoriting and unfavoriting. Tweete also lets you follow new Tweeps and offers the fairly unusual feature of being able to delete one of your own Tweets.

6-May-2014: Shut down


What's This?

EmiratesNews

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.emiratesnewsline.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Mobile edition of a news blog covering the United Arab Emirates. Updated frequently throughout the day, EmiratesNews is focused on local news.

Parked domain


What's This?

Warner Bros.

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://m.warnerbros.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Warner Bros. Mobile

Promotional site for Warner Bros. movies, TV series and video games.  Plot or game synopsis, cast lists for movies and shows, free ringtone , wallpaper and video trailer downloads. The image heavy site with pages up to 50KB in size may be too large to load on some phones and the fixed 240px wide layout doesn't scale well to narrower or wider screens,  Navigational is by image links without alt text so that the site is unusable with images turned off. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

No longer has a mobile or responsive web design site.


What's This?

PHN.me

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.web.tr/ (xhtml-mp)

Free mobile site creator lets you build rich mobile websites without any html knowledge. Includes an RSS reader addon with image resizing. Site use mobile friendly subdomain urls, (site.phn.me) and you can monetize your sites using Admob and other major ad networks.

Redirects to mobile.web.tr, another site bulder


What's This?

Thunderbirds Mobile

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://usaftbirds.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Official mobile site of the US Air Force Thunderbirds precision flying team.  The site has Thunderbirds history, a schedule of performances and free wallpapers, videos and ringtones to download. Source: Mobility.mobi

Shut down


What's This?

Frommer's LA

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://frommersla.mobi (xhtml-mp)

Travel Guide to Los Angeles from one of the leading travel publishers. Lists, hotels restaurants, events, attractions, nightlfe, shopping  and "L.A.'s Five Best Sights for Tourists". Source: Mobility.mobi

Down: 21-Mar-2009


What's This?

Afrigator Mobile

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://m.afrigator.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Afrigator mobile home page

Afrigator is a meme tracker that aggregates the the top posts by African bloggers. The mobile edition is divided into seven categories; Life, Entertainment, Business, Tech, Politics, Religion and Sport with a separate page for each and a front page that caries the top stories from all categories. 

Listings consist of the post title and a short except.  You can click through to read the full article which will not usually be mobile formatted. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Sept-2011: No longer has a mobile edition


What's This?

Fantasy Cricket

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.fantasy.cricket.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Play fantasy cricket on cricket.com with your mobile. The top players each week win signed game balls and photos.  At the end of the season the Grand prize winner will get a signed match shirt from the winning IPL team.  Mobile view by Mobify

Parked domain


What's This?

StreetLevel

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://streetlevel.com/ (xhtml-mp)

StreetLevel is another AOL lifestyle site for young urban males covering fashion, sneakers, cars, games, toys, gadgets, art and film Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

AOL has shut down Streetlevel


What's This?

Cell C Football

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.cellcfootball.mobi (xhtml-mp)

An attractive and content rich soccer news site for South Africa's third largest mobile operator, Cell C.  The site has news, results, Fixtures (schedules) and free soccer wallpaper downloads. Source: Mobility.mobi

Site is gone.


What's This?

Mobile Fiction

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobilefiction.mofuse.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

A collection of tech-themed mobile short stories in English by Polish writer Niżej Podpisany (aka "Nick Name"). Source: Oh! Mobile Directory


Site is gone: Niżej Podpisany's blog is at passwordincorrect.com but his short stories are nowhere to be found.


What's This?

Kontax

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.kontax.mobi (xhtml-mp)

Kontax is a serialized short story about the adventures of 4 teenagers that you can read on your cellphone.  Register to comment on the story.  Available in English or the South African language Xhosa.

May-2011 Redirects to Yoza Cellphone Stories


What's This?

mobilePLACE File Sharing

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.mobileplace.us/ (xhtml-mp)

This is another mobile file sharing site similar to QFS.mobi (review). Both let you upload and share files of up to 10 MB in size. The main difference is that mobilePLACE has no option to password protect uploads. On the other hand, if you are looking for something to download, mobilePlace wins as all uploaded files are listed in a searchable directory.

N0v-2010 - No longer available.  Redirects to an ad network's desktop page


What's This?

YellowBook

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.yellowbook.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Keyword search for local businesses anywhere in the US. Listings include hours, address, click to call number, description, map, directions and a link to the business' (not always mobile friendly) website.

1-Nov-2010: No longer a mobile website.


What's This?

TweetGo

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://www.tweetgo.net/ (xhtml-mp)

A new "touch web" optimized Twitter client. I like the attractive dark theme. But on my Android phones (Sapphire and Evo) text doesn't wrap properly and horizontal scrolling is required unless I zoom out to a point where text painfully small. This even happens on the Evo's 480 px wide screen! I'm guessing this works well on the iPhone, though.

25-May-2013: Site is down, OAuth error.


What's This?

Chuck Norris Facts

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://chuckfacts.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Amusing, one-liner "facts" about actor and martial artist, Chuck Norris. Example: "Chuck Norris eats eight meals a day. Seven are steak, and the last is the rest of the cow". You can send any fact to a friend by SMS.

No longer mobile friendly


What's This?

ZuzMarks

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://zuzmarks.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Email based online web bookmark site.  After registering at zuzmarks.com, bookmark web pages by emailing the link to zumarks. Then log into zumarks.com with your phone or PC to access your bookmarks.

Expired domain


What's This?

Google+ Touch

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: https://m.google.com/app/plus/?force=1 (xhtml-mp)

Rich mobile web version of Google Plus with check in and the ability to create circles which are missing in the basic mobile version. Served by default to Android, the iPhone and Firefox Mobile. Also works well in the WebOS, Symbian Belle, bada and Opera Mobile browsers. There's a link to this version at the bottom of the basic mobile version (https://m.google.com/app/plus/x/) that's served to these browsers.

Google Plus has switched to a single mobile view for all devices. https://m.google.com/app/plus/?force=1 no longer forces a different version.


What's This?

MyWapLink

Content:  Usability:
Last seen at: http://www.mywaplink.com/ (wml)
Not a wap page
What's This?

MobileTracker

Content:  Usability:
Last seen at: http://www.mobiletracker.net/wap.wml (wml)
Mobile edition discontinued 2/15/05
What's This?

GoHandee

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.gohandee.com/ (xhtml-mp)

A mobile file sharing and download site.  Share and download mobile wallpapers, ringtones, videos and music.

No longer mobile friendy.


What's This?

InfoSpace Directions

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.infospace.com/wml11/dd/index.wml (wml)

  Yahoo    Yahoo  Infospace's mobile Driving Directions site is quite similar to Yahoo's wml site. It's again a Wizard interface, although less elaborate than Yahoo's. There is no way to use previously entered or saved locations. To enter an address you first enter either a zip code or state. Like Yahoo, Infospace gives you the choice of typing a 2 letter USPS state abbreviation or picking a state from a list divided into groups by the first letter of the state name. For choosing a city, Infospace provides a list of the ten largest cities in the chosen state, a nice touch. If the city you want isn't on the list, you have to type it in. Unlike, Yahoo I found that you have to enter the full city name. If I entered SF or San Fran instead of San Francisco, Infospace didn't complain but it gave directions to or from some where else entirely. Infospace handles all browsers well, serving pages with "do"'s for navigation when an Openwave browser is used and links when a non-Openwave browser is used. Infospace's directions were identical to the results returned by Yahoo.

Emulator images courtesy Openwave Systems Inc. Openwave and the Openwave logo are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of Openwave Systems Inc. in various jurisdictions. All rights reserved.

InfoSpace no longer offers driving directions


What's This?

fi24.com

Content: ****1/2  Usability: XXXX1/2
Last seen at: http://wap.fi24.com/ (wml)
Dowload ringtones, wallpaper and games. Chat room.

Service unavailable 5/28/05 - will it be back?

8/4/06 No longer a mobile site.
What's This?

Steike IRC

Content: ****1/2  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wap.steike.com (wml)
Participate in IRC chat. Works OK for basic chatting but there doesn't seem to be anyway to send commands like /whois

02-Jul-2008 - Seems to be gone for good.
What's This?

Hotel Express

Content: **  Usability: XX
Last seen at: http://wap.hot-ex.com/ (wml)

Find Hotels around the world. Seems to be limited to major cities. It didn't find anything in Green Bay, WI, USA or Dinan, France for example but did for Milwaukee and Strasbourg. The user interface is clunky. You must key in, typically with T9 or triple-tap both the city and the country. Listings are returned as a long list of hotel name, address and phone number in alphabetical order. Phone numbers are not clickable, you have to remember them and key them in.

19-Feb-2013: No longer hasa mobile friendly or responsive web design site.


What's This?

SF Chronicle

Content: *****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://206.130.125.95/mobile.php?UMPG=index (HTML5)
San Francisco Chronicle's mobile site. Appears to include the entire contents text contents of the paper. Works pretty well as a mobile site although the text that links to articles tends to be very long causing each link to take up multiple lines on a mobile screen. Here's an extreme example:
    2 BAY AREA PAPERS TO JOIN GROWING MEDIA GROUP / MediaNews to acquire San Jose Mercury News and Contra Costa Times -- Hearst to provide financial backing, get a stake in operations outside the region. That link fills an 128x160px mobile screen.

    Down 07-May-2007
What's This?

Big Pond WC

Content: *****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://t.sportsflash.com.au/wap2/main.asp?sp=soc&pg=spl (xhtml-mp)

  Big Pond FIFA  Another day, another World Cup site. Actually, this is a very good one from Australia's Big Pond, a major ISP down under which is owned by the Australian telecom giant, Telstra. Big Pond has an attractive mobile home page, http://wap.telstra.com/wap/ although much of the content is links to external sites like CNN, Yahoo, etc. For the World Cup, Big Pond has commissioned Sportall to produce an original mobile site. On the right device, it's very attractive mobile web design and contains first rate content as well. The qualification is because the site locks content into a fixed size div. The div width is either 166 or 176px depending on some sort of browser detection. There are also header and footer images the same width as the div. At least those were the only sizes I got after throwing a dozen or so user agents at it. I don't see the point of offering only two sizes that are so close together. However as long as your phone has a browser with a screen at least 166px wide or one that can resize images on the fly the site should look great.

There's really a lot of information on this site, more than any of the other World Cup sites I've seen so far.   Big Pond FIFA  For each of the 32 teams there's a roster of players, schedule of matches, a detailed team profile and one or more pieces about the team's recent matches. For the Australian team, the Socceroos, there is not surprisingly much more - over 20 stories about the team's chances, top players, which opponents they are worried about etc. There are also feature articles on the front page previewing Saturday's opening matches and approximately 20 additional general World Cup articles.

Great site, check it out! I've added it to the World Cup page on yeswap.com. Go to yeswap.com on your mobile phone and follow the menu to Sports/World Cup/Big Pond.

Site is gone.


What's This?

AOL Local

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wap.aol.com/portal/location.do (xhtml-mp)

AOL Local seems to be AOL's latest replacement for Digital City Mobile which used to be my favorite city guide but degraded into a bunch of broken links and eventually disappeared completely.  Everything works in AOL Local but compared to Digital City there are far ewer listings and superficial descriptions instead of real reviews.

Redirects to AOL homepage


What's This?

BBR Wine Encyclopedia

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.bbr.com/ (HTML5)

An extensive trove of wine information by London wine merchant, Berry Brothers and Rudd. Includes wine news, vintage chart, descriptions of wine regions and grape varieties. The emphasis on French wines, but all major world wine regions get some coverage.

No longer a mobile formatted site


What's This?

Cabbies.mobi

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://Cabbies.mobi (xhtml-mp)

Every traveler should bookmark this site on their phone. It's a comprehensive listing of taxicab companies in the US, Canada and UK. The listings do include click-to-call phone numbers. My only complaint is that all 60 or so US cities are on one long scrolling page. Splinting this list up by groups of states would greatly enhance usability.

31-Oct-2010 Parked Page


What's This?

BlackBerryCool

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://blackberrycool.com/wp-mobile.php (HTML5)
Mobile edition a very active blog covering the BlackBerry mobile email/smartphone device.

27-Oct-2008 BlackBerryCool no longer has a mobile edition
What's This?

Mostat

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mostat.us (xhtml-mp)

If you have a blog or other site running Google Analytics you can view charts on your mobile phone with Mostat.

Site is down. Apr-2010


What's This?

News Alloy

Content:  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://pda.newsalloy.com/ (HTML5)

 News Alloy Item ListNews Alloy is another good mobile(and desktop RSS reader). It's very similar to Google Reader in features and user interface. Google is a better choice for use with the built-in browsers of mainstream phones because it resizes images and splits large posts into multiple pages. News Alloy can deliver pages that are too large for the limited built in browsers of feature phones. On the other hand, with a browser that can handle large images like Opera Mini or a Smartphone browser, News Alloy can be significantly faster than Google Reader. Read the full News Alloy Review on the blog.

Dec-2009: redirects to a Russin language Airline Industry Blog!


What's This?

HooQs

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.hooqs.com/ (xhtml-mp)

HooQ's (m.hooqs.com) is another new mobile video and music site.  HooQsThis is a crowded field and HooQ's is trying to distinguish itself with the concept of channels. A channel is a collection of audio and video content with a common theme like a band, new movie release, "how to do it instructions", UFOs or a major news story. There are many predefined channels and Hooqs will create a custom channel for you based on your interests. Or you can build a channel from any of the content on Hooqs. You create and manage channels on the web and send then to your own phone or a friend's phone as a link in an SMS.

Hooqs has a very eclectic selection of videos, the usual movie trailers, clips of people doing stupid things, newscasts, sports highlights and music videos but also a large selection of how-to instructional videos and several that seem to be medical school lectures.

The site is free and no registration is required to search for and stream or download videos which are in 3gp format. Registration lets you push videos and music to your phone from Hooq's web site and also create and publish channels of your favorite clips from Hooq's catalog. Registration does not require your mobile phone number unless you want to be able to send content to your device.

Currently there is no way to upload your own content. I contacted the site and immediately received a reply that uploading is coming soon as well as higher quality .mp4 videos.

Jan-2010: Hooqs ihas shut down.


What's This?

Measurements.mobi

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://measurements.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

A simple but useful site with tables for conversion between Imperial and Metric, Celsius and Fahrenheit, also Cooking Equivalents and a Temperature Converter.

Domain registration expired


What's This?

Find.mobi

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://find.mobi (xhtml-mp)

Mobi domain registrar mTLD has launched a mobile site search engine and directory. It seems quite complete and good mobile sites regardless of if they are on .mobi domains or not.

Shut down


What's This?

Kyte.tv

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.kyte.tv/ (xhtml-mp)

Kyte.tv Launched last April as both a web site and a mobile site, San Francisco based startup Kyte.tv combines video with social networking. With Kyte you create a homepage, which Kyte calls a channel, and add video, images, text and music from your PC or phone. Anyone can visit your channel, and view the content you have shared. Registered users can leave comments, live chat with you and other users and participate in polls. Channels can be embedded on a MySpace page or blog and there's a Facebook app too.

Kyte was designed for mobile from the start, giving it a advantage over sites like YouTube, MySpace and Facbook which have had to graft a mobile web front end on to something that was created with no awareness of the mobile web. I've blogged about Facebook, MySpace and Friendster's mobile sites and they all have have a raft of usability issues most of which are related to their initial implementation as a web only services.

More...

July-2011: Aquired by KIT Digital, a back-end video management provider, and shut down.


What's This?

Sports Illustrated

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.si.com/news/item/to_oly_sports (HTML5)

Time Warner's Sports Illustrated Magazine, has a comprehensive Olympics section on its mobile site with Olympics news items, results and photos.

Offline until 2016


What's This?

BlackBerryNews

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://www.blackberrynews.com (xhtml-mp)

Blog covering new BlackBerry hardware and software releases and other Blackberry news. Updated several times a  day.  The mobile addition uses Alex King's WordPress mobile plugin. Images aren't resized which should be no problem for BlackBerries but could be for lesser handsets.

Redirects to lifeonmymobile.com which is not mobile optimized.


What's This?

Corwall, On AM 1220

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.am1220.ca./ (HTML5)

Local and national news, business news, sports, weather and more from Cornwall, Ontario's information station, AM 1220. Text-only site design combines multiple stories per page and requires a lot of scrolling.  Source: Seaway News.

Radio station and site have shut down.


What's This?

Foxmarks

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://my.foxmarks.com/mobile/ (xhtml-mp)

Mobile front end to Foxmarks, a popular add-on for Firefox, IE and Safari that keeps your bookmarks in sync across computers and securely backed up in the cloud. On mobile Foxmarks offers web based access to your bookmarks.


5-Jan-2015: Redirects to xmarks.com


What's This?

MadNews

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://madnews.mobi (xhtml-mp)

The Madnews.mobi site is a mobile news feed collection of the best 'Strange but True' and funny news stories from reputable news providers - links to full articles use Mowser.

Dec 2010 - site is gone


What's This?

F1 Limit

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.f1limit.com/ (xhtml-mp)

A new Formula 1 site with F1 news in brief, results, standings, photos, videos and free ringtone downloads.

Parked Domain Apr-2010


What's This?

s*com (UK)

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://www.scom.com (xhtml-mp)

s*com mobile job search

UK based recruitment agency specializing in aviation, defence, engineering, government, IT and telecoms jobs.

Usability on mobile devices is somewhat hampered by the large banner images and several screens full of boilerplate text touting s*com's benefits that job seekers have to scroll through to reach the search form.

An advanced search form dispenses with the verbiage and allows results to be filtered by industry, permanent/contact and U.K./Rest of the World. Source: Mobility.mobi

No longer has a mobile webapp


What's This?

Men's Health

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.menshealth.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Health and Fitness articles and videos from print magazine Men's Health.

No longer has a mobile version.


What's This?

Living Prague

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://livingprague.mobi (xhtml-mp)

Prague travel guide by an English tourist who became a Czech resident. An insider's guide to the city with recommended hotels, restaurants and attractions and money saving tips for visitors to Prague. Source: Tappity


Site is discontinued


What's This?

Mippin Cricket

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.mippin.com/mip/m/mippintoday.jsp?&cat=cricket (xhtml-mp)

Latest posts on the sport of cricket gathered from the RSS feeds of The Guardian, Telegraph, Cricket Blog, Wisden Cricketer and other cricket sites.

June 2012 Shut Down


What's This?

Go Green

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://gogreen.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Information on how you can reduce your personal energy consumption and production of greenhouse gases by making simple changes to your lifestyle, eating habits and transportation choices.  Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Shut down


What's This?

ImFootball

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://lmfootball.mobi (xhtml-mp)

Latest soccer news and live coverage. Dedicated pages with news, results and fixtures for major soccer leagues around the world including the English Premier League, South African Soccer League, Spain's La Liga, the UEFA Champions League and more. Source: Mobility.mobi

Site is gone


What's This?

Royal Artist Club

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://royalartistclub.com/mobile/ (xhtml-mp)

Nokia sponsored Royal Artist club, which recently celebrated its fifth anniversary is a free blog platform for bands.  Sort of like MySpace but older and not nearly as big with about 50 bands represented currently. Source Nokia Conversations

Nokia still owns the domain but it's inactive


What's This?

WPbeginner

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wpbeginner.com/ (xhtml-mp)

As inplied by its name, WPBeginer is a site aimed at getting newcomers up to speed with the WordPress blogging platform.  Loads of WordPress tips, tricks and tutorials covering topics like WordPress installation, recommended plugins and themes, integration with Feedburner, Facebook and Twitter and lots more. 

No longer a responsive or mobile formatted site.


What's This?

Love-Edu

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://shresthmobi.com/love/ (xhtml-mp)

Relationship and love tips for men, a "Love Calculator" and links to romance related apps on GetJar.

Site is gone.


What's This?

Yedwik

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.yedwik.com/ (xhtml-mp)

A new Meme Tracker that gathers the top news stories from around the web based on their popularity on Facebook. Uses the Google transcoder to display mobile formatted versions of the original articles.

No longer a meme tracker, Yedwik as morphed into an "Automated Lead Generator" that auto replies to your competitors posts on Twitter.


What's This?

N-Gage.com

Content: ***1/2  Usability: XXXX1/2
Last seen at: http://mobile.n-gage.com/ (wml)

Help and articles for N-gage users

26-Jul-2009 Replaced by ovigaming.mobi/


What's This?

AirIM - AIM, Y!M, MSM

Content: ****1/2  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://airsoftwireless.com/airim/login.wml (wml)

Connect to AIM, Yahoo Instant Messenger or MSN Instant Messenger. Messages are sent and received using the browser, doesn't use SMS.

Down: 13-Feb-2008 Parked page.


What's This?

GnomeFiles

Content: ***1/2  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://gnomefiles.org/index.php (HTML5)
Last seen at: http://wap.gnomefiles.org/index.wml (wml)

Catalog of applications for the Open Source Gnome Desktop suite and development toolkit.

Nov-2011: No longer has a mobile version


What's This?

WindowsBeta

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX1/2
Last seen at: http://www.windowsbeta.net/modules.php?modid=9 (wml)
News of the latest software releases. In spite of the name, covers all platforms not just Microsoft Windows.

05-May-2006; Site is down.
What's This?

AkagiNet Forums

Content: ****1/2  Usability: XXXX1/2
Last seen at: http://akaginet.com/board/wap/index.php (wml)

Singapore based mobile phone user forum.There seems to be quite a bit of technical expertise among the posters to this site and a friendly flame-free atmosphere. All brands of phones and carriers from all over the world are covered on AkagiNet. There are also non-technical forums on sports, travel, food etc. Unfortunately, some of the pages are over 3K in size which means that they not load on many WAP 1 phones including some of the latest models.

Down 24-Apr-2008


What's This?

Club SonyEricsson

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.clubsonyericsson.com/forum/index.php?wap2 (xhtml-mp)

Unofficial user forums for SonyEricsson owners

1-Sept-2010: Forum appears dead.  No mobile version and can't register or log in.


What's This?

GeckoBeach

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://wap.geckobeachforums.com/wap.php (wml)

Img. 1Img. 1I've made an addition to the Reviews section of this site. It's a fairly new online forum for cellular enthusiasts, GeckoBeach. This is the eleventh mobile cell phone forum listed on the/Home/Technology/Mobile Phones/Forums page. GeckoBeach is a Canadian based site and has an emphasis on Canadian providers. There is plenty of interest to non-Canadians on the site including phone reviews and experiences of travelers roaming or using local pre-paid sims around the world. The site is quite active, although nowhere near as active as such well established sites as Howard Forums, Esato or GSM Arena - all of which also have mobile editions. One nice thing about GeckoBeach, is that you can browse the entire mobile forum as a guest without having to register (almost all mobile forums require registration - which often can only be done from a PC). Another plus is that the users seem to be more friendly than on many of these phone forums where name-calling, flaming and constant one-upmanship is unfortunately common. The site's not perfect. There is no search function, the links to view a subset of the forum list (A-F, G-K, etc.) all bring up the same long list of all forums. This list page is 3.9 KB which is too large to load on some phone browsers. While some recent phones allow WML pages to be as large as 50 KB, a limit of around 3 KB is much more common and Nokia's from a couple of years ago can only handle 1.4 KB. The same problem occurs with long posts - they can be too large to load. A site like this, which transcodes web content into wireless markup needs to break long pages into manageable pieces. I also got a compile error loading the "American Providers" forum on several phones. The error occurs because of an un-escaped ampersand in the phrase "AT&T". The WML standard requires that all ampersands be replaced with the entity & In spite of these issues, Gecko Beach is worth visiting particularly for Canadians who have phones that can handle the issues with the site.

Jun-2011: Parked Domain


What's This?

Phonifier

Content: ***  Usability: XX
Last seen at: http://www.phonifier.com/index.php (xhtml-mp)

Img. 1 Phonifier is an open source mobile transcoder. Phonifier does not split up large pages and does not resize or reformat images (but does allow you to turn images off). Like loband, Phonifier needlessly replaces a site's backround and foreground colors with boring black on white.

On the plus side, Phonifier did a great job of implementing web forms,Img. 2it was possible to use all the forms needed to make a booking on the Southwest site Southwest is a secure site but my browser warned me that the connection through Phonifier was not actually secure. I would never use Phonifier for online banking or purchases but it could be useful for logging into developer portals and other secure sites where I don't really have much to lose if my login security is compromised.

Phonifier also handles RSS feeds and does a pretty good job, Img. 3presenting an index page with entry titles and the first 200 characters of each post. Clicking the title takes you to the full post. For phone browsers it would be better to just show the titles in the index as 200 characters is a full screenfull on a typical phone so a great deal of scrolling is needed to see the whole index.

While I was somewhat disappointed by with Phonifier, at least it's Open Source. Hopefully, someone will grab the source and fix it.

Dec-2010: Parked Page


What's This?

Feedalot

Content:  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://www.feedalot.com/feedalot/Mobile60/ (xhtml-mp)
 Img. 3 Feedalot is a new service from Jumbuck, a commercial mobile game seller, dating and chat site. Jumbuck doesn't try to sell it's services to Feedalot users. Feedalot has great potential, the site is fast, shows the number of unread items in the feed index, titles only in the item index and it displays the full item content (except for images). There are a few issues with Feedalot. One is that doesn't break up large items into pages. An other issue is that than when Feedalot removes an image it replaces it with "[Image Removed]" rather than displaying the images alternate text. All links are also removed and replaced with "[link removed]". I don't mind that links are removed but it doesn't seem to add any value to tell me so each time. I've found a couple of alternate urls, intended for PDA's which will show your feeds with images and external links intact. A word of warning, the images are NOT resized to mobile friendly dimensions so proceed with caution if you have metered data access. The two urls, which seem to give identical results are:

http://mob.feedalot.com/feedalot/Palm/ http://mob.feedalot.com/feedalot/PocketPC/

My other, admittedly minor beef with Feedalot, is that it displays each item's description above its content. As the description is usually the first 270 characters of the item, you end up with duplicated content.

Although not perfect, Feedalot is my preferred mobile RSS reader.

14-July-2008: Site is down.
What's This?

whatsonwhen

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX1/2
Last seen at: http://www.whatsonwhen.com/wap/ (wml)
Worldwide guide to club dates, concerts, festivals and theatre.

7/31/2006: whatsonwhen.com no longer offers a WAP edition.
What's This?

DW-WORLD WC

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.dw-world.de/english/mobile.S-A.html (xhtml-mp)

  DW-WORLD  Deutsche Welle or 'DW' is Germany's independent but publicly funded international broadcaster. Somewhat similar to the BBC International Service or the Voice of America, DW broadcasts shortwave radio news, sports and cultural content in 29 languages and satellite TV in four; English, German, Spanish and Arabic. Like the BBC, DW has a comprehensive internet site, DW-WORLD.DE again in 29 languages. Of course I wouldn't be writting abour DW-WORLD unless they had an intersting mobile web site. The mobile site is mobile.dw-world.de and it features almost all of the content from the full web site in different 29 language editions .

The mobile site not only contains most of the articles on the full web site but the articles are also complete, although that's not too hard as DW-WORLD articles tend to be short, averaging 400 words. Most articles are illustrated with a single photo 122px wide. Page weight is mobile friendly, about 7 KB for text and image combined. The UI is reasonably good with a text based navigation menu at the top of the main pages, followed by short headlines linking to the stories. There is some room for improvement, the navigation menu has too many links and fills the first screen and half of the second on a 128x160px device. I'd also like to see access keys on the navigation links and the "To Top" link at the bottom of the page, but it's a very usable design as it stands.


Not surprisingly as Germany is the host nation, DW World has a very good World Cup page, with live coverage and frequently updated headlines.

23-Apr-2012: Redirects to DW World home page


What's This?

Tour of California

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.amgentourofcalifornia.com/ (xhtml-mp)

The annual 600 mile stage race from San Francisco to Long Beach kicks off this Sunday (16-May-2010). Among the world class riders in this years event are Levi Leipheimer, Lance Armstrong, Andy Schleck, Tom Boonen and  Fabian Cancellara.

The official Tour of California mobile web site will have live coverage of every stage. VeloNews.com and. CyclingNews.com are also be offering live coverage of the Tour this year at mobile.velonews.com and live.cyclingnews.com respectively.

16-May-2010 Redirects to desktop site


What's This?

CricketFan

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://CricketFan.mobi (xhtml-mp)

CricketFan.mobi () News blog covering the game of cricket. It's a mashup of headline feeds from cricket sites with links back to the full stories mobilized by Google.

Parked domain


What's This?

Wachovia

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.wachovia.com/mobile (HTML5)

Wachovia is another US bank with branches on the the US east cost, Texas and in the Los Angeles area. The bank's mobile site is available to all Wachovia online banking customers without any additional signup and offers account balances, transaction history, transfer between accounts and an ATM and branch finder. Wachovia was purchase by Wrlls Fargo Bank in December, 2008 but for the time being still opperated under it's own name and URLs.

Redirects to wellsfargo.com


What's This?

FeedM8

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://fdm8.com/ (xhtml-mp)

FeedM8 HomepageI got an email from Ivan at Wattpad.com announcing his new mobile service, FeedM8. What it does is create a mobile site from an RSS feed. There are other services that do this. But the only ones I can recommend are Mowser (review), Winksite (review) and now FeedM8. I like these three because they are the only ones of the dozen or so I've tried that split long posts into mobile sized chunks and deliver clean and valid markup that works on almost any phone.

Domain is parked - Apr-2010

The main differences between them are that Mowser and FeedM8 resize images while Winksite strips them. FeedM8's image handling is particularly nice. Images display as small, fast loading thumbnails. Clicking a thumbnail gives choice of viewing the image in four different sizes.

If you don't want advertising on your site, only Winksite is ad-free. The other two put ads on your content but both will share the revenue with you. All three services deliver xhtml-mp, the current standard in mobile markup languages. FeedM8 and Winksite also support wml, an older standard that is all that some phones support.

 WapReview by FeedM8Many mobile developers and publishers discount wml as old and crufty, which it is, but there's still a considerable amount of traffic being generated by wml-only phones. In the developing world where the mobile provides the only web access for most people, used phones are the norm and more often than not they are wml-only. Even in the US both Sprint/Nextel and ATT still sell new wml-only phones. My Yeswap.com site actually gets more wml traffic than xhtml-mp. Using FeedM8 or Winksite is a painless way to add mobile support including wml to your blog

FeedM8 has some nice features for publishers, you can upload a logo for your pages and a description which appears in Feed9M's site directory. There's even a statistics page where you can track your traffic and ad revenue. Feed9M gives you a halfway decent url too, mine is fdm8.com/wapreview.

Besides being a tool for publishers to create an instant mobile site, FeedM8 is also a mobile portal offering a wide selection of content, in the form of mobilized RSS feeds, from major sites like The Economist, Reuters, Business Week, GigaOm, The Times of India and BoingBoing. Users can bookmark any of these feeds or add their own to create a custom home page.


What's This?

Ma.gnolia

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://m.gnolia.com (xhtml-mp)

My M.gnolia.com Bookmarks Ma.gnolia.com is a De.licio.us clone which is to say that it's a bookmarking site that encourages sharing of bookmarks. There are more similarities than differences between the two sites, both use tags to categorize bookmarks and bookmarks are public by default but can be flagged as private. The main differences I see is that Magnolia has a prettier, more Web 2.0'ish Ajaxy user interface.

Ma.gnolia has launched a mobile edition at m.gnolia.com. It allows you to view the most popular bookmarks from all users, your contact's bookmarks or your own bookmarks by tag.

Ma.gnolia has a bookmarklet for one click bookmarking from PC browsers which I've modified it to work with Opera Mini, Netfront and Internet Explorer Mobile. You can find it on the Yeswap Opera Mini Bookmarklets page at o.yeswap.com where there are also instructions on how to install bookmarlets on mobile browsers without having to type them in.

More...

Sept-2009: Ma.gnolia relaunched as Gnolia.com. It's currently invitation only.and as far as I can tell doesn't have a mobile version.


What's This?

Vehix

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.usablenet.com/mt/www.vehix.com/ (HTML5)

Vehix is a site for car shoppers. The mobile version lets you find new and used cars for sale by zip code with prices and click to call phone numbers. You can also lookup the value of any used car made since 1989. Those features worked well, however digging deeper in the site revealed a lot of non-functioning links. Via: Mike Rowehl - This Is Mobility

Shut down by its owner, Comcast on June 30, 2013


What's This?

Property-England

Content: ***  Usability: XX
Last seen at: http://property-england.com/m/ (wml)

Find homes and busness properties for sale in England. Search by post code or keyword and filter results by price. Listings include a brief description and the price. Once you find a property that interests you the site leaves high and dry. To act on a property you are advised "For more information, refer to property-england.com quoting reference number nnnn" I'd think a proper mobile site of this type should offer a way to contact the listing agent directly like a click to call or click to SMS link.

Now a a private property portfolio for members only.

 


What's This?

Mideast Youth

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mideastyouth.com/?mobi (xhtml-mp)

Mideast Youth HomepageMideast Youth is a news and opinion blog, published in Bahrain with the goal of connecting young people of all nationalities and regions throughout the region to increase understanding and to promote "human rights, religious freedom, tolerance, and free speech. According to the site's FAQ:

"Our aim is to offer the public what mainstream media constantly lacks - uncensored information, personal anecdotes from underrepresented minorities, highlighting ignored or forgotten human rights abuses, articles that focus on unique and youthful art, music and culture."
No longer a mobile site.
What's This?

Bunkers

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://bunkers.mobi (xhtml-mp)

Search for US golf courses by city and state or zip code. Results include address, click to call phone numbers, green fees, and number of holes. There is a link to driving directions from something called Pilot.mobi which did not work, failing with the message "We are experiencing a high volume of searches".

3-Jan-2011 Site is down


What's This?

Sync2It

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.sync2it.com/mobile/ (xhtml-mp)

Sync2it Mobile

Mobile front end to Sync2It, a cross-browser bookmark synchronizer for Windows. Sync2It is a small Windows application that runs in the backround on your PC to monitor and synchronize your IE bookmarks to the cloud.

Your bookmarks can be synchronized across multiple computers running the Sync2it client and are also available online on a password protected web site and on the Sync2It mobile site. 

The mobile site supports folders and adding new bookmarks directly from the mobile browser.  Although Sync2IT is primarily marketed as a PC product you can also use it as a stand alone mobile bookmarking service.  Sync2It is free for unlimited bookmarks and up to three PCs with paid subscription options supporting more computers and https connections. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Offline since Feb-2014


What's This?

Artnet Magazine

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://artnet.mobi (xhtml-mp)

Artnet Magazine Mobile

Covers the art business with a database of fine art auction results allowing art buyers and sellers to research fine & decorative art prices online.

Artnet also features a directory of international galleries and articles about artists, galleries, major auctions and art market business trends. 

Artnet uses the Google mobile transcoder to convert major portions of the full Artnet site to mobile fomat. Source: Mobility.mobi

10-Jan-2009 Redirects to mofuse.mobi!


What's This?

Feedzilla

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.feedzilla.com/ (xhtml-mp)

News agregator which collects the top news stories from thousands of sources.  You can view news in any of 26 categories from Art to Video Games or as a blended "Top News" stream.  Listings consist of a headline and excerpt.  You can click through to the original source which is generally NOT mobile friendly.  Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Feedzilla now provides tools that let publishers and devlopers incorporate feeds into their products and is no longer a general purpose meme tracker.


What's This?

Amsterdam Mobile Guide

Content: ****  Usability: XX
Last seen at: http://us.holland.com/mobile/ (xhtml-mp)

Amsterdam Mobile Guide

Visitors guide to Amsterdam from the Netherlands Board of Tourism and Conventions has extensive coverage of attractions, bars, gay and lesbian events and establishments, restaurants, hotels, museums and transportation options with loads of photos and an interactive map. 

Although billed as being usable with all mobile browsers, the site is clearly optimized for advanced devices like the iphone.  Page sizes are over 100 KB and the maps do not display in browsers without JavaScript support.

No longer a mobile web app.


What's This?

ezmogo

Content: **  Usability: XX
Last seen at: http://ezmogo.mobi (xhtml-mp)

ezmogo mobile web coupons

Ezmogo is a mobile web service that lets you search for discount coupons and special offers on services, entertainment, retail stores, restaurants, and more in the U.S. Similar sites include Xtra! Coupons and PocketDeal in the U.S. and  ActiveDeals for India.

There are two ways to find coupons with ezmogo.  You can browse through categories of offerings for your location or you can enter a "Quick Code" found on an ad, flyer or poster. To redeem a coupon just show it displayed on your phone screen at the point of sale.  You don't have to register to use ezmogo but registered users can save coupons for quick access and forward them to friends by text message. Registering requires giving your mobile number to ezmogo.

I think mobile coupons are a viable business model but ezmogo is currently not very useful due to a combination of lack of inventory and user interface limitations.   Without a quick code using this site is an exercise in frustration.  After setting my location to downtown San Francisco, I clicked of each of the 29 shopping categories and sub categories only to be greeted by "there are currently no ads available in your location in this search category" for each one.  Categories need to be hidden if they are empty to avoid leading users "down the garden path" to disappointment.

Parked domain


What's This?

Angus-Reid

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.angus-reid.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Angus-Reid is a public opinion research company specializing in politics, public opinion and policy. This site is the mobile version of the company's Global Monitor website which tracks elections around the world and publishes results and analyses of the latest Angus-Reid polls as a resource for  journalists, students, policy makers, and citizens.

20-Jan-2012: Site is down.


What's This?

Latest Stories: Cycling

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.mippin.com/mip/m/mippintoday.jsp?&cat=cycling (xhtml-mp)

A collection of items gathered by Mippin from the RSS feeds of online cycling sites including Road Diaries,
Tour de France Lanterne Rouge and Podium Cafe.

June 2012 Shut Down


What's This?

Radisson Edwardian

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://raded.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

View descriptions and photos of Radisson Edwardian luxury hotels in London and Manchester England.  Walking and driving directions for each hotel. There is no online booking or availability information but click to call reservation numbers are provided. Source: Mobility.mobi

Redirects to main Radison site.


What's This?

Evening Standard

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.istandard.co.uk/ (xhtml-mp)

The mobile web edition of the London Evening Standard newspaper includes news, sports and business stories. weather forecasts and reviews of restaurants, films, theatre, arts, music and comedy performances. Source Oh! Mobile Directory.

No longer has a mobile friendly version.


What's This?

MobiSoccer

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobisoccer.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Soccer news, scores, player profiles and live match updates. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Site is gone


What's This?

LouLou

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://loulou.mobi (xhtml-mp)

Online fashion magazine for young women with a "deal of the day" and mobile coupons for brick and mortar clothing retailers. Too bad it's such a slow loading site.  Source Mobility.mobi

Aug-2010 Site is down.


What's This?

Raine & Horne (AU)

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://rhmobile.mobi (xhtml-mp)

Find properties for sale or lease in Australia.  Listings include photos, price, description and phone number which is not click to call.  Decent site but not being able easily initiate a call to the listing agent is a huge lost oportunity for sellers. Source: Mobility.mobi

Raine & Horne no longer offers a mobile friendly site.


What's This?

Samsung

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mysamsungmobile.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Samsung India's official site has images and specs for current models and a dealer locator. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Site is gone


What's This?

Just.mobi

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://just.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

A good mobile web search site based on the Bing Api.  Unlike m.bing.com, Just.mobi favors made for mobile sites over inferior transcoded desktop ones! Source: Mobility.mobi

All queries return no results


What's This?

Eurosport WAP

Content: ***  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://wap.eurosport.com/wap/wap.asp?page=/home/zones/V3/wap/L0/menucenter_Lng0_MediaId2.shtml (wml)
Short headlines for Soccer, Cycling, Motor Sports, Track and Field and Tennis. You will be better off using the Eurosport PDA site which has full stories and works well on most phones. 5/21/05 no longer a wml site - redirects to main eurosport web page. This fine site may be gone - there have been no updates since 3/30/05 and the "Mobility" section of the main Eurosport site now lists only a series of exclusive arangements with a few major European Carriers - users are told to contact these providers to get Eurosport content on their phones.
What's This?

Yahoo F1

Content:  Usability:
Last seen at: http://uk.wap.yahoo.com/uk/sport/f1/index.wml (wml)
No longer exists as a F1 specific page - redirects to a general sports news page.
What's This?

Straits Times

Content: *****  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://straitstimes.asia1.com/avantgo/ (HTML5)
News from Singapore. Has the best Asian News coverage available on wap. No longer available at this address. Still on avantgo so it appears that the url has been changed.
What's This?

Mobile Weather

Content: **1/2  Usability: XXXX1/2
Last seen at: http://www.ejse.com/MobileWeather/ (HTML5/wml)
Barebones weather site. Enter a USA zip code and get current conditions. 6-May-06 Too slow to be usable.
What's This?

RohDesign Weblog

Content: ****  Usability: XXX1/2
Last seen at: http://www.rohdesign.com/weblog/mobile.html (HTML5)

Mobile edition of Mike Rohde's weblog. Not a dedicated PDA site but occasionally Mike writes about PDA's.

No longer a mobile site


What's This?

itv F1

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wapsbt.momac.net/pl/svt/si/formulaone/po/miguk/xuid/71.131.206.100/ms/3W0AxGnXW (xhtml-mp)

Formula One News and Results from the UK's largest commercial TV network.

07-May-2009: ITV no longer covers F1 on their mobile site.


What's This?

Lonely Planet

Content: ****  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.lonelyplanet.com/ (xhtml-mp)
Last seen at: http://wap.lonelyplanet.com/devices/orange/wml/lp.cfm (wml)
Lonely Planet publishes a series of guidebooks originally aimed at low budget and and adventure travelers but lately trying to appeal to everyone. This site highlights excerts from the guide books with a different city profiled every day plus a world guide with short lists of must see sites in each country. Update: 3/31/2006, Lonely Planet no longer has a mobile site.
What's This?

Mobile Comp SIG

Content: ***1/2  Usability: XXX1/2
Last seen at: http://www.mobilecomputingsig.com/mobile/index.php (HTML5)
Announcements of upcomming events of the San Francisco based Mobile Computing Special Interest Group of California.

Dead 7/25/2006
What's This?

PalmZone

Content: ****  Usability: XX1/2
Last seen at: http://www.palmzone.net/ (HTML5)

News, forums, product information and release announments. Daily Updates. Not really a mobile site although usable on PDA's.

Redirects to a "coming soon" page for a site called "Xxtremely Mobile".


What's This?

Upoc Chat

Content: ***1/2  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://www.Upoc.com/wap/ (xhtml-mp/wml)

Chat group site. Upoc is an SMS text messaging based chat site. When you join a Upoc chat group you will receive an SMS of every post that other members make to the group. You can post by SMS WAP, the web or by texting into a landline phone. If you don't want to receive SMS's, register for upoc on the web and check the box "I do not have a mobile phone" You can still read the messages via the Web or WAP

30-Nov-2011 Upoc shut down.


What's This?

Economist

Content: ****1/2  Usability: XXX1/2
Last seen at: http://www.mobileread.com/avantgo/economist_mobile.html (HTML5)
The Economist is a highly-regarded British weekly newsmagazine with an emphasis on political and economic analysis of cuurent events. Update 05/31/05: All of the articles are now "premium" content and you will not be able to read them through this link.
What's This?

MobileGear

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX1/2
Last seen at: http://www.mobilegear.biz/mobile/xhtml/ (xhtml-mp)
Last seen at: http://www.mobilegear.biz/mobile/wml/ (wml)
User Forums, Game, Wallpaper and Ringtone downloads, WAP link directory. New forums, not many posts yet.
Down 11/26/2007
What's This?

IYHY

Content: **  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://www.iyhy.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Img. 1 IYHY is another relatively new service that promises to make most web pages viewable on mobile phone browsers. It doesn't break up large pages and many web sites are too large to be loaded on phone browsers. I can get to the IYHY homepage with all my test browsers except one (Sony-Ericsson). The screen is hard to use because the site overrides the browser's default fonts making them too small for easy readability. Horizontal scrolling is required to see the entire logo and text box on a small 128 x 160px phone screen.

If I enter the url of this blog in IYHY, I get either a browser hang (Nokia) or crash (Motorola) or an error 'insufficient memory for this operation' on Openwave which means the page is over that device's maximum page size of 10KB). Img. 2

I was able to load the homepage of Southwest Airlines's full PC site on the Nokia, Motorola and Openwave simulators. But when I click the "Book Travel" button I get an error (Page too large on the Nokia and Openwave, "page cannot be loaded on the Motorola). Even using The Access Netfront mobile emulator, "full web" browser, I cannot complete the reservation - when I click the "Book Travel" button, IYHY redirects me to the full Southwest web page which is unusable on almost any phone. IYHY also strips out all of a site's images, colors and even simple formating like bold and italic. At least IYHY is fast and seems to be reliable.

Dec-2010: Site is down.


What's This?

NewYorkBusiness

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.mdog.com/bookmarks/nybusiness/htmlsite/ (HTML5)
New York business newspaper's mobile edition.

7-Jul-08: No Content!
What's This?

YoMoBlog

Content: *****  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://yomoblog.com/ (HTML5)

 YoMoBlog Screenshot I'm trying out YoMoBlog, a very cool mobile blogging tool from Dave Winer. It works with lots of blogging platforms including WordPress and Type Pad. As it's mobile web based with a page size of only 7kb, it's compatable with most phones.

YoMoBlog really shines when used with a device with a QWERTY keyboard. I wrote and posted the lead paragraph of this item with my Moto i855 but not being a demon texter I wouldn't want to write more than a few lines with a phone keypad.

To get started with YoMoBlog, head first to yomoblog.com/startup to register. Registration consists of entering your blog's url, an email address and an existing login and passsword to your blog. Once your registered you log into yomoblog.com, type your post, hit submit and you've posted to your blog. It couldn't be simpler. YoMoBlog even lets you tag your mobile post with any of the categories you've set up on your blog. There is no draft mode, so what ever you've keyed gets posted immediately.

YoMoBlog is easy to setup and use but If you get stuck there's on-line help and a Yahoo Group, blackberry-bloggers

.

 

I like YoMoBlog. The interface is clean and intuitive and it seems to be compatable with most blog software and devices.

Gone, domain is now a realtor's site. Apr-2010


What's This?

Valleywag

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://feedm8.com/wap/feed?f=45 (xhtml-mp)
Last seen at: http://htow.net?u=http%3A%2F%2Fmini.mobileplay.com%2Fheadlines.php%3Ft%3Dxhtml%26cp%3DValleyWag%26cat%3D1%26b%3D1 (wml)

Silicon Valley gossip blog - reformatted for mobile by FeedM8.

Valleywag has been folded into Gawker and nolonger has a stanalone mobile or desktop site.


What's This?

San Jose Mercury News

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.mdog.com/bookmarks/mercurynews/htmlsite/ (HTML5)
San Jose Mercury News Silicon Valley's hometown paper - full content in lightweight text-only format.

Down 31-May-2007 Stories are blank!
What's This?

Mobleo

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.mobleo.net (xhtml-mp)

 Mobleo Bookmark Page Image Social bookmarking using del.icio.us and similar sites is huge on the web and I think it's about to really take off on the mobile web too. Surfing, bookmarking and sharing your bookmarks doesn't require intensive keying, so it works as well on the mobile web as it does on the full web. I'd go so far as to say that social bookmarking has the potential to become as become as big as sharing ringtones and photos.

A great way to do mobile social bookmarking is with the Opera Mini bookmarklets I recently posted about (and which are working again , BTW) but it's not the only way. I've been looking at a new site that takes a server based approach. Putting the bookmarking functionality on the server means you can use any browser - good news for the millions of users (including all Verizon and Alltel customers) whose phones can't run Opera Mini.

The free service, called Mobleo lets you create a directory of your favorite mobile and non-mobile websites. You can setup your bookmarks on the web at mobleo.net and access them from your phone at mobile.mobleo.net . Lots of sites let you do that but what sets Mobleo apart is that you can dispense with the PC and save bookmarks directly from your mobile browser. As you surf the web with Mobleo you are actually going through a transcoding proxy which adds a form to the bottom of every page with an Enter tags field and a Tag Page button. You can instantly bookmark any page you land on. The proxy also transcodes non-mobile websites to a more mobile friendly format. Mobleo's transcoder doesn't resize images but you can tell it not to display them. There is even a link on every page that lets you jump out of the transcoder and view the page in its original format. The whole thing reminds me of a concept Charlie Schick proposed half a year ago in A website, wrapped in a transcoder, inside a browser .

Mobleo's PC site lets manage your bookmarks and fine tune the transcoder. You can delete and rename bookmarks and for each bookmark you can specify whether you want the linked site transcoded or not and whether the transcoded pages should include images.

There's no bookmark management on the mobile site, you can only add bookmarks - you can't delete, rename or change their tags. You can however, register for Mobleo on the mobile site which features the first mobile captcha I've seen. The lack of mobile editing facilities keeps Mobleo from being a service that doesn't require a PC to use to it's fullest. While personal computers are ubiquitous in the US, worldwide mobile browsers outnumber PC's by 10 to 1 and are often a user's only way to access the web. I'd like to see more mobile services that don't require a PC to use their main features.

The thing that keeps me from using Mobleo all the time is that the transcoder can't handle some of my favorite sites. I haven't been able to login to Google Reader or Bloglines using Mobleo and those are the sites where I most often want to bookmark something. When Mobleo can't open a page you still have the option to view the page in its native format although you can't bookmark pages viewed in native format. Sites that don't require a login generally work well. Mobleo is a beta (launched in November) with some beta bugs but it's a great start which will surely improve with time. Writing transcoders that work with any site and browser is obviously very difficult - in my use, even Google's transcoder fails with an error message about 10% of the time.

It doesn't seem possible to search or view other users public links by tag on Mobleo like you can on del.icio.us. Maybe I'm missing something as the About page speaks of sharing your links with "...the Mobleo community" but I can't figure out how to do it. I can only see the tags of friends who have explicitly shared theirs with me - not everyone's public tags. What makes the buzz on a social bookmarking site is the ability to discover what the community is giving it's link love to. Public bookmarks provide a great pool of searchable data that Del.icio.us leverages with their hotlist , what's popular and fresh only filters. I'd like to see Mobleo do something similar.

Even in it's beta state Mobleo is a great mobile bookmark site, you can set up mobile bookmarks on the PC or phone, assign tags to them and share your favorites with friends. The phone GUI is easy to use. Switching from one tag to another on the phone is convenient using a dropdown list at the top of every bookmark page.

Mobleo, which was created entirely by developer, Tom Boilard in his spare time is more attractive and polished than the sites of many well-funded startups. It's a great showcase for the mobile social bookmarking concept.

29-Apr-2013: Site is down.


What's This?

Q users

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.qusers.com (HTML5)

A news site and discussion forum for users of Motorola's "Q" Windows Mobile CDMA (and soon GSM too) smartphone.

Dec-2009: Site down


What's This?

Honolulu Advertiser

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.honoluluadvertiser.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Local News from Hawaii.

Merged with the Honolulu Star Bulletin to become the Honolulu Star Advertiser


What's This?

Save2Phone

Content: ****  Usability: XX
Last seen at: http://wap.save2phone.com/myzus/mobile/ (wml)
Save2Phone (wap.save2phone.com/myzus/mobile/) has over 2000 downloadable freeware, shareware and demo  mobile applications and games for Java, Symbian, Palm and Windows Mobile phones. The mobile site is slow, hard to navigate and there are no descriptions of the files only filenames. The best way to use this site is to first visit the desktop edition of Save2Phone at www.save2phone.com which also slow but is better organized and has descriptions of the files.  The files on the PC site all have a numeric code which can be entered on the mobile site to download the file.
Down 15-Mar-2008
What's This?

Avvenu

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: https://mobile.avvenu.com (xhtml-mp)

Avennu Avvenu, which was recently acquired by Nokia, is similar to SoonR (review) in that both provide remote web access to files on a desktop PC from a phone or another PC. I'm a satisfied SoonR user, is Avvenu good enough to switch?

To use Avvenu, you start off by installing the Avvenu client program, which runs all the time in the background, on the PC (Windows XP and Vista only). Then, when you log into Avvenu's mobile (https://mobile.avvenu.com) or PC site (https://www.avvenu.com) with a phone or another PC you're able to browse the remote PC's entire file system and download files. You can also share files with another user - Avvenu emails them a link granting time-limited, read-only access to specific files. Avvenu doesn't allow sharing audio or video files, however. If Google Desktop search is installed on the PC, Avvenu integrates with it letting you search the PC for files. You can upload files to the PC from another PC or a mobile device that supports file uploads from the browser - like Windows Mobile and Symbian S60 phones. Or you can upload to a single pre-configured folder using MMS with almost any phone.

