Interesting that now even the big boys offer mobile web solutions for a flat fee:

O2’s offering for UK users:
“Sign up for their £20 a month mobile web service, including 3GB of
data and unlimited wireless, between 1 August and 31 October and you’ll
get home broadband for nothing”

Not bad at all!

SprintWeb used to be a walled garden developed by Sprint. However it seems there is some light at the end of the tunnel.

According to Cnet “Sprint Web also adds an adaptive home page that will deliver
personalized content based on the user’s browsing. Sprint Web is
available on more than 40 Sprint phones; current customers don’t need
to take any action to upgrade”

Well, I would say: Congrats for realizing that you cannot control customers these days.

If you still believe the mobile web hasn’t arrived, consider yourself not very smart. Today the Dummies series launched a new book called “Mobile Internet For Dummies” and “Mobile Web an Hour a day” is probably not far away.

Here the content of the book:

• Find your mobile phone browser

• Use the Mobile Internet to surf, shop, blog, watch movies, and more — on the go
• Send and receive e-mail from your mobile device
• Locate other mobile applications
• Watch TV on your mobile phone
• Manage your kids’ access to the Mobile Internet
• Secure and name a mobile Internet site and acquire mobile Web development tools
• Build your own made-for-mobile Web site
• Use your Mobile Internet site to promote your business and generate revenue

Quite interesting how Obama is utilizing the web, online and mobile, for his campaigns.

Here his newest invention: http://www.obamamobile.mobi/

Interesting news today from the World Wide Web Consortium, an organization that I haven’t watched closely lately

The W3C released a new Mobile Web Best Practices guide with recommendation by the Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group.

Also the W3C published another great paper called XHTML Basics 1.1 Recommendations, which includes preferred format and specification of the Best Practices.

But that’s not all: Also a Mobile Web Application Best Practices paper came out from the hard working organization.

Thanks to Enrique , Francois, Wade and Allen for sharing

Research from the Mobile Data Association (MDA), found that 25 per cent more people are using the internet on their mobiles than they were two years ago.

However the MDA complaints that the lack of cost transpareny harms the mobile web. A low flat fee for mobile web usage would probably the key to not only have more mobile web users, but also start an entire industry around the mobile web.

Crazy times over at Facebook:

1 million Iphone/Itouch Apps have been downloaded. About 1.7 million users a day visit the mobile wap site.

Quite impressive. Like Mix.jp in Japan, social networks are on the mobile web a big hit.

The Adobe team lately played with Flash for mobiles and pretty much stated that they
are ready to go. However it seemed Apple wasn’t really ready for it until now.

A patent released today by the US Patent and Trademark office showed that Applie might support Flash and Windows Media Content.

“[0779]In some embodiments, user interfaces 4000A-4000F include the
following elements, or a subset or superset thereof: [0780]402, 404,
406, 3902, 3906, 3910, 3912, 3918, 3920, 3922, as described above;
[0781]inline multimedia content 4002, such as QuickTime content (4002-1), Windows Media contentFlash content (4002-3); (4002-2), or… “

Entire post over at Iphonebuzz.

Extremely interesting!

Interesting live stream currently over at Techcrunch. Especially the current fight between Apple’s OS, Windows Mobile, Nokia’s symbian and whatever Google has in mind.

Check here for more info.

Opere published again their latest Mobile Browsing report. It seems that Europe is devided when it comes top devices.
In the UK the mobile web seems to be ruled by the Blackberry, while Sony Ericsson runs the show in Germany and Poland. South Africa however is Samsung country while US is ruled by Blackberry’s.

Data is pulled from Opera Mini Downloads, so many devices probably rank much higher when it comes to mobile web usage.