News/International/Europe

BBC Beta m.bbc.co.uk/news The BBC's new site for mobile devices. Built with mobile first responsive design techniques, it's designed to adapt to a range of devices from feature phones with 240px wide screens and no JavaScript support up to seven inch tablets with 720x1280 px screens. If your are interested in the details, the BBC designers have shared their design goals and methodology and their testing methods in a couple of interesting blog posts. Via Stephanie Rieger
Ratings: Content  Usability

Science & Tech

Scitable www.nature.com/scitable A free science library and personal learning tool from the publisher of Nature and Scientific American.

Scitable concentrates on genetics and cell biology, including evolution, gene expression, and the cellular processes shared by living organisms. Also offers resources for the young scientist, including advice about effective science communication and career paths.
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Search/Local

SelfStorage m.selfstorage.com Online directory of over 5,000 US self storage facilities. Search by city, address or zip. Listings include maps, photos, prices, hours. Book a space online or click to call. Some facilities offer discount pricing for SelfStorage.com users.
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Diaroogle Toilet Search www.diaroogle.com Crowd sourced directory of free public toilets in Manhattan, New York City. Search for a restroom by address, cross street, zip, neighborhood, landmark or park.

Listings include a Google, map, address, hours, walking directions from the establishment's front door to the loo for well hidden ones, ratings for privacy, cleanliness and accessibility, and in some cases a photo of the facilities.
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Science & Tech/Tech News Sites and Blogs

Ogbongeblog m.ogbongeblog.com Jide Ogunsanya's tech blog has mobile phone reviews, PC and blogging tips, iPad tutorials and more. Mobile version created with Mobstac.
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Sports/Soccer

Football Pool EC 2012 ek2012.voetbalpoule.mobi An online social game where you predict the outcome of Euro 2012 soccer football matches to compete for points against other users. Also soccer news and schedules.
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News/International/Middle East

gulfnews m.gulfnews.com Mobile web edition of an English language daily print newspaper published in Dubai, UAE
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Entertainment and Leisure/Games

Useful Chess m.usefulchess.com A mobile webapp that plays chess. Works in most browsers with JavaScript support, including Opera Mini. The site also has articles on chess openings and tactics and a chess glossary.
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Science & Tech/Internet/Web Design & Development

laura frank www.doingandthinking.com Web designer Laura Frank's personal and tech blog covering design, tooling for web designers and her other interests including film. The site's lightweight responsive desigh works well in most mobile browsers
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Search/Local/Restaurants

Snapfinger www.snapfinger.com/mobile A geolocation enabled webapp that detects your location and lists nearby restaurants (US only) that offer delivery or takeout. You can view menus and place your order online.
Content: Usability:

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Seeking Alpha is a big US based stock market analysis and financial site. I recently discovered that it has a mobile formatted layout which it seems to only serve to Android and iOS devices. In Safari, the Android default browser and Android Chrome, the mobile layout is attractive and seems user friendly, although scrolling in both Android browsers feels a bit laggy.

On other mobile platforms like bada, Symbian, S40 and WebOS, Seeking Alpha delivers its desktop layout, which is a bit sluggish and unwieldy, but usable on mobile devices.

But woe to anyone who tries to use the Seeking Alpha site with Firefox Mobile, Opera Mobile or Opera Mini on Android. The mobile formatted version loads in these browsers. It even looks OK with all the page elements laid out in their proper places. But most of the links don't work and pages can't be scrolled.  In other words the page is completely and totally broken! And there's no way to switch to the desktop view either. I didn't try the site in Opera Mini on an iPhone but suspect it breaks the same way there.

The site's designers apparently know or suspect (because they probably didn't bother to test in any other browsers) that their mobile view doesn't work with anything but iOS Safari and the Android browser so they don't serve it to other mobile platforms.  But their browser detection algorithm detects platforms rather than browsers and they end up serving markup intended for the Android browser to Opera and Firefox just because they are running on the Android platform. This is confirmed by the fact that the Opera browsers on Symbian get the desktop version.

The way Seeking Alpha breaks only on non-Google browsers on Android is weird, but one of the perils of building and testing to a specific browser or browsers rather than using a standards based approach and testing with multiple browsers and platforms.