More...

Nokia has shut down Avvenu and migrated user files to files.ovi.com


What's This?

Hawt Lolz!

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://frengo.com/wapichc/ (xhtml-mp)

The LolCat phenomenon shows no signs of dying out. If you're like me and get a chuckle out of cat pictures with humorous captions in broken English, Hawt Lolz! is the site for you. It has a seemingly endless supply of mobile sized lolcats, one to a page.

Site is gone


What's This?

Beijing2008

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wap.beijing2008.cn/pams/s.do?p=507&amp;lo=en (wml)
Official Olympics SiteThe official site of the 2008 games Beijing2008.cn has a mobile edition in English at wap.beijing2008.cn/pams/s.do?p=507&lo=en.  It's a one size fits all wml site but is quite comprehensive with news, schedules and free wallpaper downloads for each sport. The 96x128 wallpapers feature the 2008 Olympic mascots, five good luck dolls. This should be a particularly good site if you are lucky enough to actually be in China for the Olympics as it has maps of the Oympic cities and venues, visitor guides, hotel information and a downloadable GPS enabled Olympics Navigation application (Windows Mobile only).

Down - 17-Oct-2008.
What's This?

FBI Most Wanted

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://FbiMostWanted.mobi (xhtml-mp)

FBIMostWanted.mobi ScreenshotI got an email from Mark at Idea Earth suggesting I take a look at the mobile sites they have developed. Idea Earth's got a boatload of sites, but one jumped out at me as especially interesting and unusual was FbiMostWanted.mobi. It's just what the name suggests, a mobile version of the famous Federal Bureau of Investigation's 10 Most Wanted Fugitives List. The list has been around for almost 60 years and every American has no doubt seen the hard copy version of prominently displayed in Post Offices around the country. These days is online as well but the FBI hasn't had the foresight to create a mobile friendly version creating an opportunity which Idea Earth has taken the initiative to fill.

The FBI has supplemented the original 10 Most Wanted list with additional lists of the Most Wanted Terrorists, Most Wanted Sexual Predators, Most Wanted Murders, Most Wanted Robbers and Most Wanted Drug Conspirators and FbiMostWanted.mobi has all the lists too. The site also has links to the FBI's online form for reporting a fugitive and to a list of FBI offices. These links are not mobile friendly. It would be nice if Idea Earth linked to non-mobile sites through a transcoder like Mowser, Skweezer or Google's GWT There's also a click to call link to 911, just be careful you don't accidenly click it! Just a remainder, but if you ever do accidently call 911, stay on the line until the emergency operator answers and explain that you dialed 911 accidentally, otherwise you could wind up surrounded by emergency vehicles and possibly a fine for a false report.

FBIMostWanted.mobi was created with the free mobile site builder MobileSiteGalore which goes to show you that you don't need a big budget or impressive technical skills to create a compelling and useful mobile site.

Parked Domain


What's This?

Article99

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://mobi.article99.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Article99The mobile edition of Article99.com Authors Club, a site where people who want to promote their business, website or reputation as a subject matter expert submit articles on any topic, a practice called Article Marketing.  There are actually dozens of Article Marketing sites on the web but this is the first  one I've seen that has a mobile edition. Article submission is free on Article99

As you might expect on a site dedicated to self promotion the quality of these articles tends to be pretty low,  but some of the articles are reasonably well written and useful.  Article99 has some fairly specific content and style gudelines and appears to moderate submissions to weed out the trash. There are over 20 thousand articles grouped into a couple of dozen main categories and over 450 sub-categories.  You can find anything from  dog training tutorials to web design tips on Article99. Unfortunately the Google powered site search doesn't seem to work making the site more suited to browsing than searching for anything specific.  Considering the quanity of content, Article99 is reasonably usable on a mobile thanks to the use of accesskeys and the hierarchical organization.

20-Nov-2010 Site is down


What's This?

EuropeFoot

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://europefoot.mobi (xhtml-mp)

A one page mobile summary of international soceer football news and results. There about a dozen headlines and brief story blurbs on the page. Available English, French, German and Spanish.

Site is gone


What's This?

PremLeague.mobi

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://premleague.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

A fan site covering the Premiere League, England's top professional football organization. The site is a mashup of newsfeeds from the BBC, Sky and 4TheGame, current standings and links to external sites including some of the teams' own mobile sites. Source: Mobility.mobi

Parked domain


What's This?

yourfootball.eu

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://www.yourfootball.eu/ (xhtml-mp)

Soccer football news, results, betting tips and links to livescore.com for the latest scores.

3-Jan-2011 Domain lapsed


What's This?

Perham MN Ent. Bulletin

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.perhameb.com/m/ (xhtml-mp)

From Perham, Minesota, the text-only mobile edition of the Enterprise Bulletin offers local news, weather, business and classifieds. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Feb-2010: Mobile version is no longer offered.


What's This?

Discover Hong Kong

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wap.hktb.com (xhtml-mp)

Travelers guide to Hong Kong with sightseeing, shopping and dinning listings and recommendations, an event calendar, directory of useful numbers and local weather forecast. Source Oh! Mobile Directory

No longer has a mobile formatted or responsive site.

 


What's This?

BBC Radio

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://bbcradio.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Unofficial directory of BBC Radio streams in Real Media and Windows Media formats.

Parked domain


What's This?

Twittme

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://twittme.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Twittme mobile Web Twitter client

Twittme is another mobile Twitter front end. One thing that sets Twittme apart from the rest is that it that allows creating Tweets longer than 140 characters.  The "What are you doing" field in Twittme accepts up to 240 characters.  Tweets longer than 140 are sent as two successive Tweets.  Several desktop clients do this but Twittme is the first mobile web one I've seen that does. Twittme has a couple of other features that set it apart from the crowd, there are links under each tweet in the the timeline that let you share it on Facebook or by Email.

Initially, Tweetme was missing a few features found in the best of other mobile clients but it's added support for OAuth and made Twitter @IDs and #hashtags in the body of Tweets clickable links. I often click on IDs, especially in retweets.  It's the main way I discover new people to follow. Being able to click hashtags is also a big plus as it's a great way to follow live events and to see what others are saying on  a topic.

21-Sep-2012 Redirects to a makeup artist site!

 


What's This?

springpad

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: https://springpadit.com/m/ (xhtml-mp)

Springpad is an online organizer app based on linked notepads called "Springpads".  Each Springpad can contain notes, recipes, todo lists and calendar events. Springpads can be linked to other Springpads and can be shared with other Springpad users. Source Tappity

Springpad no loger has a mobile webapp.


What's This?

My Nokia Blog

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mynokiablog.com (xhtml-mp)

My Nokia Blog Mobile

Jay Montano's My Nokia Blog is one of my favorite Nokia specific sites. Covering Symbian and Maemo and updated daily the site is full of tips for making the most of your Nokia smartphone. There are also reviews of the newest Nokias with plenty of quality photos and videos and a catalog of free apps, games and themes.

As a WordPress.org site, My Nokia Blog benefits from WordPress' built in mobile support which detects mobile devices and delivers a couple of different mobile formated themes, one for touch devices and one for non-touch.


Apr-2012 - no loger has a mobile version


What's This?

ScoreMobile Olympics

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.thescore.com/olym (xhtml-mp)

The Score Mobile - Olympics 2010

Canadian cable TV sports chanel, The Score's mobile site has an unusual design with an auto-refreshing front  page that displays the latest live scores for a specific sport.  For the Olympics, The Score has built a page dedicated to Canada's nation sport, hockey.  It will provide full, in-game coverage of men’s and women’s hockey along with medal standings, hockey tournament standings, men’s hockey stat leaders, and news updates from all Olympic events.

Dec-2010: Page has been removed.

 


What's This?

BPFanZone

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://bpfanzone.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

BPFanZone

A different sort of World Cup mobile site from BP (yes that BP).  Rather than scores, standings and live coverage, it has extensive background information, star players, trivial and local lingo for the 9 FIFA top ranked and 6 African teams in the World Cup along with lots of free downloadable audio clips and ring-tones of the countries' national anthems, chants, cheers, songs.  There is also a directory of 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™ official FIFA Fan Fests, where fans without tickets can watch the matches televised on a giant screen, a BP station search and gas saving driving tips. Source: Mobility.mobi

Site has shut down.


What's This?

Heatworld

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.heatworld.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Online mobile edition of UK based Heat magazine, a celebrity, entertainment and gossip print weekly. The mobile site includes lots of celeb photos and trivia contests with DVDs and gadgets as prizes. Source: Taptu Touch Web Report (PDF).

Apr-2013: Heatworld's mobile edition is no more


What's This?

Home of F1

Content: 1/2  Usability: 1/2
Last seen at: http://wap.homeoff1.com (wml)
Usually a good source of F! news but currently throwing errors on most pages. Down for good: 3/18/2006
What's This?

Buckle Up!

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://buckleup.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Public service site Buckle Up!, promotes seat belt usage with a debunking of seat belt myths like "I'd rather be thrown clear in a crash" and a selection of scary crash videos. Source: Mobile Mammoth

May-2013 Domain expired


What's This?

The Feature

Content: ****1/2  Usability: XXXX1/2
Last seen at: http://www.thefeature.com/xhtml (xhtml-mp)
Last seen at: http://www.thefeature.com/wap/ (wml)
Major mobile industry news and opinion site. Ceased publication June 2005.
What's This?

Continental Air

Content: ****1/2  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://pda.continental.com/ (HTML5)
Last seen at: http://wap.continental.com/ (wml)

Flight schedules, flight availability, flight status, my itineraries, frequent flyer balance.

Continental was acquired by United Airlines and no longer has its own Web presence.


What's This?

JonRoig Weather

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX1/2
Last seen at: http://jonroig.com/weather/index.php (wml)
Current conditions and 9 day forecast for any US zip code. Must reenter zip every visit.

Sown 29-May-2007
What's This?

Swendsen-net

Content: ***1/2  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://wap.svendsen-net.dk/ (wml)
Browser test suite for WAP developers. Ringtone, wallpaper and game downloads for everyone.

Down 03-Oct-2008 - The site displays this message "Well after more than 7 years of activity and fun, have I decided to close down my wap test pages etc. since it do not any more have my attention."
What's This?

All About Palm

Content: ****1/2  Usability: XXX1/2
Last seen at: http://mobile.allaboutpalm.com/ (HTML5)

All About Palm is a brand new site from Ewan Spence creator of All About Symbian and All About N-Gage. The site features hardware and software reviews and Ewan's opinion pieces about the Palm Smartphone future.

26-Jul-2007 Publication of All About {alm has been suspended.


What's This?

wapchimp

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX1/2
Last seen at: http://www.wapchimp.com/mob/ (HTML5)
Game, ringtone and image downloads and a small forum. Emphasis is on media for Sony Ericsson and Nokia phones.

5/5/2006 Gone, it just redirects to a commercial ringtone site.
What's This?

Mobilicio.us

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobilicio.us/ (xhtml-mp)

Use your del.icio.us links on yor mobile. Mobilicio.us is a mash up of del.icio.us with Google's Mobile Transcoder. After logging in with your del.icio.us id and password, you can enter a tag and get a list of all your links with that tag. Click a link and it's converted to xhtml-mobile by Google.

31-Oct-2010 Site is down


What's This?

AM New York

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX1/2
Last seen at: http://mobile.amny.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Top stories in new, business, sports and entertainment from the New York City daily. Well designed and attractive WAP2 site keeps page size down to about 4KB with a few small images of less than 110px in width should work on almost any phone.

No longer has a mobile or responsive site.


What's This?

History Channel (UK)

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://www.thehistorychannel.co.uk/text_only/home/ (HTML5)

The UK edition of The History Channel has launched a mobile site featuring their broadcast calendar with promotional descriptions of upcoming shows and a This Day in Historyy feature.

No longer a mobile or responsive site.


What's This?

BareSite

Content: **  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://baresite.com (HTML5)

Another mobile transcoder. I don't use these much anymore since the advent of Opera Mini but new ones keep popping up. Anyway BareSite strips out most styles and formatting, even bold and italic, giving a basic black on white text-only page. You can turn on images from a preferences page. But images aren't resized and large pages aren't split so a lot of desktop content will still be too large to load on typical mobile browsers. BareSite is new, so give it time, but for now Google, Mowser and Skweezer are better choices for mobile transcoding. Via Access on Main Street

Feb-2013: Parked domain


What's This?

Gay.com

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://gaycom.opnr.com/ (xhtml-mp/wml)

Gay.com (gaycom.opnr.com) Lifestyle magazine for gays and lesbians. Travel articles, entertainment reviews and news. Pinup wallpapers and videos for purchase.

Site and domain are gone.


What's This?

:bMarks

Content: ****  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://bmarks.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

:bMarks (bmarks.mobi/) is pretty much a pure Digg clone, the :bMarks equivalents of Digg and Bury are Bump and Dump and like Digg you can leave comments on listings. Sites are displayed by number of Bumps in the past 1, 7, 30 or 365 days and the results can be filtered to only show sites in specific categories. :bMarks users seem to post breaking news stories from mobile news sites quite a bit.

 

 :bMarks:bMarks supplies an Opera Mini Bookmarket which can be downloaded from the site directly to your phone. Full instructions are provided. The bookmarklet not only passes the url and name of the current page but also the description meta tag, if the site has one, which is cool because it fills in the description field for the site on :bMarks. Unfortunately, the :bMarks bookmarket is too long to work in Opera Mini on some browsers including my Motorola 1855. That phone's Java implementation limits text fields to 250 characters. I've edited the :bMarks bookmarklet by removing the description to make it small enough to work on my phone and others with similar limits. Both versions are posted on o.yeswap.com ready for you to download into Opera Mini or Mobile IE.

 

June-2010: Parked Page


What's This?

JiWire Wi-Fi Finder

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://iphone.jiwire.com/ (HTML5)

JiWireJiWire Wi-Fi Finder (iphone.jiwire.com/) Is a worldwide free hotspot finder with listings for over 200,000 hotspots in 135 countries. You can restrict the search to free hotspots only or search for both free and pay locations. Officially this is an iPhone web app but it works beautifully on Opera Mini. It's usable in Nokia's Webkit browser although the bottom half of the last listing on each page is cut off.. The built-in Openwave browser on my Motorola i855 can load all of the site except for one image but searches fail with a "Malformed URL" error.

Aug-2010 - The mobile site has been replaced with an iPhone only app and the full site is unusable even with the Android browser.


What's This?

MobileActive

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobileactive.org (xhtml-mp)

Mobile ActiveMobile phones have had a huge effect on society by making interpersonal communication instant and always available. They are also becoming important tools for political and social change. Here are a few examples:

  • Most of the reportage, both text and pictures, documenting the repression of the Tibetan Independence movement has come from camera phones and SMS eyewitnes accounts.
  • Twitter proved it's value for emergency communications in use by police and fire departments and the Red Cross during last October's Southern California wildfires.
  • Barak Obama's presidential campaign is using text messages to get out the vote and organize rallies. The candidate also has wallpapers and sound bite ring-tones for download by supporters. Hilary Clinton is using text messaging political organizing too.
  • Zimbabwean workers in South Africa use mobile banking to send their money home to avoid having to pay bribes to border guards.
  • In Nigeria, teenagers can get their questions about AIDS and safe sex answered by a free SMS service sponsored by the government and a consortium of agencies.

Some of these stories appeared in the mainstream press, but I heard about them first by reading MobileActive.org's blog. MobileActive's motto is "Mobile Phones for Civic Action". They do this by reporting and encouraging the use of mobile technology for the common good and by connecting non governmental political action organizations working in areas like human rights, democracy campaigns, environmental awareness and disaster relief with mobile technology and mobile technologists. Besides the blog, MobileActive's web site has a directory of current activist projects using mobile technology, another directory of tools and vendors supplying technology of interest to political action organizations, and a great database of global mobile usage statistics.

MobileActive is a must read for anyone interested in social change and mobile technology. And you can read it on the mobile web. The mobile edition of the MobileActive blog at mobileactive.mofuse.mobi is created from the site's RSS feed using Mofuse (review) and offers the full text of the ten most recent posts. Since my review, Mofuse has added Mowser integration which means that you can click through to a transcoded version of the full MobileActive blog to leave and read comments on items.

Dec-2011: Mobile site is down.The full site at mobileactive.org works OK on most smartphones

Sep-2015: Mobileactive.org is a parked page.


What's This?

Olympics from The Hindu

Content: **  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://pda.thehindu.com/099pdahdline.htm (xhtml-mp)

The Hindu, one of India's biggest daily English langauge newspapers has a small mobile Olympics page with text only coverage of Games highlights.


What's This?

nayaNews

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://nayaNews.mobi (HTML5)

nayaNews HomepagenayaNews.mobi - From the creators of the myToday personal mobile portal comes nayaNews.  It's a news aggregator in the style of Google News but with an emphasis on Indian and Asian news.  nayaNews pulls the latest stories from the RSS feeds of a  variety of Indian and world news sources including Sify.com, ZeeNews.com, NDTV.com, the Times of India, DNA - India, the BBC, Asian Age and the Business Standard.  Stories are organized into sections: News, Business,  Tech, World and Sports. Cricket, which is a bit of an obsession in India, gets a section of its own.  Something I haven't seen before is that nayaNews has obtained separate .mobi domains for each section so that they each exist as a standalone sites with theie own URLs.  For example, if you just want to see cricket news you can go to nayaCricket.mobi, for business news its nayaBiz.mobi, tech is at nayaTech.mobi, etc.

Headlines on all the the naya sites link to an interstitial page offering the user the choice of viewing the full article in its original format or a  mobile version. The mobile pages are created using nayaNews' transcoder which resizes and selectively removes images but does not split pages. Pages can get fairly large, up to 50 KB, which maybe a problem for users of some of the less capable mobile browsers.

Shut down


What's This?

Microsoft Live Mesh

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: https://m.mesh.com (xhtml-mp)

Live Mesh Mobile Web Interface

Live Mesh is Microsoft's "cloud" storage and sharing environment.  There are a couple of ways to use Live mesh. The main one is a dowloadable application forWindows Vista or XP or a Mac OS 10.5 or later that runs in the background and synchronizes the files and folders you specify with the Live Mesh web service.Multiple computers can run the Live Mesh application allowing files to be synchronized across computers. Files can also be shared with other Live Mesh users.

There is also a web interface in to the Mesh storage cloud called Live Desktop that can be accessed from any PC. With Live desktop you mahnage the files in your cloud, create folders and upload and download files.

Finally there is the mobile web version of Live Desktop which is actually called "Live Mesh"; It's a basic mobile page that that duplicates most the functionality of the PC version, you can create folders and upload and download load files. For uploading and downloading to work you will need a mobile browser that supports the "browse for file" input tag, like recent Nokia browsers or Opera Mini.

Update: Live Mesh no longer offers a mobile web interface


What's This?

4TheGame

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mippin.com/4thegameEPL (xhtml-mp)
Last seen at: http://wap.4thegame.com (wml)

UK football news site with in-depth coverage of the Premiership, Coca Cola Championship, Scotland's Premier League and all major cup competitions.  Mobile version by Mippin.

Site shut down


What's This?

Mobil Travel Guide

Content: ***  Usability: XX
Last seen at: http://wap.openmotion.com/sprintmtg/xhtml (xhtml-mp)

Mobile edition of the Mobil Travel Guide, a popular series of motoring guide books in the US.  The mobile edition is fairly limited consisting of brief text only descriptions of hotels, restaurants, attractions and events in major US cities. The site has some navigation problems. Once you select a city you seem to be stuck with it for the rest of the session as there is no obvious way to get back to the city selection page. Search by zip code seems to be broken as well.

31-Oct-2010: Site is gone


What's This?

Assignment X

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://assignmentx.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Formerly IF Magazine, Assignment X is an online entertainment magazine. Brief news articles covering film, music, TV and drama. Reviews of TV shows, movies and music are a little more in depth.

No longer has a mobile or responsive web design version


What's This?

Microblogging.com

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://microblogging.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Microblogging.com is a blog about microblogging. Covers Twitter, Plurk, Pownce, Brightkite, Jaiku and identi.ca and the people who use them. Mobile version uses the MobilePress Wordpress plugin.  Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

No longer has a mobile version - Apr-2010


What's This?

Linkius

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.linkius.net (xhtml-mp)

Linkius is a place for people to store and share their mobile bookmarks. Register to create your personal bookmark page or to add links to the public portal. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Parked domain


What's This?

Mosio Mobile

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.mosio.com/q.php (xhtml-mp)

Mosio is similar to Yahoo Answers but for mobile. You can text any question from your phone or enter it on the site and have it answered by real people (other Mosio members).Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Mosio has reinventered itself as a "..mobile software company providing messaging and mobile web solutions for businesses and organizations."


What's This?

Mobile Faker

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.mobilefaker.com (xhtml-mp)

Help for the relationship challenged and other luzers.  Mobile Faker offers fake calls, (which cost 99 cents) to get you out of difficult social situations or to give yourself the appearance of popularity.  The site also has entertainment news, rejection lines and fake numbers to give out to people you really don't want calling you back. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory.

Parked domain.


What's This?

Bookworm

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://m.bookworm.oreilly.com (xhtml-mp)

Bookworm mobile web eBook Reader

Bookworm is O'Reilly Publishing's free online eBook reader. The site lets you read electronic books in the epub format, an open source specification for xml based electronic books. Epub is fast becoming the standard for ebooks. It's used by Sony's Reader, the popular Stanza iPhone eBook app and the FBReader on Linux devices like the Nokia N810. MobiPocket has announced that future versions ofits reader will also support epub.

Their are no actual ebooks available on Bookworm. You have to upload  books obtained elsewhere to read them on Bookworm.  Free public domain and Creative Commons books can be downloaded from sites like Feedbooks.com and epub formatted commercial books can be purchased from O'Reilly.

Bookworm's mobile version seems to be designed for use with a full-web mobile browser like the iPhone, Opera Mini and most smartphone browsers.  Each chapter in the books I've tried is rendered as a single page which means large pages, up to 100 KB.  Many mobile browsers on basic "feature phones" can only handle pages up to 10 or 20 KB so Bookworm is unusable on them.  The other issue with large pages is that while Bookworm tracks were you are in each book, it does so by the chapter.  So every time you open your book you are dumped back at the start of the chapter and have to browse though it to find where you left off.  Dedicated readers take you back to the exact mobile screen of text you left off on.  Bookworm also lacks two features found in most dedicated reader software; the ability to create multiple named bookmarks and to make notes or annotations on particular pages. In addition there is no search function available in the mobile version of Bookworm although the web version does have full text search.

Bookworm closed as of March 31, 2012.


What's This?

Portuguese Translation

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://portuguese.mobi/index.php (xhtml-mp)

Free mobile English-Portuguese-English translator with a simple but effective UI. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Parked domain


What's This?

phling!

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://phling.mobi (xhtml-mp)

Phing - My Music

phling! (phling.com, phling.mobi) is a service that gives you access to the  music, podcasts, and pictures stored on your PC and allows you to share them with up to six friends. It's a lot like  a mobile-only, audio and images-only version of Orb.

To use phling! you need to download an application to your PC (Windows XP only, Vista "coming soon", Windows Media Player 10 or later required).  On the mobile side you can use the phling! mobile website or a downloadable player application which is available for many devices including Symbian S60 and many recent Sony Ericsson and Nokia S40 phones.

I tried the mobile web version of phling! and found it generally worked well.  By default it lets you view the the contents of the My Music and My Pictures folders on your PC, although you can change which folders are available using the the PC app.  Click the name of a song to stream it though your phone's media player.  There is also a "Shuffle Play All"  option.  phling! can handle MP3, DRM-free M4A (iTunes/Quicktime) and WMA (Windows Media with or without DRM) audio and .jpg images.

The phling! PC app runs as a background service on your PC.  With the basic setup you can only access your music if your PC is powered up, connected to the internet and not "sleeping".  phling! recently launched a new feature called MusicStash that lets you store up to to 4GB in the cloud with phling!. The music in your MusicStash can be played even when your PC is off.

phling! has a "Free Music" section where you can listen to tracks uploaded by musician's participating in phling!'s Mobile Music Promotion  program.  Artists  also get personal page where their fans can sign up to recieve promotional messages such as announcements of new releases or concerts from the band or artist.

So between Orb and phling! which should you use?  For video it's no contest as phling! doesn't do video. If your PC is running Vista it's also Orb for you as phling! doesn't support it yet.  But if you are still running XP, I think phling! has the edge for music. Orb has nothing comparable to MusicStash, your PC must always be on to use Orb on your phone. I also found the phling! mobile web site much more responsive and slightly easier to navigate than Orb's.  I didn't try the phling! app but theoretically at least it should provide an even better user experience.

Like Orb, phling! is free.  However, if you don't have an unlimited data plan, streaming audio to your phone can get VERY expensive.

Site is down


What's This?

MobTuner

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.mobtuner.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Sister site to HTCradio, MobTuner is a directory of over 1600 mobile radio streams in mp3 format compatible with most phones.

Now a Chinese language financial advice site


What's This?

SmartyPig

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: https://m.smartypig.com (xhtml-mp)

SmartyPig Mobile

SmartyPig is a service that combines online banking, money management and social networking.  If that sounds like a weird combination read on.  The basic concept of SmartyPig is to help people save for a specific goal, a vacation, new gadget or even a child's college education.  You link SmartyPig with a bank account and set up specific goals each with a name, goal amount and the date you want to achieve your goal.  SmartyPig determines how much you will need to contribute monthly to reach your goal and, if you approve, automatically withdraws that amount from your linked account every month.  Funds are deposited in an FDIC insured savings account at Iowa's West Bank and currently pay 3.05% interest.

The social networking part of SmartyPig lets you share your goals and the progress toward them with friends and family members who are SmartyPig users.  You control what information you want to share which can be your any combination of your goal amount, amount saved or the  percentage of your goal reached.  Friends can also gift you with funds toward your goal.  There are also widgets available that let you share your goals on your Facebook and MySpace pages and integration with online budgeting sites Mint and Wesable.

When you reach a goal you can withdraw your savings in the form of a Master Card prepaid debt card, gift card from over a dozen participating retailers including Amazon, Best Buy and Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines or by transfering it back to your linked account.  The retailer gift cards offer discounts of "up to 6%" although I could not find a list of specific discounts by retailer.  There are no fees charged for making deposits and withdrawals except deposits funded from a credit card which incur a 2.9% fee..  If your plans change you can cancel a goal and withdraw your funds at anytime without penalty.

Today, SmartyPig launched a mobile site at  m.smartypig.com. You can't register using it but you can track your goals and your friend's goals and make contributions to them.  The mobile site was developed by Brian Fling's new webdesign company pinch/zoom, and uses browser detection and adaptation to optimize the mobile experience for any device from the  iPhone to the embedded browsers of low-end phones.

SmartyPig is an interesting concept. I can see this sort of forced savings plan working well for many people.  Add to that a good interest rate, no fees as long as you avoid making credit card deposits and a kind of friendly way to solicit friends and family, including FaceBook friends to give you money and I can see SmartPig getting pretty popular.  Anyone out there using it? If you are please share your experience in a comment. Source: ubergizmo

No longer a mobile webapp.


What's This?

College Recruiter

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://collegerecruiter.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Searchable directory of entry level jobs and internships for college students in the U.S. 50 KB+ page sizes will keep this site from working on many feature phones. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Site Down 8-Dec-2010


What's This?

bosguide.mobi

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://bosguide.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Guide to Boston with museum hours and click call numbers and links to transit information, Special offer coupons for a few restaurants, attractions and shops. Source: Mobility.mobi

Parked domain


What's This?

SymbianOne

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mippin.com/symbianone (xhtml-mp)

News blog covering Symbian games, development tools, usage case studies, market analysis and employment opportunities.  Source Anything Geospatial

Hasn't been updated since 2004


What's This?

Bike EXIF

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.bikeexif.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Bike EXIF post news articles, reviews and photos daily covering the coolest motorcycles including new and classic cafe racers, custom motorcycles, and vintage track bikes. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

No longer hasa mobile formated or RWD site

 


What's This?

KBR Heritage CU Houston

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: https://nbp1.cunetbranch.com/kbrfcu/MB_Login.aspx (xhtml-mp)

Mobile account access for members of Houston's KBR Heritage Federal Credit Union. KBR is using Fiserv's Mobile Money hosted mobile banking product to provide this service.

No longer has a mobile banking site


What's This?

iCurrent

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.icurrent.com/ (xhtml-mp)

iCurrent

A personalized news aggregator. Registered users can customize their iCurrent homepage by choosing from a variety of pre-configured channels like Financial Reform, HTML5, World Series of Poker, Net Neutrality or Search Engine Marketing or by adding their own search queries to create a new channel. Anyone can use iCurrent as a news search engine or meme tracker without registering or logging in.

News items are presented as headline links to the original online sources, which are often not mobile formatted. Source: Mobile Mammoth

Oct-22-2012 Site is down.


What's This?

WapZan

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wapzan.com/ (xhtml-mp)

WapZan is a mobile site builder that anyone can use to create a mobile site for their personal or public use, free of charge and with no programming knowledge required. Sites can be monetized using various ad networks.

Parked domain.


What's This?

1GOAL

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://1gol.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

1Goal Mobile

1Goal:Education for All is a huge international effort to increase awareness of and support for education worldwide.  Organized around Soccer's World Cup, it's supported by government organizations, mobile operators, soccer stars, world leaders and celebrities including Jordan's Queen Rania, Shakira and Keven Spacey.

1Goal seeks to engage and educate Soccer fans to the plight of 72 million of the world's children who do not attend school.  In the largest SMS campaign ever, 1Goal is sending 1.5 billion text messages asking for people to respond with "Yes" to indicate their support for the cause.

1Goal has a mobile web site at 1gol.mobi with more information about the campaign and the opportunity to download free soccer videos, wallpapers and ringtones, and to join 1Goal. Contrary to early reports of problems with the videos, they played well for me on both a Nokia N95 and and HTC Ion Android phone. Source: GoMo News

No longer has a mobile site


What's This?

MakeUseOf

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.makeuseof.com/ (xhtml-mp)

MakeUseOf - Mobile View

MakUseOf is a popular tech blog that reviews desktop and mobile software, websites and webapps and offers tips and downloads to help make your computer and smartphone use more productive.  The emphasis is on great but little known free apps and services and tips for Linux, Mac and Windows users.

In addition to the main blog, MakeUseOf also hosts the Directory, an extensive catalog, with capsule reviews, of the editor's favorite mobile and web apps. There's also MakeUseOf Answers, a user driven question and answer site a little like Yahoo Answers where readers ask tech related tech questions which other other users answer. Geeky Fun is MakeUseOf's humor section where the jokes revolve around geek anti-social behaviour and the technical incompetence of non-geeks.

MakeUseOf's mobile view was built using Mobify and includes the full content from the blog, Geeky Fun and Answers.

MakeUseOf no longer has a mobile site

 


What's This?

webdev360

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://webdev360.com/ (xhtml-mp)

A web and mobile development portal targeted at web developers and designers and featuring news, interviews, event write-ups, opinions and analysis.

Aug-2012: webdev369 has been retired


What's This?

Famous

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://famous.bpapps.com/ (xhtml-mp)

The mobile edition of Australia's celebrity gossip magazine Famous.  Simple but effective UI consists of a timeline of headlines (3 to a page with Next and Prev buttons) linking to stories. 

May-2013: bpapps.com domain is gone. Famous' current site doesn't have a mobile edition and doesn't use RWD.


What's This?

BestParking

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.bestparking.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Parking search for  New York City, Philadelphia and Boston.  Enter an address, arrival time and how long you intend to park and BestParking returns  a list of open spots and prices at nearby parking lots and garages.

1-Nov-2010; BestParking has replaced their mobile site which worked on all phones with an iPhone, Android and BlackBerry Storm only app!


What's This?

E*Prairie (Chicago)

Content: *****  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://www.eprairie.com/wireless/ (HTML5/wml)

Chicago Area Business News.

Redirects to non-mobile fashion site


What's This?

Live On The Go (Take Out)

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://liveonthego.com (xhtml-mp)

Live On The Go

Live On The Go (liveonthego.com) seems to be a rather cool service that lets you use your iPhone, BlackBerry or Symbian phone to place takeout food orders at nearby restaurants in the US only. You search for restaurants by zip code or address and browse takeout menus, selecting the items you want. LiveOnTheGo places your order and tells you when it will be ready for pickup.

I'm somewhat surprised by the rather limited handset support. Live On The Go is a web app, though not a very sophisticated one, just a series of web forms. It's not even location enabled, something that's doable on the iPhone and BlackBerry. It seems to work on just about any BlackBerry, even ancient models running BlackBerry OS 4.1. The BlackBerry browser, especially on older models, is one of the worst mobile browsers on any smartphone. If this site works on an old BlackBerry, there is no reason why it shouldn't also work with Android, Palm Pre, Windows Mobile devices, Opera Mini and even some of the better feature phone browsers. But if you go to liveonthego.com with any of those browsers you get redirected to the desktop site, which is usable on my Android phone at least, but not nearly as convenient as the mobile one would be.

According to both AdMob and Millennial, smartphones still account for less than 50% of total mobile web and application traffic in the US! Live on the go seems like a smart company but why are they throwing away well over half of their potential market by restricting access to their mobile site to a subset of capable phones?

Aquired by Snapfinger and shut down.


What's This?

KLM

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.onlinetimetable.klm.com/pda/ (HTML5)
Timetable and trip planner. Down since 6/17/2005
What's This?

Accor Hotels

Content: ***1/2  Usability: XXXX1/2
Last seen at: http://accorhotels.mobi (xhtml-mp)
Last seen at: http://wap.accorhotels.com/ (wml)
The name Accor is not widely known in The US, but it is one of the largest hotel chains world wide Accor's Has US hotels under the Sofitel, Red Roof Inn and Motel 6 names. They also have a better than average WAP site. The site is multilingual as an international chain's should be. Navigation is pretty good and you can check availability. After selecting English (German and French are the other options) you get a textbox where you type a city. Partial searches work, I typed "San F", scrolled past the optional Brand combo box to the Start Search link and bingo I was on a page with 2 choices San Fernando CA and San Francisco CA. I clicked San Francisco and got 8 choices. None were actually in San Francisco - it seems Accor doesn't have any San Francisco hotels but they were in the metro area. Even if you search for a city where there is an Accor hotel it won't necessarily be listed before hotels in surrounding areas. You can check availability and if you register at www.accorhotels.com you can add hotels to your a favorites list for quick access. Registered users can also have SMS reservations confirmations sent to their phones.

Update 3-Sept-2008 Down, the Accor mobile site currently doesn't load. Hopefully it will be back as accorhotels.com still has a page promoting their mobile access at accorhotels.mobi!
What's This?

WashingtonPost

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.washingtonpost.com/c.jsp?cid=4220539 (xhtml-mp)

The Washington Post has good mobile Oympics 2010 page that promises ti deliver the latest  news, scores, features and photos from the games.

Dec-2010: Page has been removed.


What's This?

Nextel Cup Chase

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://cluster1.tmce.biz/wap?app=chase&c=nex (xhtml-mp/wml)
Nextel Chase ImageNextel Chase is featured on Sprint a Nextel's home decks but seems to be reachable from any network. The site has pre and post race stories, interviews and a listing of driver personal appearances.

Down 06-Aug-2007
What's This?

Financial Times at MSNBC

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032240/ (xhtml-mp)

Featured Financial Times articles from MSNBC.

Hasn't been updated since 2008 and all the article links are broken.


What's This?

BCN on Your Mobile

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://w10.bcn.es/APPS/asimobils/en/scbcn?action=menu (xhtml-mp)
BCN on Your Mobile: (w10.bcn.es/APPS/asimobils/en/scbcn?action=menu) An attractive Barcelona city guide with interactive maps, walking directions, hotel and restaurant directories. Pages load slowly, and the map's are a fixed 240px wide - too wide for most mobile browsers.

Update: 16-Sep-2007 The English version of this site has disappeared.
What's This?

Reqwireless

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://reqwireless.com/wap (wml)
Home of EmailViewer and WebViewer, a couple of pioneering mobile Java web applications. When Reqwireless Inc was acquired by Google over a year ago it looked like these programs were no longer available. In fact the FAQ on Reqwireless' site states, "Reqwireless WebViewer, EmailViewer, HotViewer, and GotMailViewer are no longer available for purchase." Thanks to tip from a reader I discovered that while this statement is technically true, you can't purchase these programs anymore, but now you can get WebView and EmailViewer for free! While neither program is state of the art any more they are still pretty good. They use a proxy to compress content before delivering it to the phone to improve performance. As MIDP1 Java programs they will work on many newer phones that don't support Opera Mini or the mobile gMail appliction. Speaking of gMail, EmailViewer lacks SSL support so it can't work with gMail's POP servers.
Site Down 15-Mar-2008. The application doesn't work anymore either.
What's This?

ING ATM Finder

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://app.ingdirect.com/atmlocate/pocket/ (HTML5)

Search 33,000 no-fee ATMs for ING DIRECT customers.

Now part of the main mobile site of CapitalOne 360 following CapitalOne's aquisition of ING Direct.

 


What's This?

ELLE girl

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.ellegirl.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Elle ceased print publication of ELLE girl last year but the magazine, targeted at teenage girls, continues as a web site and now a mobile web site. The site is similar to Elle Mobile but with the focus on teen fashion, boy bands and young Hollywood stars. There is also a section of relationship advice called simply - Boys.

Redirects to elle.com


What's This?

Mobiseer

Content: ***  Usability: XX
Last seen at: http://www.mobiseer.mobi (xhtml-mp)

Another mobile social bookmarking site. The focus of this one seems to be using your PC to set up links for your own Mobiseer mobile page. The Mobiseer mobile site is lacking in features compared with the PC one. Other than viewing your own bookmarks you get couple of pages labeled Popular Sites and Featured Sites each of which lists only five sites. You can also search by tag or keyword to find more sites. What is missing for a mobile community is that there is no way to browse, rank or comment on links from within the mobile site. No way to bookmark site from the phone, either. An Opera Mini Bookmarklet would be nice but none is provided and I wasn't able to create one that works with the Mobiseer submission page which is a non mobile one in any case.

June-2010: now a Japanese lanuage music site


What's This?

MobiYogi

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobiyogi.mobi (xhtml-mp)

Mobi Yoga offers simple Yoga exercises to counteract the effects of long hours spent staring at a computer or cellphone screen.

URL doesn't resolve


What's This?

Everything Q

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.everythingq.com/forum/ (HTML5)

Everything Q Mobile is a forum site for users and fans of the Windows Mobile powered Motorola Q smartphone. Lots of tips and good information for getting the most out of your Q. There are separate boards for the various models and carriers The forum is powered by the popular vBulletin software using a very nice mobile style add-on. I couldn't figure out where the mobile style is from but I like it a lot better than what HowardForums (also a vBulletin forum) is using for their mobile edition.

Jul 2010: Now "EverythingWM' and no longer offers a mobile edition.


What's This?

ReadBurner

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.readburner.com/ (xhtml-mp)

ReadBurner a mashup that finds the most shared Google News items, uses another mashup, mofuse to create their mobile site.

07-Sept-2009 - Broken! Empty menu structure with no news items displayed

 


What's This?

NYC Mobile Train Schedule

Content: **  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://www.actuanmobile.com/trainscheduleserver/mainhomepage.jsp (xhtml-mp)

Mobile Train Schedule ResultsMobile Train Schedule.com is an interactive schedule for New York City's three major commuter rail lines; The Long Island Railroad, New Jersey Transit and Metro-North. This isn't an official site, it seems to be an ad supported service from Actuan Mobile. The main feature is "Point to Point Train Times", a simple schedule lookup (top image), where you pick the start and end stations from dropdowns, choose the time of departure and day of the week and get a list of the next four trains between the two stations. Or you can choose "Now" from the Day of the week dropdown to list trains departing immediately. Another page offers complete timetables listing all stops and times for any train by train number (bottom image).

This could be a handy site for NYC commuters. Usability could be better though. One thing that's confusing is that when "Now" is selected in the the Day dropdown the time controls are ignored. For the time to be recognized, the Day must be set to "Today", "Tomorrow", "Weekday' Or "Weekend". As "Now" is the default, I found this confusing and didn't understand why changing the time was ignored. It's not really logical for "Now" to be a choice for the prompt "Please Select a Travel Day" (2nd Image). Another thing that could be improved is if the train numbers in the schedule lookup linked to the detailed schedule of stops for that train rather then requiring the user to go back several pages to enter the train number and get the details of that trip. Also the mobiletrainschedule.com URL didn't work on one of my phones, a Motorola i855. If you get an error or a non mobile page try using www.actuanmobile.com/trainscheduleserver/mainhomepage.jsp which is what the first URL rediects to and which did work on the i855. (More...)

Dec-2009: Site is down.


What's This?

Blood Alcohol Checker

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://b4udrink.mobi (xhtml-mp)

Blood Alcohol Checker - Results pageThe Century Council, an alcoholic beverage industry group, is sponsoring this free blood alcohol checking site on the mobile web. The idea is that before you go out to a party or a night on the town you use the site to calculate your blood alcohol percentage. If the result is over the legal limit of .008 you are warned. if you plan on getting really sloshed by say, downing 10 shots in an hour you will see some thing like "Significantly over the legal limit to drive. May experience extreme impairment, including total mental confusion, nausea and vomiting, difficulty walking, etc."

The wizard style interface prompts you for your sex, weight, the number and type of drinks you expect to consume and the number of hours you will be drinking.

This sort of thing is a great idea and hopefully it will keep some of us out of jail and more importantly save a few lives.

I'm not wild about the site's design however. It works but seems rather cumbersome for such a simple concept. There are six pages to click though to before you get your result. First there are two! welcome pages to click through and then a separate page each sex, weight, type/number of drinks and time. Surely several of these could be combined. The welcome could easily go on one page along with the sex and weight selection. The time period text box doesn't need a page of its own either, there is no reason it couldn't be combined with the type and number of drinks selection. With these changes the pages would still be under the 10KB of markup that the least capable phones are limited too. Fewer pages mean less time wasted on network overhead and would make the whole experience less tedious.

31-Aug-2011: Site is down


What's This?

HTCradio

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.htcradio.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Directory of  over 1600 streaming radio stations in Windows Mobile compatible formats. Source Oh! Mobile Directory

Parked domain


What's This?

TheDieline.com Mobile

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.thedieline.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Blog and News site covering commercial package design.  Topics include reviews of production packaging and design topics.  Mobile site created by MobifySource: Oh! Mobile Directory

3-Jan-2011: The Dieline no longer has a mobile view.


What's This?

Slumchic Hong Kong:

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://slumchic.typepad.com/.m/ (xhtml-mp)

Blog style site with Hong Kong news and special offers of interest to visitors. Source Oh! Mobile Directory

Gone


What's This?

Stackoverflow

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://stackoverflow.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Unofficial mobile version of the popular software development forum, stackoverflow.com. Source: Mobility.mobi

Stopped updating 3--Jun-2009


What's This?

Fwix

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.sfbay.fwix.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Fwix is NBC Universal's local news service.  FWIX covers 70 US and Canadian metropolitan areas, with dedicated mobile web and mobile version for each. FWIX's mobile views, which were created with Mobify, offer the full text and photos from the top 15 stories for each city.

Redirects to an unrelated CRM site


What's This?

Meathaus

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.meathaus.com/ (xhtml-mp)

An art blog showcasing the work of the cartoonists, illustrators and painters of New York City's Meathaus Collective. Mobile View by Mobify.

5-Jan-2011 No longer a mobile site


What's This?

Alrroya

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://alrroya.mobi/en/ (xhtml-mp)

Middle Eastern business and financial news, including videos from Dubai based Alrroya News.  Source: Mobility.mobi

No longer has a mobile or an enlish language site.


What's This?

MyWibes

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.mywibes.com/ (xhtml-mp)

A free mobile page builder that offers unlimited space, unlimited mobile content sharing, easy to use mobile based tools for site creation and advertising revenue sharing.

Apr-2012: Shut down. Redirects to XtGem.

 


What's This?

San Francisco

Content: *****  Usability: XXXX1/2
Last seen at: http://www31.brinkster.com/wapap/ (wml)
San Francisco Bay Area (USA) transit trip planner.
15-Mar-2008 - Doesn't return any results
What's This?

Evolve

Content: ***1/2  Usability: XXX1/2
Last seen at: http://members.lycos.co.uk/arthurj/index.wml#menu (wml)
Cellphone Tips and tricks. Unlock codes, wap settings, downloads. Gone 5/28/05
What's This?

PDAGeek

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://www.geek.com/pdageek (HTML5)
News and discussion of PDA's, software and accessories. The experience is somewhat marred on the small screen by large blocks of adds that have to be scrolled through to reach the content.

09-Sep-2007 Not a mobile site anymore
What's This?

Underground HQ

Content: ***1/2  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://ughq.net/ (xhtml-mp)
Forum site focused on Symbian Serries 60. Discussions and downloads. Registration required.
Down: 11/26/2007
What's This?

English-German Dict.

Content: *****  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://wap.linguatec.de/ (wml)
16-Apr-2007 No longer a mobile site.
English-German and German-English dictionary
What's This?

BBC Sports PDA

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/solpda/ukfs_sport/hi/default.stm? (HTML5)

An alternate mobile edition of BBC Sports optimized for off line reading on classic PDA's. It does not use CSS and has fewer but longer pages than the BBC's standard mobile version.

Jan-2011: There are no longer separate "PDA" versions of BBC sites.


What's This?

BAMF

Content: ***1/2  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://winksite.com/mikerowehl/bamf/ (xhtml-mp/wml)
Bay Area Mobility Forum San Francisco based group for developers and others interest in mobility. Announcements of future events and general discussion.

Gone: 06-Aug-2007
What's This?

Fodors

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.fodors.com (xhtml-mp)

Hotel and Restaurant listing by price, location cuisine etc. for popular travel destinations around the world. While there are no reviews - just name, address, phone and fax the establishments are the same ones that are recommended in the well regarded Fodors travel guidebooks.

Fodor's no longer has a mobile friendly site.


What's This?

Mobiledia

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX1/2
Last seen at: http://wap.mobiledia.com/ (wml)
Active forum with an emphasis on USA cellular providers. Uses the excellent WiForums software. Has a number of user reviews of phones. Guest access to the forums or register (free) to post.

Down 24-Apr-2008
What's This?

check-inn.com

Content: ****  Usability: 1/2
Last seen at: http://www.hotelcatalogue.net/cgi/h.pl?p=2&l=en (HTML5)
Search for hotels around the world. Claims to index 550,000 accomodations in 215 countries. Search by price, star level or hotel name within a city. You can send a message to a hotel to request a reservation from the site, the hotel will reply by calling or texting your mobile. You can also cancel a reservation using the mobile site.

Update 3-Sept-2008 Down: The site is still up but searches return a blank page!
What's This?

IMDb

Content: *****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.mdog.com/bookmarks/imdb/htmlsite/ (HTML5)

mdog's mobilized version of IMDb, the Internet Movie Database is the webs largest and most respected source of movive information. IMDb's mobile editon searchs the IMDb database of other 700,000 titles, includes TV shows and video games. Cast and soundtrack listings, plot outlines and location information for thousands of films.

Down: Like the rest of mdog.com this site appears to be down for good. Use metajam.mobi which includes a great mobile version of IMDb.


What's This?

Symbian Tweet

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.symbiantweet.com/ (xhtml-mp)

The mobile edition of a lively, frequently updated tech news blog . Symbian Tweet offers news, game and app reviews and tips and tricks for Nokia, Ovi, Symbian, Maemo and  Meego users.

Apr-2012 - No longer has a mobile site


What's This?

Smartphone2000

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.smartphone2000.com/ (HTML5)

  SmartPhone2000.com  SmartPhone2000 is interesting in that exists as a mobile site only with no corresponding desktop site. Of course, the cHtml site is perfectly usable in the desktop version of Internet Explorer.

Smartphone2000 focuses on the SPV series of Smartphones on the UK Orange network but much of what's on the site is of use to owners of any Microsoft Smartphone device. The main areas of interest are the help and download sections. Help has clear, detailed instructions on how to install various types of media and applications, how to unlock the SPVs and dozens of tips to help you make your Smartphone faster and more usable. The download section includes unlocking tools and a good selection of free and demo software, videos, sound files, skins and background graphics. The site has a nice selection of mobile links too.

I noted a few relatively minor usability issues. On some browsers (but not on PIE or Opera including Mini) there was some text overlapping. There are a number of image links without alt text which could pose a problem for anyone who turns off images in their browser to reduce data charges.

All in all, a very nice site - particularly for anyone with a Microsoft Smartphone or researching the purchase of one. At around 20 KB including images the site's page weight should not be a problem for most WAP2 phones.

Nov-2011: Parked page.


What's This?

WapTags

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://mp.waptags.com/ (xhtml-mp/wml)

  cnet without Waptags  In one of the posts featured in last week's Carnival of the Mobilists, Justin Oberman at mopocket did a nice write up of an ambitious new mobile site from mPulse called WapTags that combines personal homepages, a mobile rss aggregator, social tagging, chat, SMS and classified adds. It seems like a great concept. Justin did a fine job of explaining WapTags so I won't repeat what he said. If you haven't used WapTags, go read Justin's piece and give it a try. I've added it to the YesWap.com mobile directory under Search|Web/Wap Search to make it easy for Yeswap users to find. There's also a good interactive demo of WapTags on mPulse's site.

The web and news search part of WapTags is very similar to a concept Charlie Schick wrote about on Lifeblog some time ago in a piece called A website, wrapped in a transcoder, inside a browser. When you follow a link in WapTags, the page you see is rendered using WapTags's proxy. Unlike in Charlie's proposal the proxy doesn't do any transcoding - it doesn't need to because WapTag's search only finds mobile sites. What it does do is add two links to the bottom of every page from the remote site. One link takes you back to WapTags but the other lets you tag the page. Wow, this is the mobile equivalent of a del.icio.us or digg bookmarklet. The images show the cnet mobile site first as it normally appears and then as it appears in WapTags with the two links. Pretty unobtrusive and very powerful.

  cnet with Waptags   My own experience with WapTags is that it has great potential but is still a little rough around the edges. I'd like to be able to tag any site - not just the ones WapTag's search can find. You can search for sites and feeds and tag the ones you like from within the search results, however you can't tag an arbitrary URL like you can with del.icio.us. The search engine seems to work pretty well most of the time but if it doesn't find the site you want to add you're out of luck. Justin liked WapTag's rss feed reader, and indeed it works well with the mopocket site. However with Wap Reviews's feeds, when you click on an item WapTags only displays the item's description and then stops without showing the full content (my feeds are full feeds, BTW). Finally, I'm no prude but to those that are, WapTags's "safe search" filter doesn't seem to work. Regardless of whether it's on or off, even innocuous searches like "Nokia financial report" turn up plenty of adult material.

I think that the mPulse team have a very powerful and addictive new mobile web paradigm in WapTags. In addition to the easy bookmarklet-like tagging, the classifieds with SMS followup and the forthcoming "missed connections" feature are unique to the mobile web as far as I know. There's so much good stuff in WapTags. I can see this really taking off.

June-2010: Redirects to "VH1 Mobile Chat".


What's This?

Mojeo

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://mojeo.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)
 Mojeo Image I saw Mojeo presented at the Mobile 2.0 Event in San Francisco Monday as part of a Launchpad presentation spotlighting new services. I wasn't too impressed with the presentation which was brief and lacking in details, but I did jot down "mojeo.mobi, location based search - any phone, add mashups". Today I took a look at Mojeo.mobi which is the mobile site and the PC site, www.mojeo.mobi. I found a clever and useful but definitely beta service that has the potential to be that killer application for the mobile web that we all dream of.

The premise of Mojeo is simple, it's a mobile portal that keeps track of your current location. When you click on one of the links on the portal - which include Google Local, Yahoo Local, Fandango, Upcoming, Weather.com and Yelp to name most of them - Mojeo passes your location to the target site which uses it deliver location aware information. So without having to reenter your location information, Fandago shows what's at theaters near you, Weather.com presents a forecast for your city, etc. Mojeo has a simple REST API that lets any site receive location information as either an address or latitude and longitude.
So how does Mojeo find your location. According to the FAQ,

"Ideally, we use GPS built into your mobile phone to figure out your exact location. But sometimes the phone does not have GPS, or you have not enabled that feature on your phone. In these situations we try to guess your location by asking the Internet where it thinks you are using a map of Internet addresses. This Internet lookup can be very accurate, or very far off."

