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Today’s mobile website is all about using your camera phone. fotochatter lets users send their phone pictures to their fotochatter friends, and then comment on them by text message from, of course, their phone.
While this looks more like a dating site right now, I can think of a few more practical uses for this as well.
If you’ve used fotochatter or a similar mobile photo-sharing service, let us know what you think!
Ever wanted to start your own community of mobile phone users, and earn money in the process?
That’s the idea behind Sonopia. To better explain what can be done with this service, here’s an excerpt from their about page:
Sonopia’s mission is to provide every organization, group or club with the opportunity to create branded mobile service and build a unique mobile and web community of supporters and members.
Leading brands, charities, environmental organizations and entertainment groups are working with Sonopia to create their branded mobile phone services. These services are marketed with Sonopia’s help to an increasingly discerning consumer, who demands relevant services, the right price and great customer service. We call each of these mobile services a “Sonopia” and expect there to be thousands of Sonopias within a few years.
With Sonopia, anyone can create and start marketing a mobile service in 15 minutes or less.
From an end user’s perspective, I have to say the user interface seems a bit clunky. I found it confusing to create multiple communities and then try to navigate between them. Hopefully that will be improved in future updates.
While Sonopia sounds interesting (particularly if any charities have success with it), I simply cannot see the volume of users getting to the point where it has enough staying power to be successful. Maybe they can prove me wrong — we shall see.
Just a reminder that the race is wide open to WIN $100 CASH in our first ever Mobile Website Submission contest. While all the contest details can be found on the original post here, here again is all you need to do to enter:
How to enter:
1. Add a comment to the original post here with 5 mobile websites. Any mobile sites will do.
2. All submissions will be voted on by our readers, and the winner will get $100 USD via PayPal.
All submissions are due by August 31, so get yours in now before it’s too late.
(So far, Melvyn is guaranteed to win $100 unless someone offers up some competition!)
Submit your favorite mobile websites here today to win!
We’ve been behind in our postings this week, so it’s time to catch up and bring you more mobile websites so you get your fill. Let’s get right to it…
What is Twitter?
For those not familiar with Twitter, it is a way for people to share what they are up to at any point in time. Twitter’s official description says it best:
A global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing? Answer on your phone, IM, or right here on the web!
There are many opinions on whether Twitter is truly useful or an utter waste of time. Like most things, it’s all in how you use it. What we will see is that the concept can be applied very creatively to specific scenarios, and that is where Twitter will become more valuable. I am sure there are several unique and interesting applications already out there today.
Twitter’s Mobile Website
So now you’re a registered Twitter user (a Twittee?), you’re away from your computer, and want to share what you’re doing. Twitter provides two options from your mobile phone:
1. Send a text message of what you’re doing to Twitter at 40404.
2. Bring up the Twitter mobile website at m.twitter.com. You can not only share what you are doing, but also see what your friends are up to as well.
Just a quick note that we just added another site to our list of Stomping Grounds. If you have not browsed through WAPReview yet, you are missing out on a very useful resource.
WAPReview is a handy directory of mobile websites, which includes reviews and ratings for each one. The sites are listed by category, and the latest count on their home page listed 797 total mobile websites in their directory. Not too shabby.
We only noticed one listing (Cinema Electric on this page) that now points to a parked Network Solutions page, but that’s to be expected when you are managing so many listings. And one out of 797 is not too shabby.
Mobile Web Version
Of course, the smart folks at WAPReview also includes a mobile version at YesWAP.com. The benefits of the mobile version are obvious, and they did a great job of keeping the interface clean and mobile-friendly.
So go see what you’ve missing and let us know if you find any gems.
So we got our days mixed up yesterday in the post about sending an anonymous text message, so since today is actually Friday, we’ll keep it on the light side.
Anyone that has been to fark.com knows they have off the wall user-submitted headlines from around the world. Now you can read those same headlines from your mobile phone on the Fark mobile website.
As an example of the type of stories that Fark covers, the first story for today is about a rather unattractive litter of tigers born in Mexico. Another is about a 4 year old girl dialing 911 three hundred times in an effort to find a McDonald’s. You get the idea. You cannot experience Fark without the user-submitted comments, which are also made available from the mobile version.
A little web design firm in Albany, NY put out a simple, yet useful app that lets you use your mobile phone to find movie showtimes in your area.
We tested it out in the Washington, DC area, with good results. The user simply enters their zip code, and the site returns a listing of upcoming movies for that day, starting with the next showtime.
goMovies pulls their listings from Fandango, the movie showtimes site. That may explain why we consistently had a Smithsonian IMAX theater as the fist result in every test we did.
Regardless, goMovies can be a useful little site to bookmark on your mobile phone, particularly when you find yourself on the wrong end of a sold out show.
HandyFact provides quick, easy to access blips of information for people on the go. As it’s name implies, it includes links to a number of different tools and information resources that can indeed be very handy while traveling.
At the time of this article, HandyFact offered 17 different categories of information, including area codes, entertainment, measurement conversion, and even a tipping guide. One of my favorite tips was filed under the “Proper Etiquette” category:
Should I pickup a dropped fork? HandyFact Answer: Let the waitperson pick it up. You or someone else may accidentally use it if you put it on your table.
So much for the 5-second rule.
Based on the URL, HandyFact seems to be an offshoot of another mobile site called SqueezeNet. Perhaps we can dive into that site in a future article.
Note to readers: As we begin providing these daily highlights of mobile websites, we want to hear from you. What do you like about this format? What would you change? What would make you come back to this site, or bookmark it?
Apparently someone has already discovered several interesting uses for the new Apple iPhone. This iPhone video first aired on Conan O’Brien. If you have not seen it yet, you need to check it out.
We tested it out in the Washington, DC area, with good results. The user simply enters their zip code, and the site returns a listing of upcoming movies for that day, starting with the next showtime.
