Find Stuff You Didn’t Even Know You Were Looking For

Sure, most of us are familiar with Google’s mobile offerings, but they are not the ginormous power on the mobile front that they are on the PC.  The mobile internet is one of those fronts that is still largely untapped and provides an equal opportunity for those talented and creative enough to blaze new ground.

The large challenge is squishing tons of information on your mobile.  Obviously.  With resolutions maxing out around 300 pixels, content made for mobile is appreciated and much more usable.  So the next time you’re out and about and you are looking for something on your phone, check out find.mobi.  Not only is it set up for mobile phones, it returns back more mobile results then we’ve seen before.  Pretty cool stuff.

Added to the Portals & Internet Search Directory

Stream On, Man.

You gotta admit, the fact that you can stream internet radio on (a lot of) cell phones is up there with TV dinners and Pop Tarts.  Maybe even cooler.  Now I know, I know, the quality isn’t exactly CD (or even FM) quality, but for tunes and news on the go, it’s tough to beat.  And free is always good, too, so long as you have a data plan.

TalkStreamLive [Mobile] has compiled a list of (Read: what they deem) the favorite streaming internet radio stations in a simple, straightforward website.  We didn’t even know that they had a website for the PC before we discovered their mobile offering, and honestly, we prefer the mobile site.

The mobile site is divided into categories:  Talk Radio, News, Sports, Music, & Video.  Of course, different sites stream in different formats, so you may not be able to utilize all of the links.  File this under trial and error, but there are quite a few streams in each category -you should be able to find one that you both like and that your phone can load.

So if you’re into streaming media, check it out.  It’s always fun to experiment with what kind of horsepower your phone might be able to, ahem, pony up…

Added to the Music, Video & Photos Directory

-wS.

Update:  After chatting with the kind folks over at TalkStreamLive.mobi, they gave us the following tips:

For those using smartphones, try TCPMP, a free media player that will play 100% of the radio streams.  TCPMP will even play the broadband streams that Windows Mobile Player will not.  And apparently the 128 kbs streams sound sweet on bluetooth audio headphones or on a bluetooth car radio.

Now where did we put that Jensen Bluetooth Receiver?

The Gphones Are Coming, Kind Of.

Today Google, along with a number of the major players in the OHA (Open Handset Alliance), announced the existence of Android.  From Google’s very own blog:

“Android is the first truly open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices. It includes an operating system, user-interface and applications — all of the software to run a mobile phone, but without the proprietary obstacles that have hindered mobile innovation.”

New phones should start arriving 2nd half of 2008.  Looks to be an interesting ride, especially for Microsoft, Palm, and Symbian.

Read [PC - Mobile]

-wS.

Yelp Gives Local Flavor Mobile Access To Reviews

If you’re not familiar with Yelp.com, we suggest a quick glance at their About page [Warning - PC Link].  It’s a pretty cool idea that basically allows patrons to rate and review the offerings of their local businesses.  While the mobile site is limited to review searches from your phone, the site itself has spurred somewhat of a cult-like following.  Outside of the larger city-base that is listed on the site, reviews can be few and far between, which ends up really just being a glorified local search.  Added functionality to the mobile site would undoubtedly help to increase reviews, simply because most of us still do not drag our laptops to dinner or the salon.  Just saying.

Of course, there is always a disclaimer in the fact that not everyone is meant to be a critic, and YMMV.

Added to the Local Info Directory. 

-wS.

Have Phone, Will Drink

A clever, yet simple, website that we stumbled across (in our never-ending quest for mobile supremacy) is Bars.mobi.  Utilizing the new standards for the .mobi domain, the site loads quickly and does the job.  The idea is simple - if you know the bar name, simply drill down to your city and, voila!  A list of local drinking holes appears before your eyes.  The site actually just ties in to Google’s mobile local search, but at least the content listings will always be fresh.  The beer, on the other hand, remains to be seen.

Of course, we’re still waiting for a mobile version of Beer Bloggin’ [PC Link]

Added to the Local Info Directory. 

-wS.

Remember The Milk: The Ultimate Reminder Service

The days of carrying around oversized leather-bound organizers are over.  Seriously, if you still carry one, it really is time to start thinking about joining the digital age - and soon.  With even the most basic of mobile phones carrying calendar and web access, information is readily accessible almost anytime, anywhere. Read more

Hey, Slackers! Game More, Sleep Less, Repeat

The next time you pry the Wii remote from those cold, sweaty hands, grab your trusty mobile phone and give it some gaming love.  You see, the mobile gaming space needs you.  Scratch that, they need your money. 

Just how these companies stick around while managing to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars is beyond me, and many continue to see their revenues eroding.  Of course, the mobile gaming industry faces competition from everywhere.  The Nintendo DS and Playstation PSP are much more obvious choices when it comes to portable game systems with larger screens and vast titles to choose from.