This tendency for web designers to only test against iOS and Android, the so called "Webkit Monoculture", is putting other browser vendors and their users in a real bind. It's pushing Opera and Mozilla toward giving their browsers -webkit- CSS prefix support, and in the case of Mozilla, changing user agent strings to impersonate Safari.  Many in the web design community design community whom I respect think this will do more harm than good. As a user I'm don't know who's right, I just want sites to work no matter which platform and browser I'm using.

Update 3-May-2012: The Seeking Alpha site now works properly in Firefox Mobile but is still broken in Opera Mobile and Opera Mini.

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Thematic Consistency is the principle that a web link should serve essentially the same information to all browsers. Adapting content to better fit the target platform is good but redirecting requests for a specific image or news item to your site's homepage spoils the user's experience and discourages them from using or linking to your site or web service.

Sites that break thematic consistency get a place of honor in the WapReview Thematic (In)consistency Hall of Shame. The latest honoree is Google Plus! That surprised me as Google is one of the few big companies that seems to understand the web on mobile devices. It's all the more surprising that the problem occurs with Plus, a product that Google is lavishing a lot of effort on currently. I'm sure this is a bug rather than intentional and I hope that Google fixes promptly.

Google+'s thematic inconsistency problem occurs when someone shares a link to an individual Google+ item on Twitter or in a blog post. For example, here's the permalink to a Google+ post by MobileBurn's Michael Oryl https://plus.google.com/113528147156289620389/posts/3e13HVX1kLB

If you follow that link in a desktop browser or the Android or iOS browser everything will work as it should and you will end up on a page showing Michael's post (first image, above).

But with most other mobile browsers including Opera Mobile, Opera Mini, UC Browser or the bada, WebOS, Symbian Belle or Nokia S40 Proxy Browsers, Google will redirect your request for Michael's post to your Google+ home page showing your own Google+ stream (second image, above) rather than the linked post!. That means the permalink is broken!

Until Google fixes this bug, do your friends a favor and don't share links to Google+ posts by email or on Facebook or Twitter.

This bug only occurs if you are signed into your Google account. Sign out of Google and Google+ permalinks open the correct page. They do go to the desktop version of the page rather than the mobile formatted one which is probably another bug, but not a serious one as most modern mobile browsers handle Google+ single item pages well.

Related: Don't Let Thematic Inconsistency Bite Your Mobile Users

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I did a post a while ago explaining how to modify Opera Mini's jad file to hide the unneeded touch keypad that displays at the bottom of the screen on some touchscreen phones. The post included a link to the modified Opera Mini. I received a request asking for a copy of the latest signed Java version of UC Browser modified to hide the keypad.

The process for modifying the UC Browser or any other Java app is exactly the same as what was described in the original post:

1.Download the app's jad file to a PC. You can get UC Browser jad files (signed or unsigned ) at www.ucweb.com/English/UCbrowser/platform.html?platform=java

2. Open the downloaded mini.jad with a text editor or Windows Wordpad

3. Scroll to the bottom of the file and paste in the following lines:

MIDlet-Touch-Support: True
UseNativeTextButtons: hide
ReverseSoftkeys: hide
UseNativeCommands: hide
Navi-Key-Hidden: true
Nokia-MIDlet-On-Screen-Keypad: no

4. Upload the file to Dropbox.com or another file sharing service that is easy to use in your phone browser. Click here to get a free 2GB Dropbox account (by using this referral link I get an extra 250 MB of storage in my Dropbox which I thank you for).

5. Visit Dropbox with your phone browser and click the modified mini.jad link to download it to your phone.

I've posted the modified UC Browser 8.0 jad at:
dl.dropbox.com/u/4637247/UCBrowser_V8.0.3.107_Java_pf70(Build11112416).jad
Short link: is.gd/uc8touch. To install it, go to is.gd/uc8touch with your phone browser.

Update: 21-Mar-2012 UC Browser 8.2 Alpha has been released. It features many enhancements and bug fixes see my review for details. This is the latest patch release that adds swipe navigation and fixes a bug that made entering URLs on bada phones impossible:

dl.dropbox.com/u/4637247/UCBrowser_V8.2.0.132_Java_pf70_(Build12032111).jad
Short link: is.gd/uc82touch. To install it, go to is.gd/uc82touch with your phone browser.

