“Over the course of the past year, we have seen use of mobile Internet evolve from an occasional activity to being a daily part of people’s lives,” observed Mark Donovan, senior vice president, mobile, comScore. “This underscores the growing importance of the mobile medium as consumers become more reliant on their mobile devices to access time-sensitive and utilitarian information.”

“Social networking and blogging have emerged as very popular daily uses of the mobile Web and these activities are growing at a torrid pace,” observed Donovan. “We also note that much of the growth in news and information usage is driven by the increased popularity of downloaded applications, such as those offered for the iPhone, and by text-based searches. While smartphones and high-end feature phones, like the Samsung Instinct and LG Dare comprise the Top 10 devices used for news and information access, 70 percent of those accessing mobile Internet content are using feature phones.”

In January, 22.3 million people accessed news and information via a downloaded application. Maps are the most popular downloaded application with 8.2 million users, while search was the overwhelmingly favored use for SMS-based news and information access, with 14.1 million users. Overall, 32.4 million people used SMS to access news and information in January.

Young males are the most avid users of mobile news and information, with half of 18 to 34-year-old males engaging in the activity. The mobile Internet is also quite popular among females in the 18 to 24-year-old demographic, with 40 percent accessing it at least once in January.

The new mobile Web site offers a simplified version of the Discover.com account summary interface and includes the following functionality:

• Make a payment
• View recent transactions
• View recent and pending payments
• View rewards activity
• Enroll in the 5% Cashback Bonus program

Discover.com Mobile can be accessed by visiting m.discover.com from any mobile device that supports web browsing functionality. To log in, Discover Cardmembers simply use their existing Discover.com User ID and password.

JuiceCaster allows mobile phone users to capture pictures and videos, and share them instantly with their favorite online social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Photobucket, Hi5, Blogger, Orkut, and a number of other websites. JuiceCaster enables Blackberry users to connect in real-time with friends and interact with new people in the JuiceCaster mobile community — exchanging public and private multimedia messages on the go.

Major features includes:

• Posting mobile video and picture updates directly to Facebook and Twitter.
• Broadcasting video and picture status updates, and inviting friends and non-members to “follow” updates.
• Creating unique custom groups (e.g. fantasy football, work friends, family) to send group video and picture messages to mobile phones, email, and online social networks.
• Instant video and picture blogging to personal blogs or websites.
• Searching and viewing videos and pictures on the Blackberry device.
• Connecting with friends in real-time, and interacting with new people on JuiceCaster.

To register and get the free JuiceCaster beta for Blackberry, visit www.juicecaster.com/blackberry.

How ZipClip Works

To start, go to www.zipclip.com, and select “Get It Now.” ZipClip will direct users through a short and simple installation of the application on their computer and mobile phone.

As users browse the Web from their computer, and see a particular item that they want to put into their phones, they simply right-click their mouse on that content and select “Send to my phone,” from the installed ZipClip menu on their browser. The clipped content is instantly placed in their “My Stuff” folder in the ZipClip application on their phones. In this way, users can clip and send a variety of content effortlessly to their phones and to friends’ phones — Web to phone, or phone to phone — and “fun up” their mobile phones.

In addition, ZipClip offers an online instant content editing tool called Studio, which allows users to customize and personalize clipped content. A user can shorten long videos into a few seconds, crop photos or customize ringtones before sending it to their phone or their friends’ phones.

Within the U.S., the application is compatible on regular mobile phones and BlackBerry with AT&T or Sprint service. At this time, ZipClip is not compatible with other PDAs, including Treo and iPhone. Internationally, ZipClip will work on most carriers and on Java and Symbian mobile phones. The English language version of ZipClip is available today; the Chinese language version will be available in early August 2008 during the Olympics, to be followed by the Spanish version.

“People want the Web on their phone regardless of the type of phone they have,” said Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera. “Our list of top phones shows both smartphones and feature phones, which is a testament to the versatility Opera Mini provides. Additionally, it proves that given the right experience, many more people will use the Web on their phone. Accessing the Web on your phone is not a luxury limited to who has the most expensive phone model.”

Other highlights from the State of the Mobile Web, June 2008 report:

• Usage continues to grow as more consumers find value in accessing full Web content on their mobile phones. People using Opera Mini viewed more than 3.2 billion pages in June, up 9.4% over May.
• Opera Mini drives carrier and operator value. In June, Opera Mini users generated more than 46.7 million MB of data for operators worldwide. Because Opera Mini compresses data up to 85%, this actual amount of data requested was 311 million MB in June.

Completely free for anyone to download and use, Opera Mini is available from http://www.operamini.com.

“Device manufacturers are interested in open-source solutions where there is a desire for increased control of their software footprint, and where they can bring internal programming resources to bear,” says research director Michael Wolf. “At the same time, vendors such as Opera are seeing strong growth in their mobile browser offerings, which provide the ability to access Web pages with advanced features such as zoom, bookmark syncing, and landscape mode, while also permitting handset vendors and operators to focus development resources elsewhere.”

Open-source offerings such as WebKit are experiencing adoption by vendors such as Apple, Nokia, and others. Google made WebKit its core browser and Web-rendering engine for the Android platform; and application framework vendors such as Trolltech have integrated WebKit into their development framework. Mozilla also continues to develop its version of mobile Firefox, and Nokia has integrated a Gecko-based browser on its N800 Internet tablet.

“The mobile browser market continues to be dynamic as hardware vendors embrace a variety of options for their family of devices to best meet their business, technology, and partner requirements,” continues Wolf. “ABI Research expects the larger trend to place emphasis on closing the gap between the experience of the Web on a mobile phone and that of a PC, while focusing on technologies such as content adaptation that optimize experience for the mobile screen.”

You can download the beta version here. The beta version is available with the following known issues according to the download page.

• ActiveX is disabled -> Flash plugins and embedded video streaming do not work.
• Custom IME’s (like HTC’s IME) will be buggy at best, not working at worst.
• Not multilingual build – Only English is supported. Problems with other languages (and input methods) is not unexpected.
• Installation on memory cards may cause problems.
• Text wraps in overview mode.
• Fails on ACID2 test

From the company blog,

As you can imagine, we encountered a few bugs last week that we needed to fix before we launch. Our engineering team worked through the weekend to fix the bugs. Even though our release is a beta, we’d rather spend the extra time to fix them, thus giving you a better experience. The fixes are almost complete now, but we need two more days to run the build through our quality assurance testing. The new launch date is now set for the 17th.

We’re disappointed to delay, but fixing these bugs will improve the experience with our beta and let you fully test the browser.

While Opera Mobile is a commercial version, you can also take a look at the free Opera Mini- a nice java version of internet browser.

Source [opera] via[theunwired]

You can check out the video tour below

Source [Opera]

The OpenTable Mobile site is designed to mimic the simple, streamlined reservation process offered on OpenTable.com, enabling users to quickly identify restaurants with available tables and narrow their choices by neighborhood and desired times.

“With OpenTable Mobile, we can now deliver the convenience of online reservations to diners who are on the road or out on the town,” said Jeff Jordan, chief executive officer of OpenTable. “Now mobile users can take the power of OpenTable.com with them wherever they go, to instantly find and book available tables at more than 8,500 restaurants.”

OpenTable Mobile is currently available to book reservations at all OpenTable restaurants in the United States. In order to take advantage of OpenTable Mobile, users must have a web-enabled mobile device and subscribe to a data plan with their carrier. OpenTable does not charge users to access the site or book restaurant reservations; however, standard data and text messaging charges from users’ mobile carriers may apply. For more information on the OpenTable Mobile beta please visit www.opentable.com/mobile.