Top Mobile Internet Sites voted by the "Mobile Geeks of London"

Last night the Mippin team (@geekyouup, @Flashy1980, @teriTECHno) headed to downtown London to join our fellow mobile geeks at the number one London mobile geek fest (Mobile Geeks of London).

Being surrounded by people with a passion for mobile we wanted to find out what is their favorite mobile Internet site. Equipped with some drink vouchers we asked 34 top notch mobile experts to find out what site they love or can't live without.

Drum roll!!!!!

Here are the Top 5 sites:

Google - 24% of votes - (http://www.google.com/m)
BBC News - 21% of votes - (http://bbc.co.uk/mobile)
Mippin - 18% of votes - (http://m.mippin.com)
Dabr - 6% of votes - (http://www.dabr.co.uk)
Facebook - 6% of votes - (http://m.facebook.com)



Thanks again to Mr Whatleydude to make it happen.

Hope to see all of you soon!

Best

Flashy

http://flashy.mippin.com

Search surprises

Name this person before reading the below and you are also conferred with super hero status.

We have talked about search terms on Mippin previously. They are terms we watch closely just to be sure that you are getting everything you wish. But this week has been a little baffling.

The most searched item was Shaktimaan. Now, it is important to note that the US and UK are our largest markets and that we are used to news terms, celebrity terms and surprises are usually limited to wrestling mania. So, this was completely out of the blue.

What made Shaktimaan so popular last week? (We'd love to know!).

An example of the Mippin Mobilizer in action

Here is a great post from BusinessGreen.com about their use of the Mippin Mobilizer to create a global mobile variant of their site for (pretty much) every device worldwide.

It is one of a host of titles from the innovative team from Incisive Media which includes Gizmodo, The Inquirer and VNUNet all of which can be found on Mippin.

The sites take less than 15 minutes to set up (providing that there is an RSS feed available) and we then work with the publisher to feed in advertisments (if they wish); either their own or ones that we can sell on their behalf.

The next step is to route traffic from (mass market) mobile devices to this page to ensure that all users are getting the best possible experience and the publisher is getting the best possible reach.

Carnival of the Mobilists #150

A nice round number for the Carnival with a bumper stack of posts from a wide number of areas in the mobile space.

Let's get cracking.

Femtocells [here a handy wikipedia link :-) ] come in for some attention this week with a couple of interesting posts. First up, a cheer for a newbie to the Carnival: welcome David Chambers. He offers a detailed and insightful post concerning making use of Femtocells to help manage future load issues on existing networks, including a number of pricing models. It's the kind of post that you hope the operators are up to speed with. We then also have a timely posts from Ram Krishnan on the current state of Femtocell deployment and from Dean Bubley at Disruptive Wireless on which devices are Femtocell-aware.

In fact, if you do not have Disruptive Wireless in your RSS reader of choice then I recommend you remedy that now. Also this week, Dean serves up offerings considering the inadequacy of using ARPU as a means of measuring the success of mobile broadband and considers a possible splintering of work and personal social profiles.

Another one for a regular look-in is Visionmobile who this week - prompted by the success of the iPhone app store - look at a possible resurgence of mobile app stores as a means of user discovery. The analysis is thorough but much will depend on how these propositions move out of the early influencer space into normob territory.

Here the (non-Apple) download stores could use some tips from Barbara Ballard at Little Springs Design. She identifies the niggles that stop a number of services making the mainstream and this post is an excellent example. It is all in the detail.

Long term Carnival contributor and Champion - Dennis @ WAP Review is also hot on the case of usability. Take a look at this post.

The most recent game-changing UI innovation has been the touchscreen. Sachendra Yadav asks and invites comment on how big a shift this will be and whether or not it spells a death-knell for the (more) traditional keypad.

My blog of the week is from Andrew Grill at London Calling who uses a Gaping Void cartoon to set up his article perfectly and I have featured this above. 'Ask, don't tell' is the recommended mantra for advertisers, particularly in the mobile media where the relationship with the device is far more intimate than other channels. Nice post.

Other titbits:

I love these examples of mobile technology making a difference in the 'real' world. We have an excellent example here from Tsahi Levent-Levi in Israel of a compelling use of the technology to support healthcare services.

Martin Sauter at Wireless Moves - a frequent Carnival contributor - reviews the Huawei D100 and 3G connection sharing.

The G1 has launched to mixed reviews which you are no doubt up to speed on. Two fresh insights come from Omio which feature an interview with T-Mobile's Head of Corporate Affairs and from Geoff Ballinger who has his hawk-eye on the development of the OS.

Take a look at Idlemode too. The post that I was going to link to has disappeared but there is plenty of interest there nonetheless.

And that's it. A bumper week with some old stalwarts and new contributors. Thanks for everyone for your posts and be sure to check in next week at the Golden Swamp where Judy takes her baby back again.

A call to arms.....

It was an excellent MoMo on Monday.

MoMo (Mobile Monday) is an institution in the mobile space which is held (usually) on the first Monday of every month and which now has a large number of chapters around the world. If there is one in your town and you are interested in mobile, get along it's free. Congratulations to Dan Appelquist and the rest of the organisation team for their continued evangelism.

Tom Hume did a good write-up of the event here (look for the Nov 10th post) but I wanted to comment on one element. Russell Buckley dodged a bullet in the chat show format by passing over the issue of advert quality so I quizzed him again during the Q&A.

His answer was a good one and he called on his position as Chair of the MMA (which he serves very well indeed) to stress that there is a far bigger picture to aim at and that we need to bring the larger advertisers up to speed on what can be achieved over mobile.

I wished that he turned this into a call to arms.

The quality of advertising on networks (like AdMob) right now is pretty poor. See the image above, which I can assure the reader is not a targeted piece of advertising to a married man sitting in a mobile geek event in London. Neither is properly titled as an ad and really does mobile as an industry few favours.

The only way to remedy it is to improve the quality of the inventory, the ability to target, the quality of the reporting and to educate, educate, educate the advertising industry.

If you have a stake in this industry, find the time to get out amongst the advertisers and evangelise the space as often as you can. Only with greater familiarity will come greater confidence and from there the required investment to make the industry successful.

Great Minds Advertise Alike

It came to the Team's attention yesterday that the staff here are possessed with not only great mobile engineering, user experience, design and business minds, but also TV script writing minds too (though I've always known that if I'm honest!)

The reason for this discovery? We launched Mobile Social Content Discovery on Mippin two weeks ago and to accompany the launch, made this video below complete with a bit of RuPaul style slapstick:



Note the ending! Because yesterday we came across the fantastic new Stella Artois TV Ad by advertising agency Mother. It's their first for Stella Artois since the account was moved from Lowe in August and represents the work of some of the best creative minds in the business, as it should do given Stella Artois ad's are always inventive, high quality and fun.

Here's the link to the new Stella ad and note the ending again! Stella Artois TV Ad.

It's likely more people might see the Stella ad than our own, but reckon our Product Manager did his RuPaul turn a bit more stylishly. Still, we're a bit worried that Mother might start developing an internet site for mobile phones now...

Latest from Mary Meeker

Here is the lastest Mary Meeker presentation. For those of you that have not come across her before, she is considered one of the leading analysts of the internet and technology world. Her annual presentations at Web 2.0 are a real highlight and always packed full of thought provoking analysis. This year is no exception and more timely than ever in managing expectations and identifying opportunities for the next few years.

Mary Meeker Web 2.0 Presentation

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: meeker tech)