Update: 20-Apr-2012 The Production (non-Beta) version of UC Browser 8.2.1 has been released. New features include a built in RSS reader and bookmark backup and restore. See my review for more details.

dl.dropbox.com/u/4637247/UCBrowser_V8.2.1.144_Java_pf70_(Build12041210).jad
Short link: db.tt/ajY88aHm. To install it, go to db.tt/ajY88aHm with your phone browser.

 WapReview.com Some rights reserved.

Tech/Internet/Web Design & Development

onderhond onderhond.com Web front-end developer Niels Matthijs' personal and professional blog has articles on web design plus movie reviews and a gallery on Niels' travel photos. He recently redesigned the site using responsive design principles so that it reflows to a single column in modern mobile browsers 320 px and wider. You can read about the redesign on the site.
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Social Media/Twitter

Tweet9 tweet9.tk Another attractive re-skinning of the dabr open source Twitter client. The eye pleasing design is inspired by the Twitter for Android app. Features include long tweets (more than 140 characters) using TwtMore, the ability to upload your Twitter profile and background images and photo uploading using the Twitter Photo Upload API.

The same author also offers a black and florid green (or pink) re-skinning of Dabr at twbird.tk
Content: Usability:

Tech/Tech News Sites and Blogs

TechnoBuffalo www.technobuffalo.com Launched in 2009, TechnoBuffalo has grown quickly to become one of the top US-based tech blogs. Content includes tech news, reviews, tech tips and lots of videos.The attractive mobile view, a custom WordPress theme, includes all the site's content, including the videos. It works well in smartphone browsers and Opera Mini.
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Tech/Tech News Sites and Blogs

GSMArena m.gsmarena.com One of the top mobile technology news sites. GSMArena's mobile edition includes the three most popular features of the desktop site; the latest mobile news, handset reviews and a comprehensive database of mobile phone specifications.
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Entertainment and Leisure/Literature

Wattpad Touch touch.wattpad.com/search Touchscreen version of the Wattpad eBook site. Wattpad is a community of readers and authors where anyone can publish stories for all to read. Wattpad has native book reader apps for iOS, Android, BlackBerry and Java ME and you can also read online using a reader webapp on the site. There's also a version of Wattpad.com optimized for feature phones at m.wattpad.com
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Tech/Mobile/BookMarking

Notesi www.notesi.com/mobileonlinebookmarks.jsp A free service providing secure, private, cloud based storage for your browser bookmarks. Notesi makes your bookmarks available in all your browsers on all your devices.
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News/Politics

CNN Political Ticker politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com With the US presidential election year in full swing, CNN's political blog is jumping. The mobile friendly site is updated throughout the day with current US political news and analysis.

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ICTs for Development ict4dblog.wordpress.com From researchers at the University of Manchester’s Centre for Development Informatics, ICTs for Development covers the use information and communication technologies to encourage socio-economic development.
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FAILFaire failfaire.org The blog of FAILFaire, a conference focused on learning from failed ICT4D projects.

ICT4D is an acronym for "information and communication technologies for development" which means using technology, especially computers, web and mobile, to enable and encourage socioeconomic growth and human rights. Examples include the One Laptop per Child Project and MedAfrica, which lets rural users connect to doctors and medical information using basic mobile phones.

Not all projects are successes. FAILFaire aims to help ICT4D professionals and participants learn how to succeed by analyzing what didn't work.
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Science/Tech

Nature nature.com Founded in 1869, Nature is one of the most respected scientific journals in the world. It publishes original research from all branches of science as well editorials, book reviews and feature articles of interest to the scientific community.

Nature's desktop website got a "responsive design" makeover yesterday and now adapts itself to mobile viewport widths.  Unlike most responsive designs which work in both landscape and portrait orientation, Nature seems to expect mobile users to view the site in landscape only. The site's layout looked rather jumbled to me in portrait using the Android Gingerbread, Symbian Belle, Opera Mini and Opera Mobile browsers but was find when I switched to landscape. Via: @Microflash
Content: Usability:

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I'm working on improving my meager JavaScript skills. One useful resource I've found is Adventures in JavaScript Development (rmurphey.com. ). It's the lively technical and personal blog of JavaScript guru Rebecca Murphey, who writes eloquently on everything from personal experiences and social issues to JavaScript control structures.