The part about GPS is a bit of a fantasy, I'm not aware of any carrier outside of Japan that will share location information with an unaffiliated web site. In the US, no carrier shares location data with any site, not even their closest partners.

So for now, Mojeo uses IP address lookups as mentioned in the FAQ entry, they also use the area-code of the phone number that you give them as part of the (optional) sign up process and finally they let you enter your zip code at anytime to change your location.

So how does it work in practice? Pretty well once you convince Mojeo where you are. I first tried Mojeo without registering. When I used my phone's built in browser, Mojeo though I was in Kansas (I'm actually in San Francisco). Apparently my phone's IP address is registered at Sprint/Nextel's home office in Kansas. Using Opera Mini, Mojeo said I was in Oslo! Once I entered my zip code though, Mojeo had no trouble passing my location to Fandango, Yelp, Google Mobile etc.

I also tried registering, first from the phone and then from my PC. When I registered from the phone, Mojeo sent me a text message with a numberic pin which I then had to enter into a form on Mojeo. Once I did that, Mojeo knew I was in San Francisco. Registering with the PC was potentially even easier as the SMS contained the Mojeo url with my phone number and password embedded in the query string. Unfortunately, the SMS was not in a format that was clickable. There is apparently a trick to sending a URL in a text message to a Nextel customer. Some sites like Google, Microsoft, 411Sync and Flurry know how to send the clickable sort of SMS but Ask, Treemo and Mojeo don't.

It turns out that no matter whether you register or not Mojeo will revert your location back to the IP based one (Kansas or Oslo in my case) the next time you visit the site. Mojeo really needs to remember your last location and not override it unless you tell it to. Other than that I found Mojeo stable and usable. As it works now I don't see any advantage to registering, however.
Warts aside, this idea of the portal as location broker is a great concept. When the carriers finally loosen up and let users opt in to passing their location in http headers this will be huge.
In the meantime, Mojeo should embrace the idea that the most accurate location information they can get will be what users enter. There are several things Mojeo can do to make this work even better. First would be to keep track of recent locations that a user has entered and let the user pick their current location from a list like Mapquest and Yahoo Maps do. I'd also like to see other ways of entering location information. Zip codes cover too broad an area. Phone numbers, especially listed business numbers are a great way to geo-locate. If you have the business card of your hotel or a club or restaurant you're at it would be great to enter that number and have Mojeo do a reverse directory lookup to locate you to a specific address. I'd like to be able to enter street addresses too, particularly from the PC site.

Direct entry of latitude and longitude is another admittedly geeky possibility. Nextel allows users to grant access to location data to Java midlets, even unsigned ones. I have several Java applications on my phone that can tell me my latitude and longitude and even pinpoint my location on a street map. I bet there would be times when I would want to enter those GPS coordinates into Mojeo.

I have this dream of Opera creating a version of Opera Mini that can read the GPS information and pass it to sites like Mojeo - now that would be something! It probably won't happen, though - Opera needs to sell to carriers and doing this sort of end run around them won't help.

Location Based Services (LBS), is quickly becoming the next mobile buzz word and for good reason. A recent survey (via MobHappy) found users wanted location aware applications on their phones much more than they wanted mobile video! Today, Helio, a US MVNO joint venture by Earthlink and Korea's SK Telecom announced that their latest phone and all future phones would be bundled with a GPS application. The new Helio Phone, the Samsung Drift, comes with a custom version of the Google's Maps Java application that's GPS enabled. This NewsFactor article has the details but dismisses Helio's GPS app nothing new as all the US carriers offer similar Java or Brew apps. While this is true, I think Helio's move is significant because

  1. The app comes pre-installed - all the other carriers require the user to download and install the application - a significant barrier to adoption.
  2. It's free other than data charges ($2/MB or $25/month for unlimited data including unlimited SMS and MMS).
This is a first - a carrier offering a GPS service as an incentive for signing up rather than as a $6-10/month add-on. To me, this the start of LBS becoming a standard feature that users will come to expect on their phones. I think we may soon see a competitor offering mobile web based location services. If Mojeo plays its cards right, it could be the pre-eminent web based LBS site that an upstart carrier (Amp'd?, STI?, T-Mobile) partners with.

Down: 20-Dec-2007 - The Mojeo site is gone replaced by a basic authentication password prompt.
What's This?

WikiMobs

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wikimobs.com/ (HTML5)

Another mobile front end to Wikipedia. Very similar to Wapedia.mobi (above) Search based interface.

Parked domain


What's This?

Zero Rubbish

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.zerorubbish.com (xhtml-mp)

Zero Rubish Home PageZeroRubbish is a comprehensive mobile portal which combines a mobile link directory, multi-search engine, chat rooms and forums with social networking features including profiles, guest book and shared personal link directories. As the site's name implies, submitted links pass through an approval process to eliminate adult and low quality content, non-mobile sites and other "rubbish".

No registration is needed to browse the directory, follow links and use the search engine. Registered users get access to chat and forums and a personalized My Bookmarks section, public profile page and guest book.

The site is attractive thanks to good use of color. Page size is kept low for maximum compatibility with all mobile browsers by minimizing use of images (which can also be turned off entirely) and by pagination in chat rooms, forums, the link directory and guest books.

A couple of bookmarklets are supplied for quickly adding a personal bookmark or submitting a site. These bookmarklets enable one-click bookmarking and site submission in supported browsers including Opera Mini and Mobile and Mobile Internet Explorer. More information about bookmarklets.

Mobile search in general is not really what it could be yet, not even with Google. It's too difficult to enter queries and results seem limited and lacking relevance. It reminds me of the early days of the Internet, search wasn't very good either. Two years before Google even existed, a little site named Yahoo started out and got big as a directory of links, latter expanding to a a full-blown portal and much latter, adding search. Similarly in mobile, directories currently work better than search engines for most users.

 

ZeroRubbish is one of the better of the current mobile directories with a good selection of quality links. The site is expanding into the social bookmarking and social networking areas, which is a logical and smart move. The new social features are still somewhat limited and immature. Some of this is due to the newness of these features, for example there are only a few posts in the forums and the chat rooms tend to be empty. There also doesn't seem to be any way to find other user's profiles and shared bookmarks. The only access to these features seems to be by clicking on a users name if he has posted to a form or is currently in a chat room. Give ZeroRubbish a little time and I'm sure the social features will be fleshed out to match the robustness of the site's directory.

Jun-2010: Parked page.


What's This?

mjelly

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.mjelly.com (xhtml-mp)

mjelly Home PageFree ringtone site mjelly.com (mobile mjelly.mobi) has branched out.  In addition to its funky collection of sound effects, old school phone ringers, cartoon and TV themes, rave and metal tones; the site now offers downloadable applications and games and a mobile site directory.

The new content sections are pretty small so far. Right now mjelly lists  21 app downloads and 54 mobile sites compared with 352 ringtones. But the apps and sites are all well known, high quality ones like Facebook, Mippin, Opera Mini, Shozu and Widsets.  I expect the selection to grow rapidly. Don't go looking for warez though, mjelly is a class act and everything is legitimate.

If you are an application developer or mobile publisher use the Contact Form on the full web version of the site to submit your free app or site.

mjelly has a user rating system for content.  Registration, which is free and instant is not required to browse mjelly and download any of the content. Registered users can rate and comment on any tone, app or site. By default, listings are sorted by rating but sorting by Newest or Most Popular is just a click away.

There's a lot to like about mjelly, it doesn't have a huge catalog, but the site loads fast, is easy to navigate and looks like a hassle free way to get truly free content for any phone.

Oct-2012 Site is gone


What's This?

WhitherApps

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://whitherapps.com/ (xhtml-mp)

WhitherApps Mobile

A "bandwagon-busting" experiment from James Pearce, the creator of TinySrc, HWOF, Metajam  and the lead developer of WordPress Mobile Pack. The bandwagon being busted here is the one of mobile applications. James intends to re implement popular free mobile native apps as pure webapps using HTML5, CSS and Javascript. The first target is the BBC News app for the iPad.  Each post on WitherApps will be a detailed walkthrough of the process, starting with reverse engineering of the target app through all the steps needed to build it's web based equivalent.  WitherApps promises to be a great read for mobile developers.

Parked domain.


What's This?

GamePro Mobile

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.gamepro.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Gamepro Magazine's mobile site covers video game industry news and features reviews of games and game hardware for all platforms including PC, console and mobile.

Aquired by and redirects to PCWorld


What's This?

Slandr

Content: *****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://m.slandr.net (xhtml-mp)

Slandr ScreenshotSlandr is another mobile web based Twitter interface. What really sets Slandr apart from the other mobile Tweeter front ends is its exhaustive feature set. Compared with m.twitter, Twapper, and Twistat only Slandr offers:

  • Quickly reply to a tweet via an icon so you don't have to type @someone.
  • Send direct messages via another icon, Slandr adds "d username" so you don't have to.
  • Search, powered by Summize, provides full text search of tweets plus search for from:, to:, @ #, etc.
  • You can update your location and view friend's locations of a map. If you just type a city though Slandr defaults to the US. It puts MIR's Ewan MacLeod in London - Ohio!
  • Local, View public tweets within a three mile radius of your location.
  • Events, lists nearby events.

Slandr also borrows some useful features from Twitstat; it shows each sender's avatar or photo with their tweets. there is an option to view only direct messages and a star icon next to each tweet saves the tweet in a favorites bucket for later review. Unlike Twitstat, the favorites feature in Slandr is implemented without JavaScript so it should work on all phones.

Slandr doesn't seem to work if you aren't logged in. There are features like search and viewing public Tweets that ought to be usable without login. The links to these functions do appear before you log in so I think they are supposed to work. However, Slandr bombs with a PHP error when if I try to do anything before logging in.

Based on feature set alone, Slandr is the best mobile interface to Twitter I've seen to date. Mobile usability is generally pretty good. The only real issue is that the typical page size is a little high at about 35KB thanks to the avatar images, which can't be turned off. Ready.mobi gives the Slandr homepage a score of 4 on a scale of 5 but the homepage has no images and is only 9KB. I got an out of memory error from the Openwave browser on a Motorola i855 as soon as I logged in. 35KB isn't huge by any means and Slandr should work well with many recent phones. If you're a Twitterer and Slandr works on your phone I highly recommend it.

13-Sep-2012: Now redirects to page that asks for you Facebook credebtials without telling you why or what you get in return. Stay away.


What's This?

Zimbabwe News

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://feedm8.com/zimbabwenewsrssfeeds (xhtml-mp)

A digest of news from and about Zimbabwe gathered from a variety of international sources.  The mobile site is created with the free RSS to mobile service FeedM8.

FeedM8 has shut down taking Zimbabwe News with it.


What's This?

BLiKT

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://blikt.lt/site/language/en.html (xhtml-mp)

BLiKT lets you create your own mobile online photo album which you can share with friends and family.  The site is available in Lithuanian and English.

Shut down


What's This?

CalorieKing

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.calorieking.com/mobile/ (xhtml-mp)

We all need to watch what we eat, especially the calories and carbohydrates.  CalorieKing is an easy to use mobile site where you can check the calories, carbs, fat, protein and fiber of over 50,000 food items.

Nay-2013: No longer has a mobile webapp


What's This?

Blue Financial Serv. (ZA)

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.bluefs.mobi/sa/wap/ (xhtml-mp/wml)

Blue Financial Services is a leading loan provider in South Africa. Blue's mobile site lets customers check their balances, find branches and contact the bank with click to call.

Mo longer has a mobile site.


What's This?

Skweezer Local

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.skweezer.com/search.aspx?t=local (xhtml-mp)

Skweezer's new local saerch is one of the better ones..  It has click to call phone numbers, Yahoo maps and sorts results by distance from your location which you enter as an adress, zip code or city/state.  Seems to be US only though. Source: @microflash

Out of business.


What's This?

Worth Retweeting?

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://shkspr.mobi/twitter/retweet.php (xhtml-mp)

Worth Reweeting?

Much as I love Twitter, the signal to noise ratio is pretty high. A major source of noise is when multiple people you follow retweet the same item.  Worth Retweeting? is a simple Twitter mashup designed to help you avoid excessive retweeting.

The way it works is that you enter your Twitter user name and the user name of the Twitterer you are thinking of retweeting. Worth Retweeting? then shows you what percentage of your followers also follow the other user. The idea is that if you have too high a percentage of common followers there is really no point in retweeting that person.  The only problem is at what percentage of common followers is retweeting a bad idea?  If 90% of my followers also follow the other person, retweeting is mainly going to contribute noise but what about 50% or 30%.  Where would you draw the line?

14-Nov-2011 Offline.

 


What's This?

Mobile- RSS

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobile-rss.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Mobile-RSS collects the latest content from hundreds of RSS feeds and presents them in a mobile friendly format. Items are organized by category including News, Top Stories, Horoscopes, Entertainment, Sports, Technology, Mobile, Business & Economy, Cars and Lifestyle & Health   You can share or save a link to the original article on Delicious, Reddit, Facebook or StumbleUpon.

Parked domain


What's This?

Alliance Group (ZA)

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://Alliance.ag (xhtml-mp)

Search commercial and residential real estate and property auctions in South Africa Source: Mobility.mobi

Offline

 


What's This?

Sprint Store Locator

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://sprintstorelocator.com/search.aspx?page=mobi (xhtml-mp)

Sprint Mobile Store loacator

If you are a customer, or prospective customer of U.S.CDMA operator, Sprint or just want to play with the Sprint exclusive Palm Pre, you might find this mobile site useful.  It lets you quickly locate company owned and independent stores selling Sprint phones and service. A free-form search box accepts a zip-code, street address or city and state. Results include store hours, available services, click to call phone number and a link to text based turn by turn driving directions, which I found accurate. An advanced search form lets you restrict results to locations offering handset repairs, bill payment or having Spanish speaking staff.  

The only thing I didn't really like about the Sprint site was the map feature. The driving directions include a link to a .gif file showing route on a map. Because it's a file link rather than a page containing an <img> tag many handsets will prompt the user to download the map rather than displaying it in the browser, The maps are 500x400 px and around 100 KB in size, unnecessarily large for most phones. The maps are not zoomable or panable and unless you are within a couple miles of the store, are not detailed enough to be useful. I'd prefer a link to Google or Bing's mobile driving directions which include zoomable, scalable maps sized to the handset's screen.

No longer a mobile friendly page


What's This?

KidsMealDeals

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://kidsmealdeals.com/mobile/ (xhtml-mp)

Here's another find from  @andrewjb44 on Twitter.  KidsMealDeals is a mobile site for parents looking to some money when dinning out with their chaildren.  It lets you search by zip code or  city/state for "Kids Eat Free" deals and discounted children's meals at U.S. chain eateries. Thabks to andrewjb on Twitter for the tip.

1-Nov-2010: The mobile version of KidsMealDeals is gone.


What's This?

Molly and Jake

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://m.mollyandjake.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Mobile edition of a gossip blog specializing in PG13 gossip about teen stars including Zac Efron, the Sprouse Brothers and Miley Cyrus. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory


What's This?

Nokia Mobile Talk

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.nokiamobiletalk.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Nokia Mobile Talk is a popular blog featuring reviews and news updated several times a day.  The focus is on the high end Symbian and Maemo devices and Nokia's Web services. The mobile edition of Nokia Mobile Talk is automatically generated using the Mobilepress plug-in for WordPress.

4-Apr-2012 Site is down


What's This?

HowStuffWorks

Content: **  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.howstuffworks.com/ (xhtml-mp)

How Stuff Works Mobile Web Site

HowStuffWorks.com is a great site featuring thousands of articles explaining in everyday language and with charts, diagrams and videos how all sorts of complex products, technology and processes work. Typical articles have titles like "How X works" where "X" can be anything from "OLEDs" to "identity theft".

I recently discovered that How Stuff Works has a mobile site and immediately headed there to check it out.  I have to say I was a little disappointed. There's nothing wrong with the site's design,it's easy to navigate and uses browser detection is to optimize markup, images and page size to work smoothly on everything from old wml-only phones to the iPhone. Although I wish that site's designer's had applied a style="max-width:100%; height:auto;""attribute to that logo image to force Opera Mini to re-size it to fit.

The problem with the mobile site is the content.  Has far as I could see there is nothing there but a few quiz's and a bunch of "Top 5 This " and "10 Best That" lists like "10 Best Places for Outdoorsy Types to Live' or "5 Myths about Steve Jobs"  But how Stuff Works' stock in trade, the "How X Works" pieces, seem to be totally missing.  I tried to use mobile site's search engine to look for OLED and "identity theft" and came up with nothing. I'll admit I enjoyed reading some of the "Top 10..." pieces but what ever happened to "How Stuff Works" on m.howstuffworks.com?

No longer has a mobile friendlyor responsive site!


What's This?

Chad Guevara Revolution!

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://m.chadguevara.co.cc/ (xhtml-mp)

Well written book reviews of titles currently available in eBook form from Mobipocket. You have to log in to comment on the reviews or even see links to the books, but there doesn't seem to be any way to register! Mobile view by Mobify

May-2011 - Domain gone


What's This?

Instablogs

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.instablogs.mobi/?m (xhtml-mp)

A user driven news site. Stories are submitted by users with the most popular ones (based on user voting) appearing on the front page.  Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Oct-22-2012 Site is down.


What's This?

The Guardian Olympics

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.guardian.co.uk/ms/p/gmg/op/view.m?id=43&key=Winter_Olympics_2010 (xhtml-mp)

The Guardian - Olympics 2010

Big UK newspaper and major online news outlet The Guardian has a hit on it's hands with its $3.99 iPhone app which has been widely praised for its usability and overall quality.  I don't have an iPhone but The Guardian's recently revamped mobile web site is pretty slick too.  The site (and I presume the app too) has a dedicated  Olympics page with 20 well written news items with photos.

Dec-2010: Page has been removed.


What's This?

GEN Mobile - Biotech

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://genengnews.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

The mobile edition of Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News, a leading publication in biotechnology which offers tutorials and articles on bioprocessing, assays, drug discovery, emerging technologies, product roundups and reports from key scientific and industry meetings. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

No longer a mobile site

 


What's This?

nextstop

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.nextstop.com/m2/ (xhtml-mp)

Nextstop describes itself as a "...community effort to build a catalog of all the best things to do, places to go, and experiences to try anywhere in the world" It's a mobile webapp for Android and iPhone that uses  HTML5's geolocation, local storage and application caching features to display interesting nearby places as a grid of thumb-nailed images. Click an image to see a descriptions, larger photo, map and user reviews and comments.  Source: Google Code Blog

Aquired by Facebook and shut down.


What's This?

Ancient Legion

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobile2.ancientlegion.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Ancient Legion is a free mobile massive multiplayer online RPG. You can play missions, challenge others to battle, create and join clans, chat in game chatrooms, and play mini-games to increasing your heroes' powers, abilities and money. You will need money to buy new weapons, magical items or spells.

An exciting part of the game are challenges, where you can fight another hero with your own: battles require ingenious tactical planning and constant training  to improve your heroes' abilities and powers.

No longer a mobile site


What's This?

Mcommunity

Content: *1/2  Usability: XXXX1/2
Last seen at: http://mcommunity.biz/ (wml)
This is another entry to O2's MyWap - site for creating and viewing user pages. Removed due to redundancy
What's This?

Usenet Newsgroups

Content:  Usability:
Last seen at: http://wap.usenet-replayer.com/data/alt/cellular/index.wml (wml)
Not updated everyday. Using news2web.com instead
What's This?

Sabre Travel

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX1/2
Last seen at: http://www.sabremobile.com/vt.wml (HTML5/wml)

Timetable (all airlines including low fare airlines), gates/time, view reservations, weather. Simple, efficient interface.

31-Oct-2010 Sabre no longer offers free mobile services.


What's This?

Dataopedia

Content: ****  Usability: XX
Last seen at: http://m.dataopedia.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Dataopedia's Mobile Web Site

If you are at all interested web traffic statistics, or just want to see how your site is doing take a look at Dataopedia.  The site combines data, including charts and graphs, from Alexa, Quantcast, Compete, Google, Digg, Delicious, registrar records and other sources into to a single page packed with site metrics. It doesn't really tap into mobile traffic data sources and doesn't read .mobi registrar records so its more useful for analyzing desktop websites than mobile ones.

The mobile version of Dataopedia formats results into a single column and re-sized images for better mobile useability. The sheer quantity of data, number of images and lack of pagination brings the average page size of a site report to over 500 KB.  This makes the mobile version of Dataopedia only usable with full web mobile browsers. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory.

Parked domain


What's This?

tilt view

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://tiltview.com/ (xhtml-mp)

An unusual approach to mobile site discovery, tilt view helps you find mobile versions of websites.  Enter a desktop URL and tilt view takes you to the equivalent mobile formatted site.

Now a video newsmagazine that's not at all mobile friendly.


What's This?

The Daily Front Row

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://cng.dfr.mlogic3g.com/index.jsp (xhtml-mp)

 Daily Front Row Image The Daily Front Row (dfr.mlogic3g.com) is a print fashion magazine published in conjunction with and distributed at major fashion shows. I couldn't find an online edition other than the mobile one. This is the first time that I've seen a print publisher going straight to the mobile web.

Cingular Wireless seems to be at least partially funding the Daily Front Row mobile site which is featured in a Cingular promotion targeting attendees at last week's Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in Los Angeles. The press release implies that it's an exclusive for Cingular customers. Nice of them to host it on a public URL for non-Cingular customers to enjoy as well.

This may just be one shot, temporary site built for the event but I hope it's permanent and regularly updated. It's one of the more attractive mobile web presentations I've seen. Lots of photos of models and gowns and interviews with fashion insiders.

The Daily Front Row is another of the Crisp Wireless mLogic sites I mentioned in the AP Elections 2006 post. Crisp seems to be a major player in the emerging field of providing mobile services and solutions to business. In addition to mobile web design, they do custom Brew and Java ME development and have a mobile payment system. Crisp did the NBC Summer Olympics mobile website and as well as all the others I mentioned in the previous post.

I think it's a real indicator of the maturity of the mobile web that large media properties like Time Magazine, NBC, Business Week, Fandango, The Washington Post and LA Times are all launching new or updated mobile sites. Crisp landed all those accounts - they clearly know how to market to and work with Fortune 500 companies seeking a mobile presence. Crisp is doing some good design work creating visually compelling sites, a real challenge on the mobile web platform where there are so many different browsers all implementing xhtml and css differently and imperfectly. I'm happy to report that the rendering bug I mentioned in my Time Magazine Review has been fixed on the Time mobile site and most of the other Crisp mLogic sites.

Jul-2010:  The Daily Front Row no longer hasa mobile site


What's This?

Treo Today

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.treotoday.net/?mobi (HTML5)

TreoToday (treotoday.net/?mobi) is a popular blog covering Pal's Treo Smartphones.  This is the latest of many blogs running Wordpress who have mobilized their content using Andy Moore's WordPress Mobile Plugin

Redirects to non-mobile site titled "Mobility Mind"


What's This?

MyFox

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wap.myfoxlocal.com/ (xhtml-mp)

 myFoxMyFox (wap.myfoxlocal.com) offers mobile news sites for 24 Fox TV network local affiliates. I'm rather disappointed by these sites. many of the news stories are really just headline teasers. Here's an example from Milwaukee's channel 6, this is the whole "story":

"Motorcyclists Ride to Help Youth in Milwaukee

Motorcyclists took to the streets of Milwaukee to promote peace in our neighborhoods. FOX 6's Jennifer Reyes has more."

Really Fox, these news sites look like something from the early days of WAP when phones had 3 line screens. CNN, Yahoo, MSNBC, Time, Newsweek, the BBC and hundreds of local newspapers have mobile sites with full length articles that millions of people read. On the bright side, the weather reports and financial news sections of the MyFOX sites are quite detailed.

Nov-2010 - Site is gone


What's This?

Area Code Finder

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://areacodefinder.mobi (xhtml-mp)
http://areacodefinder.mobi/">areacodefinder.mobi) This site has one purpose which it does well. Enter a US telephone area code and get a list of the towns and cities it includes. Or enter a Zip Code or City + State and get the area code.

18-Jan-2008: Redirects to a splogy non-mobile "Science News" site.
What's This?

Tappity

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.tappity.com/ (xhtml-mp)

 Tappity Home Page Tappity is a new mobile social bookmarking site. This is a genre that didn't exist a year ago and now has at least four players, WapTags (review), Mobleo (review), Mopitopia (review) and now Tappity.com (mobile - mobile.tappity.com).

Unlike the other three, with Tappity you do all your tagging from your desktop browser, there is no way to tag or bookmark from the mobile site. I think mobile tagging is an essential feature. I want to be able to tag mobile sites from the PC occasionally, but mobile site discovery is best done on a mobile. Many sites that use browser detection won't even deliver a mobile page to a desktop browser.

I tried creating a bookmarklet so I could tag from Opera Mini but it doesn't work. When Tappity detects a mobile browser trying to access any page of the PC site, including the submit form, it redirects to the mobile site's front page. The bookmarklet works fine with a desktop browser, if you want to try it drag this link (Add to Tappity) to your browser toolbar.

Two special Tappity features are extensible location based search and the ability to specify mobile optimization on a link by link basis.

  • Tappity's search box has a drop down where you choose your search engine from Google Local, Yelp, Tappity or Wikipedia. You can save your current Zip Code with Tappity and it will be passed to Google Local and Yelp. It's even possible to add any search engine that accepts the search string and optionally the zip code as get parameters. User added search engines are shared by default and you can search Tappity to find and add them to the search engine dropdown.
  • The transcoding feature means that you can specify that you want Tappity to transcode a site for better mobile usability - if you want to browse a full web page on a typically limited mobile browser you just tell Tappity to "Mobify" it .

 Tappity Find More Mobile Things PageThe web side of Tappity looks very nice, although it still has some minor beta usability issues. But it does get the job done once you learn its quirks.

The Tappity mobile site presents a clean interface with the search box, your personal links and below that the intriguingly named "Find More Mobile Things" link which leads to the social aspect of the site. This is where you find links grouped by most viewed, random, popular tags and recently added. Users can also report sites as Spam, Not Mobile, Broken, Duplicate or "Don't Like" - is that the equivalent of Digg's bury? There seems to be a user driven star rating system although I can't figure out you rate a site.

Tappity's transcoder is a mixed bag. On the one hand it does a great job with RSS and Atom feeds, creating a nice mobile friendly index page with links to each item. But for big web pages it doesn't do very much to reduce page size, pages aren't split and images aren't resized on the server. A 900KB Gizmodo home page after going through the Tappity transcoder is still a wap-browser-choking 700KB. The Google transcoded version of Gizmodo is split into 5 or more pages averaging between 10 and 30 KB depending the capabilities of the browser it detects. I wasn't able to log into my.yahoo.com through the transcoder either.

Rather than trying to develop their own transcoder, I'd like to see Tappity do a mashup with the Google and/or Skewezer transcoders. Those two market leading transcoders split pages and resize images on the fly and also do a good job with feeds. I think the ability to selectively mobilize links is a great feature but the current transcoder is inadequate. Maybe there are licensing issues with using Google or Skweezer, but all that Tappity would be doing is making it easier for users to create bookmarks to the 3rd party transcoder. The end result is just a hyperlink, no different than if the user keyed say; www.google.com/gwt/n?u=http://wapreview.com into the Tappity submit form.

In my opinion, social bookmarking is something that is really going to take off in the mobile space. The mobile web is growing rapidly in sites, buzz and users. It's inevitable that users will want to be able to do the mobile equivalent of a del.icio.us tag or a Digg. However, I don't think any of the four mobile social bookmarking sites I've seen quite have the secret sauce to make mobile social tagging happen on a grand scale. There are three things I want to see in a mobile del.icio.us:

  • To be able to create, tag, edit, browse and search my links and public links from the PC and from the phone with an interface that works well on both platforms.
  • To be able to post links using a bookmarklet from Javascript capable mobile browsers like Opera Mini or perhaps the equivalent functionality using a proxy.
  • No degradation of the browsing experience if using a proxy. Sites should work as well with the proxy as without it.

Each of these sites take a different approach, but none quite get it right for my taste. WapTags and Mobleo use a proxies that modify each page by adding a link to the bottom  Tappity - Most viewedthat lets you tag the current page. This gives bookmarklet-like functionality with any browser but both sites proxy's throw errors on a significant percentage of pages. With Mopitopia, there's no proxy, and bookmarklet's don't work consistently. You can only tag from the phone by typing or pasting the page url into the tag form. WapTags has no desktop interface and doesn't let you enter arbitrary urls, you have to use the WapTags search engine to find and Tag sites. And Tappity doesn't let you tag from the mobile site at all. For now, I'm using del.icio.us for mobile tagging. It's workable, if a bit unwieldy, using Opera Mini and a bookmarklet.

There's much to like about Tappity. I really want to use a mobile equivalent of del.icio.us. All Tappity really needs to get me to switch is to provide a way to tag from the mobile phone, including tagging via a bookmarklet on supporting browsers. A better transcoder would be nice but isn't essential to me as Opera Mini does a better job than any transcoder.

June-2010: Tappity looks like its on the way out, Returns multiple MySQL errors.

Oct-2010: Gone!


What's This?

Kayak

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.kayak.com/moby/hotelnow/ (HTML5)
Kayak's hotel search finds hotels with rooms available tonight. It's one of the few mobile hotel search sites that lists prices.

Update: 03-Sept-2008 Down, all queries fail with the error "No search terms were found."
What's This?

SmartphoneFreeware.mobi

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.smartphonefreeware.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

From the creators of PocketPCFreeware.mobi this new site specializes in free software for the non-touch screen "Standard" version of Windows Mobile formerly called Windows Smartphone. Currently has only about 500 files for download compared with 6000 for Pocket PC and 9000 for Palm.

Site is gone


What's This?

Inside Kerala

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://insidekerala.com/n/mobile.php (HTML5)

Inside Kerala (insidekerala.com/n/mobile.php) News from the South Indian state of Kerala. InsideKerala.com is a big mobile site covering news, sports, entertainment, entertainment, culture, science and at least a dozen other categories of news. The only thing I don't like about this site is it's over aggressive browser detection which redirects any browser to it doesn't recognize to the full site with no way to load the mobile site. I believe that mobile sites should do browser detection on their main URL,in this case insidekerala.com but they should also have a url (like http://insidekerala.com/n/mobile.php) which always loads a mobile friendly page.

Shut down


What's This?

SnapMyLife

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://snapmylife.com (xhtml-mp)

SnapMyLife (snapmylife.com) A mobile photo sharing site. It's an open network like Flickr meaning anyone, even non-members, can view your photos unless you mark them as private. Upload photos by email or MMS and create a network of friends. Photos marked as private are visible only to your network. All photos are resized to 240px wide. A potential problem with this site is the size of index pages which each contain ten 70X100 thumbnails for a total page weight over 100 KB. The built in browsers of many phones can only handle 20 KB.

No longer has a mobile web app.


What's This?

Ovi

Content: **  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://ovi.nokia.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Ovi (http://ovi.nokia.com/) Nokia's soon to be released Ovi "personal dashboard" already has a mobile site. At this point there's not much there but descriptions of the services Ovi will eventually provide; photo and video sharing, music downloads, maps and directions, calendar and contact synchronization and games. The site promises it's all coming soon so "check back regularly..."

Jan-2011 redirects to the mobile version of Nokia Maps


What's This?

TalkStreamLive

Content: ****  Usability: XX
Last seen at: http://www.talkstreamlive.com/mobile/ (xhtml-mp)

Streaming talk and music radio TV. Streams vary in format. The majority are WMA but some are Ogg or MP3. The site gives no indication which streams are in which format making finding the ones that work a hit or miss proposition.

29-Oct-2010 No longer a mobile site


What's This?

iCPR

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://icpr.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

A single page site providing instructions on providing cardiopulmonary resuscitation to someone who has suffered a heart attack. The site covers the currently recommended "Hands Only" version of CPR. While a mobile website is no substitute for CPR training I think it helps to make more people aware of this simple life saving technique.

May-2013: unconfigured default webapp template


What's This?

Nokia Here & Now

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://nokia.mobi/hereandnow/ (xhtml-mp)

Nokia Here & Now in WebKitNokia launched a new mobile site yesterday called "Here and Now". It's a mobile portal emphasizing music news and movie reviews from Rolling Stone and also featuring news from Reuters,  gossip from US Weekly, game and  application downloads, videos and a small directory of 3rd party mobile websites.  Nokia claims Here and Now is targeted at 18 t0 35 year olds.  That's OK by me if it keeps the marketing pros at Nokia employed but I really don't see how  interest in music, news, sports, celebrities and games is unique to any one age group.

I'm definitely not in the target demographic  but I did find "Here and Now" a nice little portal. Nokia Here & Now in Opera MiniThe easiest way to get to it is to start at nokia.mobi and click the big Here and Now banner. The direct url is nokia.mobi/hereandnow which redirects to  nokia.12dld.mobi/zone/index.do.  The 12dld.mobi domain belongs to Germany's 12snap who apparently created Here and Now for Nokia and are hosting it as well.

Here and Now looks great in WebKit on my N95 (1st image).  In other browsers, including Opera Mini, it degrades to a rather bland wml version (2nd image)  Nokia or rather 12snap, even tries to send wml to Skyfire which doesn't support it and prompts you to download index.do!   You would think  that 12snap would check Accept headers before blindly sending wml to unrecognized devices. I guess  someone decided that Here and Now really only needed to support the default Nokia browsers. Not invented here syndrome lives.

 

Dec-2012: Nokia appears to have abandoned the "Here and Now" concept. The URL now redirects to Nokia's mobile homepage.


What's This?

MobaMingle

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.mbmgl.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Moba Mingle HomepageMobaMingle  (m.mbmgl.com) is the English version of Mobile Game Town, Japan's biggest (10 million members) mobile-only social network. It seems to be a pretty literal translation of the Japanese original, both in look and feel and in most of the features. Mobamingle has the usual trappings of other mobile social networks, messaging, groups, blogs, friends and a "wall" but adds only-in-Japan features like anime style avatars and user created mobile novels. One thing missing is the signature element of Mobile Game Town, Games. The Japanese site is centered about Flash games, which makes sense as most Japanese mobiles support Flash. In the West, Flash is pretty much limited to midrange and up Nokia and SonyEricsson phones. I guess that DeNa, the company behind Mobamingle, decided to forgo the games as being a divisive element as only a subset of members could play them

Avatars are a big part of MobaMingle. When you first join, your avatar is a faceless, hairless figure in underwear. So the first step is outfit your avatar. It's a liitle like second life. You buy a face, hair and top and bottom garments. Purchasing is with MobaGold. MobaMingle's virtual curency and new members start out with 500 "G"s of it. Which just happens to be enough to buy a face, basic hair style, a top and a bottom. Of course to really look cool on MobaMingle you need fancy threads, accessories like jewelry, shades, sporting equipment, a pet and animated features like blinking eyelids. All of which require more MobaGold - which you have to earn. You get 2Gs every time you post on your blog or in a group forum and between 5 and 40G daily IF you log in every day. But to really accumulate MobaGold you need to invite friends. Every friend who accepts your invitation nets you 300G. Unlike in the Japanese version, it's not currently possible to purchase MobaGold with real money.

MobaMingle is the ultimate pure mobile site. There is no PC version You have to register for MobaMingle on your phone and all the social networking happens on the mobile web site. There is a MobaMingle PC website but it is strictly promotional, the only interactive feature is the ability to upload completed mobile novels.

Registering for Mobamingle requires giving a valid mobile number in order to receive a verification SMS. I'm always wary of sites that ask for mobile numbers because of the possibility of premium SMS scams. I'm sure Dena is reputable and would never misuse my mobile number but offering email verification as an alternative would inspire more confidence.

Will a Japanese style mobile-only social network catch on internationally?  Hard to say, Japan is the most advanced country in the world in mobile services and applications, but few of the uniquely Japanese elements of Keitai culture have been successful outside of their homeland. iMode failed in the West, QR codes are struggling and location based mobile web services have been effectively blocked by operators. MobaMingle might be different. Here on the US West coast at least, there is a lot of buzz around Japanese youth culture especially manga, jPop, and anime. One problem a youth oriented mobile web based service like MobaMingle faces in the US is that most teenagers don't have data plans. That maybe changing, Sprint just launched a $50/month prepaid unlimited voice, text and data plan under the youth oriented Boost mobile brand.

Be sure to also read mjelly's James Cooper's review of MobaMingle at Mobile Industry Review with lots more screen shots.

MobaMingle was shut down 29-Oct-2010


What's This?

Picr.mobi

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://picr.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

An alternate mobile interface into Flickr. Search for photos and download them in all the sizes available on the full web Flickr site. Flickr's own mobile site limits photo downloads to 340 px wide. Source Oh! Mobile Directory.

20-Nov-2010 Site is down


What's This?

EETimes

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.eetimes.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Mobile edition of EE Times, a trade magazine covering the semiconductor and electronics manufacturing industries.

No longer a mobile site


What's This?

UK Highways Agency

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.highways.gov.uk/mobile/default.aspx (xhtml-mp)

Live traffic incident and road work reports, weather and streaming or call-based updates from the U.K. government Highways Agency. Source: nokiAAdict.com

The Highways Agency mobile site has been replaced by an iPhone only app


What's This?

Lebanon OH Western Star

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.western-star.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Local news, sports business and entertainment news for Lebanon and Warren County, Ohio from the Western Star daily newspaper.

Merged with the Mason Pulse-Journal and Fairfield Echo as "Today's Pulse" at  m.pulsejournal.com


What's This?

Cocomama

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://cocomama.mobi (xhtml-mp)

Cocomama Mobile Search

A new mobile web search site that returns extensive and generally relevant results for the queries I tried. The results were real mobile web sites, not transcoded desktop ones.

Cocomama's results come from a UK based company called Mobile Commerce Ltd which sources from content partners including Yahoo. In addition to mobile web search, Cocomama offers a categorized directory of downloadable content (ringtones, themes, games) and information (news, sports, finance).

Now a soccer results and gambling site


What's This?

Your Hypnotist Blog

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.yourhypnotistblog.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Hypnotist and author Andy Mitchell's blog on the art of hypnosis. Mobile version was created with Mofuse. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Domain is gone


What's This?

TwitSnaps

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.twitsnaps.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Post a photo to Twitter directly from your phone, view a public timeline of Twitter photos and photo "Hall of Fame". Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

20-Jan-2013: site is down


What's This?

WapStack

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wapstack.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Download freeware and ad-supported mobile games, themes, screensavers, ringtones and videos.  Large section of games nicely organized by supported screen resolution and handset compatibility.

Jul-2011: Parked page


What's This?

NewsX

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://newsx.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

newsx.mobi aggregates news from many sources and groups them by into categories including Indian and world news, sports, politics, technology and entertainment. Users can comment and rate each news item with the highest rated stories appearing first.

Oct-2012 - Site is gone. Rediects to /wap.bollywoodjalwa.com/


What's This?

Scoper - Horoscopes

Content: **  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://scoper.info/ (xhtml-mp)

Scoper

A simple, single purpose site, Scooper serves up your free daily horosope in a mobile friendly format.

For a French langusage real estate sblog.


What's This?

MobilComm

Content: **  Usability: XX1/2
Last seen at: http://wap.mobilcomm.com/Mobilcomm_7.wml (wml)
Wap site directory. Too many dead links, site doesn't seem to have been updated recently. Optimized for Openwave browsers, navigation is tedious on others.

06-May-2006: Site is down.
What's This?

Mogg

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://video.mogg.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Mogg allows mobile users to upload, share, tag, and download videos from and to mobile phones. Videos also have an option to stream, labeled "Watch" which is non-functional on my N95 and Android phones. Downloading works.  Content includes lots of movie trailers

Feb-2012: Offline


What's This?

designM.ag

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://designmag.mobify.me/ (xhtml-mp)

A community for web designers and developers, designM.ag includes a blog, user-submitted news, a desgin job board and a design gellery. Mobile view by Mobify.


Apr-2012: No longer has a mobile (or responsive) sit.


What's This?

PDA 24/7

Content: ***  Usability: XXX1/2
Last seen at: http://www.clieuk.co.uk/cwmobile.shtml (HTML5)
PDA news and product announcements. Daily updates

Update: 7-Sept-2008: PDA24/7 has been shut down. Sister sites www.palm247.com, www.windowsmobile247.com and www.moremobile247.comare still around but no longer seem to have mobile editions.
What's This?

Smartphone & PocketPC.

Content: ****1/2  Usability: XXXX1/2
Last seen at: http://mobile.smartphonemag.com/ (HTML5)

Reviews of hardware, software and mobile optimized websites. Tips for getting the most from your Windows Mobile device.

Jul-2010: No longer has a mobile edition.


What's This?

A1 Vacations

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://www.a1-w.com/ (wml)
Search for vacation rentals worldwide. Site lists weekly rentals of cabins condos and homes by (US) state or country. Optimized for UP browsers, usablity on other browsers is clumbsy.

6-May-2006: Site is down
What's This?

CheapTickets

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wireless.galileo.com/servlet/ga?op=b2cConnect&dcid=18&sponsorid=1PG1&hostid=0 (HTML5)
Last seen at: http://wireless.galileo.com/servlet/ga?op=b2cConnect&dcid=19&sponsorid=1PG1&hostid=0 (wml)

This is the mobile site of CheapTickets.com, a major online travel agency. You can't book flights on the mobile page but you can view current flight arrival and departures and flight schedules and you used to be able to track flights in real time. These features work for most airlines. You can also view the itinerary of trips you booked on CheapTickets.com

As of August, 2006 the flight tracker seems to be broken!

31-Oct-2010 - Cheaptickets.com no longer has a mobile site.


What's This?

The S60 Blog

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://s60blog.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Anirudh Sharma's The S60 Blog covers the latest from the Symbian world with editorials, news, reviews, guides, videos and a selection of app and theme downloads for Symbian S60 and Nokia Devices. The S60 Blog's mobile version is generated using the wp-pda WordPress plugin.

Redirects to mobilecrazies.com which has little or no Nokia content and is not mobile friendy.


What's This?

MotoFans

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wap.motorolafans.com (HTML5)

MotoFans HomepageMotorolaFans.com is a forum for users of Motorola phones with the emphasis on the Linux models like the A1200 Ming. Lately Motofans have added forums for othe Linux based mobile platforms including Android, the Neo Freerunner and the iPhone. It's a great resource for owners, prospective owners and anyone interested in these phones. Motofans is aimed at tech savy users who want to mod and hack their phones in the open source tradition. The mobile version of MotorolaFans gives read-only access to all topics and forums to all and full access to members.

Apr-2010: Mobile forum is down


What's This?

San Francisco Chronicle

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.mdog.com/bookmarks/sfchronicle/htmlsite/index.php (xhtml-mp)
Full text and some pictures of hundreds of articles from the San Francisco Chronicle's SFGate.com wesite. Mobilized by mDog.com.

7-Jul-2008: No content!
What's This?

High School Musical 2

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://hsm2.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

 High School Musical 2High School Musical 2 is the second in a series of made for TV Disney movies which are cult classics with the grade school set. It's much in the news lately for reasons you won't find on the official mobile site. If there are preteens in your household and you have an unlimited data plan on their phones show them hsm2.mobi and become a hero. The site has star photos, polls, text messages "from" the principal players and a free wallpaper download.

Site is gone


What's This?

Mippin

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.mippin.com/mip/m (xhtml-mp)

 MyMippin Mippin is a mobile portal built from RSS feeds. In itself that's not new, Feed2Mobile. Mowser, FeedM8 and Winksite all offer directories of mobile formated feeds. They all have their own mix of features. Mippin emphasizes ease of use and I think is a good choice for users new to the mobile web.

Mippin's front page lists the top six stories facilitating discovery. Another usability feature is that Mippin stores your browsing history and displays it as MyMippin at the top of the homepage. The MyMippin list persists across sessions and can be edited it to delete unwanted sites. It's just a browser history list but it does serve as an automatic bookmarking feature for users. Fast page loads are an important part of usability and Mippin loads quickly even on low end phones because page and image sizes are varied to suit the handset.

The primary way to navigate Mippin is a categorized directory of sites . There's also search box that doubles as a URL entry form. You can enter a familiar web URL like Engadget.com rather than having to key the full feed URL such as engadget.com/rss.xml. Keying a URL lets you add sites that aren't in Mippin's directory to your MyMippin but doesn't seem to add them to the directory.

Mippin also has some mobile social elements. You can send a story to a friend by email or Twitter. There's a voting feature, thumbs up and thumbs down buttons on each feed's index page let you cast your vote with the running total displayed. Mippin's users seem to be hard to please with most sites hovering around a 50% approval rate.

More...

June-2012: The Mippin Portal has been shut down


What's This?

DialedIn

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://dialedin.com/wap/ (xhtml-mp)

DialedIn ( dialedin.com/wap) - This site looks like a mobile Evite. You create event listings and invite friends using SMS or email. Invites can respond with a message or picture. You can create and manage events completely from your phone or use the PC web version of the site.

Now a web publishing site.


What's This?

Discovery Health

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://discoveryhealth.mlogic.mobi (xhtml-mp)

Discovery Health Mobile has recipes, health quizzes and TV schedules for Discovery's channel on health issues.

No longer a mobile or responsive site.


What's This?

Preg2Go

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.preg2go.com/ (xhtml-mp)

"Your mobile pregnancy nutrition info source" , Preg2Go has nutritional advice for pregnant women with discussions of what are the good foods and the bad ones to avoid along with general nutritional information. A generally useable site although the combination of light orange text on a white background can be hard to read on some phones.

May-2013: parked domain


What's This?

Wired Magazine

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.wired.com/ (xhtml-mp)

The authorized mobile version of Wired designed by Crisp Wireless. The site offers several dozen full text articles from Wired,com in a highly usable mobile format. The design is similar to other Crisp Wireless developed news sites. It's a one size fits all design with images resized to 160px maximum width and aggressive pagination to keep page sizes down. I like the use of accesskeys to create numbered links that and can be opened with a single click using the corresponding number key.

19-Jul-2009: Wired appears to have killed their mobile edition.


What's This?

AskMoby

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://askmoby.com (xhtml-mp)

AskMobyAskMoby (askmoby.com) is a new mobile weather service with a couple of clever features. First when you request a forecast from AskMobi you can pick your planned activity from a list of things like Golf, Walking, Surfing, Sailing or Football. Supposedly the results are supposed to be customised base on your proposed activity. I suspect that this feature isn't quite finished yet as the only difference I could see is that for sailing or surfing, wave and swell data are added to results page which always includes temperature, wind and general condition like Sunny or Rain. The other thing that's fairly unique is that AskMoby gives you hour by hour forecasts for any time, day or night in the next 48 hours. AskMoby also has a slick Ajaxy PC version and an embeddable Widget for your Blog or MySpace page. AskMoby covers European locations only, at least for now.

Parked Domain


What's This?

Geogad

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.geogad.com (xhtml-mp)

Geogad Tour PageGeogad.com is a Siicon Valley start up whose product is mobile travel guides. Each guide is  a walking tour about an hour in length presented using maps, images and audio. There are currently 15 tours covering San Francisco, Vancouver BC, Savannah, GA and New Orleans.  Initially the tours were available in two formats, on the web at Geogad.com or as a zip file containing a one page PDF walking map and about 50 MP3 audio clips. You load the MP3s into a play list on an iPod,other MP3 player or media player equipped phone, print out the PDF map and hit the streets to begin your tour.

Geogad's downloadable tours are available in a free ad supported format or without ads for $6.99 each.  I didn't find the ads in the free version obtrusive. The tours I tried had only two 30 second ads, one at the beginning and the other at the end of each tour.

I met Geogad co-founder, Georgi Dagnall at CTIA. Georgi briefed me on a new product the company was working  on, mobile web based tours.  That product is now available from Geogad's mobile web site at m.geogad.com. There you can find all the Geogad tours in a mobile browser friendly format.  Each tour is a series of linked mobile web pages, with each page containing a map or photo and a link to a downloadable MP3 clip with the narration about a single point of interest on the tour. If your carrier blocks audio downloads like Nextel does, or you don't want to wait for the audio to download on a slow connection, the full text of the audio clip also appears on the mobile web page.  I found the tours easy to use on my mobiles, with or without audio.  Each page is small (under 20KB) and images are re-sized to suit the screen size and page weight limitations of various mobile browsers. Navigation is easy, each page has three links, Next, Prev and Play Audio.  The only improvement I can think of would be to provide access keys for one click navigation.

At this time there is no way to purchase ad free tours on the mobile web site but any tours you have bought on the full site will render without ads on mobile.

Registration is required to get full access to Geogad's tours.  Registering is pretty painless, requiring only a verifiable email address and can be done on either the full or mobile Geogad sites.

The tours I tried were well done with high production values including crisp audio, useful maps and clear, lively, factual narration.  If you are visiting one of the covered cities I recommend Geogad's tours highly, they rival or exceed the quality of any commercial audio tour I've used.

No longer has a mobile site


What's This?

St Louis Beacon

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://www.stlbeacon.org/mobile (HTML5)

A well rounded local news site from the St Louis Missouri daily paper. Severl dozen, full length articles from the paper's Issues, Politics, Health, Science, Arts + Life and Voices sections. Page size may be too large for the browsers on some phones.

Feb-2010: Mobile version is no longer offered.


What's This?

theSUGGESTR

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.thesuggestr.com (xhtml-mp)

US-only local search for restaurants, hotels, bars, etc with crowd sourced recomendations. Register at PC site: thesuggestr.com to get personalized recomendations based on your preference and to add Fire Eagle and Twitter integration.

16-Jan-2011: Site is gone


What's This?

680News Toronto

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://680news.com/wap/ (xhtml-mp)

A small (10 stories and a podcast) news portal from Toronto's 24 hour all news radio station CFTR 580 on the AM dial. 

No longer a mobile site


What's This?

Teletext

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://teletextmobile.co.uk/ (xhtml-mp)

UK based site offers news stories and photos, sports, entertainment and finance news, traffic reports and winning lottery numbers.


Site is gone


What's This?

RecipeMobile

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://recipemobile.com/ (xhtml-mp)

A collection of vegan and vegetarian recipes in blog format. Optimized for mobile using MobilePressSource Oh! Mobile Directory

In spite of its name, Recipie Mobile no longer hasa mobile formatted site


What's This?

towinghelp.mobi

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.towinghelp.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Directory of tow truck operators in the U.S., U.K. and Canada with click to call numbers. Also tips on how jump start your car and change a flat tire. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

1-Nov-2010 - Parked Page


What's This?

BitsForFree

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.bitsforfree.eu/mobi/index.php (xhtml-mp)

Free application and game downloads for S60 2nd and 3rd Edition phones including the Nokia 5800. Source @khouryrt

The site is for sale and the mobile edition seems to be gone.


What's This?

Moto-Live

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.moto-live.com/moto/en/ (xhtml-mp)

News, photos, calendar, standings and live comentary on the Moto-Gp series.

Parked Domain - Apr-2010


What's This?

GoGettem

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.gogettem.mobi (xhtml-mp)

Gogettem Mobile Search

GoGettem.mobi is new mobile search engine.  The default search is a real mobile web search (it returns made for mobile sites not transcoded desktop sites). GoGettem's listings are surprising extensive. I got lots of mostly relevant results for the queries I tried although there are quite a few duplicates. Results pages aren't paginated and are a little large (up to 45 KB) for some feature phones.

GoGettem also has separate U.S.only search pages for local businesses, people (phone number lookup), apartments, news, hotel rooms, restaurants, fitness centers and services for pets. Plus a calorie calorie counter.

I've  never heard of GoGettem before. The site has a kind of low budget feel about and Google doesn't seem to know anything about GoGettem or the company behind it, Coconut Island Software,

It seems unlikely that GoGettem built their mobile web index from scratch with their own crawlers. Which means they probably have a deal with either one or the mainstream search engines or with a "White Label" search provider like Jumptap. I wonder which one?  Anyone know?

Parked domain
What's This?

eisele.net (Java Dev)

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://eisele.mobify.me/blog/ (xhtml-mp)

Markus Eisele's tech blog covering Enterprise software development primarily with Java (J2EE/JEE). as well as Oracle Weblogic Server and other technologies. Mobile view by Mobify

Feb-2010: Mobile View has disappeared!


What's This?

