Category Archives: Portals

AOL Mobile Web – Part 2

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This piece concludes the AOL Mobile review I started last month. Part one covered AOL’s search features. To recap, I dissed the web search because it doesn’t search the mobile web. AOL’s local search has some nice features but doesn’t sort results by distance or rating. I also found it slow. Lately the speed seems much better, still not a rocket but at least competitive. Shopping search was promising with product specifications, reviews, photos and ratings. Prices were given but … Continue reading →

Mowser

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Mowser.com is Russell Beattie’s latest mobile site. It combines search, a transcoder and a mobile site directory with over 500 links, a directory of over 2000 feeds, chat room, forum and Russ’ new blog. It’s an impressive mobile portal. In brief testing the transcoder worked well. The search results are high quality, I tried to figure out which major search engine Mowser is using by trying the same queries in Mowser, Google, Yahoo and MSN Live. It looks like it’s … Continue reading →

AOL’s Mobile Portal

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America Online, while not the web powerhouse it once was, is still a high traffic site. AOL also has a substantial mobile presence at wap.aol.com. AOL Mobile includes all the features of other big portals like Yahoo, Google, and MSN – search, news, weather, sports and business – plus links to other AOL properties like Mapquest and MovieFone. I’ve reviewed pieces of AOL Mobile before like MapQuest, but I’ve never written about the overall experience. It’s a big site so … Continue reading →

Mopitopia – “Mobile Links That Don’t Suck”

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Mobitopia 2.0 (mobitopia.com) is to the mobile web what del.icio.us is the the PC web, a place to store and share links to interesting sites. If you aren’t familiar with the huge Web 2.0 success that is del.icio.us, this Wikipedia article will get you up to speed. Mobitopia’s motto is “Mobile Links That Don’t Suck (TM)“. Seeing as anyone can register and post public links to the site there’s also the admonishment, “Please don’t add mobile links just to add … Continue reading →

Mojeo – LBS on any phone

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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 … Continue reading →

MobilePlay, a Portal with Exclusive Content

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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 … Continue reading →

New Mobile Search Engines

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Ask.com and Telestra, Australia’s largest mobile operator, both launched new mobile search portals this week. Ask’s offering features a web search that searches the full web using Ask’s own search engine. The results are transcoded for mobile usability by a white label version of Skweezer (review). It works well most of time, but for some reason, Ask’s transcoded pages don’t have the message and link ” Page optimized for mobile device, click here to view without Skweezer. ” that appears … Continue reading →

Yahoo Mobile Updates

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Yahoo has updated their mobile homepage ( wap.oa.yahoo.com ). Compare the new (top) and the old (bottom). I do think the new layout is more attractive. But where have the accesskeys gone!!! What’s an accesskey? It’s a shortcut key that can be added to various web page elements, like links. When you press the shortcut key, the link is followed even if it’s scrolled off the screen. On most phones, which don’t have a tocuchsceen or mouse, accesskeys greatly speed … Continue reading →