So who is actually playing games on their cell phones?  Admittedly, I couldn’t tell you when I fired up the Treo and just had to have the newest game title, but I could be in the minority here.  I will say that carrier offerings can be their own barrier to entry, forcing consumers through almost 15 clicks to go from perusing to purchasing.  That will have to change.  I’m not a huge fan of the premiums that carriers tack on to almost everything that they offer either.  No wonder people look for options to side-load their mobiles.  A quick Google search will reveal many alternatives to the carrier-purchased titles (often for half the price).

Moral:  Game more, sleep less, don’t buy the software from the carriers so you can buy more games so you can…well, you get the picture.

-wS.

Read [PC - Mobile]

Google To Announce Mobile Plans In Two Weeks?

What’s this?  Google is planning to enter the mobile space?  Seriously, if that is news to you, I don’t know where you’ve been hiding for the last couple of years.  What IS new is that the Wall Street Journal is reporting that in just 2 short weeks the Mountain View search giant will be officially announcing several different plans to enter into the already crowded mobile arena.

This should prove to be interesting.  Especially since US carriers tend to be a little controlling with what goes on their networks and even more so about what ships on the phones.  Google-centric devices will undoubtedly be information-driven and somehow be linked to their advertising empire, and with the mobile ad space heating up, carriers will surely frown on losing any revenue that their current in-place models are generating.  Of course, Google does have some pretty deep pockets and a deal could surely be struck that shares additional ad revenues.

‘Til then, we’ll just have to sit tight for two more weeks.

-wS.

[via RCR Wireless News - PC - Mobile]

Read [PC - Mobile]

mobGas Finds Cheap Gas, Saves You Time & Money

One of the things about trying to find the cheapest gas (when you’re driving around town) is that you typically burn through any savings in the process.  So if you’re that cheap all about finding the absolute lowest price, mobGas [PC - Mobile] has your number.

The service is straightforward, simple and does exactly what it was designed for.  Registration is not required to use the service, however, registering allows you to save up to 5 zip codes.  If you do decide to register, we recommend to do so from your PC.  The register links on the mobile site redirect you to the PC version anyway, so this may not allow some users to register from their mobile.  If anyone from mobGas is reading this, you might want to look into that

All in all, a decent service.  We haven’t actually had time to check to see if the prices are accurate yet, which is really the true measure of mobGas’s performance.  We’ll keep you updated.

Added to the Local Info Directory.

-wS. 

Plusmo Puts Mo’ On Your Mobile

One of the coolest things about cell phones and the internet is that we are really just in the beginning stages of it.  With advances in software and devices, it seems that each generation gets a little better and more useable.

Meet Plusmo.com [PC - Mobile].  Their service  is cool for a lot of reasons.  The first is glaringly obvious.  It is simple to setup, from either your PC or your mobile.  Now that’s cool.  Most sites want to you to set up service from your PC, which greatly limits their mobile appeal, not so the case here.  Setup basically consists of choosing which “widgets” you want to be displayed on your phone.  They’ll initially recommend a handful of them - which you can simply uncheck if you so desire.  You can add “widgets” from any number of categories, ranging from news to sports to fun stuff.  The service boasts over 20,000 of these widgets.  Now that’s a lot of widgets.

As cool as the existing widgets are, you are not limited to just those.  If you have existing RSS feeds that you aggregate in a reader for your PC, you can now view them on your mobile with Plusmo.com.  And since you probably know how to set up an RSS feed in your reader, we won’t go into how to find it.  Rest assured, adding one to the service takes literally two button clicks.  For those that are so inclined, if you have an OPML file you wish to import, they’ve got your number as well.  Very cool.

You can access the service from your phone two different ways (from what we can tell - if there’s more let us know.)  You can choose to use a java-based program that resides on your phone (if your phone is supported, of course) or you can access the service directly through http://www.plusmo.com/wap.  Options are good.

And for the iPhone users, you guys get special love from Plusmo.  Figures.  And since we don’t have an iPhone, we couldn’t test this for you.  Sorry.

From a user standpoint, the service is quick and easy to setup and equally easy to modify it as your tastes change.  There is, however, another side of Plusmo.com that infinitely increases the cool factor.

With the advent of RSS, publishing and syndicating information on the web has been taken to a whole new level.  With mobile internet gaining speed, one of the hurdles has been harnessing this power to be more portable and keeping it easy to access.  Plusmo.com’s service for publishing content is both quick and easy, and best of all, it’s free. 

So we here at wapSwap (always giving you more for your money) decided to try this out as well.  And since mobile optimized is our bag (it’s how we roll, baby!), we went ahead and set up a widget for wapSwap’s moBlog.  (Check out the sign up button under this post.)  It even links back to the original article as well.  Very well thought out.

So, to sum up, it’s seems the good folks at Plusmo.com have a winner on their hands.  Setup for users and publishers is very straightforward and using the service is a real pleasure.  The only problems that we found were that we never did get our text message or email from registering.  I’m not sure that we really need it, because we were able to set things up fine.  Just sayin’ - you guys may want to look into that.

Added to the Portals directory.

-wS.

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