MTV Base

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://mtvbase.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

MTVBase is the name that US music television network MTV uses in the African market. The site features entertainment news, star bios of African and international artists,TV schedules, charts and playlists and a live events search engine which is currently broken.  Wallpapers, Videos and music downloads are available for purchase. Source: Mobility.mobi

MTVBase no longer has a mobile or responsive site.


What's This?

WOMWorld/Nokia

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.womworld.com/nokia/ (xhtml-mp)

WOMWorld Mobile Site

Nokia's WOMWorld received a redesign last week. Gone are the dozens of static product images which were only interesting the first time you viewed the site. The new layout is lighter, cleaner looking and loads much faster.

A nice side effect of the redesigns is that WOMWorld is now available in a mobile friendly version, created with Crowd Favorite's WordPress Mobile Edition.

WOMWorld is a news aggregator that pulls together the latest news and opinions about Nokia from blogs, social networks and mobile phone enthusiast forums. It's also the home of the Trial a Nokia Program which loans the latest handsets to bloggers and active forums users.


What's This?

Got To Dance

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://gottodance.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Got To Dance is a popular dance contest and reality TV show on the UK's Sky satellite TV network.  It's similar to the US TV show "So You Think You Can Dance". The show's mobile web site has free videos from the show, judge and contestant profiles, previews of upcoming shows,  a photo gallery, links to the show's Twitter feed and instructions on using Sky's SMS interface to remotely program your SkyTV box to record the next show.

Dec 2010: Site is down


What's This?

Gowalla

Content: ****  Usability: XX
Last seen at: http://m.gowalla.com (xhtml-mp)

Gowalla Mobile

Gowalla is a location based social networking 'game" that is very similar to the better known Foursquare. It's not a copy or clone however. The two services were created independently and both were launched essentially simultaneously at SXSW last year. 

Gowalla players compete for "Pins", the equivalent or Foursquare's badges, by checking in at physical locations around their neighborhood, city and the world. Gowalla's initial growth was international as it has always allowed checkins anywhere, unlike Foursquare which was restricted to the US until recently. Gowalla lets players check in using an iPhone app, a desktop website and a mobile site.

Unlike, Foursquare's barebones mobile site which looks like it was designed for basic feature phones and is not location aware, Gowalla's is an attractive "touch web" site that can retrieve your current location from the browser on Android and possibly other platforms. Gowalla advertises their web app as being for Android and indeed it looked great and worked perfectly with an HTC Magic Android phone. However the greatest advantage of mobile web apps is that they can be cross platform so I was hoping that at least a subset of Gowalla's features would be available on other devices.

Sadly I found  that Gowalla's mobile site was not usable on the other mobile devices I tried. On phones without location support in the browser Gowalla didn't even load hanging with the message "locating" displayed. With the advanced location aware Mozilla based browser on the  Nokia N900, Gowalla loaded and I was able to login. Gowalla got as far as finding my location on the N900,  but when I tried to check in a got an endless barrage of JavaScript error alerts that made it impossible to continue.

Hopefully Gowalla will enhance their mobile web app to support more browsers including those that do not expose device location.

Gowalla no longer offers a mobile friendl site, only iPhone and Android apps.


What's This?

Craft Beer

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://craftbeer.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

CraftBeer.mobi

This weekend wouldn't it be great to sit back and enjoy a pint or two of delicious home brewed beer? Of course you do have to brew it first.

CraftBeer.mobi is a great resource for the home brewers and beer lovers with detailed beer recipes, brewing tips and beer style guides.

The site also offers several free spreadsheet based calculators designed to help home brewers determine ingredient quantities and boil times to achieve the desired specific gravity, bitterness, color and percent alcohol for theit creations.. 

Even if you don't brew it yourself, if you love beer I think you'll enjoy Craft Beer's descriptions of famous brews from around the world.

20-Nov-2010 Site is down


What's This?

Teli.mobi

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://teli.mobi/index.html (xhtml-mp)

Teli.mobi is one of the larger directories of mobile formatted streaming video sites. It has links to hundreds of video services organized into categories including News, Sport, Music, Movies, Kids, Religious, Webcams and Weather Radar. The site is targeted at Windows Mobile devices and most of the linked videos are in Windows Media formats which are also supported by many Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Sprint CDMA devices.

No longer a mobile site.


What's This?

recast.mobi

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://recast.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

A collection of streaming rock video channels featuring various genres like Metal, Progressive, 70's, 80's and 90's. Videos are in Windows Media format. Usability is hampered by the site's use of an almost unreadable combination of gray text on a black background.

22-Oct-2010 - parked page.


What's This?

Street Tuner

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://streettuner.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Covers the international modified car scene. With contributors from as far afield as Japan, Europe and the US, Street Tuner gives mobile users the latest car performance news on the go. Content includes reviews, race reports, photos and videos.

2-Feb-2012: Site is gone.


What's This?

xTweets

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://xtweets.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

xTweets is a twitter mobile directory (built with XtGem ) for mobile webmasters. It fetches your latest tweets and displays them along with a link to your mobile site in a timeline with tweets from other xTweets users.  The service is free, all you need is a Twitter account.

25-May-2013: Broken, displays no tweets.

 


What's This?

Wikipedia

Content: *****  Usability: XX
Last seen at: http://www.bitsplitter.net/projects/pda_wikipedia.cgi (HTML5)
Mobilization of the well known encyclopedia maintained by volunteers. A PDA site that can be difficult to navigate with a phone browser. More or less maintains the original format of the Wikipedia website which really doesn't work to well on phones. I recommend Wapedia or 3G Wikipedia, both listed above, which use a simple search box interface to the Wikipedia database.

Site is down 09-Dec-2006
What's This?

BillDay.com

Content: ***1/2  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://billday.com/wp-wap.php (wml)
J2ME evangelist Bill Day's blog. Rarely updated anymore.

Down: 06-Aug-2007
What's This?

NASCAR To Go

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://cingular.digitalorchid.com/nascar/mobile.asp (HTML5/wml)
NASCAR.com ImageNASCAR is the most popular US auto racing series. To European (and many American) motorsports fans it's a bit weird. It's billed as stock car racing but the cars are anything but stock. They look like typical US 2 door mid size cars from a distance but really consist of a handmade tubular chassis, with a full roll cage to protect the drivers, covered by thin fiberglass body. Engines are loosely based on a stock V8 block. Trim details including bumpers and headlights are painted on! The races, which are run mainly on oval tracks as well as a few road courses, are actually quite exciting to watch cars running extremely close together at speeds exceeding 200 mph and frequent contact. There's a lot of passing with the lead changing frequently.
,br/> NASCAR.com To Go is on the Cingular and Nextel carrier decks but it's a public URL accessible from any network. page. The site features results, standings, live updates from the races and driver interviews.

Down: 01-Mar-2008


What's This?

Smooth-On.

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://smoothon.mobify.me/ (xhtml-mp)

Smooth-On makes a sells a wide variety of materials and tools for many types of mold making and casting.  The firm's web and mobile sites offer an array of FAQs, tutorials and videos of interest to both professionals and hobbyists in fields as varied as candle making, life-casting, prosthetics and architectural restoration.  The site's mobile view by Mobify

Feb-2010: Mobile View has disappeared!


What's This?

Concierge.com

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://concierge.mlogic.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

 Concierge.comConde Nast Traveler magazine's Concierge.com now has a mobile version. Aimed primarily at the luxury traveler, Concierge has weather, hotel, restaurant, event and attraction listings for travel destinations around the world. There are also free travel photography mobile wallpapers for download. A special Gold List section, features the best, cost is no object hotels and resorts as chosen by Conde Nast Traveler readers.

Site Down: 3-Mar-2009


What's This?

Premiere

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://boost.premiere.com/ (xhtml-mp)

A movie magazine from the publishers of Elle, Hachette Filipacchi. Premiere is a web only magazine, the print edition ceased publication April, 2007. The new mobile web edition of Premiere carries entertainment news, movie reviews with lots of still photos and box office rankings.

Premiere's online edition has shut down.


What's This?

Green Planet

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://planetgreen.mlogic.mobi (xhtml-mp)

The Discovery Channel's newest network, Green Planet, won't launch until later this year but the web and mobile web sites have been up for a while spreading their environmental message with an extensive collection of articles focusing on the message that we can and must alter our lifestyles to prevent the destruction of our ecosystem.

The Green Planet network has shut down along with its website


What's This?

CelebWire

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://celebwire.mobi (xhtml-mp)

CelebWire is a celebrity gossip site with new stories every day and a searchable archive of over 2900 items of dish and dirt of your favorite stars.

May-2013: Parked domain


What's This?

ITV

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wap.itv.com/ (xhtml-mp)

The mobile Web site of the UK's oldest commercial TV network. News, sports & weather plus lots of promotional material for the network's TV shows. For Formula One motor racing fans, ITV has a page of FI results and news

ITV no longer has a mobile or responsive site.


What's This?

Toronto Star

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.thestar.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Mobile edition of the Toronto Star,Canada's largest daily newspaper. The text-only site has a selection of local, national and international news stories plus business, sports, entertainment and living sections, Toronto weather and horoscopes. The iPhone version of the site, thestar.com/iphone, includes photos and works well in other full web mobile browsers including S60 Webkit and Opera Mini.

No longer has a mobile site.


What's This?

GeoSpot Mobile

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.geospot.com (xhtml-mp)

Geospot is a new local search service for the US. The unique feature of Geospot is that it only shows establishments that are open right now or at another time you specify.  Results include click to call phone numbers and a map.

I wasn't too impressed with Geospot. The results of a search for "bar" returned some bars but also several gas stations!.  A query for "sushi" returned relevant results but missed many nearby places including my favorite. The site sets the body text font size to 8 px which is unreadably small on my N95's 320x240 screen when using the browser's default settings.

1-Nov-2010 - Site is gone


What's This?

buzzd

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://buzzd.com/m (xhtml-mp)

A mobile city guide with listings of local bars, clubs, restaurants & events in the U.S. and Canada. Buzzd aggregates listings from Citysearch, Time Out, ZAGAT, Flavorpill, Metromix together with updates from friends and other buzzd members. Source: Tappity

13-Apr-2012: Buzzd has shut down


What's This?

Veerle's Blog

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://v.duoh.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Web designer Veerle Pieter's blog covers design, tools and techniques.  This is another site mobilized by Mobify who is getting quite a following with the design folks. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Apr-2012: No longer has a mobile or responsive site.


What's This?

Mason OH Pulse Journal

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.pulsejournal.com/ (xhtml-mp)

The Pulse Journal provides local news and sports coverage to Mason, West Chester, Deerfield Township, Liberty Township, Little Miami & Kings, Ohio.

Merged with the Mason Pulse-Journal and Fairfield Echo as "Today's Pulse" at  m.pulsejournal.com


What's This?

indieshows.

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.indieshows.net/ (xhtml-mp)

IndieShows is a user run website for independent music offering free event, venue and mp3 posting and searching.Listings include live shows like concerts and recorded shows like podcasts. Mobile view by Mobify.

22-Nov-2009: Just a parked pagenow.


What's This?

Beef.mobi

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://beef.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Strictly for beef lovers, Beef.mobi has a large selection of recipes, beef industry news and videos of cattle. Source: Tappity

Parked domain


What's This?

WhoCanHelp?

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.whocanhelp.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Interactive market place for finding local businesses to perform services you need like yard work, music lessons, or home repairs. Registration required. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

1-Nov-2010: No longer a mobile site


What's This?

WapMap

Content:  Usability:
Last seen at: http://wapmap.com (wml)
Down 02/18/05
What's This?

DigitalCity

Content: *****  Usability: XXX1/2
Last seen at: http://mobile.digitalcity.com/ (wml)

Guide to dinning and nightlife in 36 major US cities. Very comprehensive in both the number of establishments it covers in each category and the amount of detail in the reviews. Better than the major guide books for finding great dining and clubs. Covers a lot of spots with a predominately local rather than tourist clientele. It even covers neighborhood bars. Usability is great on Openwave Browsers and a bit of a pain on others but the content makes the effort worthwhile. Update: The Visitor's Guide section is broken the links don't go where they are supposed to. If you choose Hotels you get Beauty Salons , picking museums takes you to car dealers, etc!


Down 2--Apr-2009


What's This?

Guardian UK

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX1/2
Last seen at: http://avantgo.com/uk (HTML5)

Good little mobile site by Great Britian's Guardian.com. Has a daily news quiz which is quite difficult for non-Brits!

Update: 3-Mar-2009 the site now requires Avantgo registration which is free with some limitations.  But why bother as the Guardian as launched their own mobile site at m.guardian.co.uk with expanded content and no registration required.


What's This?

Ewan's Musings

Content: ***1/2  Usability: XXXX1/2
Last seen at: http://ewan.symbiandiaries.com/index.wml (wml)
Symbian OPL guru Ewan Spence's blog. Ewan has moved his blog to http://www.ewanspence.com/blog/ but no longer has a mobile edition. I recomend adding Ewan's RSS feed to Mobile RSS Reader.
What's This?

MTekk

Content: ***1/2  Usability: XXX1/2
Last seen at: http://www.mtekk.com.au/mobile/ (HTML5)

Microsoft PPC and Smartphone forum - technical tips and reviews. Updated approximately once a week. Microsoft devices get the full web site but lesser phones are redirected to the mobile site which is a WiForum and requires registration.

Dec-2009: Parked page.


What's This?

Dave's PDA

Content: ****1/2  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.davespda.com/mobile/ (HTML5)

News, updated almost every day. Reviews of hardware and software. Specifications of all recent Pocket PC devices

16-Jan-2011 - Site is gone.


What's This?

Infospace Weather

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.infospace.com/info.avant/infoapp/weather.htm? (HTML5)
Last seen at: http://www.infospace.com/wml11/w/index.wml (wml)

Basic current and 5 day forecast data from AccuWeather.com. PDA site also has International weather. Usability suffers because you must re-enter your zip or city every vist

8-Sept-2009 Redirects to non-mobile Infospace homepage


What's This?

i-Mode Webcams

Content: ****  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://helderman.hobby.nl/i/cam.php (HTML5)
A neat little mobile site called i-Mode Webcams which has links to fifty   Image 2    Image 1   or so webcams around the world - mostly cityscapes and street scenes. Handy if you want to check the weather across the world or across the city. The images are scaled down to 120 pixels wide by default so they should work on just about any WAP2 phone. You can also specify a different width if your phone has a larger screen. You can even enter the url of any other webcam you happen to know of and view it on your mobile.

22-Jun-2008: The cams don't display anymore. There's a message on the front page "Sorry - as of 2008, the Hobbynet firewall is blocking webcam input."
What's This?

Kayak

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://www.kayak.com/moby/ (HTML5)

  Image: KayakMobile Home  Kayak.com is a relatively new travel meta-search engine which searches over 120 travel sites including all the major airline sites except Southwest, many hotel chain sites as well as many travel booking sites like Orbitz, CheapTickets. It includes a lot of sites you might not think of searching like AsiaRooms.com or Wegolo.com which specializes in European budget airlines. Kayak is purely a search engine like Google - it doesn't do bookings. You search for the lowest fare or for a hotel or car rental and then follow a link to a third party site like aircanada.com to actually book you travel. I really like the full web version of Kayak. I usually search there first as I've found that it consistently finds better deals on airfare and hotels than Travelocity, Orbitz or Expedia.

KayakMobile emphasises simplicity. The interface is very straight-forward and easy to use because you can only search for flights departing today and rooms for tonight. Which is actually a good idea for a mobile travel site, especially in the US where almost everyone has access to a computer. If I'm planning a trip tomorrow or next week I'll do it online on my computer not on my phone. But if I'm already traveling and my flight is cancelled or my plans change I'd be very likely to want to use my mobile to find a flight or room for today.

I wanted to like KayakMobile as the concept of limiting choices in a mobile web app is a good one and I really do like Kayak.com on the web. The flight search seems to like it would be most useful especially for the road warrior whose plans are always changing. Just punch in you departure and arrival airport codes and click the search button and you should get a list showing price, departure time airline and a click to call airline booking number.

  Image: KayakMobile Results  Kayak worked reasonably well for me. There's a lot of flexibility in how you can enter departure and arrival points; airport code, US zip-code or city with or without state or country. If you enter something ambiguous, Kayak will prompt you with a short list of choices. Still, it is a beta and there were several areas that need work. The biggest one is that the phone numbers aren't clickable! That means that on the 90% of phones that don't have cut and paste you have to memorize or write the number down, exit the browser and dial. Almost all WAP 2 phones support the wtai: uri standard for click to call - why not use it? There are also some issues with international support. When I searched for flights from Asian departure points I got the error "Please enter a valid departure date" but of course there is no way to enter a departure date as all searches are for today only. I imagine that the problem is that it's already tomorrow in the Far East and Kayak is using a US date and time instead the current date and time at the departure airport. Interestingly, the hotel search doesn't seem to have this problem with Asian cities. Another area that needs improvement is that in over half the air searches I tried, I got "No flights available". I can understand that all flights today are fully booked. But in that case why not show the next available flight even if it is tomorrow.

You can also search for restaurants and check the weather at your destination. I didn't find the restaurant search very useful. If I entered a specific zip-code (you can't enter an address) it seemed to start searching from the city center rather from the zip-code I entered. Although you can filter the results by cuisine there are no reviews or any indication of price range. The weather feature does work well giving detailed information on current conditions

I learned about KayakMobile from Cameron Moll at Authentic Boredom who did an extensive writeup on it with lots of screenshots.

Kayak.com no longer hasa mobile friendly webapp, only Android, iOS and Windows Phone native apps.


What's This?

TV Squad

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://m.tvsquad.com/ (HTML5)

TV show reviews, industry news and star gossip.

Redirects to AOL TV which hasn't been updated since 2011.


What's This?

Crunchgear

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.mippin.com/mip/prev/list.jsp?id=507 (xhtml-mp)

Crunchgear is a gadget blog that's part of the TechCrunch empire. The site is using Andy Moore's new WordPress Mobile Plugin to detect mobile devices and deliver a mobile formatted version. Mobilization doesn't seem to be extended to TechCrunch and MobileCrunch yet.

Crunchgear has been rolled into the main TechCrunch site.


What's This?

Movly

Content: *****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.movly.com (xhtml-mp/wml)

A new movie fan site featuring Trailers in 3gp format, promotional stills (resized to fit your browser's width), user reviews, film industry news, a user forum and an extensive database of film lore.

Parked domain.


What's This?

USA Today Olympics

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.usatoday.com/item.jsp?key=olympics_sp (xhtml-mp)

USA Today has a single page Olympics sub site with links to 15 stories. The site adapts to deliver wml to older phones that don't support html and there's also an iPhone version of the site at iphone.usatoday.com/#_/item.jsp?key=olympics_sp.

3-Jan-2010 - Page is gone


What's This?

CheapenGadget

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://cheapengadget.com (HTML5)

Cheapen Gadget Mobile HomepageCheapenGadget is a new site from MechaWorks, publisher of PhoneNews.com. It's a blog style "Deal" site that's updated several times a day with the best deals on consumer electronics, computers, mobile phones and accessories both on the web and in stores.

Christopher Price and his team at MechaWorks did a great job of leaking the Black Friday ads of the major retailers days and even weeks ahead of time, now they are doing the same thing for CyberMonday which is tomorrow.

The mobile version of CheapenGadget uses the same template as PhoneNews. It does a decent job of making the site easier to use with most phone browsers.  The front page has summaries of the last 20 posts, a search box and a list of categories. It's 30 KB of text, which is too large to load on some feature phones and takes a lot of scrolling to get to the bottom.  Cutting the number of posts per page in half would make the site easier to use and compatible with more phones.  Individual posts are smaller but watch out for the links to the source of each deal.  They go directly to sites like BestBuy.com, most of which are not mobile friendly.

Redirects to technews.biz


What's This?

The Symbian Blog

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://thesymbianblog.com/ (xhtml-mp)

The Symbian Blog - HomepageI recently found Vaibhav Sharma's site, The Symbian Blog.  The name is a little misleading as focus of the site seems to be mainly Nokia and S60  rather than Symbian as a whole.  There's very little about UIQ and MOAP. But I suppose that's OK as those platforms are likely to soon become history and Symbian will become  a synonym for S60.

The site is updated daily and features product announcements, hardware and software reviews and tips for getting the most of your S60 phone. It's not pure Symbian boosterism either.  Vaibhav doesn't hesitate to take S60 and Nokia to task in the areas where they deserve it; like the slow, convoluted and unreliable Nokia Software Update application or that the N96 is in many ways a step backward compared to the N95.  I'm really enjoying The Symbian Blog, it's timely, nicely designed, well written and makes good use of images and videos.  A worthy addition to the ranks of S60 news and review sites.

The Symbian Blog just launched a mobile edition using a new mobile WordPress Plugin called MobilePress.   MobilePress does what Alex King and Andy Moore's plugins do which is to detect mobile devices and deliver the full content of your blog in a stripped down, single column format. But MobilePress adds a few tricks.  First it supports themes using the same structure as regular WordPress themes. There don't seem to be any custom MobilePress themes yet but I'm sure there will be soon.  Another nice thing that MobilePress does is to support different themes for specific devices.  You can have four themes. One each for the iPhone, Opera Mini, Windows Mobile and a generic theme for everything else.  You can also tell MobilePress to deliver the default PC version of your blog to one or more of the three non-generic platforms.

One thing MobilePress doesn't do which I think is really needed in a true mobile plugin is to split pages and re-size images to control page weight. To be fair the other WordPress mobile plugins don't either but it's still a problem that needs to be solved.  As it stands, The Symbian Blog's pages average about 40 KB, too large for feature phones using the Openwave and Motorola Browsers.   Other than that MobilePress looks quite promising, I'll try to set it up on a test site and share my impressions.

Folded into The HandHeld Blog


What's This?

NoobGibs

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.noobgibs.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Video Game news and photos brought from the mobile edition of gaming blog NoobGibs.com. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

3-Jan-2011 Parked domain


What's This?

Ubi Ubi

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://www.ubiubi.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Ubi Restaurant Guide

Search for restaurants in most U.S. metropolitan areas. Results, which seem to be limited to places listed in the Michelin guidebooks, include address, click to call phone number and maps. 

There are links to Michelin reviews but registration is required to view them.  Basic registration is free but limits you to 10 reviews per month, unlimited access is $2.50/month.  The concise reviews average 130 words and include price range and star rating. Source Oh! Mobile Directory

Gone


What's This?

CheckPR.mobi

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://checkpr.mobi (xhtml-mp)

CheckPR.mobi

I know that a lot of webmasters obsess over their site's Google PageRank. It's one of Google's measures (on a scale of 0 to 10) of a site's value. A higher PageRank is supposed to correlate with a high placing in search results and thus potentially greater ad revenue.

Google seems to be devaluing PageRank of late, removing it from Webmaster tools and publicly stating that it is only one of 200 signals that they use to rank sites and saying that PageRank is not useful to site owners.

Still, many site owners do track their PageRank and that of competitors sites. The only public source of PageRank from Google is via the Google Toolbar for Firefox and IE. Google has not published an API for retrieving PageRank, but there are apparently some undocumented APIs as dozens of sites offer PageRank lookup, alternate toolbars and Firefox extensions. Up to now none of these has been very mobile friendly. So Andres at the Mobility.mobi forum built a nice mobile friendly PageRank checker. It's at http://checkpr.mobi and seems to work very well with results that match the ones from Google Toolbar for the sites I've checked.

Parked Page


What's This?

Here Is The City

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.hereisthecity.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Global financial news from Europe's financial center, "The City of London". Carries about 40 full-length text-only items from hereisthecity.com's full site.

5-Feb-2012: No longer has a mobile edition


What's This?

Hongkiat - Web Design

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.hongkiat.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Hongkiat is a Malaysian web designer and blogger.  His gorgeous site features tips and resources for designers, developers and bloggers including free icon sets, design tutorials and pieces showcasing great site designed and photography.  Mobile View is by Mobify,

 

Jan-2011: Mobile view is gone


What's This?

mviva

Content:  Usability:
Last seen at: http://wap.mviva.co.uk/index.wml (wml)
Down 02/18/05
What's This?

Salon.com (Text-Only)

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.salon.com/partner/avantgo/ (xhtml-mp)

  Salon Mobile  Salon.com is a pioneer online news magazine. It was founded in 1995 at the beginning of the Internet boom and has always featured well written articles on news, politics, the arts and technology as well as book and movie reviews. Salon has struggled to survive economically and since 2001 has limited access to a portion of its content to paying subscribers only.

Salon is also a pioneer on the mobile web, launching a PDA edition in 2001. It was aimed at users of the Omnisky network for Palm OS PDA's. Omnisky, which started service in late in 1999 was an early data-only wireless network based around a battery powered modem which attached to Palm V and Vx PDA's and allowed users unlimited wireless access at up to 19.2 Kbps for around $50 per month. The technology was CPDP, an early protocol which allowed analog cellular providers to provide packet data service. Omnisky is long gone and most of the CPDP networks have been shut down - but Salon continues to maintain the Salon PDA site using the same layout and design that it's had since the beginning, now as an Avantgo site which is also available on a public URL.

It's actually a perfectly good design for a site like Salon which is mainly text anyway. There are quite a few similar cHtml PDA news sites originally designed for 160x160px PDA's which look good and have excellent usability on today's WAP2 phones. Nothing fancy, just a shallow cascading menu structure leading to individual articles. Salon's mobile site typically contains about 10 articles from the current issue.

I was surprised that Salon was using a mobile page design that was five years old but was pleased to find that old design still plays well on today's mobiles. If you are looking for something more modern, Salon now has a second mobile site designed for smartphone browsers at mobile.salon.com.  It contains about 200 articles with images and reader comments.

Salon has finally shut down this old Avantgo site witht the URL redirecting to  mobile.salon.com.

 


What's This?

JumpTap

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://la.jumptap.com/la/wap/ (HTML5/wml)

 JumpTap ImageJumptap is a mobile search, advertising and content delivery (think ring tones and games) startup that got $22 million in round C funding recently. Their search business provides a "white label" search box on mobile carrier portals. Other white label search companies include FAST, InfoSpace and Medio. Compared to Google or Yahoo, white label search vendors claim to generate more revenue for the carrier by sharing a larger percentage of advertising dollars and by giving prominent placement in search results to the carrier's billable content like ring tones. I suspect many carrier execs consider Google, Yahoo, AOL and MS Live as competitors for their advertising revenue and user allegiance and prefer not having them on their portals.

I've heard a lot about JumpTap but I've never seen their search service. The white label mobile search engines don't advertise their urls and don't seek off-portal visitors. They are usually accessible only from within the carrier's network. Occasionally I find a carrier whose mobile web deck and white label search is on a public URL. I found FAST search (review) on Australian operator Telstra's portal. Today I found JumpTap (la.jumptap.com/la/wap/) on Alltel's portal (wap.alltel.motricity.com/portal/home).

I expected to see links back to the Alltel portal and to the carrier's ring tone downloads prominently featured in JumpTap's results. But when I searched for "Britney" I got links to fan sites and entertainment news. There were some ringtone sites in the results but they were off portal and even included free sites like MocoSpace! I did a number of other queries and didn't see any real evidence of bias toward Alltel pages or products. I'd have to say that JumpTap, at least as configured for Alltel, is no more biased than Yahoo or Google. JumpTap doesn't return as many hits as the well known engines but it seemed to be pretty good at returning a relevant and useful results for the queries I tried. I was pleasantly surprised by JumpTap's search product. The best part is that it's a pure mobile search engine that returns only sites that are designed for mobile rather than transcoded PC sites. Both Yahoo and Google emphasize transcoded web results over mobile ones. AOL and MS Live don't even search the mobile web, returning only full web sites modified to be more mobile friendly. While transcoded pages have their place, they are never as usable on the tiny screen as well designed mobile pages.

Everyone seems to be trying to improve mobile search lately. There seems to be a consensus that the pure web search model doesn't scale down very well. There's considerable experimentation going on to try to provide answers rather than just a list of web pages containing the search terms. Google has added OneBoxes to mobile results - if your query contains the name of a sports team, you get a OneBox with scores and game schedules. Queries containing place names get a weather forecast OneBox while those with a company name get a stock quote. Yahoo Mobile Search has been doing something similar for awhile and just announced oneSearch which combines results from multiple Yahoo search engines like photos, maps and web on a single result page. oneSearch is part of the downloadable Yahoo! Go product but I suspect that it will soon be rolled into Yahoo's mobile web search as well.

Jumptap's innovation is to have a single search box return results grouped into categories like Mobile Web, News, Local, etc. After you submit your query you get a list of categories and then choose a category to see the results. The screen shot shows a result of a search for "Apple". The News category contains stories about Apple published today, Mobile Web results are mostly items from Apple Tech sites like MacRumours. Chat results are various UPOC chat rooms with Apple in their name and Stock is a detailed APPL quote. I find this design works pretty well. I can enter shorter queries and use the categories as filters to zero in on the types of results I want. I didn't expect to like JumpTap but I do.

Disclaimer: JumpTap seems to have a lot of highly placed links to my sites, yeswap.com and wapreview.mobi, more than the big search engines. I don't know why this is. I certainly didn't pay them and I don't know anyone there. The only contact I've had with JumpTap is submitting my sites via their online form, something I do with every mobile search engine I hear about. Hopefully my site's high search rankings haven't colored my review, but you have been warned.

1-Jan-2013 Site is down.


What's This?

ViewTraffic

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://viewtraffic2.net/ (HTML5)

This site aggregates links to live traffic cameras in the US. Currently list over 800 cameras in 10 states. The well organized organized site makes it easy to find cameras in your area although the images tend to a little large for most mobile browsers.

2-Oct-2007 Site is down!


What's This?

dir.mobi

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://dir.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

dirMobi HomepageAn ambitious new portal, dir.mobi features three types of content. At the top of the page are links to more than 340 mobile sites. Below that are mobile front ends to several internet directories that are part of the Open Directory Project, like the ChefMoz restaurant review directory and a large song lyric database. There's a tremendous amount of content here although response can be very slow and some links lead to non-mobile sites. Finally there a section of news, weather, stocks and directions, etc. which links to major sites like USA Today, Yahoo and Mapquest.

Parked domain


What's This?

ChannelnewsAsia

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/palmnews/main/list/1/.html (HTML5)

Asian and world news, sports, entertainment and business from Singapore based site. ChannelnewsAsia has launched a mobile video news service which is available in only on the Singtel network. You can watch a promotional video here.

Nov-2010: "This service is available only to Singtel Mobile subscribers!"


What's This?

USA Water Polo

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://usawaterpolo.mobi (xhtml-mp)

USA Water Polo has a slick profession ally designed site (usawaterpolo.mobi) with schedules, scores, photos and bios of each member of the men's and women's team and free wallpapers to download.

3-Jan-2010 - Domain gone


What's This?

A&E

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.aetv.com/ (xhtml-mp)

A&E (mobile.aetv.com) Cable TV network A&E's mobile site carries brief summaries of tonight's lineup of shows and longer pieces promoting recently launched shows, currently Parking Wars, Paranormal State and Intervention. There is also a selection of polls where users vote on such burning issues as whether Gene Simmons and Shannon Tweed should get married.

No longer a mobile or responsive site.


What's This?

NeedTickets

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://needtickets.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Locate tickets for concerts and festivals in the UK. This site doesn't actually sell tickets but lists available tickets, with prices and offers click to call access to the actual ticket agency.

Shut down


What's This?

Snappr

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://snappr.mobi (xhtml-mp)

Continuing with the holiday shopping theme I started yesterday, Snappr (snappr.mobi) is an online shopping search and price comparison site.  It's the mobile variant of Snappr.net on the web. Snappr is new, both the .net and the .mobi launched this year.

 

The mobile site opens to a simple search box where you can enter a product name or the number that appears under the UPC bar code found  on most products.  Snappr returns a list of products with price, a picture and user rating if available. The site is available in English and German and can be used anywhere in the world.

Does this sound familiar? Snappr is a near clone of Barcle which I reviewed in Feburary.  To Snappr's credit, it's a more attractive site than Barcle and seems to work better too.  Searching is much faster and the bar code database seems more complete.  In a quick test with three products, a prepaid mobile phone, a book, and an analog to digital TV converter box, Snappr found the phone and the book, while Barcle found none of the items.  Plus, Snappr shows prices in the search results list, while Barcle requires you to drill down into each item's detail page to find the cost.

It's not all rosy with Snappr though. Products are returned in random order rather than sorted in some logical fashion like by price from lowest to highest. The prices shown are often wildly different than the actual price on the retailer's site. Like that SIM card for $1.19 shown in the screenshot.  The actual price on Amazon is 29.99! There doesn't seem to be a pattern, sometimes Snappr's price is higher than the real price, sometimes lower.

Like almost every mobile shopping site, actually making a purchase can be difficult. There is a "Buy.." link for each item which goes to the retailer offering the product.  But the link often goes to a full web page that is impossible to use on a mobile. Fortunately many of Snappr's items are sourced on Amazon.com which does deliver a mobile page whenever it detects a mobile browser. Registered Amazon users with a credit card on file can even make "1-click" purchases on the Amazon mobile site.

Snappr also has an iPhone app that can use the phone's camera to capture product bar codes so you don't have to key in those long strings of digits. That's a great idea which I hope they extend to other platforms. I don't have an iPhone to try it out with but according to a post on the Agregated Intelligence Blog, it works but is harder to use than Android's ShopSavvy due to limitations of the iPhone's SDK. Source: Mobility.mobi

27-Jun-2010: Snappr was aquired by ShopSavvy publisher Big in Japan and shut down


What's This?

Freedom Bank

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://freedombank.mobi (xhtml-mp)

Freedom Bank has just two locations in Fairfax and Vienna, Virginia. The bank's mobile site adoesn't actually offer online mobile banking, however it does have addresses, current CD promotions and click to call numbers for branches and telephone banking.

No longer offers mobile banking


What's This?

Greenville NC Reflector

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wap.reflector.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Local and national news; prep, college and pro sports; business, editorials, winning lottery numbers and movie showtimes for Greenville,NC from the mobile web edition of the Greenville Daily Reflector.  Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

No longer has a mobile or responsive site.


What's This?

GoalKeeper.mobi

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://goalkeeper.mobi (xhtml-mp)

Soceer news and live scores.  Searchable database of over 600 soceer news items, The items are really just headlines with no way to read the full story.  Live scores page is unwieldy with over 100 results on a single long page. Source: Mobility.mobi

3-Jan-2011 Site is down


What's This?

Symbian-Guru

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.symbian-guru.com/ (xhtml-mp)

A great news and tech blog for Symbian users.  It's frequenty updated with news, reviews and tips for getting the most out of your Symbian phone.


What's This?

BART Next Train

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://thenexttrain.com/at/bart/ (xhtml-mp)

Shows next train times for any station on San Francisco's BART rapid transit system.

4-Jan-2010: The Next Train service is no longer available for BART.


What's This?

MFWS - Internet Tools

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mfws.ro/ (xhtml-mp)
Last seen at: http://mfws.ro/index.php?v=wap (wml)

MFWS - Mobile Internet Tools

MFWS.ro "My Favorite Web Site" is the largest mobile friendly collection of web, SEO and mobile utilities I've found to date. 

There are some tools here that are hard to find on th mobile we including link checkers, ping, whois, traceroute, a page rank viewer, SEO keyword suggester, favicon maker, image re-sizer, video downloaders, a web based FTP client, MP3 cutter, an anonymizing proxy and a lot more.

When you get tired of the techy toys there's a small directory of better than average WAP games for your amusement.  Source: Mobility.mobi

Site is gone


What's This?

Tvider

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.tvider.com/ (xhtml-mp)

A easy way to share videos, audio, pictures on Twitter from your phone. Browse for a media file on your phone and attach it to a tweet. Requires that your phone support "browse for file",  which Symbian, S40 and Opera Mini do but Windows Phone, pre-Froyo Android and many feature phone browsers don't.

26-Mar-2012: Site is down.


What's This?

Whoiz.mobi

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://whoiz.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

A simple, fast no-nonsense service for looking up domain registration details such as domain age, expiration date, nameservers, contact phone number, email and mailing addresses  for .mobi sites only. Via: Mobility.mobi

Domain exprired


What's This?

Go2Movies

Content: *****  Usability: XXX1/2
Last seen at: http://www.go2.com/setlocation?u=section%2Fmovies-and-tv& (xhtml-mp)

Find out what's playing, when at a theater near you. Reviews too.

Go2 no longer has a dedicated movies section.


What's This?

HTML Viewer

Content:  Usability:
Last seen at: http://www.tmobileapps.com/htmlviewer/ (wml)
Enter a web url and Html Viewer will convert it to wml so that it can be viewed on a wap1 phone. This service seems to be broken returning site not found errors on all sites.
What's This?

Link Blog

Content: ***1/2  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.bitsplitter.net/linkblog/ (HTML5)
Bitsblitter Link Blog - Links to mobile content of interest to mobile developers and visionaries. Hasn't been updated since 2004!
What's This?

WebInspire

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX1/2
Last seen at: http://www.webinspire.co.uk/spv/contents.html (HTML5)

Downloads and Links for MS Smartphones

Dec-2009: Site is gone.


What's This?

The Herald (South Africa)

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.theherald.co.za (xhtml-mp)

A brand new mobile news site from Port Elizabeth, South Africa's daily newspaper, The Herald. The mobile site features about 30 full length articles from the paper's News, Sport and Live (entertainment) sections. Source: Mobility.mobi

No longer has a mobile edition.


What's This?

Technorati

Content: ****1/2  Usability: XX1/2
Last seen at: http://m.technorati.com/ (HTML5)

Technorati goes mobile with a blog search engine. Searches the full text of millions of blogs for a word or phase. Seems much better than Google, etc.at finding references to recent events and breaking news. It returns the first 20 or so words of the found article and links to the full article on the blog's web site which is usually difficult to navigate with a mobile.

Nov-2009: Technorati has shut down their mobile site: Visitors to m.technorati.com now see:

"Technorati Mobile Users Upon launching the new Techorati site, we have closed the legacy m.technorati.com site. There are no plans at this time to open up a new WAP site. If you use a smartphone, you will find that most Technorati pages will render properly in your phone's browser."


What's This?

WirelessWatch

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wireless-watch.com/wp-mobile.php (HTML5)

Wireless-Watch Mobile Community is a commercial site that gathers the postings of a number of bloggers who write on mobile topics. BTW, this isn't a "splog", the original authors have given Wireless-Watch permission to to use their material and in fact recieve some sort of compensation.

Nov-2009: Wireless-Watch has switched their CMS for WorPress to something called Prototype.  Not only is theire no longer a mobile version but visitors with mobile browsers are told to use IE or Firefox!!


What's This?

S60.com

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://blogs.nokia.com/s60blogs/ (xhtml-mp)

  S60.com   S60.com is a Nokia owned site promoting the S60 smartphone platform. In addition to a web site, S60 also has an attractive mobile site which has some interesting and useful content for current and prospective S60 users. I like that there is a complete database of all S60 devices, past and present, with fairly detailed specifications. There is also a short page of hints and tips, a page of news releases, another one highlighting several recently released applications, a download section, an event calendar and links to a couple of other Symbian themed mobile sites. The site is unusual in that it uses a background image, rare on mobile sites and not widely supported by mobile browsers - but it sure looks good on the Openwave V7 browser on my Motorola :).


Update Nov-2009: S60.com was shut down by Nokia in 2009 when the S60 brand was retired in favor of just plain "Symbian" 


What's This?

Nseries

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://web.nseries.com/mobile/nseries/english/index.jsp (xhtml-mp)

Nokia's promotional site for the N-Series Symbian phones. Lot's of marketing talk to take with a grain of salt but the product photos and quite complete technical specs for each model make it worthwhile.

Re-directs to the non-mobile Nokia main site.


What's This?

Wei Wei

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://weiwei.mobi/ (HTML5)

The "Chinese Queen of Pop" and Olympic Ambassador has a mobile site. The attractive, graphics rich pages feature photos, videos, Wei Wei's blog and downloadable tracks and ring tones (some free, some not).

Site is gone.


What's This?

Ta with You

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.tauyou.com/mobile/mt.php (xhtml-mp)

Translate text between 14 different languages. This site is very easy to use, and supports lots of languages. Translation quality seems decent, no worse than Google's anyway.

Tauyou's mobile translation service has been discontinued.


What's This?

mobGas

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.mobgas.com/mobile/ (HTML5)

With gasoline prices on the rise again, here's another site that lets you search for the lowest gasoline prices by US zip code. mobGas's interface is pretty efficient, just a single field where you enter a zipcode. I like that the zipcode field uses -wap-input-format:"NNNNN" to switch most phones to numeric input. On the other hand, results are not sorted by price and in some cases were not current.

20-Nov-2010 - Site is down


What's This?

The Biography Channel

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.biography.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Bio. (mobile.biography.com) The mobile site of cable TV's The Biography Channel. You can deficiently kill some time on this site which features well-written, in-dept bios of what Biography calls the "Top 100 Biography Subjects" in such varied categories as Actors, Royalty, Military Figures, Musicians, Inventors and Athletes. Each bio averages a a dozen mobile screenfulls so there's a lot of content here.

No longer a mobile or responsive site.


What's This?

CinemaNow

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://uvumobile.mobi/cn/ (xhtml-mp)

CinemaNow, a service that rents and sells movies for download to your PC, has launched this new mobile website which lets you order and queue movies to be downloaded to your PC. Movie downloads take a while so being able to start the process in advance, say from work, is a potential time saver. The mobile site is also supposed to have free streaming movie trailers, although I couldn't find any.

Dec 12010: CinemaNow no longer has a mobile site.


What's This?

Schizo's Place

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://schizo.tk/ (xhtml-mp)

Schizo's Place homepageIf your not put off by the name or the scary masthead photo of a raving lunatic, you will probably find this site useful. Schizo tracks the latest applications, especially free ones and provides download links. The emphasis is on Windows Mobile but Symbian and Linux apps are listed too The site also has a small collection of mobile web links and mobilized versions of dozens of blogs created from RSS and Atom feeds.

Nov-2011: Now a password protected private photo gallery


What's This?

Slice.ca

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://slice.qwapi.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Mobile web site of Canada's Slice cable TV channel. Television schedules, celebrity gossip, horoscopes and details of Slice shows including Project Runway Canada, Til Debt Do Us Part, Superstar Hair Challenge, The Mom Show, Mr. Friday, Party Mamas, Shear Genius, The List and Wedding SOS. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

No longer a mobile or responsive site.


What's This?

Rocky Mount NC Telegram

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://rockymount.qwapi.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Local newspaper site featuring local, state and national news, sports, weather, editorials, columns, business, entertainment and winning lottery numbers for Rocky Mount, North Carolina. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

No longer has a mobile or responsive site.


What's This?

CN Traveler Tipping Guide

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.cnt.acumob.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Conde Nast Traveler's Mobile Tipping Guide lists recommended tips for hotels, restaurants, bars, cab drivers and tour guides in various countries around the world. Source: Branding Unlimited

Redirects to the non-mobile friendly Fodor's home page.


What's This?

MedPage Today

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.medpagetoday.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Breaking Medical News from Medpage Today a medical news service, which provides daily coverage of developments that impact clinical practice, and offers free continuing medical education courses and credits to physicians and healthcare professionals. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

No longer has a mobile version


What's This?

Channel 4

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.channel4.com/ (xhtml-mp)

The UK's Channel 4 public TV offers a variety of streaming video clips including comedy, documentaries and movie reviews.  Must are free but some cost 50p.

No longer a mobile site


What's This?

Travel Channel

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.travelchannel.com (xhtml-mp)

Attractive site with travel news,  program schedules, show descriptions, video excerpts from Travel Chanel shows and lots of photos. Source Oh! Mobile Directory

No longer a mobile site.


What's This?

mDiabetic Home

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mdiabetic.com/ (xhtml-mp)

mDiabetic offers online carbohydrate lookup and  a downloable Java ME diabetes diary for mobile devices. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

20-Nov-2010 Site is down

 


What's This?

fashionfreax

Content: ****  Usability: XX
Last seen at: http://fashionfreax.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

fashionfreax which describes itself as a  "Street Style Community" has hundreds of fashion photos grouped by designer or brand.  The site invites you to join and "...share your styles" but there doesn't appear to be any way to register! Source: Mobility.mobi

Aug-2010: Parked Page


What's This?

FreeFtp.mobi

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://freeftp.mobi (xhtml-mp)

Mobile web based FTP front end.  Manage your servers from any phone. Capabilities include upload, download, chmod and a text editor.  Could be handy but I worry about security.  It's not an HTTPS site and there is no privacy policy. Source Mobility.mobi

Site is gone


What's This?

This Is Bristol

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/mobile/home (xhtml-mp)

News, weather, sports and columnists from the mobile edition of the Bristol (England) Evening Post's website.

No longer has a mobile edition


What's This?

Softmaza YouTube Download

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://softmaza.in/yt/index.php (xhtml-mp)

A YouTube downloader for mobile devices.  Paste the URL of a desktop YouTube page to download the video in MP4 or FLV file format. It works OK, although it would be a lot easier to use on mobile if it  accepted YouTube mobile URLs.

20-Oct-2010 - No longer a mobile site.


What's This?

Ananova F1

Content: **  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wap.ananova.com/sport/index/1/?keywords=F1 (wml)
Formula One News Site that is only updated sporadically.

Update 15-Oct-2008 Access to all of Ananova Mobile is now blocked to non-Orange UK subscribers.
What's This?

Hollywood.com

Content: *****  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://wap.hollywood.com/ (xhtml-mp/wml)

Find movies and buy tickets online. Reviews, box office rankings and movie news.

Redirects to movietickets.com


What's This?

Infospace Movies

Content: *****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://www.infospace.com/info.avant/infoapp/movies/index.htm (HTML5)

Find theaters and movies near your location. Capsule reviews.

8-Sept-2009 Redirects to non-mobile InfoSpace homepage


What's This?

Speckyboy Design Magazine

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://speckyboy.com (xhtml-mp)

Speckyboy Mobile

Paul Andrew's Speckyboy Design Magazine is one of my favorite web and graphic design blogs. Content includes design showcases and loads of articles listing and reviewing Paul's favorite free and high quality design resources.

Paul recently created a mobile view for Speckyboy using Mobify.me's WYSIWYG online mobile design tool and hosting service. Yesterday he posted a Showcase of 20 Mobile-Friendly Popular Design Blogs which includes screenshots of each listed site, all of which were built using Mobify.

Almost all the top web design and development sites made the list including Smashing Magazine, Sitepoint, CSS Tricks, Six Revisions, Abduzeedo, A List Apart and Web Designer Depot. It's really great to see the web design community so wholeheartedly embracing mobile. And the fact that so many top design sites choose Mobify. is certainly a strong endorsement of its quality, flexibility and usability.

No longer has a mobile view and not a resposive design site.


What's This?

TripInfo

Content: **  Usability: X
Last seen at: http://wireless.galileo.com/tripinfo_wml (wml)

Flight status. Poor interface. You must first pick you airline from a multipage scrolling list which doesn't include all airlines.

Dec 2010 - Site is gone.


What's This?

M-Central

Content:  Usability:
Last seen at: http://www.m-central.com/ (HTML5/wml)
Dead 12/4-12-11
What's This?

Network Query Tool

Content: ****  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://wap.svendsen-net.dk/nqt.php (wml)

Resolve hostname to IP, IP to hostnamw, whois, dns information, ping

Site has shut down.


What's This?

FreddyReyes.com

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://freddyreyes.com/forums/index.php?;wap2 (xhtml-mp)

Mobile edition of an eclectic forum built using Simple machines forum software (review). As board covering software mods and hacks for Windows mobile and Motorola phones. There are also boards on hacking home media players, Microsoft Windows tips and tricks and to round it all out a jokes board and one on archeology. Quite a variety but all interesting.

Mobile forum is gone


What's This?

Nintendo World Rpt.

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/wireless/ (xhtml-mp)

Mobile edition of a blog covering the Nintendo portable and console game systems.

5-Feb-2011 No longer has a mobile site


What's This?

English-Finnish Dictionar

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://efe.scape.net/ (HTML5)

English-Finnish-English Online Dictionary: Nice little site for translating words and phrases between the two languages.

Offline


What's This?

Style

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://style.enpocket.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Style magazine's mobile edition. Style mobile hardly bothers with text at all, the site is almost entirely composed of photographs of the latest fashions.

Style has replaced it's mobile site with an iPhone only app.


What's This?

Nevada Tourism

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://nv.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

The official Mobile Web site of the Nevada Commission on Tourism is a visitors guide which lists events, things to, hotels and RV parks and a six day weather foecast.  The site looks like an iPhone web app but page sizes are generally under 20 KB and the site works pretty well even on feature phones. 


No longer a mobile site


What's This?

Acronym Geek

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.acronymgeek.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Look up acronyms.  Easy to use and returns a lot of results for business and organizational acronyms. For a service with 'Geek' in its name it seems to be missing most computer related acronyms. It didn't have SAN - "Storage Area Network", SAS - "Software As Service" or AJAX - "Asynchronous JavaScript and XML"!.

Redirects to m.all-acronyms.com


What's This?

Urban Outfitters

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.urbanoutfitters.com (xhtml-mp)

The youth oriented clothing chain Urban Outfitter's mobile site offers online shopping, a store directory,sharable  "wishlist", company blog and links UO profiles on Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter and Flickr. Making purchases requires an Urban Outfitters online account which can only be created on the Urban Outfitters desktop site.


Apr-2011: No longer has a mobile site!


What's This?

The Meego Blog

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://themeegoblog.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Formerly Maemo Central. A new blog from The Symbian Blog's Vaibhav Sharma covering news, reviews, guides and videos of Maemo and Meego devices and applications.

Folded into The HandHeld Blog


What's This?

The Grid

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://onthegrid.mobi (xhtml-mp)

A location based mobile social network, It features Twitter integration, media sharing, chat rooms, IM and user reviews of places and things.  Launched in 2007, The Grid is now one of the top 10 mobile sites in South Africa according to Nielsen. In addition to the mobile site, The Grid also offers a Java ME app, desktop site and a Facebook app. Click here for a slick video demo of all that The Grid can do.

Redirects to Vodacom home page


What's This?

MyBread

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mybread.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

A new mobile site dedicated to bread making. It features a small database of bread recipes organized by type of flour and country of origin.

Expied domain


What's This?

Ithaki

Content: ****  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://ithaki.net/wap (wml)
Second only to Google in number of hits returned. Can limit to sites in only one langage (English, Spanish, German, French, Italian or Portuguese).

Down: 11-Aug-2007, email to the site's feedback address bounces.
What's This?

Search Engine Rountable

Content: ****  Usability: XX1/2
Last seen at: http://www.feedroll.com/rssviewer/view_rss.php?source_id=8286&feed_compact=0 (HTML5)

Interesting site discussing search engine technology and search engine optimaiztion. Links lead to pages that are not mobile content


Site is returning a MySQL Error


What's This?

MetaCritic

Content: *****  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://search.metacritic.com/avantgo/ (HTML5)

Compilation of review highlights from many sources. Movies are ranked based on percentage of favorable reviews.

Down: 14-Feb-2008 Site returning "403 - Forbidden"


What's This?

SMT-5600 Tips

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wap.x2-hosting.com/ (HTML5)

Tips and Tricks for the popular Audiovox SMT-5600 MS Smartphone aka HTC Typhoon which is also sold as the I-mate SP3, Qtek 8010, Orange SPV C500/C500S and Dopod 565. Links to free software and forums. The links lead to pages that aren't mobile friendly which isn't really a problem if you are using a Smartphone (PIE can handle the links just fine) and have an unlimited data plan.

Jul-2010; Dead link.


What's This?

StockPoint

Content: ***  Usability: X
Last seen at: http://wireless.stockpoint.com/stockpoint/ (HTML5/wml)

For serious research, the best mobile investment site is StockPoint's PDA site. I'm surprised that the site exists at all. StockPoint.com as an financial web site disappeared about the time that it's parent company, Pinnacor was acquired by MarketWatch in 2003. But the mobile edition of Stockpoint is still up and running with current data and is a real treasure trove for mobile using investors. While you can't create a portfolio, there are fast loading 1 day, 1 week, 3 month, 6 month, 1 year and 5 year charts. But the best feature is the wealth of data on fundamentals. Nowhere else on the mobile web can you find data like Average Daily Volume, Price/Sales, Price/Book, Price/Cash Flow, Market Capitalization, Shares Outstanding, Float, Earnings, Sales, Book Value, Cash Flow, Cash Reserves, Dividend Yield, Annual Dividend, Payout Ratio, Return on Equity, Return on Assets, Quick Ratio, Current Ratio, LT Debt/Equity, Total Debt/Equity, Gross Margin, Operating Margin and Profit Margin (fourth image). Their is also a table of analyst rankings StockCharts.com showing the number of analysts ranking a stock as a Buy, Hold or Sell, etc. In addition to the US site, StockPoint also has sites for the UK, German (in German) and Italian (in Italian) exchanges.

