The number of Web sites designed to display well on mobile device screens continues to expand rapidly, and content providers are rushing to catch this wave of the future. More than a few of these new sites focus on entertainment.
In the October 2006 and February 2007 issue of the magazine, I highlighted some mobile entertainment sites. In this issue, I'll mention a few of those again and cover some others that I've recently discovered. I'll also touch on a range of other mobile resources, including some new portals.
Highlights from recent issues
http://PocketPCMedia.comoffers video shorts, live TV and radio, music, and vidcasts. They also offer a Web video search feature similar to Yahoo's video search.
http://PPCVidz.com has over 1,300 music videos, movie trailers, short films, movies, and commercials, as well as links to live TV, news, webcams, and more. Much of the content is free, but some, mainly the movies, requires a subscription ($5 per month for streaming and $10 per month for downloading files—with a lower price if you sign up for longer periods).
http://Gamoku.com offers free online games for mobile devices. You'll need an Internet connection and the Adobe Flash plug-in to play these. (The Gamoku site gives a link for downloading the Flash plug-in.) The Web site is nicely designed for small screens and the games download fast. There are 30 games in five categories: Action and Adventure, Card and Casino, Strategy and Puzzle, Word, and Sport.
Mobile site for entertainment news
http://Film-TV.com i_s a great new mobile site that focuses on entertainment. You'll find links to entertainment and movie news, movie releases and reviews, TV-related news, U.S. box office news, and DVD news.
The site has recently added a link to the well-known Internet Movie Database (IMD). This is one of the most comprehensive online sources for information about movies, actors, and actresses. You can search IMD with the search results mobilized so that all the information fits on the small screen of your device.
The site also offers a mobile version of the forums on http://Variety.com. Other resources include a mobile version of Wikipedia and an online encyclopedia.
Film-TV.com provides links to entertainment and movie news, movie releases and reviews, and more.
Mobile YouTube via Orb
http://Orb.com, hosts a free service that lets you access all of the media content on your computer on your device via the Internet no matter where you are, and it now lets you stream YouTube (http://youtube.com) videos to your device. YouTube, one of the most popular Web sites on the Internet, hosts millions of videos, with about 70,000 being uploaded to the site every day.
To access YouTube videos, you need to download them to your computer using a small OrbThis plug-in for your Internet Explorer or Firefox browser. Your selected YouTube videos are then available to be streamed to your mobile device. You simply log in to your Orb 2.0 MyCast account and open your video collection. You can read more about it on the "the::unwired" Web site (http://theunwired.net/?itemid=3462).
A number of commercial mobile services have announced that they'll be offering YouTube via Windows Mobile devices, including Movy.tv (http://movidity.com), a new service that should be up and running by the time you read this, and Verizon's Vcast (http://getitnow.vzwshop.com), a $15-per-month service.
PodcastPickle now offers mobile access to podcasts
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