Almost as interesting as the site itself is that it's built using Octopress, a new to me, blog aware, static site generator that claims to create a mobile first, "responsive design" layout.

Unlike traditional blogging platforms, such as WordPress, which generate pages dynamically from data in a database, a static site generator runs on your workstation and creates static HTML pages which it publishes to your web server. Serving static pages is a lot more efficent that dynamically generating them, which should make the site faster and able to handle more users with the same server hardware. Static pages should also be a lot more resistant to exploits and hacking than a complex webapp using a database and server side scripting.

Octopress is a user friendly framework for Jekyll, the static site generator powering Github Pages.  An added benefit of using a static site generator is that you can host your blog for free on Github, Dropbox or anywhere else you can publish file too. Octopress comes with quality documentation, tools (from Jekyll) for migrating from WordPress and other blog platforms and has a sizeable community of users.

I find Octopress intriguing though I''m not completely sold on the "mobile first" part. The idea of mobile first is that you send a minimal mobile friendly page with small images by default and then use front end logic to bring down full size images when a big screen is encountered.  The page weight of the Octopress pages I looked at averaged 300 or 400 KB regardless whether I used a 320 px wide viewport or a 1680 px one. 400 KB is no problem for smartphones and fast cheap data plans but not something you want to send your developing world feature phone readers who are paying by the KB. The good news is that Octopress and Jekyll are open source with an  active development community, so if there's something I don't like I can roll up my sleeves and change it.

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A new 8.2 final version of the UC Browser was released today for Java ME and Symbian 3rd edition and latter. It includes two new features, dubbed Quick Reads and Bookmark Synchronization .

Quick Reads is a built in RSS reader.  It displays item headlines with descriptions and thumbnail images from your choice of over 100 popular news sources. Click a headline to read the original article on the source site. Available feeds range from The Economist and the New York Times to E! Entertainment News and The Onion. Lots of sports sites and tech blogs and even an XDA Developers feed are also included.  You do need to provide an email address and password to create a synch account before you can set up Quick Reads. The account is used to keep your feed list is synced across all devices using the same account.  Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any way to add your own feeds by site or feed URL.

Bookmark Synchronization is not a true synchronization service like Chrome or Firefox Sync or Opera Link. It's an on demand bookmark backup and restore service. You can backup your bookmarks to the cloud, overwriting previously backed up bookmarks, and you can restore your bookmarks to the phone, overwriting the ones that were there. Although that's not true synchronization, it's still useful. It works across devices and will make it easy to transfer your bookmarks to a new phone.

The new releases also include everything that was in the 7.9 Symbian release and the 8.2 Java Beta. Click here for my reviews of older UC Browser versions.

I installed the new UC 8.2 on four phones; a Nokia N95-3 and N8 got the Symbian versions (there are separate .sisx downloads for 3rd ed. and for fifth ed. and latter Symbian devices).  The Java release went on a Samsung S8500L bada phone and a Motorola WX400 QWERTY feature phone.

The browser worked well for general browsing on all four phones. Quick Reads looked and and worked well on all, although I was frustrated by not being able to add feeds that weren't on the preselect list of available ones.

Bookmark synchronization worked perfectly on the two phones running the Java version. As with Quick Reads, you need to create an account using an email address and password. There's no email verification so if you are comfortable sharing your real emial, a fake one should work provided you don't care about being able to recover a forgotten password..

However, I could not get the bookmark sync to work on either Symbian phone. The N8 kept insisting that my password was incorrect. I knew it wasn't (and the browser displays the password in plan text so it was obvious to me that I had entered it correctly). I tried using the password recovery feature but the browser claimed my email address wasn't associated with an existing account. Creating a new synch account using a different email address didn't work either. After I filled out the fields on the registration page and pressed the submit button the page relaoded with the fields blank. I've reported this bug on the UC Forum and am hoping it will be fixed quickly.