2-Dec-2008: This site deems to be slowly dying. Quotes and charts still work but the news and comentary sections come up blank or show errors.

Aug-5-2011 Site is gone


What's This?

Cinematical

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://www.cinematical.com (HTML5)

Movie reviews, news and gossip.

Redirects to an old version of Moviefone.com that hasn't been updated since january, 2012.

 


What's This?

HTML Dog

Content: ****  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://htmldog.com/test/handheld.html (HTML5)

HTML Dog, a site featuring HTML and CSS tutorials, hosts this page for testing mobile browser support for the CSS "handheld" media type. "One web" development will be easier when most mobiles recognize the "handheld" media type - does your's? Test it here.

404 Not found


What's This?

TocMag

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://tocmag.com/mobile (HTML5)

Free downloadable user created Java magazines and videos. The site is famous (or infamous) for the How to Roll a Joint video it briefly hosted. The magazines are entertainment themed and the ones I tried were free from controversy and quite nicely done. Unfortunately, the wml download pages have un-escaped ampersands in URLs which will prevent them from working on some phones. See Validation is Your Friend for some tips on how to avoid this on your mobile site.

Update: Dec-2010: Parked page.


What's This?

Traffic Info (Wiresoft)

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://www.hivegot.com/traffic/index.wml (wml)

 Wiresoft Image Traffic Info (formerly Wiresoft) has mobile traffic maps for Phoenix, San Diego, San Francisco, Denver, Chicago, Baltimore/Washington, Minneapolis, Portland, Salt Lake City, Seattle, Tacoma, WA and the Canadian border crossing at Blaine, WA. The maps are resized copies of standard web maps from various local agencies. There's an overview map divided into anywhere from 3 to 12 numbered sectors. A set of numbered links takes you to a map of the corresponding sector. Most of the maps are 100px wide with the option of "big" 200px maps for several cities. It's all pretty low-tech - wml, no tables or image maps - which has the advantage of working on almost any phone. The readability of the maps varies considerably but is mediocre at best, hardly surprising considering that they all come from different sources and are downsized from much bigger maps.

Site is gone


What's This?

Hack In The Box

Content: **  Usability: XX
Last seen at: http://hackinthebox.org (HTML5)

Short news items related to computer and internet security. Not the best mobile design, All items are on a single page which is only 11 KB but requires excessive scrolling. Each item has a link to it's source which are news and tech PC web sites.

No longer has a mobile version


What's This?

mVies

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mvies.in (HTML5/wml)

Local movie listings for Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore India. Browse or search for current films and get show times for all theaters.

24-Feb-2013: Parked domain


What's This?

Mobicious

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://m.mobicious.com/ (HTML5)

 Search ResultMobicious is an innovative new mobile content search portal. You can search for downloadable content of various kinds; ringtones, games and wallpapers and also SMS Services and mobile web sites. Users can review and rate each content item in Mobicious and upload and share images. You can search just a single category like games or tag multiple categories and search them simultaneously. I especially like that searches can be restricted to only free content.

Xen Dolev at Xellular Identity has a good post covering Mobicious' business model and their PC web site. I'm going to focus on the mobile side of Mobicious... (more)

Site is down


What's This?

DialedIn

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.dialedin.com/wap (xhtml-mp)

Mobile social network based on nightlife and events. Anyone can browse the lists which cover New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Santa Barbara with more cites planned. Members can contribute restaurant, bar and club reviews, event listings and pictures and send invites to other members to arrange to meet at an event.

17-May-2009 Down


What's This?

Showbizfree Mobile

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://mirror.opnr.com/ (xhtml-mp)

ShowbizFree HomepageWith no change in the URL, this site, which started out has the mobile edition of British tabloid "The Daily Mirror", has morphed into "Showbizfree Mobile"

Showbizfree seems to be one of the better sites for free multimedia content. There are more than 300 wallpapers, 30+ movie trailers and over 70 MirrorTV episodes on the site. The wallpapers all seem to be 240x320px in size. It would be nice if the site re-sized them to fit your phone's screen size but that doesn't seem to be the case. MirrorTV episodes are short, averaging 10 seconds in length, 176x144px in resolution and with an average file size of about around 300KB. Movie trailers are the same resolution but much longer and can be over 2MB in size, something to watch out for if you are on a metered data plan or are worried about hitting the cap on an "unlimited" plan.

ShowbizFree pages are a little on the large size for low end phones, averaging 34KB (20KB is generally considered the maximum page weight for a site that will work well in all mobile browsers). This is reflected in the site's Ready.mobi rating. On the five point Ready.mobi scale, ShowbizFree got a Two (Bad, "...will probably display very poorly on a mobile phone").

Site is gone


What's This?

History Channel (US)

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.history.com/ (xhtml-mp)

The US edition of The History Channel (mobile.history.com) mobile site listing tonight's lineup with a description of each show's next episode, a "This day in History" item and several feature articles on historical topics.

No longer a mobile or responsive site.


What's This?

MobileTude

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.mobiletude.com/ (xhtml-mp)

A "Mobile Magazine for Busy Women" featuring short articles on health, beauty, entertaining, relationships and "getting things done".

parked domain


What's This?

Cape Business News

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://wap.cbn.co.za (HTML5)

Published in Cape Town South Africa, this site offers stories on South African business trends and opportunities plus an events calendar and and a five day Cape Town weather forecast. The site's user interface is rather quirky with only today's top three stories on the front page. However if you open the last story and hit the link labeled "Back" at the bottom of the page you can get to prior days' stories.

No longer has a mobile edition.


What's This?

National Geographic Chan.

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://www.ngc.mobi/ (HTML5/wml)

National Geographic Channel home pageI love the National Geographic. The 120 year old monthly magazine, published by the tax-exempt National Geographic Society, covers world history and culture, geography, archeology and natural science with articles that are thoroughly researched yet highly readable and entertaining. It's full of interesting, high quality photographs and maps too. The Society also produces films and television programs, hosts a popular website at nationalgeographic.com and operates the National Geographic Channel on cable TV.   Earlier this year the Society added a  National Geographic Channel mobile web site at ngc.mobi.

The mobile site's homepage is currently dominated by promotions of a couple of upcoming National Geographic TV specials; one on identical twins and the other on the connection between Kung Fu and the Shaolin Temple.  The Channel's detailed TV schedule is a click away and there are 15 short articles under the banner "Behind the scenes at the National Graphic". These cover topics ranging from an interview with former president George Bush about his game fishing exploits to an ex-con's struggle to survive "outside".  There's a poll too, today's question is; "Do you think your genes control your sexual orientation?".  The site also has a SMS trivial game based on the show "Dangerous Encounters" which follows a fearless herpetologist around the world in his quest to capture and study all the world's crocodile species.

I found the National Geographic Channel's mobile site surprising light on content.  The TV schedule is useful but not as useful as ones that show all channels like wireless.tvguide.com.  The  "Behind the scenes..." stories are short and tend toward the superficial. I expected better based on the quality of writing in the magazine and the Society's TV programs.  I don't understand why publishers dumb down their mobile sites like this. Content is king on the mobile web too. The news and information sites on the mobile web that get the most traffic like m.cnn.com and espn.mobi feature a hundred or more long-format articles.  National Geographic has plenty of great content, why aren't they putting it on the mobile web?

Usability of ngc.mobi is reasonably good except on phones with limited memory which won't be able to load the site's 50 KB home page.  The "Behind the scenes..." stories are text only and aggressively paginated and only average about 7 KB. The pagination requires you to click "More" several times to read the whole story, which is annoying. It's  also unnecessary as any browser that can load the homepage to reach the articles could also load any of the stories as a single page.

The National Geographic Channel no longer has a mobile or responsive site.


What's This?

SearchTube.mobi

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://searchtube.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Browse and search mobile formatted videos on YouTube and Blip.tv. Source: Tappity

Seems defunct. Displays nothing but an "iPhone coming soon" message!


What's This?

dAAA!

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://daaa.me/ (xhtml-mp)

dAAA! which calls itself a "mobile web shortcut service" is a new mobile portal with a unique interface.  Instead of a list of links, dAAA! offers a text box where you enter a mobile shortcut code like "!tc" for Techcrunch or "!nyt" for New York Times.  Replace the "!" in the shortcode with "." to view the site's RSS feed or with "@" to go to its Twitter page. Users can add shortcodes for their favorite sites.

Jun-2010: Site is gone


What's This?

Virus Removal Guides

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://comprolive.com/rem/ (xhtml-mp)

Mobile friendly site listing common Windows PC virus with guides for their removal.

No longer updated


What's This?

Napster

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.napster.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Napster

After being sued out of existence by the RIAA, the famous Napster peer to peer file sharing service's name and logo passed through a number of hands before being acquired by big box electronics retailer BestBuy. 

Today BestBuy operates Napster Mobile as an online music store where users can search and browse Napster's catalog of 9 million songs, listen to 30 second previews of songs and purchase and download DRM-free MP3's for 99 cents per track. Users can download a second copy of purchased songs to their PC's at no additional charge. Source: Taptu Touch Web Report (PDF)

5-Feb-2012 Aquired by Rhapsody and shut down


What's This?

MobileSecurityGuide

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://getunity.com/mobilesecurityguidemobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Guide to security related software for mobile devices with reviews.  Covers password keepers, encryption, hotspot security, VPN and anti-virus apps with reviews and best practices. There's some useful information on this site although I don't agree that mobile anti-virus apps are needed or useful at this time.

5-Feb-2012: Site is no longer active.


What's This?

O2 Formula 1

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://o2.wap.twii.net/main.sps?param2=2794 (HTML5/wml)

Good coverage of the Formula One Grand Prix racing season including team and driver profiles and some photos.

17-Dec-2010 - Site is down


What's This?

Prague Airport Shuttle

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wap.airport-cars.cz/ (wml)

Reserve a place on the shuttle between Prague airport and the city.

31-Oct-2010: Redirects to a limo service's non-mobile page.


What's This?

StockCharts

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://stockcharts.com/avantgo/ (HTML5)

StockCharts.com features 6 week and 6 month "candlestick" charts with moving averages which are popular with technical analysis proponents. Charts are all that there is on the site, no quotes or news.

StockCharts.com no longer offers a nobile site.


What's This?

MB YubNub

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://metroblogging.com/yubnub/ (HTML5)
Alternate YubNub Mobile front end. For most uses, Phil Bogle's version (above) is preferable because it mobilizes YubNub's results using Skweezer. But for those times when Skweezer doesn't do the right thing, Metroblogging's Mobile YubNub is the answer. Just be careful to use commands that won't overwhelm you browser. (WAP1 users don't need to worry about overwhelming their browsers as everything is transcoded to bite-size wml by the Yeswap transcoder.)
8-May-2008 This page no longer exists at metroblogging.com
What's This?

TANN San Jose

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://traffic.tann.net/maps/snjpda.jsp (HTML5)

TANN.com is a subscription service that offers mobile traffic maps of many cites and a free map for San Jose. The maps is 215px wide and very readable if your phone supports that resolution.

Dec 2010: Site is down


What's This?

Northwest Full

Content: *****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.nwa.com/ (xhtml-mp)

 Northwest Airlines MobileUS air carrier Northwest Airlines has rolled out a new mobile site that includes virtually all the functionality of their desktop web site. The new site (mobile.nwa.com) supplements rather than replaces the airline's existing and more limited mobile site at wireless.nwa.com.

The new site really does include all the functionality of the desktop web site. You can book flights - including award travel, enroll in the frequent flier program, do online check-in and even browse Northwest's Investor Relations page!

Mobile.nwa.com was developed by Usablenet, well known for it's tools for making web sites accessible to persons with disabilities. There's a lot of overlap in the requirements in making a site accessible, and making it mobile friendly. Both need to emphasize text over images, put main content first and have simple, intuitive navigation. Useablenet describes their technology as transcoding but it's clearly different than the totally automatic mobile transcoding done by Skweezer or Google. There seems to be some sort of custom mapping used in adapting Northwest's web site to mobile. Images on the web site are not resized, rather a completely different set of fewer and small images are used. The navigational menus are organized differently in the mobile site and some of the link text is changed slightly. The end result is a site that includes all the content of the desktop site in a generally mobile friendly format.

I was a little surprised that Useablenet didn't use accesskeys in their design as they add greatly to usability with phone browsers that lack a pointing device. Device support is somewhat limited, Useablenet's web site indicates that their solution adapts content to fit the limitations of different mobile browsers, even wml-only one. I guess that's an optional feature that Northwest didn't choose to implement as the site sends xhtml-mp to the wml-only Nokia 3510i emulator and gave out of memory errors on some pages like Flight Search using the the Openwave V7 browser on my Motorola i855. Opera Mini on the same phone handled all the pages I tried with no issue. Blackberries, Smartphones and modern mainstream phones with more capable browser like NetFront or Nokia's browser should be able to use the site.

In spite of issues with some devices, mobile.nwa.com is genuinely useful and allows travelers to do things like book flights and check- in to a flight that until were until now impossible using a handheld device.

 

Northwest's is not the first or only site to have gotten the Usablenet treatment. Amtrak Mobile is also powered by Useablenet. Other's I've found are mobile.delta.com and sites for Hilton Garden Inns and 1-800-Flowers.com.

Northwest Airlines was aquired by Delat Airlines and no longer exists.


What's This?

Poker Player

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://pplayer.opnr.com/ (xhtml-mp/wml)

An online mobile magazine for palyers of the game of poker. Coverage of professional poker tourniments and tips to help you become a better player.

3-Jan-2011 Inactive domain


What's This?

Bridgewater NJ Courier Ns

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.c-n.com/ (xhtml-mp)

The Courier News from Bridgewater, NJ

Merged with the Hme News Tribule and redirects to its m.mycentraljersey.com site


What's This?

MetaJam

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://metajam.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Nice mobile interface into the IMDb's (imdb.com) treasure trove of information about movies, actors and directors. Easier to use than IMDb's official mobile site at http://www.mdog.com/bookmarks/imdb/htmlsite MetaJam was James Pearce's entry to an internal dotMobi site building contest, see the other entrants at Tripleodeon

24-Feb-2013: Site is broken and returns, "Query error in..." on most requests.


What's This?

Bionic Beauty Blog

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://bionic-beauty.com (HTML5)

The Bionic Beauty Blog reviews beauty products and gives grooming advice. The mobile edition uses Alex King's WordPress Plugin.

No longer a mobile site


What's This?

Mindzai

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mindzai.mobi (xhtml-mp)

Mindzai (mindzai.mobi) Mobile edition of Mindzai.tv an arts and design blog covering fashion, photography, video. Lots of nice photos on this site although they aren't resized for mobile making some of the pages too big, as much as 150KB, to load on many phones.

Site is gone.


What's This?

Euro2008Info

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://euro2008info.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Euro2008info (euro2008info.mobi) News, Scores, Schedules and Standings from the 2008 UEFA European Football Championship.


What's This?

Poemus

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://poemus.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

A collection of short poems for children. What better way to entertain your children while waiting in line, etc than by reading them a poem or two.

Domain expired


What's This?

Ping.fm

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.ping.fm (xhtml-mp)

Ping.fm MobileThanks to Mark Guim at The Nokia Blog, I've discovered a neat new mobile tool. It's Ping.fm' s mobile site and Mark used to announce his engagement! Congratulations Mark.

 

If you don't know Ping.fm, it's a service that lets you simultaneously update multiple social networks. So instead of posting a Tweet to Twitter and then going to Facebook and any and all the other social networks that you use and updating your status on each one - you just update once on Ping.fm all the services get the new statusautomatically. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, FriendFeed, LiveJournal, Bebo, hi5, Mashable and Delicious are just a few of the services that Ping.fm can update. It's not limited to status updates either, you can post documents of any length, including images, so ping.fm can be used for posting simultaneously to multiple blogs.

There are lots of ways to send an update to ping.fm; you can use the ping.fm website, an iGoogle Gadget or update by email or IM. Ping.fm has an API and 3rd parties have written tons of plug-ins and apps so that you can post to ping.fm from within WordPress, Facebook, a Mac Gadget, FriendFeed and many other platforms.

Add to that list the mobile web. Ping has a lightweight mobile site at m.ping.fm with an iPhone variant at i.ping.fm. Both mobile sites are functionally identical, a text box where you type your message, and a "Ping It!" submit button. There is also a drop-down that lets you override your default posting format (status, micro-blog or blog) or choose a specific service to post too. Simplicity itself.

5-Jul-2012: Aquired by Seesmic and shut down


What's This?

konigi

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.konigi.com/ (xhtml-mp)

User experience designer Michael Angeles's site includes design critiques, articles and tutorials on web design, development and usability.  There are also lots of  links to tools and  resources for designers.  Michael used Mobify to create the mobile view of his site.

Jan-2011: Mobile view is gone


What's This?

exchanges.nyse.com

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://exchanges.mobify.me/ (xhtml-mp)

The corporate blog of NYSE Euronext, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, covers trading and market news.  The site's mobile view was created with Mobify

The New York Stock Exchange no longer has a mobile site


What's This?

PreviewMOB

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://previewmob.com (xhtml-mp)

Free movie trailers in streaming or downloadable hi and low res 176x144 3gp or downloadable 320x190 mp4 formats.  Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

29-Oct-2010 - Parked page.


What's This?

WAPFORECAST

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wapforecast.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Current conditions, and detailed weather reports for hundreds of cities around the globe. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Sept-2010 Parked domain


What's This?

Current TV

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://m.current.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Mobile website of Current TV, the television news and entertainment channel started by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore. A big (170 KB) site best suted to advanced devices it has news, technology, environmental, movie. music and comedy sections.  Many items include iPhone/Android formatted (mp4 480x320, 3MB) videos. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Current TV shut down in 2013. current,com is a parted domain displaying a page of ads.


What's This?

FoxRad Houston Weather

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://media2.myfoxhouston.com/foxradmobi/ (xhtml-mp)

FoxRad.mobi is another piece of Houston TV channel's KRIV's rather schizophrenic mobile presence.  It's a separate weather-only mobile site  that isn't linked to from the channel's mobile news site at wap.myfoxhouston.com, which has it's own weather section. On most phones the FoxRad site is a rather meh one page static affair with a couple of weather maps plus current and 7 day forecasts.  iPhone users get a enhanced version which users of lesser devices can access at media2.myfoxhouston.com/foxradmobi/iphone/ Source: Mobility.mobi

Weather radar is now a section within the main MyFoxHouston mobile site at wap.myfoxhouston.com and thew standalone mobile weather radar site has been shut down.


What's This?

Browser Info Gatherer

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://browser.mcloide.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Mobile friendly display of your browser's characteristics including request headers, screen size, color depth and cookie support. Has an option to download the report as a text file.


5-Feb-2012: Site is gone.


What's This?

XMLHack

Content: ***1/2  Usability: XXXX1/2
Last seen at: http://xmlhack.com/av_index.php (HTML5)

XML development articles. No longer updated

Site is down


What's This?

Northwest Lite

Content: ****1/2  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://wireless.nwa.com/ (HTML5)
Last seen at: http://wireless.nwa.com/wml/index.wml (wml)

Flight status, frequent flyer balance, fares, flight availability, lounge directory, view.change reservations.

Northwest Airlines was aquired by Delat Airlines and no longer exists.


What's This?

Windows Mobile 24/7

Content: ***1/2  Usability: XX1/2
Last seen at: http://www.clieuk.co.uk/wmmobile.shtml (HTML5)
Annother Pocket PC and Windows Mobile news site. Updated daily. Another PDA site that isn't really suited for the majority of phones Update: 7-Sept-2008: Windows Mobile 24/7 is stillaround at www.windowsmobile247.com but no longer has a mobile editions.
What's This?

Waply

Content: **1/2  Usability: XX1/2
Last seen at: http://www.waply.com/wap/ (wml)

Limited results. Some queries return compile errors on most phones because the site doesn't properly encode the "&" character in search results.

Down: 31-Dec-2008


What's This?

Bizjournals

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://bizjournals.com/mobile/ (HTML5)

Bizjournals covers national business news. But the best feature is that you can filter by city, industry or company. Over 50 cities are covered. There is also a search function. Great resource.

Feb-2013 No longer mobile formated or responsive


What's This?

WamPad

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.wampad.com/ (xhtml-mp)

  wampad main page  

2-Mar-2009: Site is down!

I got an email from a fellow named Shawn McCollum asking me to take a look at his new mobile site, Wampad.com. I believe that Shawn has actually created a new type of mobile site - a search based portal. The basic concept is that you enter a search phrase once and then use it to query a bunch of different sites.

Wampad's front page is simplicity itself. There's just a drop down, a text box and a Go button. You chose a type of search from the drop down, type something in the text box and press the button.

So what kinds of things can you do with Wampad? Well for one, you can go to a website. If you choose "Website" from the drop down, enter "wapreview" and then press the button - you get a screen with four links; "Search for wapreview", "go to www.wapreview.com", "Go to www.wapreview.net" and "Go to www.wapreview.org". So you have potentially saved yourself some typing. This may not be a big deal - many mobile browsers will add the "www." and ".com" to an address if you leave them off - but that doesn't help for .net or .org. But there's a lot more. If go back to the Wampad front page, your search text is still there, at least with most browsers, and you can make a different selection from the drop down. There are 18 choices;   Google News result  

  • Search - search for a mobile site on Google or a web site on Yahoo or MS Live (with transcoding). Thank you, Wampad for making the Google default a mobile search rather than a search for inferior transcoded web sites as Google itself does.
  • News - search Google Mobile News.
  • Shopping - do a UPC lookup or do a product search on Froogle, Amazon, Yahoo Shopping or Become.
  • Stocks - enter a ticker symbol to get a quote, chart or company news from Yahoo Mobile Finance.
  • IMDb - do a keyword search across the Internet Movie Database's huge archive. The search string can be an actor, title or keyword.
  • MySpace, MSN Spaces, or Flickr - search for a user's page. MySpace is Google transcoded, Spaces and Flickr searches return the respective sites own mobile versions.
  • Del.icio.us - Enter a del.icio.us user id to retrieve the user's bookmarks tagged with "mtag".
  • Upcoming.org - search for an event. You have to enter an upcoming.org event id. I have my doubts about the utility of this - how would a user know the id in advance?
  • Patents - enter a patent number and read the patent abstract and related documents from the United States Patent Office - transcoded by Google.
  • Horoscope - enter a birth date or a sign name and see a horoscope from MSN Mobile.
  • Weather - enter a zip code for a Google Mobile forecast.
  • Lottery - enter a zip code for your state lottery's winning numbers from MSN Mobile.
  • Movies - enter a zip code to see what's showing nearby or enter a title for a review - from Yahoo mobile.
  • Flights - enter a flight number and you'll be prompted to chose an airline. Supports 10 airlines (US majors, Air Canada, Virgin and British Airways) - looks up the flight on Travelocity's mobile flight tracking site.
  • Wikipedia - search for an encyclopedia entry - uses the main Wikipedia site transcoded by Google rather than one of the several mobile interfaces to Wikipedia. Nothing wrong with that - the Google transcoder does as good a job as any of the mobile versions of Wikipedia, none of which are official anyway.
  • Wiktionary - search for a word on Wiktionary - Google transcoded.

  IMDb result  

That's a lot of choices, perhaps too many, but you can customize Wampad to remove any of the search types that you don't use and change the order in which they appear.

Wampad provides a consistent interface to many different sites. It also speeds searching by allowing you to use the same query string against multiple sites without having to retype it. This is a real help as most phones (except smartphones) don't offer copy and paste. Even Opera Mini, as great as it is, doesn't support cut and paste. Mobile web users tend to avoid entering text and in fact the W3C's Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 document urges mobile developers to minimize text entry. Yet for tasks involving searching, a text query is generally the most efficient and often the only practical way to perform the search - think getting the definition of a word, tracking a flight or bringing up a MySpace user's page. Wampad lets users reuse what they have already entered, saving effort. It's not un-common to search for the same word across multiple search engines, the encyclopedia and the dictionary. Users tend to use the same user name on multiple social sites like Flickr, MySpace, a personal bog on MSN Spaces etc. so there's reusability there too. You'd use the same zip code to get weather, movie show times or local news. Ideally, I'd like to see Wampad remember my last ten or so search strings and let me choose them from a list like auto-complete in web browsers. Maybe I'm making too much of the value of reusing previous text entry, but I think it's small things like this that make mobile applications attractive to users.   Wampad options   While I think Wampad has created a useful new UI paradigm for mobile browsing, the site itself is still a little rough around the edges, understandable for a new site. Here are a few things that I think would make Wampad even better.

The site really needs some form of user help or documentation. It's not obvious that the patent search expects a patent number or the flight search expects a flight number, for example. I asked Shawn about documentation and he promises some soon. In the meantime, if you leave the search field blank and hit "Go" you will get a message telling you what type of input the current option is expecting.

The use of a drop down list to choose a search category is less than optimal on most phones. You have to first select the control and then scroll down the list, one click per line and then one more click to finalize your selection and yet another click to move off the drop down control to the text entry field. I'd prefer a series of links (no more than 10 links - less used choices could go in a sub-menu - so that each link can have an numeric access-key accelerator.) The links could also replace the "Go" button so that all the user has to do is enter their query in the text box then exit the text box and press say "1" for website or "2" for search or "9" for Wikipedia. This would reduce key presses and improve the user experience. Shawn did tell me that he is a least planning to reduce the default number of choices in the drop down to 10.

Finally, the "go to website" option needs to offer a way to go directly to the site without passing through the Google transcoder. While the transcoder serves a purpose in making non-mobile sites at least minimally usable on a mobile browser, most of the time I prefer to use sites designed for a mobile browser - which don't need the transcoder. Shawn recognizes this and is working on a way to render mobile sites un-transcoded.

Shawn has his own plans for Wampad enhancements. Wampad has a full-sized web site which currently displays the Wampad mobile site running in a mobile emulator. Shawn feels that showing mobile content on the desktop helps to drive increased mobile usage. I agree that many people think that reading the news or a map on a "tiny" cell phone screen is impractical, but when they actually see it done either on a real phone or even simulated on a web page they change their mind. Toward that end, Shawn's thinking of creating a Wampad sidebar. He's done a mock up of how it will look in Vista. Other plans for the web site include free user accounts which will allow registered users to more extensively customize Wampad. Users would also get a profile page where they could set up links to mobile versions of their Flickr, MySpace, Del.icio.us, etc. pages and then share their Wampad profile pages with their friends as a kind of mobile homepage. An enhanced local search is also planned where entering a zip code would return multiple types of local information from various sources. Shawn sees building a community of users as a key to the success of the site and said that while he'd like to add popular features like photo-sharing and moblogs, that as only one guy working on Wampad in his spare time he's better off concentrating on features that aren't found on existing mobile sites.

It's exciting to encounter someone with as many fresh ideas and as much enthusiasm for mobile as Shawn - I wish him the best of luck with Wampad.

 


What's This?

TANN Sacramento

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://traffic.tann.net/maps/sacpda.jsp (HTML5)

TANN.com's free traffic map of Sacramento is 215px wide.

Dec 2010: Site is down.


What's This?

EarthTimes

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.earthtimes.org/mobile/ (HTML5)

A good news site with a misleading name. I was disappointed to find that "Earthtimes.org" is NOT about saving the planet. Instead this EarthTimes is a World News site with lots of mobile formated hard news. Sections for the US, UK and India.

July 2011: Now a non-mobile environmental news site


What's This?

Medeo

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://medeo.mobi (xhtml-mp/wml)

MedeoNokia's free ad supported entertainment video site. Content is mostly from Hollywood and includes trailers and interviews with directors and stars.

The site delivers Real Media to Nokia N-Series phones and generic lower quality (H263 ACC) format to other phones. All the videos are low resolution. 176x144 even on the N95. I'm disappointed that Nokia doesn't send full screen 240x320 videos to recent N-Series devices.

Jan-2010: Medeo has shut down.


What's This?

S60 Widgets Library

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://widsets.mobi/library/ (xhtml-mp)

Widget LibraryNokia's S60 Widgets were launched at CTIA 2007 but until recently it was hard to find many actual Widgets to install. That's not a problem anymore as Nokia has created a Widget Library on the mobile web with over 1000 Widgets to choose from.

"Widget" a confusing generic name. The word is just so overloaded with different meanings. There are desktop widgets and browser widgets for PCs, J2ME based mobile widgets, GUI Widgets in various development tools and probably a few other kinds of Widgets I've haven't heard of.

Nokia's S60 Widgets are something else, a relatively new type of mobile Widgets, which for lack of a better term, I'll call "mobile AJAX Widgets". They look like standalone applications and are launched from icons in the S60 Launcher just like native and Java applications. The ability to be run simply by clicking an icon is what distinguishes AJAX mobile Widgets differ from Java ME based widget platforms like Plusmo, WebWag and Nokia's own Widsets. Each Widget is a small package of code created using the same technologies as web pages; HTML, JavaScript and CSS. In order for Widgets to work, the Nokia Web Runtime must be available in the phone's firmware. Currently that means an N95, N82, N96, 5320 Xpress Music, 6210 Navigator, 6220 Classic or E90. For some of these phones specific firmware versions versions are required too. More...

Shut Down: Nokia has shut Widsets and the S60 Widgets Library down.Most of the S60 widgets are now in the Ovi Store.


What's This?

Just Go Guides

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://justgoguides.mobi (HTML5)

Just Go Image MapJust Go Guides, a new service from ApiApi, Lda offers a mobile based alternative to traditional paper or electronic travel guidebooks in the form of a mobile web based travel guide.

The site, which covers Mexican and Central and South American destinations, contains background information for each country and region including sections on history, weather, customs, currency and transportation. The core content of the site consists of detailed city by city listings of hotels, restaurants and attractions. Listings include a picture, description, address, click to call phone number and user ratings. You can even book hotels and make restaurant reservations by texting a formatted message to Just Go's UK number.

JustGo.mobi redirects to a URL (http://justgoguides.com/iphone/1/index.shtml) that suggests that it's an iPhone site. But non-iPhones aren't blocked and there isn't any iPhone specific code on the site. Just Go - typical hotel listing However, the site uses image maps for selecting the regions within a country. Unfortunately, the majority of mobile browsers do not support image maps. iPhone Safari does, as do the browsers on most touchscreen phones. And thanks to their virtual mouse cursors, Opera Mini (in desktop mode only) and S60WebKit work very well with the image maps, even on non-touch screen phones. But on phones without image map support, there is no way to get past the region selection screen and into the core content of the site.

Just Go's mobile web site is a good resource for anyone traveling in the countries it covers, provided your phone's browser supports image maps.

Expired domain.


What's This?

Google Mobile Tips

Content: ****  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://google.com/mobile/m/tips/countdown/ (xhtml-mp)

Google Mobile Tips Google has put up a web site "Mobile Countdown to the New Year", which posts a new mobile tip every day through January 1st. The site is available in a full web version (google.com/mobile/tips) and also as a mobile website at google.com/mobile/m/tips/countdown

The tips demonstrate clever things that you can do with Google's mobile services.  There have been six tips posted so far and all have involved Google's mobile search, which is a good place to start.  Search on mobile uses the same powerful, but at times complex query language, as its full-web brother making it fertile ground for tip writers.

Still I'm hoping Google will get into other  areas of Goole Mobile cleverness like a look at ways you can sync your phone with Google Contacts and Calendar using third party tools.  Or a piece on creating a search feed in Google News and then following it in the mobile version of Reader.

Speaking of Reader, I'm a little disappointed that the "Mobile Countdown" doen't have an Atom or RSS feed.  I'd much rather follow these tips in my mobile feed reader than have to remmber to go back to the site daily for updates.

Nov-2009: Google has quietly shut down Mobile Tips


What's This?

Laredo TX Morning Times

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.lmtonline.com/lmt/index.htm (xhtml-mp)

News site from Laredo, Texas' daily paper, the Laredo Morning Times text-only mobile site is in English and Spanish and covers news, business, sports, editorials, obituaries and letter to the editor. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Nov-2010 - Mobile edition is gone


What's This?

Evacuations (Hurricanes)

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://evacuations.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Get the latest hurricane and tropical storm information on your mobile. Check hurricane and tropical storm satellite images and satellite loops. Also get evacuation maps and directions, hurricane preparedness tips and hurricane shelter info. Source: Mobility.mobi

3-Jan-2010 - Site is down.


What's This?

OfficialTime.mobi

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://officialtime.mobi (xhtml-mp)

A single purpose site that does one thing well; give the current time for every timezone in the world with a simple menu driven interface. 

3-Jan-2011 - Site id down


What's This?

National Archives U.K.

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/mobile/default.htm (xhtml-mp)

Mobile site of the National Archives in London.  Hours, walking, transit and driving directions to the Archives, hours, news of new acquisitions, events, exhibits and publications.

1-Nov-2010 The National Archives mobile edition is gone!


What's This?

WHEELWAP

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wheelwap.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Specifications and photos of classic and modern high performance cars. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

2-Feb-2013: Parked domain


What's This?

nokiAAddict

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://nokiaaddict.com/ (xhtml-mp)

nokiAAddict Mobile Site

No longer updated: see gerrymoth.co,uk for nokiAAdict's successor.

Gerry Moth's nokiAAddict.com is an indispensable site for Nokia and Symbian users whether they are actual addicts or just trying to get their phones to do what they want them to.

Gerry reviews the latest hardware and software but the best part of the site for me is its directory of S60 3rd and 5th apps.  When you need an an app, avoid the frustrations of the Ovi Store and doggy download sites and head directly to nokiAAddict's Downloads page where you will find direct links to all the essential apps and utilities that you need to make the most of your phone.  It's all there, Opera Mini, Skyfire and Bolt browsers, Screenshot, Gravity, Y-Files and hard to find apps like Nokia's Sports Tracker and Internet Radio and the 3 Skype client.

Don't miss the blog either especially Gerry's classic rants on operator dirty tricks "The Unlimited Con" and incompetent phone repair centers, "Never Take Your Phone To Carphone Warehouse For Repair".

The mobile version of nokiAAddict uses Alex King's WordPress Mobile Edition plugin.


What's This?

IWantInfo.mobi

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://iwantinfo.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Mobile web portal with local weather, new search, stock quotes, horoscopes and a categorized directory of several thousand mobile sites. Source: Mobility.mobi

Dec-2012: Site is gone


What's This?

SEC

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.sec.gov/ (xhtml-mp)

Official site of the US Securities and Exchange Commission has news, copies of speeches, public statements, litigation releases, administrative proceedings and proposed rules. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Site is down


What's This?

Freowap

Content: ***1/2  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.freowap.com/ (wml)
Another wml search site and link directory. Doesn't return a lot of hits but most of the ones it returns are still alive
Down: 31-Dec-2008 Parked domain
What's This?

Sterling State Bank

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.sterlingstatebank.mobi (xhtml-mp)

Rochester, MN based Sterling State Bank created their mobile site with dotMobi's Instant Mobilizer.  It has promotional information, locations and click to call contact numbers.  There is an online banking log in box on the mobile page but it is not functional as Instant Mobilizer doesn't support HTTPS. Source: OkOk

22-Nov-2010: the mobile site is gone


What's This?

AP Elections 2006

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://mer.ap.org/ (xhtml-mp)
Site Down 03-Feb-2007
 AP Elections 2006 Image Alexander at MobileRead has posted about the Associated Press' new Election 2006 mobile site (mer.ap.org) which offers state by state results for all national and major state offices. The results of this year's primaries are currently posted - most of these occurred months ago. This could be a great site to follow the Nov. 7th congressional and senate elections. However, it will need to be updated in a timely manner to be useful. It's not a good sign that as of 6 PM Oct 1st the link to the Sept 30th Louisiana elections on the front page leads to a page with no results have been posted yet! The site also carries election related news stories.
What's This?

Newsweek

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.newsweek.com (xhtml-mp)

 Newsweek Mobile Image Newsweek is Time magazine's major competitor among US weekly news magazines. Before the Internet and CNN these two publications held great power in influencing mainstream politics and thought in this country. Nowadays both are trying to reinvent themselves on the web - including the mobile web. I covered Time's new mobile site recently so here's a look at Newsweeks' mobile offering.

Newsweek, like Time, has turned to Crisp Wireless to create their mobile site. Crisp seems to specialize in repackaging web content, particularly news, for mobile use. Mobile.newsweek.com is a typical Crisp site with around 50 articles divided into sections. Numeric accelerator keys give one click access to sections and articles. Newsweek Mobile is afflicted with a bug I noted on several other Crisp sites. CSS styling is used to make selected links appear with reversed colors, white on red. Most mobile browsers ignore attempts to color links but the latest Openwave browser (Version 7 ) changes the foreground color to white while ignoring the CSS to make the background red so that the current link is rendered in unreadable white on white.

The Newsweek site is notable for including many of the magazine's well known columnists like Pulitzer prize winner Anna Quindland and well known tech writer Steven Levy (Insanely Great, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution).

Surprisingly, Newsweek doesn't really have it's own website. When you go to Newsweek.com you're redirected to a Newsweek section on MSNBC's site. If your using a mobile browser Newsweek.com redirects to a mobile version of the MSNBC Newsweek section. The Newsweek section within MSNBC's PC version is quite large with multiple news sections and over a hundred articles but the mobile edition is rather limited with only 12 stories linked from the start page. I'm rather surprised that Newsweek.com doesn't send mobile browsers to the new and much richer in content, mobile.Newsweek.com.

No longer has a mobile versuion


What's This?

Qantas Flight Status

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.qantas.com.au/wap/dyn/Main (wml)

Quantas - the Australian airline has two mobile sites with no duplication in functions.  This wml site provides real-time arrival and departure times.

Replaced by comprehensive mobile site at http://www.qantas.com.au


What's This?

TANN Tahoe

Content: *  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://traffic.tann.net/maps/tacopda.jsp (HTML5)

TANN.com's Lake Tahoe map seems to missing it's traffic overlay currently.

Dec 2010 - Site is down


What's This?

Lottery Results

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://infospace.com/info.avant/infoapp/lotto.htm (HTML5)

The winning numbers from all the US State and Canadian Provincial Lotteries.

5-Feb-2011 Infospace no longer has lottery results or a mobile site


What's This?

Zeer

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.zeer.com (xhtml-mp)

Zeer Shopping List Zeer is a new web (zeer.com) and mobile (m.zeer.com) site dedicated to groceries. It's full of information about branded food products. With Zeer you search for a product like "Corn Flakes" or "Green Beans" and get listings with ingredients, nutritional information and user reviews. Just about any branded edible or drinkable item seems to be indexed including alcoholic beverages. You can also create and manage grocery shopping lists using Zeer. When you add a item to your Zeer shopping list it becomes a link to Zeer's information page for that product so you can quickly revisit the ingredients, nutritional information and reviews.

Zeer on the mobile web contains the core of the service's features. Shopping lists can be viewed, and you can search for products and read some, but not all of the product information on the full site.

The biggest limitation of Zeer Mobile for me is that the nutritional information only includes Serving Size, Total Calories and Calories from Fat. Why not include it all, I want to know about Carbs, Sodium and Saturated Fat too. As the nutritional information is a separate screen in the mobile version there's no reason not to include the complete list, it's only a few lines of text, shorter than the ingredients list in most cases.  I'd also like to be able to register for Zeer using the mobile site and the option of logging with an easy to type user ID or PIN rather than  an email address. Typing @ signs on most phones  is an unnecessary usability hurdle.

Site is gone.


What's This?

Washington (iPhone)

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://Meenster.com (xhtml-mp)

Meenster Results PageWashington, DC's transit agency, the WMATA, has had a mobile site for years now, it's at wmata.com/mobile and is an old school WAP site that requires you to type in station names for some functions and is a bit quirky but offers a lot of information. There's a point to point trip planner, real-time arrival times for buses and trains and escalator outage information.

If you are looking for something a little more modern AND you have an iPhone (or possibly a phone with a Netfront browser or a Palm with Blazer) you can use Meenster.com. It's a bit more single purpose than the official site too. There's no trip planner and it doesn't cover bus lines, only the Metro. What Meenster does do is show you the departure time for the next six trains for any Metro station. There's also a link to a Google Map centered on the station. Google detects your device and provides a mobile formatted interactive map that lets you zoom in and out, scroll around, search for nearby businesses and get driving directions. Source: Oatmeal Stout - Justin Thorp's Web 2.0 blog

I tried Meenster on a number of non-iPhone phones and mobile emulators and sadly it doesn't really work on most of them. However the NetFront 3.2 Simulator handes Meenster perfectly, so I suspect that phones with NetFront or Palm's Blazer (which is NetFront re-branded) should work. It's really a shame that more of these iPhone sites aren't compatible with other mobile browsers. It seems to be related to the use of iPhone specific JavaScript libraries. There is a real need for a cross platform mobile Ajax library that can adapt to the different JavaScript environments of Opera, NetFront, S60 WebKit and the iPhone and maybe even degrade gracefully to plain xhtml for non-JavaScript mobile devices.

Dec-2009: Site is down.


What's This?

Tales of a New Yorker

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.talesofanewyorker.com/ (xhtml-mp)

An "Insiders Guide" showcasing what New York has to offer to residents and visitors. Covers news, events and all the things going on in New York City (and surrounding areas).

Parked domain.


What's This?

Smartimes

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.smartimesmagazine.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Smartimes magazine is a blog dedicated to the Daimler AG "Smart" car.  The site contains articles from smart club members around the world. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Parked domain.


What's This?

Easy Meet

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://easymeet.nokia.com (xhtml-mp)

Easy Meet Mobile Shared Power Point

Nokia has entered the online collaboration space with a Beta Labs offering called Easy Meet. No, it's not a dating service, it's a collaboration tool that lets you set up online meetings with shared Power Point documents and jpeg and png images, plus chat, meeting notes, voice conference calling (not implemented yet) and attendee presence indicators so that everyone can see who's joined the meeting and who's playing hooky or lost connectivity. Meetings can be add-hoc or scheduled and there's support for scheduling recurring meetings.

This a rather powerful set of features, rivaling pricey enterprise services like MeetingPlace and it's currently free .

Easy Meet is web and mobile web based with the mobile version offering all the features of the full edition. There's also a WRT widget version which I haven't tried. You set up a meeting by visiting easymeet.nokia.com and registering with your PC or mobile browser. Then you can add, delete and edit meetings, invite participants, upload local files or share files stored on Ovi Files. When you invite someone to a meeting they get an email, and optionally a text message. Clicking a link in email or message takes them to the meeting. Participants only need to enter their email address and a name to join a meeting they don't need to register for Easy Meet.

All participants can upload files and can download the files uploaded by others. One file at a time can be "Shared" by the host, meaning it's currently displayed in the web and mobile web interfaces. Meeting notes are kept by one of the participants, designated as the "Scribe", and can be viewed by all participants.

 

I

Easy Meet Chat Widget

I have some reservations about the PC browser version's user interface but the the mobile interface is highly usable. The widgets are displayed one at time with tab like buttons along the left side to switch between them. It's simple, usable and intuitive. A shared PowerPoint was accurately displayed and there are forward and back buttons to move through the sides. There's even a "Draw" mode that let's you mark up presentations on the fly. With the N95 I was only able to draw dots but I suspect line drawing is possible with a touch screen phone. My only real gripes with the mobile version are that the layout is fixed at 320px wide and horizontal scrolling is required on my N95 in portrait mode (image left or above); and that the navigation and drawing toolbar covers up part of the shared presentation and can't be hidden (top image).

It's great to see mobile users treated as full and equal participants in meetings. Because the mobile interface is web based it offers at least the promise of cross browser and cross platform compatibility. However, the only supported mobile browser currently is S60 Webkit. I tried using Opera 8.65 on a Nokia N95 and got an unsupported browser message. With the NetFront 3.2 emulator, the error was "Your Browser does not support AJAX!" and with Openwave 7 the the login form's submit button didn't respond to key presses. I did manage to get Easy Meet to load in Opera Mini 4.2, although the layout was a bit messy and most of the links and buttons didn't work. I was able to view a shared PowerPoint and advance through the slides using Opera Mini.

Easy Meet looks like a great collaboration tool, especially once conference calling works. I really hope that Nokia embraces the power of the web interface as the universal client and provides support for using any reasonably modern mobile browser with Easy Meet, not just Nokia ones.

1-Aug-2010: Site is down.


What's This?

OviFlash

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://oviflash.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Third party directory and reviews of mobile Flash games and applications in Nokia's Ovi Store with direct links to the item's Ovi download page. Source: FlashLite4Nokia

16-Jan-2011: Site is gone.


What's This?

Louisiana Sportsman

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://www.lasmag.com/mobile/ (xhtml-mp)

Louisianna Sportsman Mobile Site

Louisiana Sportsman Magazine's mobile site features daily user-submitted Louisiana fishing and hunting reports, and articles on hunting and fishing in Louisiana and Florida.  There are also links to NOAA.gov weather forecasts and radar maps for the area along with a directory of fishing and hunting guides.

Louisiana Sportsman is certainly a good resource for area sportsmen, however the mobile site's usability could be better.  The biggest issues are that the phone numbers in the guides are not click to call and the 768×496 px,  280 KB radar maps are too large to be usable on most phones. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

No longer has a mobile edition


What's This?

The Travel Editor

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.thetraveleditor.com (xhtml-mp)

City Guides and top 10 lists for travelers including hotel and restaurant reviews and suggested things to do from the mobile edition of The Travel Editor, an online travel guide. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory.

Redirects to a "Clubbit, clubs on mobile Coming Soon" page.

 


What's This?

Bolt Browser

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://boltbrowser.com/aindex (xhtml-mp)

Direct download links for all versions of the Bolt Browser. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Bolt ceased operations Dec 14, 2011


What's This?

Mozongoware

Content: ****  Usability: XXX1/2
Last seen at: http://www.mozongoware.com/pdaversion/ (HTML5)

Reviews of Pocket PC and MS Smartphone software both comercial and freeware The reviews are quite detailed and give each product a star rating although I've yet to see a truly negative review.

Dec-2009: Parked page.


What's This?

icLiverpool

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://icliverpool.icnetwork.co.uk/wap/ (wml)
Local, Regional, World Sports and Business news from the Liverpool Echo and Post daily newspapers. Full length news articles.

Down 08-May-2007
What's This?

InfoSpace FindIt

Content: ***  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://wap.infospacefindit.com (xhtml-mp/wml)

 InfosSpace FindIt Front PageInfoSpace.com is one of the pioneers of the mobile web. Starting with phone directory search in 200, the company has become a leading provider of portals and back services to mobile carriers. FindIt represents a new direction for InfoSpace - off portal. The site offers local and directory search. Usability is first rate as are the white page and reverse directory searches. The local search component is only so-so delivring too few relevant results to be competitive with the best local search engines, Local.com and Windows Live Local. Read the full review of InfoSpace FindIt on the WapReview Blog.

8-Sept-2009 Site is Down


What's This?

Evo

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://evo.opnr.com (xhtml-mp/wml)

An automotive fan site. Reviews of the latest dream machines and some cars that regular folks drive. News of upcoming new models and industry gossip.

Site is gone


What's This?

TapaTap

Content: ****1/2  Usability: XXXX1/2
Last seen at: http://m.tapatap.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Here's something new. TapaTap is a mobile contest community. You can create a contest to find the "Best NBA Dunks" or "Cutest Puppy" and upload one or more photos that you hope are winners. Other members can submit their own photos and can vote for the best. Most contests are just for fun but some carry prizes ranging from $100 to a $1485 valued "Model Search America-Next National Showcase Package in the "Searching for America's Models- MALE" contest. The site is actually a lot of fun and seems popular with some contests having received over 100,000 votes.

5-Feb-2011Parked domain


What's This?

RDR.cc

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://rdr.cc/ (xhtml-mp)

RDR.cc RDR.cc (rdr.cc) A redirection service for mobile sites. This is intended for use with the free mobile hosting provided by mobile social sites like TagTag, Peperonity, Treemo, Mob5 or Buzzed. With these services your free site usually ends up with a long hard to type url like peperonity.com/go/sites/mview/dimple.frndz. THose slashes are a PITA to type on most phones. RDR solves this problem by letting you choose a short, much easier to type url like n95.rdr.cc. When visitors go to the RDR address they are redirected to your site on the social networking site. RDR can also redirect visitors to your url to different sites based on the visitor's country as determined by their IP address.

Nov-2009: Redirects to a mobile porn site!


What's This?

MobilePreviews

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mpviews.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Mobile movie previews. This site has dozens of streaming videos including trailers for recent movie releases, TV show previews and video game demos. The videos are in the 144x176px h263 format which is supported by almost all modern phones.

Now a mobile marketing company without a mobile site!


What's This?

Minsode Network

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mini.4sony.mobi (xhtml-mp)

Minisode NetworkThe Minsode Network is a new site from Sony Picures which offers free streaming mini episodes from classic TV shows including Voltron, Charlie's Angels, Fantasy Island, Diff'rent Strokes, Fat Albert, He-Man, Rescue Me: Originals, Spider-man the Animated Series, Married with Children and She-Ra. The videos are about five minutes long and are in 176x144px MPEG4 video/AMR audio format which should work on virtually all video capable phones, providing your provider hasn't blocked streaming.

Jan-2009: Site is down


What's This?

Investors Business Daily

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://investors.mobi (xhtml-mp)

Text-only financial and markets news site has frequently updated news and analysis and links to quotes from Fidelity.com Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Site is down


What's This?

How To Articles

Content: ****  Usability: XX
Last seen at: http://www.myhowtoarticles.com/m/index.php (xhtml-mp)

My How To Articles Mobile

This site, called "My How To Articles" describes itself simply as a database of how to articles.  It must be a bit of a puzzle to first time visitors.  The user interface consists of just a search box. No browsable categories, help, "About" or suggested searches.To find out what it's about I had to enter queries for random subjects until I got some results

My first guess was home improvement tips or MacGyverisms like how to fix a leaking car radiator leak using an egg, but queries like "fix faucet" and "duct tape" returned nothing.  Finally a search for "SQL" hit pay dirt.  The short pieces, which I'd describe as "tips" rather than "articles", seem to all cover Internet web technology with an emphases on server side web development using MySQL and PHP.

The articles are actually pretty good but the site would be a lot easier to use if it included a browsable directory of articles in addition to search.

Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Dec 2010:Site is down

 


What's This?

theycallmemarty.com

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://theycallmemarty.com (xhtml-mp)

Web designer (and retired graffiti artist) Marty Romero's blog includes Expression Engine tutorials, CSS tips and tricks and items on design, photography and art. 

No longer has a mobile view and is not a resposive design site either.


What's This?

Future Perfect

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://janchipchase.com/ (xhtml-mp)

The blog of former Nokia Chief Scientist Jan Chipchase, who is now at Frog Design. At Nokia, Chipchase worked as a sort of tech anthropologist, exploring the different approaches cultures around the world take to tech and usability.  His blog focuses on observations from his work, often illustrated with a beautifully composed photograph.

Future Perfect is mobilized for the iPhone, Android, WebOS and Opera Mini using the WPTouch plugin.  Curiously, Nokia browsers and legacy devices get the desktop rather than the mobile edition.

No longer mobile formatted


What's This?

Qik

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://qik.com/m (xhtml-mp)

Download the OIK video streaming and sharing app for Symbian, iPhone, Windows Mobile, Maemo, Android and BlackBerry phones.

30-April-2014: Qik shutdown

 


What's This?

iLyrics

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://ilyrics.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

iLyrics is a comprehensive mobile song lyrics site. The database seems very complete, I was able to find lyrics for most of the obscure titles I tried. iLyrics is at least partially crowd sourced, users are encouraged to contribute lyrics if they have them. Searchable by title or artist.

Domain parked


What's This?

Gadgeteer

Content: ****1/2  Usability: XXX1/2
Last seen at: http://www.the-gadgeteer.com (HTML5)

Insightful and accurate reviews of the latest technical stuff written with a unique personal style.

No longer has a mobile edition.


What's This?

PPC Louisville Forum

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX1/2
Last seen at: http://www.pocketpclouisville.com/forum/index.php?s=mobile (HTML5)

An active usergroup forum for PPC users. Lots of good tips here.

Jul-2010: Not called My Mobile Ville, it no longer has a mobile edition.


What's This?

Bogle's YubNub

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.thebogles.com/yubnub.html (xhtml-mp)

  YubNub  YubNub is a web app that has been generating a lot of buzz ever since Jon Aquino created it a year ago to win a Ruby on Rails programming contest. If you haven't heard of YubNub (Ewok for "hooray', BTW) it's a "command line for the web". Just like the MS-DOS > prompt or a *nix shell, you type commands into YubNub and wonderful things happen - or not - if you mess up. As the web takes on more and more of the role of an operating system it makes sense that there should be a command line for the web. And it's not just for power users. There are lots of simple, ready to use YubNub commands that do neat things. Here are some examples:

g query <- do a Google search for query
lynx http://yeswap.com <- displays the html source code for yeswap.com
gim daibutsu <- Google Image Search for "Daibutsu"
yt Mickey Mouse <- Search YouTube for "Mickey Mouse"

There are currently over 11,550 commands in YubNub. Fortunately there is a search command "ls"
ls Google <- lists all Google related commands
ls mobile <- lists all mobile related commands

The examples above are all simple, but some YubNub commands are more complex,taking multiple arguments, for example;

xe -amount 100 -from USD -to EUR <- currency conversion of 100 US Dollars to Euros (ouch!).

  YubNub  So how do you know that you have to enter -from and -to and which currency codes you can use? For that there is the "man" (manual) command:
man xe
Which takes you to this helpful description page.

The above examples just scratch the surface, YubNub is really a powerful scripting language with logical operators like ifThen, functions like random and the ability to pipe the output of one command into another. To get up to speed with YubNub, first take a look at Jon Aquino's blog post announcing YubNub. Other good YubNub resources include the YubNub Google Group and Jeremy's Picks which is a good list of essential YubNub commands. I find looking at the code of existing YubNub commands, which is displayed as the first line of the the man command's output, to be a big help in figuring out how to do things in YubNub.

If your still with me at this point, you're probably wondering what this has to do with mobiles? Actually, a lot. While the normal YubNub homepage is at least marginally usable on a phone - especially if you turn off images, there is a better way. There are at least two mobile front ends to YubNub.

Metroblogging's YubNub Mobile, metroblogging.com/yubnub is a mobile-sized YubNub prompt where you can type YubNub commands and view the results. Because the results aren't transcoded and they are not always mobile friendly. You need to limit yourself to mobile specific YubNub commands like:
gmobile url <- returns url transcoded by Google. (There's also skw and iyhy which do the same thing using Skweezer or IYHY.)  YubNub  
blm <- launches Bloglines Mobile
amo query <- searches Mobile Answers.com for query

A really useful pair of commands are mo and mot. Both of these take a YubNub command as an argument and return the result transcoded by Google. mot strips out images while mo doesn't. The bottom image shows part of mot's man page.
mo xe -amount 100 -from USD -to EUR <- convert of 100 US Dollars to Euros and mobilize the result.

Another way of mobilizing commands is to use the url and {}. url is a YubNub function which converts a YubNub command into a url. Enclosing a YubNub command in curly brackets allows you to pass its results to another YubNub command. So,
iyhy {url g Motorola i850}
first creates the url necessary to do a Google search for "Motorola i850" and then feeds that url to IYHY.

You don't need to restrict yourself to mobile specific commands if you use the other YubNub Mobile which was created by Phil Bogle. Phil is a Blackberry guru who writes an entertaining Blackberry focused blog and who has also created Berry411, a Blackberry Java ME front end to numerous web services. I don't have a Blackberry so I haven't tried Berry411 but it sounds pretty cool. Phil's YubNub Mobile is at www.thebogles.com/yubnub.html and looks almost the same as the Metroblogging one but it uses Skweezer to mobilize the results of any YubNub command.

The best part about YubNub is that anyone can create a new commands using the create command. Creating and sharing what you've created. That's the social aspect of YubNub which has been called "The social command line for the web". If you type the following into YubNub;

create newCommandName

You'll be prompted to enter the url that executes the command along with a description which becomes the man page. You can and should test your command right on the same page. If your writing a complex command that takes parameters you may have to do a little trial and error before you get it right. You should only save your new command when you are absolutely sure it works as intended. One the command is saved the only way to modify or delete it is by emailing Jon Aquino.

YubNub is a lot of fun and downright useful. Give it a try. So you don't have to type type those long url's into your phone browser I've added both mobile versions of YubNub to the Search/Web/WAP Search section of YesWap.com

3-Jan-2011 - Site is down.


What's This?

Times of Malta

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wap.timesofmalta.com/ (wml)
News from Malta. Local and world news, sports, business and editorials. Full length news stories from the daily newspaper.

Down: 25-apr-2008
What's This?

411Sync

Content: *****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://wap.411sync.com/ (HTML5)
  411 Sync  The mobile web has really been exploding with new sites lately. The most interesting one I've seen is 411Sync, a site with an easy to use and very flexible API that lets content providers do mobile mashups of all sorts of query based services like driving directions, transit schedule lookups or even just plain old RSS feeds.

Oliver Starr at Mobile Crunch already did a great write up of Sync411. I'm just want to add a little to what Oliver said based on my own brief experiences with the site

When you create a mashup on the 411sync's developer page you assign it a keyword and optionally some tags. Users can go to 411Sync's mobile site and enter the keyword along with any parameters that your mashup requires and then view your content reformatted for the mobile web. It took me about 5 minutes to set up Wap Review's RSS feed in 411Sync. So now, if you enter "wapreview" into the search field at wap.411sync.com and use the default search option, you get a transcoded mobile version of the Wap Review Blog.

Feeds are presented as a list of titles with longish excepts, clicking on a title takes you to the full item body which by default is displayed without images - although images can be turned on.  411 Sync   It looks like 411Sync is using the open source Phonifier as the basis of their transcoder. The transcoder generally does a good job although it doesn't split long pages or resize images - which could be a problem with the built in browsers of most phones. You can avoid most of those problems by using Opera Mini. The Opera proxy takes care of the big pages and images so the Mini browser can render them quickly without any complaints.

411Sync also has SMS and email interfaces. You send a text or email message with the query terms to +1-415-676-8397 or [email protected]. The SMS/email interface returns the first 160 characters of plain text that it finds in the web service response. It's not useful for RSS feeds but works great with a service that returns something suitably brief like sports scores.

411Synch has OVER 680 mashups defined to date. On the 411Sync mobile site, mashups can be searched by keyword or tag and you can also browse keywords by category. Browsing for tags can be a little daunting with so many tags. It does help that tags are split into categories. The categories are all pretty usable except for the "Blogs & MySpace" category which seems to have about 500 of 411Sync's 680 keywords crammed into it - on a single mobile page!

There are a lot of other things you can do with the 411Sync. To me the best part is found near the top of the 411Sync mobile page where there are some featured mashups with well known web destinations. You can search Kayak.com for airfare deals, get traffic alerts from traffic.com, driving directions or daily photos from Yahoo and do all sorts of image searches. Unlike the rss mashups, the featured image searches do return mobile sized images although there are often dozens of images on a single page which can bring even Opera Mini to a crawl!

  411 Sync  Another feature of 411Sync is a simple but effective RSS aggregator called MobIFeeD. You need to first set up your feeds on 411Synch's PC Site. On the mobile, 411Sync uses my preferred RSS agregator paradigm of a simple list of feed names, where clicking the name of a feed leads to a list of just the item titles and clicking a title leads to the full item body - neatly paginated with resized images. Interestingly, the final transcoding, pagination and image resizing for MobiFeeD is done by passing the originating site's URL for the html version of the item to the Google Transcoder. This works really well because not only does Google do an excellent job of reformatting web pages for any mobile browser, but also because even with partial feeds you get to see the full item. The only things missing from MobiFeeD are persistence so you only see unread items and some way to edit and delete your feeds after you've set them up.

Oliver called 411Sync "a little rough around the edges". I have to agree but most of it is really slick and it's already got more usable, unique content and services than just about any other more mobile search site. For YesWAP users, 411Sync is filed under Search|Web/WAP Search

Update: 8-May-2008: Site is down!
7-Sept-2008 Site is still down.
What's This?

YourVids

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://yourvids.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

YourVids (yourvids.mobi/) is a mobile video and photo sharing site. Anyone can view the .3gp format videos, free registration is required to upload. Registration only asks for an email address NOT your mobile number which is as it should be. YourVids also emphasizes the social, members can create profiles, message and chat. Some of the photos and videos on YourVids are mildly NSFW.

18-May-2013 Offline


What's This?

DesiNJ

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.desinj.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Mobile edition of DesiNJ a weekly newsmagaizine for South Asian community in New Jersy

Feb-2010: Site is down


What's This?

Break

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.break.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Break Mobile Break Mobile (m.break.com) Break.com is a popular online video site featuring humorous user generated videos in the style of TV show "America's Funniest Home Videos". Users can indicate their approval or disapproval of a video by clicking a thumbs up or thumbs down icon with cash prizes awarded to the most popular videos. The videos are in the lowest common denominator 176x144 H263 format, meaning low quality but they will work on virtually any video capable phone.


No longer a mobile site


What's This?

Inside Orkut

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.insideorkut.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Here's a hugely popular (4000+ FeedBurner subscribers) blog about the Google's Orkut, the number 3 social network worldwide but number one in India and Brazil. Orkut recently launched a mobile version but InsideOrkut has been mobile for a while using mofuse's RSS to mobile mashup service. There's an iPhone version too m.insideorkut.com/iPhone


Now a non-mobile fashio and lifestyle blog that doesn't cover Orkut.


What's This?

CellStories

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://cellstories.net (xhtml-mp)

CellStories Mobile short Stories

CellStories is a new mobile service offering a different short story every day.  The stories, which average 1500 to 2000 words or about a 10 minute read, are free. They supplied by budding or established authors looking to increase their exposure. CellStories will link back to the author's (hopefully mobile optimized) site or Amazon.com or another bookstore page.

The design of CellStories is attractive but functional.  I particularly like how the site opens directly on today's story. There are no menus or other navigational elements to get in the way. I enjoyed today's story, a ghostly tale by John H. Mathews.  Hopefully, Cellstories will be able to find a steady stream of good short fiction as it is the quality of writing that will keep users coming back. The site is optimized for the iPhone and other Webkit based mobile browsers but other than an a cosmetic issue of text overlapping an image in the page title it also works perfectly in Opera Mini.

17-Apr-2012: Site is down


What's This?

INerd IP Tools

Content: ****1/2  Usability: XXXX1/2
Last seen at: http://www.inerd.nl/ (HTML5)

ping, host, traceroute, whois, finger, dig

1-Sep-2009 Site is down


What's This?

Cinema Electric

Content: **  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://wap.cinemaelectric.com (xhtml-mp)
Down 2007-08-04

Cinema Electric offers short downloadable (not streaming) entertainment videos in .3gp format. This site used to be pretty good but it's lately it's mainly links to paid content of dubious value. There are still a few free videos if you look hard enough.
What's This?

MobiVid.Tv

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobivid.tv/ (xhtml-mp)

Nice mobile video sharing site. Content seems to be almost 100% real user generated. Most of the videos are created with camera phones and are short, 10 seconds or so, and around a 100 KB in size.

21-May-2013: Parked domain


What's This?

Ferrari Mobile

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://ferrari.mobi (xhtml-mp)

Official site of the Ferrari Formula One racing team. The site has news, photos, driver profiles, technical details, the 2007 F1 calendar with circuit maps and free downloadable wallpapers and ring tones. I'm not ready for an F1 racing motor in full song as MY ringtone but I'm sure some one is.

Update Apr-2010: Site is up  but with the 2010 F1 season well under way, the Ferrari mobile site says it's "suspended for the holidays" with "big news" coming in 2009!


What's This?

The Nation

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.thenation.com (HTML5)

Venerable (founded 1865) liberal US weekly news and politics magazine's mobile site offers the full text of over a dozen current articles from the print magazine and website.

July 2011: The Nation no longer offers a mobile formatted site


What's This?

Chicago RTA

Content: ***  Usability: X
Last seen at: http://www.rtamobile.com/ (HTML5)

 RTAmobileInteractive trip planner and schedules for all of Chicago's transit agencies. Reliance on JavaScript and font size issues make the site unusable with most mobile browsers. Full Review on the blog...

13-Jan-2010: No longer a mobile site


What's This?

Motocross Tracks

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.mxtracks.net/ (HTML5)

Mobile edition of motocrosstracks.com a directory of motocross tracks and off-road riding areas in the USA and Canada. Browse by state or search for a track by name (but not zip or city/state).

"Under Construction" Apr-2010

Jan-2010: mxtracks.net domain is gone.

 


What's This?

Quick.as

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://m.quick.as/ (xhtml-mp)

quick.as Mobile Portal

Quick.as is a new web and mobile portal or start page.  It offers a single search box that lets you search with a dozen different search engines on basic phones and over a hundred  different search engines ranging form Google and Yahoo to the Shenzen Stock Exchange and The Pirate Bay on the desktop and phones that support JavaScript  Quick.as is not a meta-search engine, you have to choose a single search engine for each query,

Quick.as claims to detect your phone type and location and deliver appropriately formatted pages and locally relevant results. I found that both features generally worked as advertisted. On an N95 and an Android phone I got Google's mobile web search and Yelp searches defaulted to San Francisco.  However a Yellow Pages search for "sushi" dumped me on the Yellow Pages mobile homepage where I was prompted for both "Search Term" and "City/State or ZIP"!

Quick.as has a small link directory of popular news, sports, social network, email and online banking sites. These links point at non-mobile sites even on the mobile edition of Quick.as. If you set up an account on the Quick.as desktop site you can delete and edit the quick links and add your own.

I think that the concept of Quick.as is good but I'm a little disappointed in the mobile integration.  Login is by email address and a 7 character password.  Login is persistent for only 2 weeks.  Email addresses are a pain to type on mobile because of their length and the "@" sign. The relatively long password and short login retention are both mobile unfriendly and unnecessarily paranoid for a site that stores a simple list of links. Mobile usability woud be improved by allowing users to pick a short ID and password and by persisting logins until explicit logout.

Annother mobile usability issue is that Quick Links are the same across desktop and mobile and require a PC to setup and edit. This excludes the huge and growing number of mobile-only users, especially in the developing world. Also I believe that most users will want a different set of bookmarks on mobile than on the desktop. Either links to mobile vs. desktop versions of sites or to different sites entirely. Thanks to andrewjb44 on Twitter for submitting quick.as for review.

Dec-2012: Site is gone.


What's This?

io9

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.io9.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Mobile edition of Gawker Media's science fiction blog covers science fiction movies, books, TV programs and comics. Source: Eugenia's Rants and Thoughts

No longer a mobile or reponsive site


What's This?

Angryindian Radio

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://angryindianradio.mobify.me/ (xhtml-mp)

A mobile friendly podcast series from the Intelligent Aboriginal News Service, Angry Indianradio covers the often under reported "Fourth World" of  indigenous and First Nations peoples as well as relevant social justice and political issues. Mobile View by Mobify

July 2011: Redirects to a Louis Vuiton Spam Blog.


What's This?

Microfinance Focus

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.microfinancefocus.com/news/ (xhtml-mp)

An India based news blog featuring the latest news, features and interviews from the world of microfinance, a growing international movement that aims to provide sustainable, quality financial services to the unbanked.

Feb-2013 - No longer morile optimized


What's This?

Nokia Video Links

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://videolinks.nokia.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Recent Nokia phones come with this bookmark pre-configured. It's a pretty comprehensive list of mobile video sites both Nokia ones and third party. Most work on non-Nokia phones.

Jan 2010 - Redirects to the Ovi App Store.


What's This?

Surf Europe

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://surf.opnr.com/surf/ (xhtml-mp)

 Surf EuropeMobile site from the magazine of the same name. The attractively designed site features surfing news, event listings, interviews and free downloadable surf theme wallpapers. The site was created by Amsterdam based Mowave which according to their website has created mobile sites and services for quite a few magazines including Maxim and Stuff and for the TV series Family Guy. No url's so I have some digging to do.

3-Jan-2011 - Site gone.


What's This?

Silverjet

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://silverjet.mobi/ (xhtml-mp/wml)

Low fare, all business class airline connecting London's Luton Airport with Newark and Dubai.The mobile site offers flight status, itinerary viewing, schedules click to call numbers and booking using a credit card.

Silverjet is out of business.


What's This?

GreenFaucet

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://www.greenfaucet.mobi (xhtml-mp)

Mobile edition of GreenFaucet,com, a global finance and investment commentary and news site.  There's  a lot of content on this site featuring a wide range of viewpoints. It's a good read if your are interested in where the economy and markets are headed, and who isn't these days! The mobile edition is usable but a little on the rough side with numerous bad links.  There's a classic of bad user interface design too. When you click the link to leave a comment, you get a message to the effect that you need to be logged in to do so, yet there doesn't seem to be a way to actually log in on the mobile site.

Greenfaucet.com no longer has a mobile site.


What's This?

Revvs

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://m.Revvs.net (xhtml-mp)

Revvs.netm.Revvs.net is a new motorsports mobile web site which presents excepts (typically the first paragraph of a longer story) pulled from news sources around the world. Each story is illustrated with a 128x128px image. There's a lot of news on this site, with around 60 news items appearing on the site at any time, probably more than any other mobile motorsports site. Revvs covers all areas of the sport with dedicated sections for F1, MotoGP and NASCAR and an "Other Stores" section with items on A1GP, SP2, WRC British Superbikes, etc. Page size is low, about 2KB of text and 10KB of images per page ensuring compatibility with virtually any web capable phone.

The only problem I have with Revvs is that the stories are excerpts and to read the full story you need to click on the "Source" links at the bottom of each page - which link directly to full web versions of the story. The linked pages are almost always too large to load on a typical feature phone - which seems to be the market segment Revvs is targeting. Even trying to load them could cause a nasty billing shock for users on metered data plans.

Revvs needs to offer the option to open external links in a transcoder such as Google's GWT. Google is apparently OK with 3rd party sites linking through their transcoder, even high volume sites like Taptu are doing it. It does need to be optional though. I use a simple interstitial page on wapreview.mobi that offers users a choice of several transcoders or no transcoding at all. The choice of transcoders is probably overkill but the option to not transcode is essential as transcoders pretty much destroy the browsing experience for users with full web mobile browsers like Opera Mini.

Site is down - Apr-2010


What's This?

Easthampton Savings Bank

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://bankesb.mobi (HTML5)

Easthampton Savings Bank has eight branches in Hampshire and Hampden counties, Massachusetts. The mobile site has an ATM and branch locator and click to call contact numbers.

Redirects to Citizens Equity First Credit Union


What's This?

Indian Country Today

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/mobile (xhtml-mp)

Mobile edition of Indian Country Today an award-winning weekly newspaper with news, information, and imagery relevant to the Indigenous people of the Americas. Source Oh! Mobile Directory

July, 2011: No longer a mobile site


What's This?

Pocket Now

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://pocketnow.com/mobile.php (xhtml-mp)

Offers reviews, articles, commentary and news covering the Windows Mobile platform, devices and software.  The site's front page is an insanely large for mobile 390 KB. I guess Mobile IE must be able to handle pages that big.  I lot of feature phone browsers can't.


Dec-2009: Pocket Now no longer has a mobile formatted version


What's This?

stopdesign

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.stopdesign.com (xhtml-mp)

Web designer Douglas Bowman's personal site. He's currently the creative Director at Twitter and covers design, typhography and technnolgy on stopdesign.com The mobile site was built with Mobify.

Jan-2011: Mobile view is gone


What's This?

Flash Lite 4 SE

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.flashlite4se.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Mobile version of a blog on Flash Lite development for Sony Ericsson phones. Source: Oh! Mobile directory

Parked domain


What's This?

Mizoon

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.mizoon.com/node (xhtml-mp)

Another new location based social network. Check in at our favorite cafe, club or hangout and find out who else is there and let your friends know where you are.  Users can have multiple profiles or personas for work and play. Source: Oh Mobile Directory

Aug-2010 - No longer a mobile site.


What's This?

Windows Live News

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.live.com/pocketpc/Default.aspx/News/ (xhtml-mp/wml)
.  Image: Live Mobile PPC News  MSN is now Windows Live and their News content is from MSNBC News contains the full content of some of the articles on MSNBC.com - a vast improvement over the two line summaries that used to pass for news at MSN Mobile. Multiple news sections - International, Local, Business, Weather and Entertainment (3rd Image). Under these sections are dozens of additional articles. Incidentally, if you like MSNBC's online news, visit MSNBC.com with your mobile. The mobile version of MSNBC is one of the most attractive and well designed of all the mobile news sites and carries virtually the entire content of the MSNBC PC site.

Retired 7-Jul-2007
What's This?

Pocket Disney

Content: *****  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://pocketdisney.com/disney/wap/welcome.asp (wml)

Visitors Guide to Walt Disney World - what's where, what open when in the Magic Kingdom, restaurant menus, transportation and weather.

Redirects to Disney.com


What's This?

Int'l Herald Trib

Content: *****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.iht.com/index.xhtml (xhtml-mp)

wml image The International Herald Tribune is a 117-year old Paris based English language daily newspaper. Owned by The New York Times, the paper is targeted at expatriates and travelers.

The IHT has both WAP1 and WAP2 mobile sites. Both contain the full text of dozens of articles from the paper's web site. The WAP2 version has about twice as may stories as the WAP1 version and also has small photos at the top of most stories.

While the sites aren't flashy, they are actually very well designed for those of us who enjoy browsing a more or less entire daily newspaper on our mobiles. The initial page is a headline page with the day's top stories. This page is updated hourly. At the bottom of the headline page is a link to "News by section" which leads to the page shown above. There are 14 topics. Each topic contains about 10 stories (5 on the WAP1 page). Stories average around 3500 characters or about a dozen screenfulls on a typical midrange phone. wml image

I did discover a problem viewing the WAP1 version on an older phone using the Openwave 4.1 WAP browser. Some pages failed to load on the phone, failing with a compile error. I traced this back to unescaped Dollar sign characters in the stories. The wml standard requires that each dollar sign in text be escaped by doubling - so $50.00 becomes $$50.00. This sort of silliness is the one of the primary reasons WAP1 has such a bad reputation. Still there are tens if not hundreds of millions of these old browsers out there. Openwave 4.1 browsers are particularly common in the US where Nextel is still introducing brand new phone models with this browser. I've provided an alternate wml link for these phones, which uses my html to wml transcoding proxy to convert the WAP2 site to wml.

March 2009: The International Hearld Tribune's mobile and desktop URLs redirect to the equivaent New York Times sites.


What's This?

Daily Gadget

Content: ****  Usability: XX
Last seen at: http://www.dailygadget.com/new_feed.php?feed_type=MOBILE (HTML5)
Daily Gadget a popular blog and forum covering geek toys - including phones, pda's and the latest PC and mac hardware and software - now has a mobile site.  Daily Gadget screen shot    Daily Gadget screen shot  The mobile site appears to have built using phpBB, the popular Open Source forum software with the phbBBlite template. The lite template wasn't really designed for mobile sites but rather for building low bandwidth web sites. Nonetheless, it works fairly well as a WAP2 site. The main page is 19 KB which is a little large for some phones - if you run into that problem, just run it through the AOL or Google proxies.

The main page consists of the latest blog items as a single scrolling page. This works fairly well on a PDA where the screen is relatively large and there is usually a way to quickly scroll a page at a time. On a phone, it's really only practical to read the articles sequentially - there is no way to jump from one article to the next.

It's too bad Daily Gadget didn't choose to use WiForums, a nice add-on for phpBB and several other PHP-based forum platforms. WiForums is used by Howard Forums, Wireless Advisor and a number of other forum sites to provide a true mobile site supporting both WAP1 and WAP2 with very good usability.

If you are a Daily Gadget regular, you will probably find the mobile version of the site worth visiting, if a little frustrating unless you are using a PDA phone like the Treo or the Sony Ericsson P910. On the other hand, if you are just looking for a a mobile site covering the latest tech gadgets you will probably be happier with one of the higher rated sites listed above.

Down: 29-May-2007
What's This?

Novinite.com

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wap.novinite.com/categories.php (wml)
News from Bulgaria in English. Bulgarian and World news, sports, politics and Sofia event listings.

Down: 25-Apr-2008
What's This?

Tulare Advance Register

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.tulareadvanceregister.com/ (HTML5)

Nicely done mobile local news site from a city of 50,000 in California's Central Valley. Local News, Photos, Weather and Sports.

Site merged with the Visalia Times Delta site.


What's This?

Cinee

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wap.cinee.com (xhtml-mp)

Cinee presents a new mobile video clip every Thursday. The videos are relatively small around 150 KB and 176x144 and are mpeg4/amr encoded so they should be compatible with most video capable phones.

1-June-2013: Parked domain


What's This?

HelloMetro

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.hellometro.mobi (xhtml-mp)

City guides for 650 cities around the world. The mobile site is easy to navigate and contains Yellow and White pages search, local news and sports headlines and restaurant and attractions guides. Their are capsule reviews of a few of the venues. The content for San Francisco is a little thin but with 650 cities to cover what do you expect.

Nov-2009: Domain now displays nothing but a "For Sale" message


What's This?

StudioCity.mobi

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://StudioCity.mobi (xhtml-mp)

A visitors guide and merchant directory for Studio City, CA - a district of Los Angeles.

Shut down.


What's This?

HandyFact

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://squeezenet.com/HandyFact/default.htm (HTML5)

HandyFact (squeezenet.com/HandyFact/default.htm) - Handy Fact is an extensive database of useful information like zip and area code lookups, etiquette tips, a list of commonly mis-used words, birthstones wedding anniversaries and drink recipes.

Parked Domain


What's This?

Flavorpill

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://flavorpill.buzzd.com/m/ (xhtml-mp)

Flavorpill Buzzd is a new mobile social service that has hooked up with established youth oriented online events calendar Flavorpill to create Flavorpill Mobile. The site is a mobile calendar listing events like art openings, live music and comedy in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and Miami. You can use Flavorpill Mobile as a local events search, without registering. But Flavorpill is more than that, there is also Twitter-like "buzz-it" feature where users text mini-reviews and comments about of an event to Flavorpill and the message is relayed to their network of Flavorpill friends. Use the PC site at flavorpill.buzzd.com/ to sign up.

Dec 2010: Flavorpill no longer hasa mobile edition.


What's This?

BloggingBuyouts

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.bloggingbuyouts.com (HTML5)

BloggingBuyouts BloggingBuyouts is a Weblog's Inc. blog, this one specializing in the little understood area of private equity investing. PEI is where groups of well heeled investors. either individually or allied into limited partnerships to provide seed money to startups in return for equity, and to buy out companies, typically ones whose stock price has dropped low enough to make them attractive takeover targets and to provide venture capital to startups in return for equity.

The Weblogs Inc sites all use the same mobile template. which I covered in detail in my Engadget Mobile Review. It's a typical mobile blog design with a front page of headline links each leading to a post. The posts aren't paginated and include full size images from the PC versions of the blog. This was a problem with Engadget as the site uses lots of big images and occasionally very long posts. Some Engadget Mobile pages exceed 300 KB, too large to display on most phones. BloggingBuyouts tends to have relatively short posts and very few images so the lack of pagination isn't a problem even on the most humble of browsers.

Aquired by AOL and shut down


What's This?

mShopper

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://www.mshopper.net/wap/ (xhtml-mp)

mShopper results listHere's another in the rapidly growing field of mobile shopping sites. It's mShopperand is billed as a price comparison tool. The idea is that when you are shopping at a brick and mortar store and see something you are considering buying, you use mShopper to compare the merchant's price with what online stores are charging. The comparison is limited to mShopper's partner stores but there are currently oven 100 partners including Amazon, B&H Photo, Walmart, Target and dozens of smaller online retailers so the selection is actually pretty good.

MShopper seems to have put some thought into making the search process as simple as possible using a phone keypad. After you click the first link, labeled "PriceIt" on the mShopper mobile web home page you are presented with a search form with two fields where you enter the first few letters of the product's brand and model number respectively. mShopper then does a sub-string search and comes up with a list of matching items. I thought the relevance of the results was quite good.

Unfortunately, the experience started to break down at this point. I tried searching for the Sony W80 camera, The first problem was that the same camera appeared in the list multiple times with different prices. But you can't actually see the prices in the list, it takes two clicks on each item to find the actual price. After a lot of clicking I found what seemed to be the best price on the camera. There didn't seem to be any way to see the shipping cost without registering a credit card and starting the purchasing process. Shipping costs vary widely online, so you really need the bottom line price to do effective comparison shopping.

More...

Now a white label eStore service merchants with no consumer facing mobile site.


What's This?

Rally-Live

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.rally-live.com (xhtml-mp)

Motoring Rally news, photos, calendar, standings and live commentary from ESPN Racing-Live.

Site is down Apr-2010


What's This?

Idlemode

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://idlemode.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Mobile edition of  idlemode, a blog from Punchcut, a San Francisco based user interface design company. idlemode focuses on mobile interaction design and with articles by UI designers and developers covering mobile in general with an emphasis on mobile usabilty and design. The mobile edition was created with an older version of Alex King's WordPress Mobile Edition.

Parked domain.


What's This?

WaGooh

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wagooh.net/ (xhtml-mp)

Web designer and graphic artist Christina Leikam's beautifily designed site promoting her business includes a blog were she shares her thoughts on design and offers tips to help you improve your site.  

No longer has a mobile view and not a resposive design site.


What's This?

Streamzoo

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://m.phonezoo.com/ (xhtml-mp)

A user generated content site where users can upload and download ringtones, photos and wallpapers. Phonezoo also has horoscopes and a selection of games. The site is ad-supported and all content and services are free to end users. I wasn't able to download any games as the site claimed my N95 was incompatible.

21-Mar-2014: Streamzo shutdown


What's This?

Techie Buzz

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://techie-buzz.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Techie Buzz is a popular news blog covering technology, software. mobiles, gadgets, social media, gaming and more. It also features hundreds of tutorials and tips and tricks. Mobile view (using WPTouch) served to supported browsers (iPhone, Android, Symbian, WebOS, Opera Mini and Mobile, etc.)

Nov-2012: No longer a mobile or responsive site.


What's This?

ZooVision

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.zoovision.com/mobile.html (HTML5)

  ZooVision  Sean Berner tipped me about his mobile streaming video site ZooVision. It's pretty neat and to me represents the begining of a trend - off portal streaming video. But first a disclaimer, I don't have a phone that is capable of handing streaming media - so this review is based on browsing ZooVision and similar sites on a PC along with some Googling. If you want to click through to these sites and check out the videos yourself on a PC you'll need the latest versions of RealPlayer, QuickTime and Windows MediaPlayer.

ZooVision is quite nicely done and features a lot of free mobile streaming video content attractively presented and conveniently organized. There are three featured news clips from the Associated Press - News, Business and Entertainment - which are updated daily (second image). Other content includes 20 episodes of a video podcast called the 'The Blachole', and lots of Music Videos, Anime clips, Movie Trailers, and classic cartoons like Popeye, Little Lulu and Superman. Most of the content is short - 1 or 2 minutes, although the Blachole Vodcast I watched was quite long - 15 minutes - way too long to hold my interest. The videos come in three formats although the majority are 120 x 160 3gp. There are some Windows AP News on ZooVision Media videos that are in larger 240 x 320 format and are noticeably higher in quality and three "3G Demos" which are encoded with the latest h264 codec. The h264 clips didn't work with any of the players on my PC although my version of QuickTime Player claims to support h264.

According to Sean as well as users on HowardForums, the ZooVision videos work with a variety of phones and carriers including:

  • Cingular's LG CU500 (HSDPA), Samsung ZX10 (W-CDMA), and even Edge phones like the SonyEriccson w600 and Z500a and Nokia 6620, 6230 and 6270
  • Sprint's MM (multi-media) series phones - EVDO units like the Samsung NMM-A920 and the LG Fusic and also 1-RTT devices like the Sanyo MM-8300
  • compatabile phones on T-Mobile US but only with the $20-30/month "web" plan, not with the cheaper T-Zones.
  • Samsung D600 (GPRS!) on Orange UK and the Samsung A920 (EVDO) on Fido Canada.

No joy for non-Windows Mobile Verizon customers however, as the Brew media player onV-Cast phones only plays content with Verizon specific DRM.

20-July-2012: mobile version offline


What's This?

CarRentals.com

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.carrentals.com (HTML5)

A handy site for checking rental car rates and making reservations. Accepts a zip code or airport code and date range and returns a list of rentals with prices from multiple agencies. It seems to be for North America only. The results pages are on the large side (20+KB) for mobiles.

No longer a mobile friendly site


What's This?

Fanhouse

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wap.aol.com/fanhouse/ (xhtml-mp)

NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, Motorsports, Tennis, Soccer and college sports news from AOL's FanHouse, including stats, scores, game results, team schedules and more. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

AOL has sold the Fanhouse name to the Sporting news.The mobile Fanhouse URL now redirects to the AOL mobile homepage.


What's This?

MobiLocation

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobilocation.com (xhtml-mp)

An annotated mobile world atlas created with a mashup of Wikipedia and Google Maps. MobiLocation, which offers maps and background information on thousands of cities and towns around the world is available in 17 languages.  Source Oh! Mobile Directory

31-Oct-2010 Parked Page


What's This?

Leucadia Mobile

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://leucadia.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Guide to Leucadia, a neighborhood of Encinitas, California.  Leucadia has a quaint, artsy shopping strip and is home of Beacons, a well known surfing spot.  The mobile site has local  weather, an events calendar, surf report and listings of local businesses and services. Source: Mobility.mobi

Redirects to spammy gambling site.


What's This?

Usenet News

Content: ****1/2  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://usenet.mail2web.com/cgi-bin/dnewsweb.exe?utag=&wild=cellular&cmd_grpsearch=Search&group= (HTML5)

Read postings from all the alt.cellular.* usenet newsgroups at mail2web.com

Nov-2009: The online Usenet reader at Mail2Web.com has been shut down


What's This?

PalmOne Mobile

Content: ****1/2  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.palmone.com/ (HTML5)

A very comprensive directory of quality PDA sites which is usable on the smallest of screens although most of the links lead to pages which are not obtimized for the smaller phone displays. Particularly stong for news sites.


What's This?

Mobileplay

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mini.mobileplay.com (xhtml-mp)
 Mobileplay Image Mobileplay is a free ad supported mobile portal that offers some content that is not available anywhere else. Probably the best reason to visit Mobileplay is Salon.com. While it's true that Salon has it's own mobile site which I reviewed a while back that site is limited to just excerpts from a handful of stories. Salon on Mobileplay has the full content of over 100 current Salon articles. Other Mobileplay exclusives include AP News, Wired, TechnologyGuide.com, DigitalCameraReview.com, Flavorpill, About.com and the Gawker Media blogs, Defamer, Gawker, Wonkette, and Valleywag.

It looks like what Mobileplay is doing is taking full RSS feeds and mobilizing them by removing links and images and splitting long articles up into pages. In some cases you could do this yourself with a mobile rss agregator like Google Reader Mobile (review) or Bloglines (review). But not all these sites have free full feeds and most of them are very active and can easily overwhelm the casual reader. If you just want to browse some of these sites once in awhile rather than having your news reader clogged up with every item from some very prolific feeds, Mobileplay again makes sense.

Mobileplay fills out their portal's content with links to some of the best mobile sites around like the BBC, Google Local, MLB.com, Mapquest and HopStop.com. It's a fairly well rounded collection of mobile sites including some online games. About the only categories missing are mobile web search, email, chat and social networking.
There are a couple of ways to access MobilePlay's content. You can go directly to the mobile site at mini.mobileplay.com. There's a special version of Opera Mini that has MobilePlay as a featured bookmark which you can download by pointing your mobile browser at mini.opera.com although it's not required - you can use the browser that came with your phone. Mobileplay also has dedicated applications for Palm, Pocket PC, Blackberry and Java ME phones.

I tried the Palm and Java applications and recommend that you stick to accessing Mobileplay through a browser, either Opera Mini or your phone's built in browser. I do recommend downloading Opera Mini though - it's speed and UI quality is impressive and you'll probably prefer it to the phone browser.

The Java ME application was frustratingly slow on my phone - both Opera Mini and the built in browser where several times faster. In addition, the Java application is missing several of the sites that are on Mobileplay's mobile web portal.

The Palm application works on non-connected PDA's by downloading a day's worth of reading using your PC's internet connection when you HotSync. This is similar to the way Avantgo and Plucker work. If you have a converged device like a Treo you can also sync over air. I couldn't get the Palm version to work, however. It installed easily and looked promising. I subscribed to several channels and HotSynced. While synchronizing I saw messages indicating that Mobileplay was updating my channels and the Hotsync log showed no errors - but I never got any content on the PDA. I'm sure it's some sort of configuration error that I'll eventually resolve but it was definitely frustrating.

Give Mobileplay a try, it adds a significant amount of quality content to the mobile web and using the web version doesn't require any registration or downloads. I didn't find the ads on Mobileplay intrusive either - they are limited to a single graphic banner at the top of each page - a small price to pay for getting access to some unique mobile content.

11-Nov-2008 - Redirects to Mocospace
What's This?

MyWaves

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.mywaves.com/m (xhtml-mp)

MyWaves is a major new and well funded mobile video sharing site featuring thousands of videos organized into channels. The content is very YouTube like - a blend of user-submitted amateur videos and professional offerings from the likes of ABC, CNN, Nike, MTV and HBO. If you register, which requires a mobile phone number, you can create your own public or private channels. Registration is not required to view any of the thousands of public channels. If you are wary about giving out you real mobile number any 10 digit number seems to work. MyWaves also has a Java Me application which can be downloaded at www.mywaves.com/p/d - however all it does is launch the MyWaves mobile web site in the phones default browser!

Jan-2011: Site is gone


What's This?

CeX Mobile

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.webuy.com (xhtml-mp)

How much is your phone worth?  U.K based CeX's phone valuation site will tell you, at least for GSM phones that are either unlocked or locked to one of the UK operators.  If you like the price, CeX will buy your phone as well. Source: GoMo News

No longer has a mobile formatted or responsive site.


What's This?

Playyoo

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.playyoo.com (xhtml-mp)

Playyoo home pageFlash Lite is Adobe's version of Flash for mobile phones. It's been around since 2005 but never really caught on except in Japan. It's pretty much a commercial failure in the rest of the world and I blame that on Adobe's greed. On the PC the Flash player is free and Adobe makes its money on development tools. With Flash Lite, the player has to be purchased, either by end users or device manufacturers. Charging for the player doomed Flash Lite. If the mobile player had been available to OEMs and users at no cost, Flash Lite would be as ubiquitous on mobiles as it is on PCs.

There are some Flash Lite enabled phones, most mid-range or better Nokia and Sony Ericsson handsets come with the player.

The relatively small installed base means that there isn't a lot of Flash Lite content either. But there is some. Playyoo (m.playyoo.com) is the first mobile web site I've found that offers free Flash Lite games. Anyone with a compatible phone can download and play these games. But Playyoo is more than just a game download site. It's also a community for gamers with high score contests, user driven game ratings, forums and a web based game creator. Anyone can create a Playyoo game using a template based online tool on the full playyoo.com website. There are over 500 user created games on Playyoo. The  templates pretty much limit you to creating simple "casual" style games.

Sushi and Asahi Please! Flash lite GameI tried a couple of Playyoo's games and they were highly playable and a lot of fun. The games are around 100 KB and download quickly. My Nokia N95 even gave me the option of saving downloaded games locally so that they could be played anytime directly from the phone's Flash player application without the need to re-launch the browser.

My favorite Playyoo game was "Sushi and Asahi Please?",  a matching game where you have have to quickly match pictures of sushi items to win bottles of Asahi beer. The instructions and prompts in that game are in Italian, but the game is simple enough that I had no trouble figuring it out. Playyoo has other games that are in English. Playyoo is ad-supported, but I found the advertising infrequent and unobtrusive.

If you have a Flash Lite equipped phone, (see Adobe's site for a list) give Playyoo a try. I noticed that the list includes a number of Verizon feature phones. Verizon normally blocks off-portal downloads of games or applications so I suspect Verizon users will not be able to use Playyoo.

Oct-2012 - now the non-mobile site of a developer of mobile gambling games


What's This?

Adobe Flash

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.adobe.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Adobe Mobile Flash Downloads

Adobe seems to have dropped their brain-dead practice of charging for the Flash client for mobile phones.  I never understood why the far more capable desktop client was free but Adobe expected end-users and OEMs to pay for the mobile client.  In my opinion, if the mobile client had been free from the start Flash would be the dominant mobile application platform today instead of Java ME.

Adobe has  launched  a new distributable player solution that finally brings the free distribution model to mobile. It lets developers package Flash Lite apps in such a way that when users launch them they are prompted if they want to install the player.  If the user agrees, the player will download and install at no cost to the user.  This mirrors the way Flash works in PC browsers and should help to drive adoption.

To showcase the distributable player solution, Adobe has created a mobile web site at m.adobe.com with a few free games and apps built with distributable player solution.  The distributable player supports most S60 3rd edition and recent Windows Mobile phones but is only available in India, Italy, Spain, UK, and U.S.  I can understand supporting only a limited number of handsets but why the geographical restriction?  I'd expect that the apps would work anywhere, why limit them to five countries?  The mobile site didn't detect my location or my N95 and asked me to choose one of the supported countries and pick my handset from a list.  Given that the site can't detect my location, it might actually be possible to download these games from other countries.  If you try it and works from somewhere other than  India, Italy, Spain, UK, and or the U.S. please leave a comment letting us know.

On my N95 in the US there were six apps available:

Adobe's MWC Concierge Flash App

  • Adobe Barcelona Concierge: Get MWC news, local restaurants, Spanish phrases, and more.
  • Bone Comics: Follow the humorous adventures of these cartoon cousins.
  • Dolce & Gabbana: Check out videos and photos from D&G fashion.
  • Finetune: Build your own radio station and stream it to your phone.
  • Nespresso: Find a local coffee vendor, or order some delivered to your house.
  • TowerBloxx: Build your own city in this drop and stack construction game.

I tried TowerBloxx first and was prompted to install two additional apps; Adobe Version Checker and Flash Lite Player V. 3.01.  The installation (over WiFi) took a surprisingly long time. I didn't time it but it seemed like a couple of minutes.  The player installed along side of  rather than replacing the N95's pre-installed Flash Lite Player 3.0.  I wasn't impressed by TowerBloxx, a rather simple game with uninspiring graphics that ran in a window half the size of the phone's screen.  The MWC Concierge  was better. It offers show news, hours, a video player with interviews of industry executives,  a Twitter client with some hard coded show timelines,  a show map, Barcelona tourist guide and a small talking phrasebook.

Gone - URL redirects to the non-mobile Adobe homepage,


What's This?

Wordtravels

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.wordtravels.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Concise sightseeing guides to over 200 world cities.  The guides include a history and overview for each city and a description and photo of  top sights and things to do.  The content is good but the large page size (up to 70 KB) makes for too much scrolling and will cause out of memory errors in some mobile browsers.

1-May-2013: Site is broken


What's This?

Surat.Mobi

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://surat.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Guide to Surat, the second largest city in the state of Gujarat, India with a population of over 5 million. Surat is the "Diamond Capitol of the World" and 92% of the world's diamonds are cut and polished in Surat.  The mobile site includes a brief history of the city and photos and descriptions of Surat's top tourist attractions. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Parked Page


What's This?

ASPCA

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.aspca.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Visit the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals' official mobile website to learn how to fight animal cruelty, read expert pet care advice, and view dogs and cats available for adoption. Source: Mobility.mobi

July-2013 - No longer has a mobile formatted or responsive site.


What's This?

WorldDJ

Content: ****  Usability: XX
Last seen at: http://wap.worlddj.com/ (wml)

International guide to concerts and festivals around the world. Some of the pages have syntax errors and may not load on all phones.

Nov-2009 LiveDJ is now a registration required non-mobile site


What's This?

J2ME Apps

Content: *****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobits.com/jad/ (HTML5)

Eugenia has posted this page (mobits.com/jad/) with links to her favorite mobile apps. Most are free.

Down:18-Oct-2009


What's This?

Hong Kong Map

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.ypmap.com/wince/ (xhtml-mp)

 Hong Kong Wireless Map showing bank locations Slick interactive map of Hong Kong. Search by address or building name or browse for public facilities like schools, libraries and government offices. The maps are very high quality, scrollable and with four levels of zoom. You can toggle the display of icons showing the location nearby ATMs, Banks, stores and Karaokes! on the maps. Clicking an icon give details about businesses. The side is designed for Pocket PC's but is usable with Opera Mini except that clicking the icons , which relies on an image map, doesn't work.

No longer has a mobile webapp.


What's This?

Find A Toilet

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.findatoilet.mobi/index.php5 (xhtml-mp)

Same concept as the now defunt MizPee, but for the UK. It does what it says, you type a city or town name and get a list of public toilets. Listings include the hours of operation, cost and in many cases a detailed description of exactly where the loo is in a building or park.

For best results when searching the larger cities, specify the borough, district or town within the city like "Camden" or "Ealing" rather than "London".

Shut down.


What's This?

ParentsConnect

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.parentsconnect.com (xhtml-mp)

Find family events, child friendly restaurants and stores in major US metropolitan areas. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Jan-2011: No longer has a mobile version


What's This?

Treehugger

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.treehugger.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Treehugger, which is owned by Discovery communications, is a leading news blog covering environmental issues, the "green" movement and sustainable living. Attractive site design is by Crisp Wireless.  Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

No longer has a mobile formatted site and the main page doesn't use responsive web design.


What's This?

Spel

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://spel.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

If your phone supports Flash Lite (most Nokias and Sony Ericssons do), Spel has a bunch of free Flash Lite games for you to download. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Oct-2012 - Redirects to a non-mobile online game site


What's This?

Ethical Consumer Guide

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.ethical.org.au/ (xhtml-mp)

Australian based site rating products on a variety of measures of their manufacturer's business ethics, including use of sustainable agriculture and avoidance of animal testing, child labor and genetically engineered foods. Source Oh! Mobile Directory

No longer has a mobile formatted or responsive site.


What's This?

Mocality

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.mocality.co.ke/ (xhtml-mp)

Mocality's ambitious plan is to build Africa's largest mobile business directory using crowd sourced data. Independent Mocality agents add local business listings and photos to the directory from their phones using a mobile website. Currently limited to Kenya, Mocality plans to expand across Africa. Source: Mobhappy

Shut down Feb. 28, 2013


What's This?

Dot NET Mobile Profile

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX1/2
Last seen at: http://aui2.msaui.com/rtm/ (xhtml-mp/wml)

Test site for ASP.NET mobile WAP developers

Site is down 09-Dec-2006


What's This?

Plinkit

Content: ****1/2  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://www.plinkit.com/ (HTML5)

Another good directory of PDA sites.

Jun-2010: Parked page


What's This?

Yes.com

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.yes.com/ (xhtml-mp/wml)

  Yes.com  I stumbled onto a mobile site that will tell you what song is currently playing on almost any US radio station. The site is mobile.yes.com and it's actually not new having been around for over three years. It works pretty well after you get past the initial hurtle of finding your station - which is a bit tedious on the phone. You first pick your city and then the station. Yes has thankfully broken the city list up by first letter of the city name, so I just clicked, clicked, clicked way down in a dropdown to "S" and and then in a second dropdown to "San Francisco" and finally in a third dropdown to the station I was listing to. On the full Yes.com web site you just enter the call letters, which should be an option on mobile too. Keep the menu driven interface for those people who refuse to enter text on a phone but give the rest of us a call-letters entry field, sheesh call letters are only four characters it would be so much faster then the endless drop downs.

Once you have found your station, bookmark the page. Yes Mobile will remember your station and city but only if your provider sends a unique subscriber ID in the html headers. Not all carriers do and neither do Opera Mini's servers. I don't know why Yes doesn't use a cookie. It's true that in the early days of WAP cookies weren't well supported but the opposite is true today. Anyway, at least Yes creates a book-markable url that will always take you back to a specific station's page.

The actual page where the song is listed is clean and simple with the artist, song title and album (if any) at the top on the page, above the "fold" on most phones.   Yes.com  Too bad Yes doesn't include a "Refresh" button or link. On some browsers the refresh function is buried. Like on the Openwave V. 7 browser on my Motorola i855 - to refresh I have to hold down the menu button for a few seconds to bring up the browser menu then choose "Advanced" and then "Refresh". Come on Openwave, you guys used to make the best mobile browsers with the greatest usability but the refresh thing on V7 is so screwed up. On this browser a short press of the menu key does nothing, so why do we have to press and hold the menu key to get a menu? And since when is refreshing the page an advanced feature - Opera Mini, which I'm liking more and more, makes refresh a hotkey function.

Yes has commercial tie ins with Amazon and iTunes. If you hear a song you like you can order the CD from Amazon and get a dollar off by doing it from the Yes mobile site. The iTunes integration is only available from the web not the mobile site, presumably because iTunes doesn't support mobile downloads.

Yes claims to cover 2500 stations which sounds like a lot until you consider that there are over 12,000 AM and FM stations in the country. Still, Yes covers most of the stations I listen too regularly so I like it. Set up a few bookmarks to your favorite stations and then when you think "that singer's voice sounds familiar but who is it?", just grab your mobile and get the answer with a few clicks. Yes.com serves both WAP1 and WAP2 versions of the site from the same url using browser detection to (hopefully) always serve the optimal version to your phone. Content is the same for both WAP flavors but the WAP2 pages are more attractive thanks to the use of color.

Yes is now a non-mobile streaming music based soical network and no longer offers a sound recognition service.


What's This?

FILM-TV.COM

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://www.film-tv.com/english.html (HTML5)

A specialty mobile portal featuring a comprehensive set of links to mobile entertainment sites. A good example of a fluid table based design that looks good all sizes of mobile screens. Not so good is that here are too many links on the front page for good usability.

Redirects to a Facebook page.


What's This?

MOSH

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mosh.nokia.mobi (xhtml-mp)

 MoshNokia has launched a mobile content sharing network called MOSH. Theres a PC site at mosh.nokia.com and the mobile version is at mosh.nokia.mobi

.

MOSH is an open network. Anyone can browse the site with a PC or phone and download videos, images, ringtones, games and applications.  Registration, which can be done on either the PC or mobile site is only required to upload. Registered users can organize content into collections, create a profile page and comment on each other's content. There's a voting feature where you can can indicate their approval or disapproval of any content.

In less than a week the site has signed up over 24,000 users and recorded over a million downloads. MOSH breaks no new ground but it's a well designed and easy to use site. Nokia's marketing power and their ability to put a MOSH bookmark on every phone they sell make this a serious contender.

Shut Down: Nokia has shut MOSH down.The site redirects to the Ovi Store.


What's This?

Barcle

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.barcle.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Barcle HompageBarcle is a recent entrant, launched in November 2007, to the crowded field of mobile web price comparison and shopping. They have 900 merchant partners including Best Buy, TigerDirect and B. Dalton. This week Walmart, the biggest US retailer, partnered with Barcle.

The "Bar" in the name refers to barcodes. You can search by entering the 8, 12 or 13 digit number that appears under the UPC barcode on most consumer products. This is a great idea for mobile as it's much easier to key numbers than words with a mobile keypad particularly if the mobile website switches the phone's input mode to numeric only in the barcode field.

Barcle fails to exploit that opportunity by using the same input field for both barcodes and product name searches. The site's barcode database also seems to be incomplete. I had limited success using barcodes with Barcle. I tried the codes from eight current products that are available online; a couple of mobile phones, two books, two music CDs, some brand name vitamins and a digital camera. Of the eight products, Barcle found only three (one phone, a CD and a book) when using barcodes and two more (the vitamins and the camera) if I typed in the product name.

More...

Barcle has closed


What's This?

FishingGuides

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://FishingGuides.Mobi (xhtml-mp)

If you idea of a perfect vacation is going fishing in a new place, this site's for you. It's a directory of over 800 US fishing charters, guides and outfitters sorted by state.

Site is gone


What's This?

Discover Our Town

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://discoverourtown.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

The mobile edition of DiscoverOurTown.com, AKA DOT, a local directory service covering hundreds of cities and towns in the United States aimed primarily at travelers. Listings are submitted by business owners include a brief description, the address and a click to call phone number.

Jul-2010: Site is down


What's This?

Fullerton Community Bank

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: https://www.fullertoncb.com/mobile/ (xhtml-mp)

Southern California's Fullerton Community Bank's mobile site. I'm not sure what the features are as I don't have a login and there's no promotional information on the banks full site. There is a list of locations (with links to Google mobile maps and driving directions) which does not require a login.