The N95-3 recognized my log in and displayed a "Bookmarks are syncing, please wait" message and then the browser crashed. Several UC Forum users have reported that both Symbian 3rd and 5th edition devices are crashing while syncing.

UC Browser 8.2 adds a couple of useful features but needs a fix to the Symbian bookmark sync issues and a way to add any RSS feed to Quick Reads.

Download UC Browser from wap.ucweb.com (mobile) or ucweb.com (desktop). The UC mobile site is a bit of a mess. If it recognizes your device but claims there is no suitable version for it, tap the "Change" link after your device name and then scroll to the bottom of the page and click Java or Symbian. Symbian Anna, Belle (and probably Clara) phones can use the S60 5th ed. version.

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WPMU.org is a great resource for WordPress publishers and developers. Don't be put off by the site's name which suggests it's about the "MU" multi-user/multi-site version of WordPress (which no-longer exists as a standalone product). Actually, WPMU.org is the most popular independent site covering WordPress and BuddyPress. Packed with WordPress lore, news, tips, tutorials and theme and plug-in downloads, it's a site that should be of interest to anyone who runs a WordPress or BuddyPress site.

Last July WPMU.org was redesigned in the "responsive" style which means that the site adapts itself, using mainly front-end (client side) logic, to a wide range of browsers, both desktop and mobile. In a post about the re-design, one of designers talks about how they used a "mobile first" approach that delivers 320 px wide images by default so that mobile devices don't have to download large graphics intended for desktop browsers. If the front-end code detects a wider viewport, it replaces the images with larger ones.

The design targets devices ranging from modern mobile browsers with a screen width of 320 px or more on up to tablet and desktop browsers. I tried it with the Android Gingerbread browser, Opera Mobile 12, Opera Mini 7 and Firefox Mobile 12 (all on Android) and with the WebOS 1.4.5.1 and Symbian Belle (image top, right) mobile browsers and in Chrome (image below), Firefox and Opera on the desktop. The site generally looked good and worked well on all of them, which I find pretty impressive. The only glitch I noticed was that lightbox images in posts where badly clipped on the right side on all my mobile devices (image right). Hopefully this can be fixed.

The mobile first approach works pretty well. According to Opera Mobile 12.0 for Android, the homepage was a relatively svelte 247 KB in the mobile browser, while in Firefox it was 1184 KB.

Filed in: Wap Review Directory - RSS - Blogging
Mobile Link: wpmu.org

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A few days ago, Opera Labs unveiled an early release of Opera Mobile that adds support for Opera Extensions. These are small user installable programs, similar to W3C widgets, that are built with JavaScript, HTML and CSS and add functionality to the browser. The Labs release of Opera Mobile uses the same extension format and APIs as desktop Opera. Many of the extensions created for the desktop run without modification in Opera Mobile.

I downloaded Opera Mobile with Extensions support from the Dev.Opera post using the Android browser on a Motorola Photon running Android 2.3.  The same page has download links for Windows, Mac and Linux versions of  the Opera Mobile PC Emulator that include Extension support.

The Dev.Opera post called this a very early release with some rough edges. It also warns that not all extensions will work and cautions that the design of the extensions user interface is not final and that there is no guarantee that extensions will be included in future Opera releases.

In spite of the warnings the Labs release worked very well for me. It seems perfectly stable and usable for general browsing. Most of the extensions that I tried worked quickly and well. The Labs release installs alongside Opera Mobile 12 on Android rather than overwriting it so there's little risk in trying it.

To install extensions, visit the Extensions catalog at addons.opera.com using the Labs version of Opera Mobile. When you find an extension that looks interesting, click the install button and the extension will be downloaded and installed. If you are developing an extension of your own, the browser supports loading extensions from the file system.

Opera lists several extensions that are known to work with the Labs browser, including  Ghostery, Layers, Google Images Direct, HTTP Header, LastPass. I tried four others and two worked; WeRankSEO and Domaintools.com's Whois. The images above and bottom, center show some of these extensions in action.

In Opera Mobile extensions appear as buttons below the browser's URL and Search fields  at the top of the screen. They scroll out of view when the page is scrolled.