Aquired by Opus Bank which doesn't offer mobile banking.


What's This?

How's the Bar?

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://howsthebar.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Live user generated reviews and updates on crowd size, male to female ratio, average age, entertainment, and drink value.of bars and clubs in Chicago and the Chicago area. Receive text messages when your friends are bar hopping also. Free registration is required to use the site. Souce: Chicago Daily Herald via Mobility.mobi


What's This?

PocketMalta

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://pocketmalta.mobi (xhtml-mp)

Pocket Malta Mobile Guide

Information on events, attractions and other visitor services for the Mediterranean island nation of Malta.The site also has Malta and international news headlines and directory of shops, restaurants and clubs, a page of information about Malta and another with click to call numbers for emergency services

The directory of shops and services seems incomplete with, for example, only a single listing (a hairdresser) in Birkirkara, Malta's largest (population 21,000) town.  Most listings contain only the business name and address, but on some clicking a More Information link reveals a page with hours and click- to call numbers. All the information about an establishment could and should easily be on a single page.  The second click is a waste of time and energy on mobile where minimizing clicks is an important element of usability. Source: Mobility.mobi

Site is gone


What's This?

360Tulsa

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://360tulsa.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Business directory for Tulsa, Oklahoma.  Listings include description, address, click to call number, an email contact form and a map.  There are also coupons for some businesses and Tulsa job listings. CSS positioned two column layout renders poorly on older S40 phones, Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

No longer has a mobile site


What's This?

Web Resources Depot

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.webresourcesdepot.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Mobile friendly view of one of the top Web development sites. Web Resources Depot has tips and turorials on using PHP, CSS and JavaScript to create desktop and mobile sites. It also offers reviews and recommendations of development tools, frameworks and plugins. 

10-Apr-2012: No longer has a mobile view and not a responsive site either.


What's This?

Serbia.mobi

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://serbia.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Visitor's guide to Serbia with transportation, hotel, restaurant, event, culture, nature, spas, nightlife and activities listings. Most listings include address, click to call phone numbers and email addresses.

20-Nov-2010 Site is down


What's This?

t-mobile usa

Content: ***1/2  Usability: XX1/2
Last seen at: http://www.t-mobileapps.com/vs/istream_int2/LinkLibrary/Results.cfm?Cat=1461 (wml)

Huge directory of Wap sites with brief descriptions. Not very well organized and there are a lot of dead links.

Down: 2-Mar-2009


What's This?

PhoneInfo

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://jonroig.com/phoneinfo.php (wml)

See what header information your browser sends.

25-Jun-2010: Site is down


What's This?

MoBits

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX1/2
Last seen at: http://mobits.com/index.php (HTML5)
Last seen at: http://wap.mobits.com/index.wml (wml)

Site promoting making all web sites mobile browser friendly. Not a lot of content here, a small site directory, a couple of permission papers and promotion for their consulting and design services. Nicely designed site, particularly the Wap2 version

Nov-2009: Down


What's This?

Mob5

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mob5.com/ (xhtml-mp/wml)

 Mob5 Image Mob5 isn't really a pure Mobile Social Software (MoSoSo) site although it bears some similarities to one. I'd call it a forms driven mobile site builder and free mobile hosting service. It lets you build a site to share your writing and photos. There's a comment form that you can add as a "wall" or shout-box were anyone can leave (and read) comments. Mob5 is good for building a site where your friends can look at your photos or writing and leave a message or click to call you. Pages can be password protected to keep the world at large out. But unlike a true social networking site there is no way within the site to find other Mob5 users or to grant access on a user by user basis.

Mob5 is also a good choice for a small business looking to build a promotional site.

After registering at Mob5.com - which only asks for an email address - you create a site using a very nice online editor which lets you add pages and elements to each page. The available elements are text blocks, images, the comment form, mobile web links, "click to call" phone number links and an email link which is just a mailto:// uri and thus will only work on phones with a built in email client. You can put any combination of elements on a page - there is no specific photos page, for example but you can easily create one. You can control text size, background, text and link colors and center, left or right align elements. Everything can be easily moved around and tweaked endlessly if that's your style. The editor is currently a PC web application only but a message on the site promises a mobile editor in "a few weeks". It's one of the easiest and most intuitive site builders I've used. There's no need for a manual or help file to figure out how to use it - a good thing because their isn't any. You are limited to only 200 photos per site but can have as many as 500 pages which is more than I think anyone would ever want. URLs are sub-directory style - mob5.com/user_name. Images can be uploaded by email or MMS or directly through the web editor and also via the mobile editor when it's released.

 Mob5 Image I am impressed with mob5.com's technology for adapting images to various mobile browser screen dimensions. Mob5 is resizing images to literally the largest exact size that will fix the browser's width. When I tried impersonating various mobile browsers using the the Firefox User Agent Switcher extension Mob5 would deliver the same image resized anywhere from 90 to 183 pixels wide. It worked well, in most cases delivering the largest possible image that would fix the screen without horizontal scrolling. I never got an image that was too wide for the screen. When Mob5 doesn't recognize a browser it renders images 90px wide which will safely fix on any phone's screen. Wml-only browsers are supported with a text only version of the site.

Mob5 is less than two years old and doesn't seem to have really caught on yet. I'd estimate that their are fewer than 2000 mobile sites on Mob5. I think it's a great choice for anyone who wants to create an attractive, modern WAP2 site with minimal effort. The adaptive image resizing makes it a particularly good way to show off photos on your phone.

Update: 22-Feb-2009 Mob5 no longer offers a free mobile site builder.

 


What's This?

Shop Bazzar

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://www.harpersbazaar.com/avantgo/ (HTML5)

Shop Bazzar is a directory of fashion boutiques in New York, London, Paris, Milan and Hong Kong. Although published by Harper's Bazzar, which is noted for it's fashion photography the site is disappointingly text only.

Redirects to main Harper's Bazaar site.


What's This?

Thyng

Content: **  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://thyng.mobi (xhtml-mp)

Common phrases in common languages" Thyng is a minimalist phasebook offering translations of "Thank you", "Hello", "Yes", "No" and "Goodbye" in French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian.

31-Oct-2010 - Site is gone.


What's This?

Upcoming

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.upcoming.yahoo.com (xhtml-mp)

Mobile edition of the popular online event calendar. Search for events by zip code or address. Register to save events to your personal calendar.


Aquired by Yahoo and shut down on April 30, 2013


What's This?

Cellufun

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wap.cellufun.com/ (xhtml-mp)

A popular (over 4 million users) mobile community built around ad supported Java and wap games. Many of the games are multi-player including their latest Space Wars, a massively multiplayer mobile web game (MMMG) for up to 120 other players. Besides the downloadable and online games the site also has community features like chat and polls and a sellection of comics.

Oct-2012 - Redirects to tyltedwap.com, a mobile browser based game site


What's This?

Nabbit

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.nabbit.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Nabbit Home Page

Nabbit ( m.nabbit.co) is a new service that reminds me of mobile.yes.com. Both sites tell you what's currently playing on almost any U.S.  radio station.  The key difference is that Nabbit has more features but requires free registration.

Registration lets Nabbit remember your location and favorite stations. The downside is that you can't just start using it right a way on your phone, you need to visit the Nabbit PC site to create an account and specify your preferred stations, which Nabbit calls "Presets".  Well actually you can register for Nabbit on the mobile site but you can't select any presets and without presets the mobile web version of Nabbit is useless.

Once your get set up, Nabbit is very easy to use with a dead simple one page UI which is just a list of your presets. Every time you launch Yes.com you have to search for your location and then choose the station from a long list of all the stations in the area.

Nabbit also lets you "Nabb" your favorite songs to create an online playlist.  The playlist is only available on the full web site.  From the online list you can search for the songs's video on YouTube; view the lyrics from lyricsWiki.com;  buy ringtones from MTV; get full track downloads from iTunes, Amazon, Walmart.com or Napster; or purchase concert tickets  from Ticketmaster or Ticketsnow.  Yes doesn't have a playlist , but it does let you buy the current track or album  on Amazon directly from the mobile site.

You can also Nabb a song by sending an SMS with the station's frequency to Nabbit.  But the ultimate way to Nabb is with a voice call using Nabbit's integration with Jott's voice recognition service.

So between Nabbit and Yes, which do I prefer? Although I generally dislike mobile web apps that require a PC to setup, I do find Nabbit  a little easier to use. So from now on Nabbit is my preferred  "What's that song" service.  But I'd really like to see Nabbit make their mobile web app self contained by adding the ability to add and edit presets on the mobile site,

Shut Down


What's This?

PrioBangl.Net

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wap.priobangla.net (xhtml-mp/wml)

Bangladesh based mobile portal offering forums, chat rooms, downloads, live local news, live cricket scores, jokes, horoscopes and free email.

Jun-2010: Now a non-mobile travel site


What's This?

the css blog

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://m.thecssblog.com/ (xhtml-mp)

A nice collection of very good CSS tips and tutorials in blog format.  Large (up to 160 KB) pages may be an issue for some mobile browsers. Mobile view by MobifySource: Oh! Mobile Directory


What's This?

SearchBliss

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://searchbliss.comNo longer has / (xhtml-mp)

Searchbliss is a collection of webmaster and SEO tools, some free and some not, plus a webmaster's forum. The mobile version was created with dotMobi's Instant Mobilizer which did a pretty good job with all the web forms and features I tried working properly. Usability is somewhat hampered by what I consider an excessive number (12) of advertising links for a mobile site.

25-May-2012 - No longer has a mobile view and not a responsive design


What's This?

TelcoData USA

Content: ***1/2  Usability: XXX1/2
Last seen at: http://www.telcodata.us (HTML5)

Enter the NPA (area code) and NXX (1st 3 digits of phone no) and find the carrier and location of the central office serving that number.

No longer mobile friendly


What's This?

Maxis

Content: ****1/2  Usability: XXXX1/2
Last seen at: http://wapportal.maxis.com.my (xhtml-mp)
Last seen at: http://202.75.163.27/maxistextwap/pindex.asp (wml)
Very well done Malaysian operator portal. News, Weather, Directions and downloads
xhtml version down 20-Dec-2007, many broken linkes on wml site.
What's This?

Scripting News

Content: ****1/2  Usability: XXXX1/2
Last seen at: http://scripting.com/ (HTML5)

The blog of Dave Winer, founder of Userland and Manila, who is generally credited with being the originator of RSS and thus blogging. Dave's blog is highly opinionated and often amusing.

No longer has a mobile version


What's This?

Slifter

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mp.slifter.com (xhtml-mp)

A new shopping search site. Searches both online and local brick and mortar stores, though most hits seem to be to online sites currently. Slifter also has a downloadable Java application that doesn't seem to add much value compared with the web based one. If you register you can save you shopping list and location and send links to bargains by email or SMS. Registration requires a mobile number, something I consider risky especially with new, unknown sites like Slifter. I was able to register with an obviously bogus number.

Slifter has shut down.


What's This?

SwissInfo

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.swissinfo.org/ (HTML5)

Mobile news site of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation. Local and International News, plus business, science, technology, culture and weather sections. The main site is cHtml and there is also a wml version at wap.swissinfo.org.

Site is no longer mobile friendly.


What's This?

FindNearYou - India

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wap.findnearyou.com (xhtml-mp)

Local search for India. This is a new service combining local search, localized event listings and flight schedules for Indian domestic airlines. Currently in Beta and with listings only for Chennai, FindNearYou is slated to go live with coverage of all of India in January.

31-Jan-2013: No longer mobile friendly


What's This?

South African Phrasebook

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://pocketlearn.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Phrase book covering Zulu, Afrikaans and Xhosa to help you communicate when you travel in South Africa which expects a big influx of visitors for the World Cup in 2010.

31-Oct-2010 - Now a non mobile education site


What's This?

Copy Page Text

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://cousinisaac.com/mobitol/index.php (xhtml-mp)

Mobitol - Copy text with mobile browsers

The ability to copy text from a web page is one of the most requested features by users on the Opera Mini Forum. It's such a basic and useful function that's available in all desktop browsers, yet hardly any mobile browsers support it. A clever coder who goes by the handle "Cousinisaac" has found a way make web text copying possible not only in Opera mini but with several other mobile browsers too.

Cousinisaac created a simple web form at mobitol.com that makes it all possible. You enter a URL and Mobitol retrieves the target's text and displays it in an editable textarea. If your phone and browser support copying text from edit boxes you should be able to copy it from Mobitol. Mobitol also lets you view and copy the html source of the target page if you want.

So what phones does it work with? So far I've found that it works great with Webkit and Opera Mini on S60 phones and also with Blackberries using the Blackberry Browser or Opera Mini although retrieving large pages in Opera Mini on the Blackberry makes scrolling very slow. It also works with the Skyfire and Bolt browsers on S60, but only with small pages like mobile sites. When I used a larger page (the WapReview homepage), Bolt truncated the text after the first 50 lines or so. Skyfire loaded the full text but wouldn't allow me to copy or edit it. Mobitol might also work with other phones that support copying from text fields including Windows Mobile, Palm OS and most Sony Ericsson feature phones. If you get it working on one of those platforms or anywhere else please share the knowledge by leaving a comment.

Mobitol is a great hack. One thing that would make it even better would be you could use a bookmarklet to pass the URL. That's not currently possible because the Mobitol form uses POST. I've emailed Cousinisaac and asked him if he could possibly modify it to except GET parameters which would make a bookmarklet possible.

Feb-2010: Site is Down.


What's This?

Touch Dictionary

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://touchdictionary.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Designed for iPhones, the Touch Dictionary actually works very well on most phones. Source Oh! Mobile Directory

Parked Domain


What's This?

Clubland

Content: **  Usability: XX
Last seen at: http://clubland.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

A rather basic nightclub directory.  Search for US nightclubs by zipcode or city. Listing contain the club name, click to call phone number and a link to a non-mobile Yahoo map.  The maps pages are huge and require Javascript so they don't work on many phones.  The site also has drink recipes and nightlife videos. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Nov-2009: Site is down with a 500 error.


What's This?

Weegoh

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.weegoh.com/ (xhtml-mp)

A location based social network that emphasises sharing events and places with your real-live and online friends using messaging, photos and video.  Source: Oh! Mobile Directory


What's This?

Diesel

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://m.diesel.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Store locator and catalog of collections formen, women and children from the Italian clothing and accessory design firm Diesel.  Image heavy pages run over a megabyte in size and require a good browser and fast connection.

5-Feb-2012 No longer a mobile site


What's This?

Alan's Pocket Portal

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.alanspocketportal.com/ (HTML5)

Formerly Alan's Hiptop, this is a short list of hand picked quality sites sites that been around since the early days of the web on mobiles.

Aug-2010 - Parked Page


What's This?

PhoneMag

Content: ***1/2  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://www.phonemag.com/ (HTML5)

Mobile news site highlighting new phone releases. Updated daily. Pages too big to load on some WAP2 phones.

21-May-2009: PhoneMag no longer offers a mobile version.


What's This?

news4mobile

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.news4mobile.com (xhtml-mp)

  news4mobile main page  Here's a neat new site that I found mentioned at MobileRead. It's called news4mobile - which is a sort of misleading name as it's not really a news site. News4mobile is a mobile portal with a social ranking system that makes it sort of a combination of Digg and del.icio.us. Anyone can (after registering) add a link to a mobile site. That's not especially new as there have been lots of sites like that and most of them quickly became a disorderly collection of broken links and links to abandoned TagTag pages that say little more than "This is Bob's mobile site - please leave a comment". But I think the ranking aspect gives news4mobile the potential to become a very big thing. When you add a link you can enter a description and add tags and you get credited as the person who first linked to the site.

The way it works is that news4mobile has a public side and a private side. On the public side news4mobile is a mobile portal or web directory that anyone can use by visiting www.news4mobile.com. The default view lists the top 20 mobile sites in order by how many visits they've received through the news2web portal. You can filter the view to a single category like sports or news, still ranked by popularity within that category. There is also a search function which searches within news4web directory including within descriptions and tags.

  news4mobile main page  If you register you can create a "My news4mobile" which is your private collection of bookmarked links. You can mark each of your links as either public or private. Public links show up in the directory and participate in the ranking process. Private links are visible only to you on your personal page - good if have links to personal notes or projects that can are working on.

On the public side of news2web all users can chose a couple of alternate views of the portal. One is ordered by the number of people who have bookmarked a site and the other puts the most recently added sites first in the list.

The other noteworthy feature is that according to the site's FAQ, "Dead Links will be automatically deactivated if not available and will only be reactivated if they're available again." It seems to be working, so far I haven't found any dead links in news4mobile.

The site is new and there are only about 125 links and probably not many users yet so I don't consider the rankings authoritative. For what it's worth here are the current top 10 mobile sites as ranked by news4mobile.

1 PocketPC Media
2 Pocket Movies
3 eBay
4 Humor on the Internet
5 PocketPC Themes
6 Sky Sports
7 WiFi Hotspot Search
8 BBC Sport
9 Daves PDA
10 Ringtone Charts

Seems like a high percentage of PocketPC links, but I imagine that's a refection of the current user base.

Anyway, I think that the concept of the site is great, in fact I wish I'd thought of it myself. A mobile portal where anyone can add a new site. Sites start out at the bottom of what can potentially be a very long list and can only move up the list by getting hits. Ideally the best of the best in mobile sites, at least by popular opinion, will wind up at the top of the charts in the favored position on the front page above the "fold".

I do foresee some potential problems. One is the obvious possibility for abuse. If news4mobile catches on, unscrupulous content providers will use bots to try to drive worthless ad-farm type sites to the top. This is the same problem that Digg and search engines face already. I also wonder what happens when multiple users add the same link (or slight variants) multiple times.

Obviously these problems can be managed and if they are I can see this site really taking off.

Incidentally, I believe news4mobile is based in Germany. The site defaults to English for me but I can switch to German via a link at the top on the page. Currently, the German side is a little more active with 257 links compared with the English side's 125.

Domain expired


What's This?

Paxmodept

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.paxmodept.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Paxmodept is a mobile Web and Java development shop. They host a small mobile portal that includes a set of unique tools for the mobile web developer. Curious about what types of types of audio and video content your phone can handle? Use Paxmodept's Multi Media File Tester. There are also tests for Javascript and markup capabilities and quirks, support for special uri's like wtai:// tel:// and sms:// and a copy of Luca Passani's GAP templates.

5-Feb-2012: no longer has a mobile developer tool page.


What's This?

Wireless@SG

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://wirelesssg.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)
Singapore based mobile portal, local restaurant guides and transit schedules plus extensive listings of news, sports and entertainment sites from around the world.

Down 22-Jun-2008!
What's This?

Sundance Short Films

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://www.e-clips.mobi/ (HTML5)

Sundance Film Festival Global Short Films - 5 short films presented by Sundance and the GSM Association. Each video is available as either a streem or a download. The videos seem to be protected by some sort of drm. I couldn't find any way to download them to my PC for side loading but recent phones seem to handle them with no problems. Each file is between 2.5 and 3 MB

Jan 2010: URL doesn't resolve.


What's This?

Travelosa

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.travelosa.mobi (xhtml-mp)

A mobile travel portal with links to airline, hotel and other travel sites.

Parked page.


What's This?

Mobile FilmMakers 2006

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wap.mobifilms.net (xhtml-mp)

Mobile FilmMakers 2006 (wap.mobifilms.net) This is a mobile site created for a mobile filmmaking contest held in 2006. The site has about a dozen films available for viewing in 176x144 h263/aac format including the four winning films. There are also film making tutorials available in text or video format.

29-Oct-3010 - Site no longer exists.


What's This?

Livemint

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://m.livemint.com (xhtml-mp)

Livemint HomepageLivemint (m.livemint.com) is the mobile edition of Mint, a major Indian business print newspaper. Livemint has an extensive collection of financial and business news grouped into topic areas like Corporate News, Economy & Politics, Technology, Marketing & Media, International News, Careers and Opinions. A separate "Markets" tab offers reports and prognostications from the New York and Indian stock exchanges as well as commodities and real estate investing news and quotes. It's not all business at Livemint either, there's a "Life" section with features on diversions including Sports, Politics, Style and Travel.

Mobile Livemint has an attractive, fluid tabbed design that looks good even on screens as narrow as 128px wide. Unfortunately, the site's page size (The front page has over 40KB of markup alone) keeps it from loading fully in the Openwave and Motorola MIB browsers found on many feature phones.

5-Feb-2012: No longer has a mobile edition


What's This?

Pocket TV

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://pocket.tv.qpbrand.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Sony Ericsson has launched this mobile video site featuring five new free music and comedy videos each week.  You can also enter a music trivia contest to win a Sony Ericsson W995 Walkman phone with 8 MP camera.  There's a new contest and winner each week. Source: Mobility.mobi

Domain registation lapsed


What's This?

Jambands.fm

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.jambands.fm/blog/ (xhtml-mp)

Jambands.fm is aimed at live music collectors, traders, and enthusiasts. It's a registration required music bittorrent tracker for live recordings of artists who allow their music to be traded. The lively Jambands blog featuring concert and recording reviews is available as a mobile view created with Mobify.me

26-Feb-2013 No longer has a mobile or responsive web design site.


What's This?

HRH.mobi

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://hrh.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Well designed and nicely illustrated history of the British royal family from 1066 to today. Source: Mobility.mobi

Parked domain


What's This?

Kastor.mobi

Content: ****  Usability: XX
Last seen at: http://kastor.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Free game, app, ringtone, theme and wallpaper downloads.  There's a decent amount of content on this site but you will waste a lot of time finding it as many links lead to empty pages! Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Oct-2012 - parked page.


What's This?

Londonist

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.londonist.com/ (xhtml-mp)

An online magazine about London with news, event listings, reviews of art, theatre, concerts, exhibits, galleries, pubs and restaurant. Source: Taptu Touch Web Report

No longer has a mobile site

 


What's This?

Truphone

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://truphone.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Truphone is a free app for iOS, Android, Symbian and BlackBerry that gives you free and low cost mobile calls using VOIP..  Download the app from truphone.mobi. Source: Mobility.mobi

The Truephone app for Symbian and Windows Mobile has been discontinued and the download site closed.


What's This?

WindowsMedia

Content: ***  Usability: XX
Last seen at: http://windowsmediamobile.theplatform.com/ (HTML5)
Microsoft Windows Media Mobile site. View short entertainment videos on your phone or PDA. Your device must support Windows Media. The site hasn't been updated in ages and the video links are currently broken.
What's This?

JuiceCaster

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.juicecaster.com/wap/ (xhtml-mp)

JuiceCasterJuiceCaster is a "social broadcasting" service. It's an embeddable player that you add to your Facebook, MySpace or Friendster page or a blog. You send photos and videos to Juicecaster by MMS, email or by using the JuiceCaster application and they appear in the player on your web page. When you upload you can flag an image or video as public, private or shared with selected friends. JuiceCaster is free to use except for the mobile application, which is a BREW executable currently available on US CDMA carriers Alltel and Cricket for $2.99/month. A Java version is due to be released early next year. The application adds convenience but is not required to use JuiceCaster.

In addition to the embeddable player, JuiceCaster also has PC (juicecaster.com) and mobile (juicecaster.com/wap/) websites with social networking features like profiles, friends, image and video sharing and chat. The content you and everyone else uploads can be viewed, shared and downloaded from either site.

JuiceCaster requires a US mobile number to register. You can register on the mobile web using your phone or from a PC.

4-Jan-2011 Site is gone.


What's This?

mPoria Mall

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mall.mporia.com (xhtml-mp)

mPoria Product Page One of the better mobile shopping sites. mPoria Mall works a little like Yahoo Shopping. You do a search and are offered a choice of items from partner stores, some of which are well known establishments like Buy.com and GameStop but others are small merchants similar to Yahoo StoreFronts. The Mall is a full fledged shopping center with all sorts of merchandise from books to clothing and jewelery.

The site is quite well designed with small fast loading pages and wizard-style navigation. There are some nice touches to enhance usability. Accesskeys (numeric shortcuts) provide one key menu selection and text fields use the input-format attribute to force the phone keypad to numeric mode for items like phone number and zipcode. Instead of entering your shipping and billing address you can enter a landline phone number and mPoria does a reverse lookup to fill in the address. This only works for listed numbers of course, but it's handy for shipments to a work address, for example. Context-sensitive help is available on all screens.

More...

Nov-2010 - Site is down.


What's This?

It's Rugby

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://mobi.itsrugby.co.uk (xhtml-mp)

A rather basic text-only Rugby site. It has schedules and standings for the World Cup and rugby unions around the world.

No longer has a mobile edition


What's This?

MileSplit

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.milesplit.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Mobile version of MileSplit.US which covers U.S. high school track & field and cross country with results, rankings, articles, photos, statistics and a forum. Source: Mobility.mobi

Jul-2012 Redirects mobile browsers to the desktop site


What's This?

One Tribe

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://onetribe.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

The official supporters club of the Vodafone Warriors New Zealand NRL rugby club.  News, scores, NRL ladder, vote for player of the day, live match commentary and wall paper downloads which are currently broken. Source: Mobility.mobi

Jan-2011: Site is down


What's This?

Jump2Video

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://jump2video.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Search and browse a catalog said to contain millions of videos from YouTube, DailyMotion and MetaCafe and other sites and view them on your phone .  Join Jump2Video's social network to  chat, share photos and videos and find friends.

Expired domain


What's This?

Blippr

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://blippr.com (xhtml-mp)

Blipper (recently aquired by Mashable) is a Twitter inspired social network where user share ratings and reviews of Apps, Books, Games, Movies, and Music in 160 characters or less.  The mobile edition is a "middle web" site with page sizes up to 140 KB, best suited to the iPhone, Android, Web OS and Opera Mini. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory


What's This?

Jeremy Visser

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: https://jeremy.visser.name/ (xhtml-mp)

Tech blog by an Australian hacker, bassoon player and user of free and open source software. Updated regularly, the blog covers topics ranging from Linux, Ubuntu and Python to Wordpress, Google, Tech Events and learning to drive a car.

No longer has a mobile version


What's This?

MyWap

Content: ****  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://mywap.o2.co.uk/ (wml)

You can register for, build and maintain your site completely from your phone. The web interface at www.o2.co.uk is easier to use however.

Update: 22-Feb-2008 MyWap seems to be no more. The url redirects to Peperonity.


What's This?

PDAPortal.de

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.pdaportal.de/pda_index.php?cat=0&lang=2 (HTML5)

A very large PDA directory

Aug-2010 Site is down.


What's This?

Cooler

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://cooler.opnr.com/ (xhtml-mp/wml)

An active sports magazine for young women. Covers skiing, snowboarding, cycling, roller blading, skateboarding, rock climbing, mountain boarding and other outdoor adventure sports.

Nov-2009: The domain is gone


What's This?

Nokia Developer

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.developer.nokia.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Forum NokiaForum Nokia Mobile is the mobile edition of Nokia's site for mobile application and web developers. Unfortunately it's missing much of the content found on the full PC Forum Nokia site. Some of the missing content like the SDK downloads don't make any sense on a mobile site. But also missing are my favorite part of Forum Nokia, the discussion boards. What is on ForumNokia.mobi is a calendar of events, a list of new articles posted on the main Forum Nokia site and a pretty good device characteristics data base with specifications including technical details like supported JSRs and audio and video formats. Be aware that some of the links in the News and Events section point to non mobile content.

5-Feb-2012: No longer a mobile formatted site.


What's This?

RedTram News Search

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://wap.redtram.com (xhtml-mp)

RedTram is a searchable automated news aggregator similar to Google News but less US centric. RedTram's front page covers top world news stories or you can click the "News on..." link for the Technology, Economics & Finance, Culture & Arts, State & Community, Incidents, Automotive and Sports sections. Users can comment on stories and there is a page of the most commented stories. All links in items are removed and there's is no way to get to the original news source. I like to see a way to click thorough to transcoded versions of the original articles or the possibility of emailing the a link to the source item.

31-Jul-2011: Site is down.


What's This?

London Wap Guide

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.bmh54.f2s.com/ (HTML5)

Lots of tips and useful information for visitors to London. Guides to attractions, restaurants, clubs and services, all with click to call telephone numbers and the nearest tube stop. Also an extensive transportation section covering the Tube, taxis, airports and intercity trains and buses. A downloads section has maps and Java apps like an interactive Tube map, language translators and a few games.

1-May-2013: Site is down


What's This?

Kinoma

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://kinoma.com/m/ (xhtml-mp)

Download free and paid versions of the Kinoma video and audio player for Palm OS 5 and Windows Mobile 5.0 and latter. The player plays local files as well as podcasts and streaming videos from Audible, YouTube and other online services. I haven't tried Kinona as I don't have a compatible device. The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg gave Kinoma on Windows Mobile a positive review recently. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Mar-2014: No longer has any downloadable content


What's This?

The Dotsisx Blog

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://dotsisxblog.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Dotsisx is Rita El Khoury, a graduate student in Paris, and the other guru (along with Richy Cadden) at Symbian-Guru. She shares her S60 tips with an emphasis on gaming on her blog.

3-Jan-2011 - Site is gone. Rita is blogging at ritaelkhoury.com/blog/ which does not have a mobile version.


What's This?

FUEL TV

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.fueltv.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Fuel is an extreme sports channel from the Fox television network in the US.  Fuel's mobile site has skateboarding, snowboarding, motocross, surfing, BMX and FMX. news and photos. Source Oh! Mobile Directory

Jul-2012: no longer has a mobile friendly option


What's This?

Royal Purple Ringtones

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.royalpurple.mobi/ringtones/ (xhtml-mp)

If you'd like your ringtone to be a Ferrari Testarossa or Ducati Superbike revving up, Royal Purple, a maker of synthetic motor oils, has these and 22 other free mp3 motor sounds ringtones for download on their mobile site. Source: Mobility.mobi

Oct-2012 - Mobile site and ringtones are gone


What's This?

Jason Calacanis

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.mippin.com/mip/prev/list.jsp?&id=23046&cat=software (HTML5)

Personal blog of Jason Calacanis, founder of Weblogs. Jason covers an eclectic range of topics but the emphasis seems to be the web business especially the hot trends, startups and social oriented "Web 2.0" stuff.

Hasn't been updated in over a year.


What's This?

MyMobileClips

Content: *****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://wap.mymobileclips.com/ (HTML5)

 MyMobileClips Image Here's another mobile web site that lets you download videos from YouTube, Google Video, DailyMotion and MetaCafe to your phone. It's called MyMobileClips and works a little differently than TinyTube which I reviewed a week ago.

To use the mobile service you have to register at the MyMobileClips.com PC site. Don't be put off by the fact that you seem to be registering for a phpBB Forum. There is a forum but that's not the main purpose of the site. I think MyMobileClips leveraged the robust registration and email verification facilities in phpBB to get the site up quickly. That's in keeping with the rest of MyMobileClips which has the look of a quick, clever and very functional hack.

Once you are registered you can download any YouTube, Google, DailyMotion or Metacafe Video either to your PC for sideloading or directly to your phone at wap.mymobileclips.com. Unlike TinyTube, access to videos on MyMobileClips isn't immediate. You request the video and MyMobileClips retrieves it and converts it to mobile format. This process takes about 5 minutes. Your converted videos remain available for you to download for 24 hours.

The PC interface is barebones, you just paste in the url of the video from YouTube or one of the other video sites and enter an arbitrary password. MyMobileClips gives you a short pin number. You can retrieve your downloaded video later by entering the password and pin.

Unlike the mobile versions of most PC sites, the MyMobileClips wap site is more full featured than it's big brother. Instead of entering a video's url - which would be very tedious on a phone - you can browse YouTube and MetaCafe videos or you can search YouTube, MetaCafe or Google videos. Searches return descriptions and optionally thumbnails. Speaking of options, you can specify all sorts of parameters such as video size (128x96 or 176x144), frames/per second, bitrate, mono or stereo sound, and 3gp (h263) or mp4 encoding.

I won't say that the MetaCafe mobile UI is slick or particularly easy to use. Pages are long - there's a lot more scrolling than I like. If you want to view the thumbnails you have to click a link after the page has already loaded forcing a time wasting reload. But no other mobile video site has the power and flexibility of MyMobileClips or makes the entire library of YouTube plus three other Major video sharing sites available on your phone, PDA or portable media player. If the UI gets to be too much, a link near the top of the mobile home page lets you download videos that you had queued in advance on the PC site.

11-Oct-2010 - Parked page


What's This?

Master Card

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wap.mcnearby.com (xhtml-mp)

MasterCard Nearby features an ATM locater for US locations and a list of current discount offers available on purchases made using MasterCard.


What's This?

Kingpin

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://kingpin.opnr.com/ (xhtml-mp/wml)

Skateboarding magazine with interviews of top skaters, event calendars and result, news and gossip.

Jan-2011: Site is gone


What's This?

Steve Rubel

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.steverubel.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Steve Rubel, who's a senior VP at the big PR agency Edelman writes about new technology as it applies to marketing, a subject that often involves covering new mobile services.

No longer offers a mobile version.


What's This?

Streams4PDA

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://www.streams4pda.com/ (HTML5)

This site features 300+ links to streaming video and audio news and sports broadcasts from services like the BBC, Eurosport, Al Jazzera and CNN. About half the content is in English. The video links are all in 320 x 240 Windows Media format. the audio content is also mainly Windows Media but some are in more open formats like MP3 or Ogg Vorbis.

Jan-2011: Site is gone


What's This?

Hack The RAZR

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://hacktherazr.com (HTML5)

Hack The RAZR Mobile Site Motorola phones have plenty of detractors, but one great thing about them is that they are the most hackable of all mobiles. I'm talking about the good kind of hacking, figuring out the secrets of  hardware and software and making it work better.

Unlike most phones which require special expensive hardware to update the firmware, with Motorolas all that's needed is software and an ordinary data cable. There's also free software available to extract, modify and replace almost any file in the phones filesystem. As a result of this relative openness, there is a big Motorola hacking community which has collectively figured out how to enable phone features that have been disabled by Motorola or by the carriers. If you want to use Bluetooth to do file OBEX transfers or make you phone vibrate first and then ring both can be accomplished by flipping a few bits in the phone's firmware, a so called "SEEM" edit. The onerous "security" restrictions on un-signed Java applications that block Java access to the GPS and throw up constant nag screens in Opera Mini can be defeated by modifying a configuration file. The knowledge is out there and the community is willing to share it on several Motorola themed web forums.

One of the best of the Motorola hacking sites is HackTheRAZR.com which specializes in the iconic thin RAZR phone. HackTheRazr's mobile site, unlike so many dumbed down, limited content mobile web sites, features virtually everything on the full PC HackTheRazr site. The most valuable parts of HackTheRAZR are the Guides, tutorials on how to configure your hacking toolset and get started customizing you phone, and the forums where the latest discoveries are shared and questions are asked and often answered. The mobile site also has images and videos to download and a mobile web directory.

Standard disclaimer: hacking your phone will void the manufacturer's waranty and can result in a "bricked" phone!

5-Feb-2012: Mobile site is down.


What's This?

DeviceDownloads

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://www.devicedownloads.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Big collection of free windows mobile apps.  Games, Multimedia and Utilities.

7-Jul-2011: Site is down


What's This?

Discover Namibia

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://discovernamibia.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Official site of the Namibia Tourist Board.  Information on entry and visa requirements, attractions and weather Source: Mobility.mobi

No longer a mobile site


What's This?

Get it 4 Free

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://getit4free.mobi (xhtml-mp)

Free ringtone, wallpaper and video downloads. Getit4Free.mobi encourages the exchange of free and non-copyrighted mobile content. All available content on Getit4Free.mobi is free of charge (except for possible
data charges).

11-Mar-2014: Blank page.


What's This?

WWE Mobile

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wwe.mobi (xhtml-mp)

Official site of World Wrestling Entertainment, the "sport" of professional wrestling.  The slick looking mobile site has news, results, schedules of TV shows, live events and star appearances. There are ringtones, wallpapers, videos and a subscription text alert service available for purchase. Source Mobility.mobi

Jul-2012: WWE no longer has a mobile friendly option


What's This?

Wikitravel

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://wikitraveler.info/ (xhtml-mp)

Wikitravel is a free worldwide travel guide that is built and maintained by its community of users. It has over 20,000 articles in its English edition.  Wikitravel provides background information on destinations including language, cuisine, customs, currency  and things to see and do. It does not seem to include reviews or recommendations of specific restaurants or hotels. Source: Mobility.mobi

2-Aug-2010 Site is down


What's This?

GeoFanPage

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.fanpagehere.com (xhtml-mp)

GeoFanPages

Coded in 24 hours at the Muther of all Hackathons in Silicon Valley this mobile web app finds nearby businesses by searching Facebook Fan Pages.  It won its co-creators a pair MacBook Airs as Best Mashup Using fitml.com's cross-platform mobile web platform.

Clicking a search result displays the businesses address, click to call phone number and a mobile formatted view of their Facebook Wall and Twitter timeline

The cross platform app works only in browsers with geolocation support, there's no option to input an address or zipcode. Confirmed working on the iOS, Android, and bada browsers and Opera mobile 10.1 and latter. I suspect it will also work with the Maemo and Meego Harmattan browsers and with BlackBerry browsers since OS 4.1

3--Jan-2012: Site is down.


What's This?

PPCVIDZ

Content: ****1/2  Usability: XX
Last seen at: http://www.ppcvidz.com/small/mainmenu.asp (HTML5)

A site with an incredible collection of over 1800 Windows Media files. The total includes some audio only files but there are several hundred videos including live TV, music videos and movie trailers. Some of the content on PPCVIDZ requires a subscription ($5/month) but most of the videos are available for free and without registration. PPCVIDZ is designed for Windows Mobile handsets with a QVGA screen and also requires Javascript to make full use of all the site's features such as filtering on things like musical genres (rock, country, etc.) and countries of origin for the live TV channels. Actually, I couldn't get the drop down menus to work with any browser mobile or desktop, not even IE 6. Maybe they work in Pocket IE. There are also an annoyingly high number of dead links. In spite of these faults there is still a huge quantity of high quality free mobile video content on this. For now you are pretty much limited to viewing it on a Windows OS device but Microsoft has finally made the Windows Media standards available for licensing. We are starting to see support for this format on non-Windows devices on the Symbian UIQ Motorola A1000 and A1010.

Jan 2010: Shut down.


What's This?

Moblr

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.moblr.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Free mobile video sharing site with lots of content. No registration is required to download and view videos. Most of videos are in 3gp format and under 300KB. Registered users can upload, rank and comment on videos.

1-Jun-2010: Shut Down


What's This?

MyToday

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mytoday.com/ (HTML5)

A portal with news, sports , movie reviews , feeds from Slashdot, Engadget and local bloggers. As the name suggests, MyToday can be customized as personal mobile homepage. Registration is by SMS and is limited to users with Indian mobile numbers.

Dec-2012: Shut down.


What's This?

Aapka Video

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://www.aapkavideo.com/m/ (HTML5)

Another video streaming site with lots of sports highlights, music and Bollywood videos. The clips are encoded in the widely supported 3gp/h263, amr format but their large size of 3-4 MB and 288x352 px makes them best suited for 3G phones and networks.

Jan 2010: Parked Page.


What's This?

MizPee

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://mizpee.com/mizpee/Mainmenu.do (xhtml-mp)

MizPee is a new mobile site that aims to help you find a place to go when you gotta go.  MizPee Front PageThe premise is simple, enter an address and MizPee will find the nearest public restroom. Toilets are user rated from 1-5, represented not by stars but by toilet paper roll icons. Hours are listed along with whether there is handicapped access, a baby changing table or a charge for using the loo. Listings are currently limited to New York, Portland, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Chicago, Washington, Atlanta, Seattle, Oakland and San Jose.

The mobile site is easy to use when finding a toilet. Of course it would be nice if it were GPS enabled but that is impossible without carrier cooperation which seems to be unobtainable for a mobile web app like MizPee.

30-Jan-2012: Site is down


What's This?

Paving Ways Ajax Tests

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://pwmwa.com (xhtml-mp)

Does your mobile browser support Ajax? These demos and tests (plus another page at pwmwa.com/frost) from Jon Arne, a Product Manager for mobile development shop PavingWays will help you determine it's level of JavaScript and Ajax support. You can find out more about mobile Ajax and the tests on Jon's blog

3-Jan-2011 - Site is down


What's This?

Jaiku

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.jaiku.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Mobile web version of the micro-blogging service. Jaiku is often thought of as a Twitter clone but it's actually the other way around, Jaiku predates Twitter by a few months. The best way to use Jaiku is with their S60 application which supports presence, location, native contact book integration and IM using Google Talk. The mobile web version is more limited but is still a great way to post to Jaiku and to follow streams of your friend's updates. If you don't have any friends (or don't have a Jaiku invite) you can follow a stream of all public Jaiku's without needing to log in.


What's This?

WIP Jam

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wipjam.com/ (xhtml-mp)

WIP Jam Mobile

WIP (Wireless Industry Partnership) is a grass roots organization that seeks to open up lines of communication between mobile  developers and industry leaders. WIP holds developer "Jam" sessions at major industry events like MWC and CTIA which operate under a "No PPT, No Panels!", No Ties!" mandate. The WIP Jam site provides developer information and news and schedules of upcoming WIP Jam sessions. The mobile version of the site was created by Vancouver's Mobify.me.

5-Feb-2012: No longer has a mobile formatted option.


What's This?

t3ch h3lp

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://t3chh3lp.mobify.me/ (xhtml-mp)

T3ch H3lp publishes tech tutorials and reviews as articles, videos and podcasts. Featured topics include Apple, Microsoft, Gadgets, the iPhone and Gaming. Mobile view by Mobify

Apr-2011: T3ch H3lp as changed it's name to OKGeek and killed it's mobile edition.


What's This?

Pat Phelan

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://patphelan.net/ (xhtml-mp)

Personal blog of Irish serial entrepreneur (MaxRoam, Twitterfone, Allfreecalls.net, Roam4free), Pat Phelan. Frequently updated and packed with industry news, gossip and Pat's take on the latest handsets, software and services,  "Pat Phelan: Bits, bytes and telecoms" is a must read for everyone in mobile.

No longer has a mobile site.


What's This?

Ananova

Content: ****  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://pda.ananova.com/ (HTML5)
Last seen at: http://wap.ananova.com (wml)
British portal with News, Sports and Celebrity Gossip .

03-May-2008: Blocked for non-Orange UK users
What's This?

Mob385

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mob385.com/wap (wml)

Mob385 has no games, it's all freeware applications like calculators, calendars, browsers, password safes, etc. plus some wallpapers. You can download directly to your phone from the mobile site (http://mob385.com/wap/) or to your PC for side-loading from the PC site (mob385.com/java/) The PC site has screen shots and descriptions, the mobile site doesn't but it's fairly small and files are at least grouped into categories.

June-2012: all the app download links are broken



What's This?

Zannel

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wap.zannel.com (HTML5)

A new mobile media (videos and images) sharing site. Anyone can browse, download and view. Register at www.zannel.com to be able to upload which can be done by MMS or on the PC site.

Dec-2011 Site is down


What's This?

Mobilcast

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://zeus.melodeo.net/mc/ (xhtml-mp)

A Java ME podcast and video player. Claims to have a library of 150,000 podcasts. The player and podcasts are free other than what your carrier charges for bandwidth. About 50 phones are supported, visit the Mobilcast website for details.

Update: 24-Oct-2010 Site is down and Java ME player doesn't seem to be available anymore.


What's This?

TinyTwitter

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.tinytwitter.com/m/ (xhtml-mp)

Download Tiny Twitter, a free Jave ME Twitter Client that works on most phones. Source OH! Mobile Directory

Ct-2012 - Site is gone and the app no longer works.


What's This?

my Wauwee

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://wauwee.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Wauwee is a new social network based around photo sharing and chat rooms which is targeting India, the Middle East and Africa. If you have trouble logging in with your username, try entering the email or phone number you registered with in the name field.

Jine-2010 - Site is down


What's This?

eSnips

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://m.esnips.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Download images, full track music .mp3's and videos (currently .flv only but more mobile friendly formats are coming soon.)

Dec-2011 Site is down


What's This?

Eye For Travel News

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.eyefortravel.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Travel trade website provides business intelligence for the travel and tourism industry. Mobile version by Netbiscuits

Dec 2010: Mobile edition is gone.


What's This?

AORTA

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.chetansharma.com/blog/ (xhtml-mp)

The mobile edition of well know mobile industry expert and consultant Chetan Sharma's "Always On Real Time Access" blog covers wireless industry news and features Sharma's insightful white papers and analyses.

No longer has a mobile version


What's This?

TalkTalk

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.talktalk.co.uk/mobile/wap/ (xhtml-mp)

News (International, British national, business and entertainment), email, sports, horoscopes TV guide for Great Britian. Wap site directory

Dec-2012: TalkTalk no longer has a moble or responsive site


What's This?

3G Portal

Content: ****  Usability: X
Last seen at: http://www.the3gportal.com/index.php/home1/pda/ (HTML5)

Third Generation mobile technology news. Now available in some markets, 3G will provide mobile data transmission rates of 384 kbs or more which is about 7 faster than GRPS. The main page of this site looks fine on mobile phones and PDAs but all the links point to full web pages that are unusable on most phones and unwieldy even on PDAs.

21-May-2009: The 3G Portal is no more, 404 page.


What's This?

RealOne

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.realnetworks.com/mobile/series60/us/us_index.html (xhtml-mp)

Real has a demo site called RealOne Media Guide at www.realnetworks.com/mobile/series60 with more than a dozen videos in Real Media format. The emphasis is on music videos which seem to be a few years old but are of excellent quality. Most Symbian S60 devices seem to either have Real Player installed or available as a free download. As far as I know there is no Real Media support is available on any other platforms.

Jan 2010: No longer a mobile site.

 


What's This?

Socialight

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://socialight.com/m (xhtml-mp)

  Socialight Image I saw an interesting video on PSKF.COM. It was a demo of a newish LBS mobile web service called Socialight which is based around sticky notes (aka Post-it's ™) that are tied to a particular location.  Users create the free-form notes to scribble their impressions of a  restaurant or club, as either a private reminder to self, a "Meet me here" note visible only to friends or as a shared bit of knowledge viewable by anyone.
 
What really caught my eye was that the video had Socialight CEO Dan  Melinger, and  PSFK's interviewer roaming around Manhattan with sticky notes popping up on Dan's mobile phone.  The user generated notes were tied to Dan's current location and carried recommendations for things like a pretzel stand that the two were standing in front of and an announcement (with audio attachment) of a concert that would be held nearby. Dan's phone was Motorola i870 on Nextel's iDEN network.  That's no surprise as Nextel is by far the easiest US provider to develop GPS apps on. There's lots of sample code on the web using these phones to get you started and Nextel is the only US network that doesn't require GPS apps to be signed.
 
As I have an iDEN phone I was pretty excited about Socialight after seeing the video.  The excitement was somewhat dashed when I discovered that the Java app is "coming soon".  For now, Socialight on the phone is a mobile web site (  socialight.com/m  ). Theres's also an SMS interface which I didn't try. When you post a sticky note on the mobile web site you have to type in the address or at least a zip code. Socialight will geolocate the note based on the address you entered.  Every time you visit Socialight you also need to set your current location by entering your zip code or address. Locations expire after two hours so you have to re-enter them periodically.  Socialight remembers your last five locations and lets you re-chose one of those from a list which eases the pain considerably.
 
The mobile website is a one size fits all design that is optimized for phones with a 176px wide screen.  After you enter your current location you get a list of nearby places which have sticky notes attached.  Selecting one lets you read the note with another click taking you to a map.  I really like the way Socialight has done the maps.  They are an fixed size (160x156) perfect for phones like mine with 176px wide screens. What I like is that the zoom level is such that the street names are readable and  the map includes about five square blocks which is generally enough context to visualize the location in relation to where you are.
 
The mobile site  is rather slow to load and always times out if I try to visit it with Opera Mini. There's a disclaimer on the site warning that it's a work in progress and some things may not work, but except for the slowness it actually works very well.

Socialight shows a lot of promise.  It's a bit of a pain having to enter addresses to accomplish anything with Socialight - here's hoping that Java app is delivered soon. With GPS, I can see this really taking off both as a social app to connect with friends who are nearby and as a user generated city guide.

Apr-2012: Socialight is now a platform that helps developers creat location aware iPhone apps. It no longer has a mobile webapp.


What's This?

The Smirking Chimp

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://www.smirkingchimp.com/avantgo.php (HTML5)

Mobile edition of a popular anti-Bush US Political Blog.

Nov-2010 - The mobile edition is gone.


What's This?

YourPlates

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://yourplates.mobi (xhtml-mp)

New mobile using your license plate as your email/Screen name! Send messages private messages to other YourPlates members to friends and post public messages to reports dangerous conditions and drivers. Source: Mobilty.mobi

June-2010 - Site is gone.


What's This?

LocalNetwork.mobi

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://localportal.mobi/localnetwork.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Directory of over 100 US local search and directory sites. Each site covers a single city or town. All have local business search, some also include classifieds, local news and weather.  Directory listings include address, map and click to call numbers.

Parked page


What's This?

WordDial

Content: ***1/2  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://96733425.com (wml)

WordDial HomepageDownloads, chat, sports, news, weather, horoscopes. Site is based in New Zealand and has pages devoted to finding shops, events and restaurants in New Zealand. This site's gimmick is that you can reach many of the top level categories by going to a numeric url where the numbers correspond to letters on the phone keys. For eaxmple, if you go to http://836647.com you will get WordDial's tennis page because the letters T E N N I S correspond to 833647 on the phone keys. Cute, but does anyone actually use this feature? More information on WordDial is available at www.worddial.com

Dec-2012: Site is gone.


What's This?

SportsFeed.com

Content: *****  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://www.sportsfeed.com/welcome.wml (wml)

Covers all the professional sports with odds and online pools.

July-2012 - Site is gone.


What's This?

WapMarks

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://wapmarks.net/wap/list.xhtml (xhtml-mp)
Last seen at: http://wapmarks.net/wap/list.wml (wml)
Large unsorted list of user submitted wap site links

Down 22-Jun-2008! Domain is parked
What's This?

wcities.com

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.wcities.com (xhtml-mp)

Img. 1A 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 review.

Outside the US, coverage is not as complete, only 9 cities in France, 7 in China, 8 in Mexico and only four in South Africa which is the only nation covered in Africa. There is still a lot of detail for the covered cities, more than 80 budget Paris hotels are listed, for example.

The sites usability is lessened because of rather slow load times.

Service has shut down.


What's This?

TinyTube

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://tinytube.net (xhtml-mp)

TinyTube

TinyTube.net is an independent mobile site that hosts 3gp versions of a lot of the current content on YouTube, MySpace, MetaCafe, Blip, Veoh and FileCabi.net, Rever and a number a number of other sites. . The videos are searchable and can be browsed by category and sorted by newest, Most Popular, Highest Rated or Longest. TinyTube can deliver streaming site or downloadable video in low or high quality. Both qualities are 176x144 with varying degrees of compression and of course size - low quality averages 300KB, High 2MB.


8-Dec-2010: Site is down


What's This?

mpulp Ajax Tests

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mpulp.mobi/a.php?id=28&amp;force=mobile (xhtml-mp)

Jon Arne, a Product Manager for Norwegian web development company, Mobiletech AS has been experimenting with mobile AJAX. He's written about his experiences on his blog offering some tips and three sample/test pages at mpulp.mobi/a.php?id=28&force=mobile

24-Oct-2010: Site is down.


What's This?

Jmise

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.jmise.com/mobile/ (HTML5)

Jmise is a new mobile portal with an attractive graphical interface optimized for phones with 240px wide screens. It has about 200 generally high quality mobile links.

Jun-2010: Jmise has morphed into a non-mobile Car Stero splog.


What's This?

Skype

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobiledownload.skype.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Skype Lite

You can now download the Skype "Lite" Java ME application directly to your phone.  Supported phones include most recent Nokia and Sony Ericsson phones and selected Motorola, Samsung and LG models. The site detects your phone model but doesn't stop you from downloading the app with an unsupported phone.  Skype Lite is available in signed and unsigned versions.

Skype Lite is quite limited compared with other mobile VOIP applications like Gizmo5 and Fring. It uses your mobile voice channel (and minutes) so calls will not be free, even to Skype numbers. In addition, you can only initiate voice calls from Australia, Brazil (Rio de Janeiro & Sao Paulo), Denmark, Estonia, Finland, New Zealand, Poland, Sweden, the United States and the UK.

Skype Lite is mainly useful for Skype IM and cheap international calling. You can make calls to Skype numbers anywhere in the world for the cost of a local call.  You can also call international mobile and fixed line numbers using Skype Out which will almost always be cheaper than your mobile operator's rates.  Skype IM is fully supported and uses only data.

I like Skype and use it on my PC quite a bit. It's far and a way the biggest free VOIP network and the best part is that it just "works". It's ultra reliable, there's nothing to setup and call quality is generally excellent.

Skype's been promising a true VOIP enabled mobile client forever.  They released one for Windows Mobile years ago but we are still waiting for a S60 version.  Tuesday at MWC, Skype and Nokia finally announced a S60 Skype client that supports free Skype to Skype calling on WiFi or 3G.  The only catch is that it will only available as part of a firmware upgrade.  Given that Nokia hardly ever issues firmware updates for the US versions of their phones I doubt I'll ever see Skype on my N95-3.  I don't understand why a Skype client can't be a simple .sisx download.    Gizmo, Fring and TruTap all delivered stand alone S60 clients two years ago, why can't the much larger, Ebay owned Skype? Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Oct-2012 Redirects to desktop Skype homepage. Skype no longer offers a Java ME app.


What's This?

ActiveDayton

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://activedayton.qwapi.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Dayton' Ohio's guide to events, bars, clubs movies and music. Source Oh! Mobile Directory

28-Jun-2010: site is down


What's This?

ApniEYESP

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wap.apnieyesp.com/ (xhtml-mp/wml)

The (mostly) WML mobile edition of "Pakistan's biggest entertainment portal". The English language site contains a large collection of Pakistani & Indian music with downloadable mp3s and ringtones, Pakistani mobile videos, concert listings, Bollywood movie reviews and mobile game and wallpaper downloads.

18-Dec-2012: Site is down


What's This?

MobileGeekInc.

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://MobileGeekInc.com (xhtml-mp)

Lively and frequently updated blog from two Polish mobile geeks. Features mobile news and rumors along with device un-boxings and phone and app reviews and how-to articles. Mobile version was created with WordPress Mobile Pack.

5-Aug-2012: parked page


What's This?

Pub Quiz Help

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX1/2
Last seen at: http://www.pubquizhelp.34sp.com/wap.wml#Main (wml)

Answers to trivia questions in a variety of categories including Animals,Art, Literature, Christmas, Entertainment, Games, Geography, History, Language, Science, Sports and Time. Light weight fun to browse stuff.

Site is gone


What's This?

VivaSelecta

Content: ***  Usability: XX
Last seen at: http://vivaselecta.com/wap/ (HTML5)

A collection of free ringtone downloads including sound effects, animal noises, funny sayings, TV show and computer game themes and lots of rock, rap and r&b. The search by artist and download by numeric code features are broken, follow the "browse by category" link to find the tones which are in polyphonic (mdi) and truetone (MP3) formats.

10-Jan-2010 - Parked domain


What's This?

WordTube

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.wordtube.com (HTML5)

This site aggregates news headlines from a number of sources including Reuters, The New York Times, Google News, Yahoo News and OMG. WordTube editors pick the best stories for inclusion on the WordTube Top News page. There are additional separate WordTube pages with top stores in Sport, Business, Opinion, Culture and Regional News.

Nov-2010: Site is gone


What's This?

Pownce

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.pownce.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Pownce (m.pownce.com) is the new microblogging service from Kevin Rose. Pownce lets you share text notes, links, files and invites in the form of a public or private feed. Pownce feeds can be read using any RSS reader, Pownce's web site, a Pownce desktop application (created with the Adobe Air platform), and now on the mobile web.

15-Dec-2008 Pownce has shut down.


What's This?

Blue Mobile

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://blue-mobile.com/ (HTML5)

A directory of streaming TV and Radio stations. Most are in Windows Mobile format which limits the audience to Windows Mobile phones, unfortunately.

Jan 2010: Shut down.


What's This?

Kerala Tourism

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://keralatourism.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Directory of hotels, home stays, houseboat rentals and transportation in the India state of Kerala. Notable for its beaches, historical sites and eco-tourism opportunities, Kerala is one of the most popular tourist destinations in India. Source: Mobility.mobi

No longer a mobile site


What's This?

WeRok

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://m.werok.net/ (xhtml-mp)

 

Werok, aka WeFi, is a portal linking to selected mobile services offering videos, chat, ad supported game downloads, mobile email, a service for cheap sending international SMS, mobile comic strips and a celebrity gossip site. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory 

18-Dec-2012: Site is down

 


What's This?

Coders.mobi

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://coders.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Coders.mobi

There is a new blog aimed specifically at mobile web developers. It's Coders.mobi and offers  tutorials, tips and tricks, code snippets and mobile site and toolkit reviews.

I think that there is a real need for a site like this.  Mobile web development is a subset of web development in general but it isn't currently given much coverage by the big web development sites like Webdesigner's Depot and SitePoint

Coders is new and doesn't have a huge amount of content yet but there's some good stuff like a recent post on using the Google Maps API to display maps on a mobile site. I'd classify the content on Coders.mobi as beginner to intermediate level but definitely worth a look for anyone building mobile sites. I hope David Wiles, the developer behind Coders, continues to add useful mobile development content and features to the site.

The mobile version of Coders.mobi was created with WordPress Mobile Pack Source Mobility.mobi



What's This?

Mobile Awesomeness

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.mobileawesomeness.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Blog covering mobile web design and development. Features a gallery of outstanding mobile web designs and a directory of mobile sesign and development resources.

 


What's This?

InfoCapri

Content: ***  Usability: XX
Last seen at: http://www.infocapri.mobi/en/ (xhtml-mp)

InfoCapri (infocapri.mobi/en) This is the official mobile site of the Capri Tourist Board. It gives visitors to the Italian Isle of Capri ferry schedules and extensive lists of phone numbers for services, hotels, clubs and restaurants. The schedules are no doubt useful but the lists are just that, just the name of the establishment and the phone number - no addresses or descriptions and the phone numbers are not even click to call.

Site is gone


What's This?

Betavine

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://betavine.mobi (xhtml-mp)

Betavine.mobi homepage

The huge international operator Vodafone supports and hosts a mobile developer community and forum on the web at betavine.net.  About a year ago Vodafone added game and application downloads to the site and re-launched Betavine as a community for both developers and users.  At the same time they created a mobile edition of the app portal at betavine.mobi

Developers submit new mobile games and applications to Betavine which are then available for download on the web and at betavine.mobi.  Users who download the apps can submit feedback to developers using either the mobile or full web sites.

This seems like a great idea, users get to try new applications and developers get valuable feedback and exposure to an audience of millions of Vodafone users.  There is no cost to developers or users and there don't seem to be many restrictions on the sorts of apps that are allowed on the portal.

Betavine.mobi is a 240 px wide fixed width mobile site that looks good on screens of that width but doesn't adapt well to larger or smaller screens.  The site is a little on the heavy side too, with pages up to 150 KB in size, too large for phones with the Openwave or Motorola MIB browsers.

I was really surprised to find only 216 apps and games on Betavine.  The files are filtered by device type, so only 130 of the 216 were  available for download to my N95. The apps are organized into categories (Games, Travel, "Keeping in Touch", Health and Fitness, Music Photos, Sport, Business and A-Z)  There is no search but with only 130 downloads it's not a big deal to browse through the categories.  I don't understand the A-Z category, though.  I expected it to contain an alphabetical list of all the downloads but instead it lists only nine apps which don't seem to have anything in common.

Anyone can browse Betavine.mobi but to download you must register with a mobile number (for SMS verification) AND a captcha - more security than necessary for a free download site, IMHO.   On top of that I never got the SMS.  I'm inclined to blame T-Mobile USA for that rather than Betavine.  Receiving international SMS seems to be hit or miss with T-Mobile, but that's another story.  Fortunately I was able to log in  to the mobile site by using my Betavine.net credentials, an email address and password.

The apps on Betavine are a mix of well known ones like Trutap and SocialPlayer that are available elsewhere, demo versions of commercial apps and developer oriented API demos. Betavine.mobi is a nice little app showcase but where is all the content?  I don't understand why there are so few applications and games on the site.  Betavine.mobi is an on-deck site for Vodafone subscribers in Germany,  Spain and the UK which means 70 million potential visitors.  I'm really surprised developers aren't falling all over each other to submit apps to Betavine.

Admittedly there are no paid apps, so no direct revenue opportunity; but shareware, ad-supported and trial commercial apps seem to be accepted.  Why haven't more of the thousands of developers using GetJar submitted their apps to Betavine? Even Phoload, which is only a few moths old, has more aplications.

9-Oct-2012 - Site is down.


What's This?

GO211

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://m.go211.com (xhtml-mp)

Skateboard, Snowboard, Surfing and BMX news, videos, blogs and event calendar.  Slick looking site but page size of over 80 KB maybe a problem for feature phone browsers.

16-Jan-2011: Dimain aquired by Metacafe.com and  shut down


What's This?

Gophernow

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.gophernow.com/mobile/ (xhtml-mp)

Local restaurant search for the U.S. Listings include addresses (sorted by distance) and click to call number. Source Oh! Mobile Directory

1-Nov-2010: Parked page


What's This?

WAP Insight

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.wapinsight.com/wml/index.wml (wml)
Mobile Industry news, wap site directory.

Down 22-Jun-2008!
What's This?

Vcellspace

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.vcellspace.com/ (HTML5)

A free third party mobile interface to MySpace.com that works with all providers. Read and reply to MySpace mail, post bulletins, view friend's galleries. No registration is required for Vcellspace but you must have a MySpace account. There is also a Vcellspace Java app (download from vcel.net/d/) which has all the same features and also lets you upload photos directly from your camera phone to MySpace. For more imformation visit www.vcel.net on the web or the Vcellspace co-founder Sergey Lossev's blog at modernmobility.blogspot.com/

Feb-2009: in the deadpool


What's This?

NxtClick

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://gb.tribes.cc/globalen (xhtml-mp)

 WapReview with Tribe's ToolbarNxtClick (formerly Tribes) is a portal that appears as mobile browser toolbar with five buttons:

  • Next: Every time you press "Next" Tribe takes you to a new random mobile site.
  • Hot: Flag a site as "Hot" and add it to your "Hot List". When you flag a site as Hot you can add comments and see a list of sites that other users who flagged the site like.
  • Not: If you don't like the site you can click "Not" and Tribes will never show it to you again.
  • Options: Personalize Tribes by choose categories like news, entertainment, adult or sports that you would like to see sites from. Under Options you can also view your Hot List, see the top 10 sites flagged as "Hot" by users, view your browsing history or enter a url to add to your Hot List.
  • Home: Back to the Tribes Homepage.

I found NxtClick rather compelling, when you click on the next button the focus remains on that button after the next page loads so you can just keep clicking and see a new page every few seconds. It's a lot like channel surfing on your TV. I found myself clicking over and over just to see what new sites I'd discover. Read the full review of Tribes on the WapReview Blog

Jun-2010: Site is down


What's This?

MyCorner

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://m.mycorner.com/ (xhtml-mp)

 MyCorner Home PageNicely designed site with a variety of user submitted news, tech sports and travel videos in 176x144 .3gp format. I enjoyed the ones taken by someone wandering around the big 3GSM trade show in Barcelona earlier this year. Anyone can download, you must register to submit videos. Registration can be done on the phone or on MyCorner's PC web site and requires giving your mobile phone number. As far as I know MyCorner is reputable but I advise against giving your number to anyone you aren't personally acquainted with. It only takes a phone number to perpetrate a premium SMS scam.

Jan 2010: Site is down


What's This?

Inside Edge

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://insideedge.opnr.com/ (xhtml-mp/wml)

Mobile magazine covering sports and the game of Poker. Poker playing tips and coverage of World Series of Poker profession matches. Also sports features currently covering Cricket and Football or Soccer as it's called in the US.

Nov-2009 Domain is gone.


What's This?

Quobile

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.quobile.com (xhtml-mp)

This mobile portal's name combines the words "Quick" and "Mobile" to suggest that it's "blazingly quick". It does seem fast and offers a well rounded selection of 50 News, Sports, Weather, Social Networking sites and Blogs. About half the sites are true mobile sites, the rest are Skweezer transcoded versions of full-web sites.

Now a non-mobile Splog


What's This?

Inside Higher Education

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.insidehighered.com/ (xhtml-mp)

News, commentary, career advice and a job board for higher education professionals. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

5-Feb-2012: No longer has a mobile edition


What's This?

Smile Wap

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://smilewap.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Free celebrity wallpaper downloads.  Actresses, models and sports stars from around the world. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

9-Oct-2012 - Site is down


What's This?

The Progress Project

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://theprogressproject.com (xhtml-mp)

The Progress Project'ss Mobile Site

The Progress Project is a joint venture by Nokia and Lonely Planet that documents the companies efforts to solve social, environmental and economic problems around the world. The solutions are varied but all involve mobile technology in some way.

The Progress Project's mobile and desktop Websites report on the various projects with text, photos and video. Currently featured are:

  • Nokia Life Tools - helps Indian farmers bargain more effectively by checking crop prices in neighboring regions using their mobile phones. Life Tools also delivers agricultural information like pest control advice and has a module to help learn English.
  • Nokia PIER is a mobile app, Facebook widget and Web service that lets Los Angeles and San Francisco commuters monitor and reduce their carbon footprint and exposure to environmental hazards.
  • Nokia Data Gathering lets Brazilian health workers track, monitor and ultimately stop the spread of dengue fever using mobiles for data gathering. The program is credited with a 93% drop in cases of dengue.
  • Nokia Tej provides a mobile phone based order and inventory system to local textile factories in India's Gujarat province.
  • At the Mobile Learning Institute in San Francisco students use phones to make films promoting environmental responsibility.
  • Mobile Millennium uses phones as sensors to measure California traffic flows and help users find the fastest, least congested routes which reduces carbon emissions.

The Progress mobile website contains virtually all the content of the Flash based desktop version, including the videos, in an attractive low-bandwidth format suitable for all mobile browsers

Apr-2011 - Redirects to lonelyplanet.com


What's This?

Wireless and Mobile News

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wmns.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Mobile edition of the up and coming news blog Wireless and Mobile News, which covers mobile news with the emphasis on new smartphones and apps for them. A popular feature of the site is the "Review of Reviews" summarizing online reportage for a hot new handset.

The mobile site offers virtually the entire content of the full site.  It's targeted at modern mobile browsers with a front page size of 78 KB and images up to 300px wide. There are no JavaScript dependencies.

No longer has a mobile version


What's This?

AppScout

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.appscout.com/htmlsite/ (xhtml-mp)

AppScout

Part of Ziff Davis' PCMag.com Network, AppScout is a news blog offering breaking news, tips, and reviews of desktop and mobile software and webapps.

The mobile edition, created by mDog includes the full content and photos from all recent AppSout posts including read-only comments. There's a bug in the site's browser detection code which throws a 403 "Not Found" error with some mobile browsers when visiting appsout.com or mobile.appscout.com. Use mobile.appscout.com/htmlsite/ as a work around.


No longer has a mobile version.


What's This?

Bangladesh/Kolkata Portal

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wapdir.pbadda.com/ (xhtml-mp)

A categorized mobile directory featuring sites from Bangladesh and the neighboring Indian state of Kolkata.

Site is down


What's This?

Mobile Distractions

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://onlyfor.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Mobile trivia site with Today In History, Quotations, Confucius Quotes, Facts About Beer, Your Mama Jokes and more.

Parked domain


What's This?

MoveDigital

Content: ****  Usability: XX
Last seen at: http://mobile.movedigital.com/ (HTML5)

Streaming Video Site with a lot of content. The lack of any sort of catergories, tags or search facility makes it hard to find anything.

Jan 2010: Site is down


What's This?

StupidVideos

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wap.stupidvideos.com/ (xhtml-mp)

YouTube competitor emphasizing humorous videos. Some of the videos are user submitted while others are made for the site. On the web, StupidVideos.com lets users comment on and upload videos but the mobile site is view-only. The videos are in .3gp format (176x144, h263 encoded with mono amr audio) which is the lowest common denominator of mobile video formats and should work on just about any mobile phone that can download video from the open internet. They will not work on BREW carriers like Verizon, Alltel and US Cellular which block all off-portal content downloading.

21-Jun-2010: Displays an error page with the message: "The site is currently unavailable; please contact the system administrator."


What's This?

Wadja

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.wadja.com (xhtml-mp)

A mobile focused social network that has been around since 2006. It's very mobile centric, there is a desktop version of Wadja but you never really need to go there, everything can be done from the mobile web site.Wadja

 

Wadja has the usual social networking features of profiles, friends, content (music, video, pictures) sharing and chat. The thing that sets Wadja apart is the ability to send free SMS text messages to any number in the world. Of course the messages are only free if you have an unlimited data plan or send them from your PC. Wadja is based in the UK so sending text messages to non-UK numbers might be a little hit or miss as it depends their being an SMS-interconnect agreement between your carrier and whatever service Wadja is using. I never got the ones I sent from Wadja to my Boost phone on the Nextel network for example.

Wadja has a reassuring privacy policy and you do not have to give your mobile number to sign up. If you do let Wadja have your number you can hide it allowing Wadja friends to send messages to your Wadja ID without revealing the phone actual number to them. Wadja works pretty well although a few screens with 25 or more small images that are too large (over 20 KB) to load on low end mobiles.

13-Jun-2010 Sit is down, displaying only "New mobile site is coming soon..."


What's This?

Glocut

Content: *****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://glocut.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Glocut Local Mobile Search

Glocut is one of the nicest local mobile search web apps I've seen yet. What sets it apart from all the others is its deceptively simple but effective user interface.

When you launch Glocut the first time you will need to enter your location. It's not very fussy about  formatting; a full street address, city, country, postal code or a landmark like "Times Square"; they all work .

It gets even better, Glocut has a tiny Java or Windows Mobile native app that you can download. All the app does is retrieve your location from the phone's GPS and launch the browser passing the Glocut URL with your latitude and longitude embedded in the query string. After launching the browser the app terminates freeing what little resources it was using. What a great way to GPS enable a web app. It works perfectly on my unbranded Nokia N95-3 and should work on any GPS equipped phone that supports the Java ME Location API and allows an unsigned application access to location data.

Once Glocut knows were you are it displays your location on a map and and initially shows Google Local search results for nearby hotels. Not looking for a hotel? You can enter a search query or click on links for predefined searches like  Restaurant, Bar, Bank, Cafe, Taxi, Pizza, Sushi or  Mc Donalds. Click on one of those and Glocut displays results centered on your location from the selected category. Glocut's truly a global application. It seems to recognize address anywhere in the world and the interface is available in 17 languages.

Glocut is more than just a better Google Local front end. There's a top menu that lets you choose from (Local) Search, Wikipedia, Pictures (from panoramio.com), Events (from last.fm) and Twitter (Tweets from people near you).The Twitter tab even lets you update your Twitter status and when you do it sets your location in Twitter

Glocut's really very slick and intuitive with short click paths and fast page loads.  I'm really impressed with how easy it is to use. OK, it's not perfect.  There are a few details that need a little work; the Panoramio and Wikipedia results link to full-web rather than mobile pages and there is no privacy policy that I could find, which might make people a little wary of sharing their location.

I had an email conversation with Glocut's developer who agreed on the need for a EULA and that the Panoramio and Wikipedia results need to be transcoded or point to a mobile version in the case of Wikipedia.  A fix for the non-mobile links and a privacy policy will be in place soon along with some other enhancements including local news, weather, YouTube clips and Flickr images.

Even with its few warts,Glocut is pretty amazing. If Google had built this everyone would be going nuts over how great it was and how Google really understands mobile.  But Glocut wasn't built by Google, although it uses some Google APIs for maps and local searches.  Glocut was created by Anders Johnard, a Swedish consultant and veteran of social networking site LunarStorm where he was responsible for their mobile site. Glocut is self funded although Anders indicated he might be interested in some VC funding eventually.    Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

1-Nov-2010: Site is down.


What's This?

Taptu Blog

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.taptu.com/taptu-blog/ (xhtml-mp)

Taptu Mobile Search Blog

Taptu is one of my favorite mobile search engines.  I've blogged about Taptu's mobile search product and it is listed in the Wap Review Mobile Directory's Web Search section. But did you know that Taptu also has a blog? Unlike so many boring promotional corporate blogs, Taptu's actually has content of interest to mobile developers, entrepreneurs and enthusiasts.  Posts cover a wide range of topics from analysis of industry news like the recent Yahoo, Microsoft search deal, mobile design and usability tips, and mobile application and site reviews.

The Taptu Mobile Search Blog uses James Pearce's WordPress Mobile Pack plug-in to deliver a mobile optimized version to all browsers while preserving thematic consistency. That means that all links, including deep links to posts, pages,and  tag and monthly archives will work and deliver the same content, obtimized for mobile as needed

 

Apr-2011 - No longer has a mobile edition


What's This?

Purely Mobile

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://www.purelymobile.co.uk/default.asp (HTML5)

Mobile link directory and search engine. 200+ sites in 39 categories.

Update: 11-Nov-2008 - Site is down - SQL Error


What's This?

MEDIAWEEK

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.mediaweek.com (HTML5)

A trade journal covering the TV, radio and magazine industries.

5-Feb-2012: Redirects to adweek.com


What's This?

BluePulse

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://bluepulse.com (xhtml-mp)

Bluepulse messaging interfaceWhen I last looked at Bluepulse a year and a half ago, it was an Australian company with a Java ME based mobile widget platform. Well that has changed and Bluepulse is now headquartered in Silicon Valley (in YouTube's old offices!) with a "social messaging" service. What's that? Bluepulse describes social messaging as "as the love child of a social network and an instant messenger", combining typical social network features like profiles, chat, friends, groups, photo and video sharing and a status update feed with mobile messaging via SMS, email and the web.

 

Although Bluepulse used to be a Java application it's now a purely mobile web, SMS and email based product. It's all on the mobile, there is a Bluepulse PC web site at www.bluepulse.com but it's about Bluepulse with FAQ's help texts, privacy polices etc. To actually use Bluepulse as a social network including signing up, messaging, profile and group management you do everything at the mobile site at bluepulse.com (without the www). The mobile site can be used from a PC, by the way if you aren't yet entirely comfortable with a purely mobile platform.

More...

June-2010: site is down.


What's This?

Livefizz

Content: **  Usability: XX
Last seen at: http://www.livefizz.com (xhtml-mp)

Livefizz CitiesLiveFizz gives you the latest "buzz" on nightlife and the local live music scene in major US cities as well as last minute ticket info for sporting and concert events in your area.

Unfortunately, the search results seem very limited with only a handful of listings for this weekend in both LA and San Francisco. There are also some usability issues. After you enter your zip code (required field) the site asks you to chose your city from a list of all cities!  There doesn't seem to be a direct mobile URL and site's browser detection doesn't work very well forcing my N95 to the full site rather than the mobile one. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

1-Nov-2010: Site is down. 


What's This?

Rummble

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.rummble.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Rummble

Rummble (m.rummble.com) is a location based social network that uses the Gears Geolocation API to find your current location. Rummble lets you build a network of friends and rate and share "things" like restaurants and clubs with your friends or the world.  Rated things are called "Rummbles". When you log the site, it displays nearby friends and Rummbles.   On the web, Rumble displays them on a Google map. The mobile interface makes do with a text list although you can bring up a map showing the location of a single Rummble. Gears is currently available for Windows Mobile and Android. Rummble works on other platforms without Gears, users just have enter their location manually.

The mobile location based social networking field is getting crowded.  Rummble competes directly with Zkout, Socialight, MolologoLoopt and Mobiluck. And most of these services have their own ways of autocratically detecting your location; Socialight, Molologo and Loopt with standalone GPS enabled applications and Zkout with a mashup of Navizon and Yahoo's Fire Eagle.  The Gears approach is certainly more scalable than expecting the user to install a different app for each location based service or the complicated setup required to get Zkout, Fire Eagle and Navizon all working together.

Jan-2011 Rummble social network shut down


What's This?

Papaya

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wap.papayamobile.com/ (xhtml-mp)

A mobile social network started by ex-Googler Si Shen.  Papaya is available as an iPhone or Java app and on the mobile web. Features include on phonebook backup, multi-player gaming, avatars,  micro blogging, multi platform IM (AIM, Yahoo IM, MSN IM, Google Talk, and ICQ), avatars, photo sharing, chat rooms and cheap international caling and SMS.

April 2012 - Papaya has morphed into an Android social gaming platform and no longer has a cross platform mobile web app.


What's This?

Horticulture Week

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.hortweek.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Mobile edition of a leading British horticultural trade publication offering news, analysis, opinion, technical reports, product and market data to professionals working in production horticulture. Mobile view by Mobify

No longer a mobile site.


What's This?

Multiply

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://multiply.com/m/ (xhtml-mp)

 MultiplyMultiply (multiply.com/m/) is a social networking site which claims 6 million members. Multiply's mobile edition comes in two forms, one for the iPhone and the other for all other mobile devices. The two share the same url with browser detection serving special content to iPhones.

Multiply is a closed network. That means that without a Multiply account you can't do anything on the site. You can register right on the mobile site or on the Multiply desktop site at multipy.com. Registration requires only an email address.

Multiply's main focus is content creation and sharing. Users have a blog which along with comments and the content like videos, images and games that the user is sharing make up a Multiply home page. Comments appear immediately giving the site a bit of a chat like feel. Everything you publish can public, private or shared with only your contacts or your network which is your contacts plus everyone they are connected to through contacts.

The Multiply Mobile is generally well designed except for the photo album pages which can contain over 100 images per page. The images are small, 120x120 px, but even small images add up. I saw one page with 133 images that was 600 KB! in size. This is on the regular mobile site not the iPhone variant and is much too big to load on most handsets.

Now a non-mobile shopping site


What's This?

Boing.mobi

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://boing.mobi/ (HTML5)

Another new .mobi themed directory, portal and search engine which has about 80 links including many that are new to me.

Update: 11-Nov-2008 Site is Down.


What's This?

10Best

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.10best.com (xhtml-mp)

Guide to the best restaurant, hotels, night life and attractions by city for over 3,500 cites around the world. There are multiple categories so "10 best restaurants" is not just the most expensive places in town but the 10 best Indian, 10 best cheap eats etc. Search, directions and brief, but in my experience, accurate reviews make this an outstanding site.

No longer has a mobile site


What's This?

Cerkle

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://cerkle.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

New mobile social platform from Roundpoint, a company previously known for building subscription based mobile sites for newspapers. Cerkle lets you build a simple mobile homepage with photos, text and links. Cerkles can be public or private and their is a parental control feature allowing you to set of a Cerkle for your child and restrict access to only approved friends. Registering for a Cerkle account involves sending an SMS to a UK number which seems unecesary and also means Roundpoint has your mobile number.

10-Jan-2009 - Dead!


What's This?

Zkout

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.zkout.com (xhtml-mp)

Zkout Mobile HomepageZkout (rhymes with "shout") is a new player in the crowded mobile social network field. Launched (audio) at Le Web 3 in December, Zkout bills itself as "The network that follows you", to emphasize that it's location based.

Zkout combines Twitter-style location and status updates with location and media sharing. The basic idea is that you periodically update your status and location and optionally upload a photo or video shot on location. Zkout calls these updates "Moments". Your information is shared with all Zkout users by default but you can restrict visibility of your location, Moments and Profile to friends only and you can completely hide the location from everyone. Zkout uses the shared information to show you nearby media, people and places and to provide a newsfeed of friend updates. Zkout users can also comment on each others posts and chat.

More...

June-2010 - Site is down


What's This?

Singapore iMode Portal

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://imode.x10hosting.com/ (HTML5)

An extensive list of categorized links to mobile sites of interest to Singapore residents and visitors. It includes local news, sports, shopping, traffic and weather.

Jul-2010: Site is down.


What's This?

Yubuk (italy)

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://yubuk.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Restaurant search for Italy.  Search by proximity, type of cuisine or restaurant name.  Results include  map, address, photos, description, average price range and rating and phone numbers which are not click to call. .  Registered users can make reservations with confirmation by SMS. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

1-Nov-2010: Site is down.


What's This?

aBrilliantBlog

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://abrilliantblog.com/ (xhtml-mp)

ABrilliantBlog Mobilized by Mippin

aBrilliantBlog is Jeb Brilliant's personal blog on all things mobile.  Jeb is a social media and brand image consultant to the mobile industry and also runs a trade show and events production company. 

At aBrilliantBlog Jeb writes about mobile services, VOIP, social networking and devices, especially Nokias.  Jeb uses the Mippin WordPress plugin to create the mobile version of aBrilliantBlog.


Rebranded as The Mobile Perspective


What's This?

Folio Mobile

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobile.foliomag.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Mobile edition of an online trade magazine covering the magazine industry with news, interviews and information "blogs" on specific areas of the magazine publishing business like Sales and Marketing, Audience development or Regional Publications.  Mobile edition is by Crisp Wireless. Source Oh! Mobile directory.

No longer has a mobile edition


What's This?

Global Dinning

Content: **  Usability: XX
Last seen at: http://wap.globaldining.com/ (wml)

Worldwide restaurant listings. No reviews, just a listing of restaurant names and phone numbers by county and city.

No longer has a mobile site


What's This?

Treemo

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://treemo.com (HTML5)

 Treemo Image Treemo is a new social content sharing site which combines most of the features of YouTube and Flickr with a strong mobile web presence. Treemo allows users to upload and share video, audio, text, images. The site's free account has much more generous upload and storage limits than Flickr's. Treemo allows uploading 200 MB per month, ten times as much as Flickr. In addition Flickr limits free accounts to displaying only the 200 most recent images. Treemo doesn't limit the number of images but does cap total storage at 1 GB which is enough for at least 400 large, high quality images or a couple thousand of typical web quality.

For video on the other hand, Treemo's limits are lower than YouTube which accepts videos up to 100MB each with no limits on total uploads per month or total storage size. Treemo's limit is 20MB per video and there are also the 200MB/month upload and 1GB total storage caps. Treemo has announced a $3/month premium account with unlimited storage but it's not available yet.

But Treemo has something that YouTube doesn't. Every video on Treemo is available in mobile friendly .3gp format from Treemo's mobile site. I uploaded a 400x300px, 17 MB .wmv file which Treemo converted to a 180X150 px, 3 MB mobile video. The mobile videos don't stream though, you have to download the whole file before it starts playing.

Treemo's PC web site is very slick, using drag and drop for reordering content and moving media between one set (think Flickr album) and another. Content can also be tagged and the location where the shot or video was made can be specified. Like YouTube and Flickr, Treemo makes it easy to embed content in other sites like MySpace with cut and paste links. The social features of Treemo include comments, messaging and the ability to pick other user's content as a favorite. The "Most Favorited" content is highlighted on Treemo's front page. Currently Treemo is ad-free but has plans for advertising - but users get to choose if they want to have ads displayed alongside their content. For those who allow ads, Treemo will split the revenue with the user.

I was really impressed with how polished and professional the PC site was especially so soon after it's September launch. Unlike many of the new Web 2.0 Ajax based sites, Treemo's PC site is fast and stable. Even on a slow machine, dragging and dropping is smooth, fast and error free.

Treemo also seems to be trying to be a responsible member of the community rather than just Treemo Image a profit taker. They collect donations of digital cameras and give them to several Seattle-area non-profits that offer photography classes to disadvantaged youth. The donor gets 3 months free premium service and a tax deduction. The site also encourages Cell Phone donations via links to another charitable group.

The mobile part of Treemo is very full featured, giving access to all of the content searchable by user, tag or location. Mobile users can comment, message and "favorite" too. Mobile uploads are supported by email and MMS. It would be nice if the site also supported direct browser uploads like Flickr mobile does. While not all phones do browser uploads, they are a money saver for users on unlimited data plans.

The mobile site's usability is reasonably good but not perfect. I'd like to see better use of access keys which only a few pages have. Also, some of the index pages have as many as 20 images on them which is more than most mainstream phones can handle.

Normally I use Opera Mini for graphics heavy mobile sites like this one but Treemo doesn't recognize Mini as a mobile browser and serves it the full PC site - which is almost unusable in Mini. I haven't been able to find a URL that goes directly to the mobile edition. I like to see sites deliver mobile content from their main URL when a mobile browser is recognized like Treemo does. But browser detection is never perfect - an alternative URL that's guaranteed to deliver mobile content is needed too.

Overall, I'm quite happy with Treemo's generous storage and upload limits and very full featured mobile version. The on-the-fly down-conversion to .3gp mobile content is a great feature for anyone with a video capable 3G phone and suitable (unlimited) data plan. For the rest of us this is the better mobile Flickr. Flickr does have it's own mobile site (review) but it's much more limited than Treemo's - no commenting or messaging and searching is only by user.

The field of social media sharing is crowded and Treemo is a late entrant but I think they have a chance of success because of the combination of generous storage limits, great site design and usability and a very promising mobile presence.

Sep-2012 Treemo is now a mobile app development shop and the social network is gone


What's This?

Solo Media Forums

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://www.maximumgeek.org/forums/index.php?s=mobile (HTML5)

A mobile forum with posts and comments from a eclectic group of blogs including Maximum Geek, Writing on Your Palm, Raving Media and Tibbarerew which cover technology, eBooks, SciFi, gaming and politics and a lot of other interesting stuff.

3-Jan-2012: Site is down


What's This?

Phreep

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wap.phreep.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Ad supported mobile Java games. Curiously, only .jar files are supplied which will work with Nokias but not Motorolas which need both .jar and.jad.

10-jan-2010 - Site is down.


What's This?

LifeLogger

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://lifelogger.com/m/ (HTML5)

LifeLogger is a free blogging platform with image and video sharing and social networking features. It you have a lot of videos to share, Lifelogger is notable for it's unlimited storage and generous 15 GB/month upload limit. LifeLogger recently added mobile support, all Life Logs are now mobile enabled and you can sign up for Lifelogger right on the mobile web site, although you do need to be able to receive and reply to a validation email. For mobile registration there really needs to be an option to validate via SMS. Mobile blogging is supported with both direct file uploads and by sending a photo or video to your LifeLogger email address. Given LifeLogger's popularity as a video hosting site, I'm surprised that videos aren't available in a mobile friendly format, in fact the mobile web version of Lifelogger actually includes Flash (not Flash Lite) videos, which no current phone supports.

10-Jan-2010 - Site is down.


What's This?

Pocket Cambridge

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://www.pocketcambridge.co.uk/pcafiles/indexcambridge.html (xhtml-mp)

A slick "iPhone style" guide to history, events, sightseeing, shopping, nightlife and tours for Cambridge, England, home of Oxford University. The site includes click to call numbers, an interactive map and audio guides. The site works well on full-web browsers but page sizes of up to 175 KB make it a non-starter on basic phones.

No longer a mobile site.


What's This?

Marketing Devil

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mippin.com/mip/plus/list.jsp?&id=107268 (xhtml-mp)

Blog of UK based Charlie Trumpess, marketing professional and copywriter covering marketing and advertising theory and practice. Source: Oh Mobile Directory

Site is gone.


What's This?

Midlet.org

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://midlet.org/wap/index.jsp (wml)

Download from an extensive collection of free games.

May-2010 - Site is down!


What's This?

Goodrec

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.goodrec.com/m/ (xhtml-mp)

Goodrec Mobile Recomendations

Goodrec is another user generated reviews site somewhat like Zagat, Yelp and Boorah.  Like Yelp, Goodrec is not limited to restaurant reviews, users can review anything; clubs, hotels, restaurants, services, products, etc.

Goodrec differentiates itself from its competitors in a couple of ways. For one, Goodrec limits reviews (called "recommendations") to a concise and mobile friendly 140 characters and encourages users to submit recommendations from their mobiles. In a video interview, Goodrec co-founder touts the ease of making recommendations from mobile and mentions that some users have submitted as many as 200 recommendations in a day and that  40% of Goodrec users make recommendations with about 50% of the recommendations coming from mobile users. Other things that set Goodrec apart from the competition are the  an option to view only recommendations from friends and the ability to save recommendations in a personal "I want to go" list.

The well designed mobile site's listings include recommendations, thumbs up and down ratings, addresses, hours, maps, and click to call numbers. For a new site, Goodrec seems to have quite a few listings particularly for the U.S. East and West Coasts and major European cities. In addition to web and mobile sites, Goodrec has a couple of iPhone apps and Twitter and Facebook integration. Source Oh! Mobile Directory

10-Feb-2012 Site is down


What's This?

Cingular MediaNet

Content: ***  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://kevxml2a.infospace.com/cinglr.wap/wml11/index.wml (xhtml-mp/wml)

This is interesting if not all that useful. Cingular, the largest US mobile carrier, allows non-subscribers to connect to their WAP portal which they call MediaNet. The url is http://kevxml2a.infospace.com/cinglr.wap/wml11/index.wml Img. 1 Although the .wml extension usually means a WAP1 site, Cingular uses browser sniffing to send either WAP1 or WAP2 content depending on the capabilities of your phone's browser. If you don't want to key that long url into your phone, you can find it linked on my WAP portal site yeswap.com under Portals. So what's on the MediaNet portal? You'll find a good selection of mainstream sites like Yahoo, CBS, ESPN, Google, Accuweather, Go2 directory and Infospace. Especially Infospace which seems to be hosting and maintaining the site for Cingular and has separate links to their News, Sports and white and yellow page directorys. All the WAP2 Infospace pages have been customized with MediaNet's rather attractive "theme" of a ruled gray body with orange headers and a "MediaNet Home" link at the bottom of each page. I did find a couple of sites linked from MediaNet which I hadn't seen before: E! Online and Hotels.com. They both look pretty good and I'll be reviewing them next.

Jun-2010: 404 Error


What's This?

mtoto wa jirani

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mtotowajirani.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Kenyan tech entreprener Simeon Oriko's personal blog covering tech, Africa, politics and art among other things.

No long has a mobile version.


What's This?

CellPhone News 2.0

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.cellphonenews2.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Cell Phone News 2.0 (m.cellphonenews2.com) Is a Digg style site specializing in mobile related stories. Just like Digg, users can submit items, Digg, Bury and comment. What surprises me about this site is how relevant articles seem to be. The secret seems to be that most items aren't actually user submitted, Cell Phone News 2.0 pulls in all items from the RSS feeds of 60 well known mobile blogs and news sites.


What's This?

sMsDuBBa

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.smsdubba.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

This site has over 1000 canned text messages to send to your friends.  Messages are arranged by themes like; Friendship, Flirty, Love, Miss You, Inspirational, Jokes, Slams, Happy Birthday and more. On most phones, the texts can be copied into a new SMS with just a click or two.

10-Apr-2012: Site is down


What's This?

Springwise

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.springwise.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Aimed at would-be entrepreneurs, trend watchers and journalists, Amsterdam-based Springwise, using a network of 8000 "Springspotters" scans the globe for the most promising new business ideas and startup concepts. Mobile view by Mobify.

Aug-2011: Site is down


What's This?

Alltel

Content: **  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://wap.alltel.motricity.com/portal/home (HTML5)

I like mobile carriers who host their portals on public urls. While carrier portals tend to have the same sorts of boring mainstream sites sometimes you find something unique and interesting. With Alltel the surprise was their search. It's a true mobile web search powered by JumpTap and its surprisingly good. Alltel is the US' 5th largest carrier and covers mainly rural areas with a well regarded CDMA/EV-DO network.

Jun-2010: Reports: "You are not authorized to access the content you have requested"


What's This?

Pocket-Lint

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://m.pocket-lint.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Touch Optimized mobile edition of the UK's most popular gadget review site covering cameras, phones, audio and toys. Average page size 120KB.

No long has a mobile version.


What's This?

Visible.mobi

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
Last seen at: http://visible.mobi (xhtml-mp)

Financial news market quotes from India. Keep up with the latest on one of the fastest growing economies in the world. Quotes from the Indian exchanges BSE and NSE.

Parked domain


What's This?

Mobile Messaging 2.0

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.mippin.com/mip/prev/list.jsp?&id=18986&search=Mobile%20Messaging%202.0 (HTML5)

Mobile Messaging 2.0, is a frequently updated blog on mobile topics with an emphasis on messaging services. It features posts by well known mobile bloggers including Oliver Starr, Darla Mack and podcaster Ewan Spence.

5-Aug-2012 Site is gone.


What's This?

TechFlash

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.techflash.com/mobile (xhtml-mp)

TechFlash, published by the Puget Sound Business Journal,  bills itself as "Seattle's Technology News Source" and covers the tech beat with special emphasis on Pacific Northwest companies. Source Oh! Mobile Directory.


Nov-2012 - No longer a mobile formatted or responsive site.


What's This?

Jd's Tech Tips

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://jdstechtips.mofuse.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Tech tips blog with tech tips, gadget and software reviews and tips and tricks for Windows, Symbian, Java and blogging. Mobile version created with MoFuse.


What's This?

Mobile Royale

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://mobileroyale.co.cc/?mobile=1 (xhtml-mp)

Mobile Royale is a general mobile blog offering  news, software and device reviews for all mobile platforms.  The mobile edition was created using the  Wapple Architect Mobile Plugin for WordPress

5-Aug-2012 Site is down


What's This?

RetailBulletin

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://retailbulletin.mobi (xhtml-mp)

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. The frequently updated site covers 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.

Dec 2010: Site is down


What's This?

mdog

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.mdog.com/start.php (HTML5)

mDog PortalmDog is Unified Mobility's new brand. mDog mobilizes dozens of mainstream news, sports and entertainment sites which exist on their own urls and are linked from this new portal site. mDog has a couple of new features that look interesting. There's a page that lets you to post to your hosted WordPress.com, Blogger, LiveJournal, Typepad or Xanga blog. Another nice feature is a well designed front end to eBay that lets you search. bid and track your watched items. It even shows small images of auction items unlike eBay's own mobile site.

Update: 12-Oct-2008 - mDog seems to be dead. All the content pages either display a MySQL error or no content.


What's This?

PhoneContent

Content: ***1/2  Usability: XXX1/2
Last seen at: http://wap.phonecontent.com/ (wml)

Industry News (udated daily) and downloads

No longer has a mobile version


What's This?

The Mobile Weblog

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.mobile-weblog.com/ (xhtml-mp)

 MTW: Mobile Edition Update: Creative-Weblogging has fixed most of the browser detection issues with their mobile sites making much of what I wrote below no longer true. Opera Mini and Netfront are now recognized as mobile devices. See Creative-Weblogging CEO Torsten's comments. It sounds like he is committed to making the CW sites mobile friendly. If you have a mobile browser that's not getting the mobile edition of one of the Creative-Weblogging sites please leave a comment and I'll try to pass it on. - Dennis 22-Jan-2007

Another enhancement, now you can force a mobile page to be rendered by adding index_xhtml.php to the end of any of the creative-weblogging urls, for example http://www.mobile-weblog.com/index_xhtml.php. - Dennis 24-Jan-2007

One of the blogs I find good enough to subscribe to is The Mobile Technology Weblog (MTW). It's a well written, lively mobile news and opinion blog covering what's happening with mobile software, analysis of industry trends and pictures and specs of the most delicious new handsets.

I usually try to read MTW on my PC because I've found it one of the hardest sites of any kind to read on a phone. BTW, this is not the fault of MTW's bloggers, Tom Gordon and Scott Smith. MTW is part of a network of over 100 blogs called Creative-Weblogging all of whose sites use the same basic page template.

I'm using Opera Mini which is a "full web" browser that handles PC sites reasonably well, in fact the PC editions of most blogs are very usable in Opera Mini. But not this one. I have to scroll through 39 (I counted) screens containing the site's linkroll, archive menu by month, a long list of categories, a calendar of events, a list of over 100 sister sites in the same blog network, a bunch of text ads, lists of recent comments and most popular posts until I finally reach the content! This is using a phone with a decent sized 176x220 screen that displays 17 lines averaging 22 characters per line. It's much worse on an entry level phone's 128x128 screen and not much better even with on QVGA screen. Of course, the site will render beautifully on the iPhone :).

The problem is the way the page's html is laid out. Full-web browsers for mobile devices generally ignore CSS positioning and block element widths and re-flow the content as a single column in the order it occurs in the html document. The same is true of the screen readers used by the visually impaired and text-only PC browsers like Lynx. For a page to be usable by the largest possible audience it should be designed with document order in mind by placing the most important content near the top. The MTW site puts all the sidebar junk at the top of the markup with the content at the bottom and then uses CSS to move the main content block to the top left. This looks fine in modern PC browsers but nowhere else.

The mobile web has arrived and Creative-Weblogging, like blog-network rivals Gawker Media (review of Gawker Media's Lifehacker Mobile) and Weblogs, Inc (review) and so many media and corporate sites of late, has rolled out mobile editions of all its blogs.

The new mobile edition of MTW is quite nice, if you can actually get it on your phone, more about that later. It uses a mobile blog design pattern that I haven't seen much of but which like a lot. The front page contains just the blog's latest post followed by a link to the next oldest post and so on seemingly back indefinitely to the blog's very first post ever. It's a variation on the River of News concept but one that works for mobile because by limiting pages to a single post, page size is kept below the 10KB limit of many low end mobile devices.

I'm glad Creative-Weblogging is offering mobile versions of their blogs but there are a few problems with this version 0 of the mobile edition which I think could be easily remedied to make the experience so even better. The biggest problem is that the mobile edition is only delivered when a mobile browser is detected and the browser detection doesn't work very well. Both my phone's built-in browsers are served the mobile version but all the full web mobile browsers like Opera Mini, Opera Mobile, Netfront 3.1 and 3.3 get the almost unusable PC version. The browser detection seems to be looking for the presence of "text/vnd.wap.wml" in the browser's HTTP_ACCEPT header to denote a mobile browser. As wml fades into the sunset, fewer and fewer browsers announce support for it.

Another issue is that even supported browsers only get the mobile pages if they enter though the "front-door" - www.mobile-weblog.com. Deep links to individual articles, like the continue links in MTW's partial feed go to the unusable PC version even when using a supported mobile browser. As a full feed isn't offered, reading MTW in the mobile versions of Google Reader or Bloglines is painful as well.

No longer has a mobile version


What's This?

mwc - Zcapes

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.zcapes.com/tags/12 (xhtml-mp)

Live micrblogs from the Mobile World Congress (MWC), the bigest mobile industry trade show in the world which is happening 16-Feb-2009 - 19-Feb-2009 in Barcelona.  The micro-blogs are hosted on Zcapes, brand new mobile based blogging platform from Amsterdam's SPRXmobile.  Zcapes is designed to make it easy to create an instant mobile friendly blog around an event or object.


What's This?

Mobile Tech News

Content: ****  Usability: XXXXX
Last seen at: http://www.mobiletechnews.com/ (HTML5/wml)

Industry news and product announcements. Daily updates.

No longer has a mobile version


What's This?

Bink.nu

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://bink.nu/mobile/default.aspx (HTML5)

A news site covering Microsoft Corporation. If there's news about and aspect of Microsoft's business or products, you will find it here.

Nov-2012 - No longer offers a mobile formatted version.


What's This?

MSearchGroove

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.msearchgroove.com/ (xhtml-mp)

MSearchGroove Mobile Web Version

MSearchGroove (MSG), published by well known mobile industry analyst, consultant, author and lecturer Peggy Anne Salz, is one of my favorite sources for the latest news and commentary on mobile search, marketing and advertising.  In addition to Peggy, the site's authors include industry insiders Chetan Sharma, Andrew Grill, Andreas Constantinou  and John Puterbaugh among others. This is one site that should be on every mobilist's reading list.

I'm not sure how long MSearchGroove has had a mobile edition.  I discovered it when I used my mobile browser to visit last week's Carnival of the Mobilists which was hosted by MSearchGroove.  The mobile edition of MSearchGroove looks like it is generated by a highly customized and very attractive version of Crowd Favorite's WordPress Mobile Edition plugin.

17-Apr-2012 No longer has a mobile version


What's This?

WebClip2Go

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://webclip2go.com/ (xhtml-mp)

WebClip2GoIf you're like me, I bet there's a lot of web content you'll like to use on your phone but which isn't available in mobile friendly form. The traditional solution to this problem is to use a full web browser like Opera Mini or a transcoder like Mowser, both of which work pretty well but can still leave you scrolling through lots of irrelevant junk to get to the content.

Startup eZee inc has released a free service called WebClip2Go that takes a different approach to mobilizing web sites. Instead of reformatting the whole web page, with WebClip2Go you specify the particular region or "clip" of the page that you want to make mobile.

I can see a lot of uses for this. For example, I'd like to have just the portion of the local bus schedule that covers my commute on my phone or the latest piece from MSN investment columnist Jim Jubak. Neither of these are available in a mobile version or even a full RSS feed.

More...

08-Sep-2009: Site is down.


What's This?

Mowave

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://opnr.com/ (xhtml-mp/wml)

Amsterdam based Mowave builds mobile sites and services, mostly for magazines. This portal links to all the Mowave created sites including Maxim , Stuff , The Daily Morror and a number of sports magazines. Also on the portal are a few downloadable movie trailers in .3gp format.

07-Sept-2009 Site is down.

 


What's This?

MocoNews

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://m.moconews.net/ (xhtml-mp)

MocoNews covers all aspects of the business of mobile from carriers to mobile web 2.0 startups. The mobile edition carries text-only versions of the last 10 mocoNews items.

28-May-2012 redirects to paidContent.org


What's This?

Mobile Developer TV

Content: ***  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.mobiledeveloper.tv/ (xhtml-mp)

Mobile Developer TV

My favorite mobile blog for the last few years was SMS Text News (later renamed Mobile Industry Review, or MIR for short) I thoroughly enjoyed Ewan MacLeod's brutally honest, scathing but hilarious put downs of "rubbish, bullocks and fluking useless" mobile devices and services.

I was disappointed when Ewan announced at a month ago that he had accepted a funding offer that required making MIR into a pricey subscription-only service and that the public site would no longer be updated. I though that was the end of it but it turns out that Ewan's back with Mobile Developer TV featuring weekly video interviews with... mobile developers.

As I wrote this, Mobile Developer TV is still in an embryonic state with a stock WordPress Theme, generic mobile plugin and inaugural post - no videos yet but given Ewan's track record I expect great things from this site. Incidentally, Ewan's is also blogging at EWAN.NET as funny, irreverent and as insightful as ever though there doesn't seem to be a mobile version of that site.

17-Apr-2012 Site is down


What's This?

David Carrington

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://blog.davidcarrington.co.uk/ (xhtml-mp)

Dabr (the best mobile Twitter client) creator David Carrington's s blog.  He's a long time Windows Mobile user, now Android convert who writes about mobile and web development, phones and the mobile web.

Nov-2009: Site is down.


What's This?

PhoneArena

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.feedm8.com/feed?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.phonearena.com%2Frss%2Frss_news.php (xhtml-mp)

News, new product release announcements, very short phone reviews.

Apr-2011 - Mobile Site is down


What's This?

Wireless Week

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://www.feedm8.com/feed?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wirelessweek.com%2Frssfeed.aspx%3Ftype%3D3 (xhtml-mp)

Text only version of controlled circulation industry paper Wireless Week.  The mobile site is by FeedM8.

Apr-2011: Mobile site is down


What's This?

InfoSync World

Content: ****1/2  Usability: XXX1/2
Last seen at: http://www.mippin.com/mip/prev/list.jsp?&id=16489&search=infosync (xhtml-mp)

News and reviews of the latest digital devices with a focus on mobile phones and laptop computers, game consoles and home theatre.

Nov. 2012: Redirects to non-mobile site "Best Techno".


What's This?

Skeptic Geek

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
Last seen at: http://skepticgeek.com/ (xhtml-mp)

TechMeme editor, former writer at MakeUseOF and one of India's most popular tech bloggers, Mahendra Palsule's personal blog. He writes some great stuff on technology and especially the social Web. A good example is his latest piece, "What We Really Need: Discovering Whom To UnFollow" on how Twitter's huge spam problem is undermining it's "discover new people" feature.

19-Jan-2012 - Site is displaying a blank page in mobile browsers


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What's This?
QR Code
It's a QR (Quick Response) Code containing the URL of WapReview Mobile. Snap it with your phone's QR Code reader to go to the WapReview mobile site.

Ratings Key :

Content - 0-5 *'s indicating the quality of the site's writing, depth, timeliness and accuracy.

Usability - 0-5 X's indicating the usability of the site on a mobile device, based on ease and intuitivness of navigation and lack of excessive scrolling through ads etc. to reach main content.