There's a new Extensions icon in Opera Mobile's menu (image above, left) that takes you to a page listing installed extensions (image above, center). Tap an extension's name to change its settings, enable or disable it or remove it (image above, right).

Extensions are a great way to add niche functionality to a browser. Adding them to the mobile version of Opera is a great idea and I'm hoping Opera adds them to future production releases of Opera Mobile on both Android and Symbian and on future platforms.

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Pinterest is a social media startup that is quite the rage at the moment, especially with women. According to Comscore (by way of TechCrunch) it went from zero to 10 million monthly unique visitors in 20 months, faster than any site ever. All the more surprising as the service is still in private Beta. Potential members must be invited by a current user or request an invite. That makes it sound pretty exclusive however I received an invitation less than 24 hours after requesting one.

Pinterest lets users share photos and videos (called "pins") they have created or found on the Web and organize them into themed "pinboards". Pins can be shared on Twitter and Facebook or by email. Users can follow other Pinterest members, comment on and "like" other's pins and "re-pin" them to their own pinboards.

Pinterest is a webapp on the desktop. There is an iOS native app and a mobile webapp which seems to be optimized for Android, although it can be accessed with any browser by visiting m.pinterest.com.

Pinterest's mobile webapp is not dumbed down. It mirrors the desktop site's work flows and appears to retain all the features and functionality of its big brother but with a (mostly) single column layout.

When you login to Pinterest's mobile site your are greeted by a "pin feed" displaying the latest pins by you and users you follow (image above, right). Each pin has buttons that let you comment on, like or re-pin it or open its pin board (image above, left). Drop down menus let search and browse for pins and users and get to your own pins and profile.

When you click a pin it opens in a screen that lets you work with that pin. The screen scrolls sideways to reveal menus controls on either side. Scrolling right exposes an icon on the left that displays which pinboad the pin belongs to and lets you edit the pinboard's name and description if it's yours (image above, left). Scrolling left exposes buttons that let you work with the pin itself (image above, right). You can add a comment, share the pin on Twitter or Facebook or by Email or report it for copyright infringement, spam or for violating Pinterest's TOS which prohibit hate speech, personal attacks and nudity among other things. Another button lets you grab code for embedding the pin in another site. If it's your pin you can edit its name, description and the URL that opens when someone clicks the pin.

While I like the Pinterest mobile webapp's overall design, usability and full feature set, I did have some problems using it.

• Many of the pages are slow to load, especially the initial pin feed screen. I think this is due mainly to page size. The pin feed page contains 50 large images and weighs in at a whopping 7 MB compressed.
• The side scrolling pin edit screen has problems that made it hard or impossible to use in every browser I tried. With the Android 2.3 browser the pinboard icon on the left and the buttons on the right for sharing on Facebook and Twitter are completely missing and the Embed, Report Pin and Email buttons are partially super emposed on the pin itself (image below, left).
• Pinterest seems to work best in the Android browser. It loads in most other mobile browsers but aesthetic and functional gitches are common. A few that I noticed include.
  • WebOS browser - Pinterest.com defaults to desktop view but the mobile site is mostly functional except that the Facebook and Tweet butons are missing. The report, embed, and email buttons overlap the image and do not respond to taps.
  • bada browser - defaults to the desktop site. The mobile site's login button is missing in portrait orientation but appears in landscape.
  • Symbian Belle browser - defaults to the desktop site. The login form (on both desktop and mobile) doesn't echo typed characters. Fields and the submit button on the mobile login screen disappear but can be revealed by tapping the spot where they should be. Generally usable once logged in, however the long menu that lets a you browse "All" topics menu doesn't scroll and only lists the first few topics.
  • Opera Mobile and Firefox Mobile on Android. The Search and Profile menus don't open when tapped, making them unusable.
  • Opera Mini - The Search and Profile menus don't open when tapped. All the controls are missing on the side scrolling edit screen.
  • myriad (formerly Openwave) 7.2 feature phone browser - The login form's submit button doesn't work making it impossible to login.

Pinterest's mobile webapp is as powerful as the desktop version and has some nice design and usability touches. But the slow page loads and numerous the bugs make it ultimately frustrating to use.

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