Mobile Web News: Week of June 18, 2007

June 18, 2007 on 5:00 pm | In Mobile Web News |

Microsoft Relaunches the MSN Portal Designed for Mobile PhonesJune 18: Microsoft has announced the refurbishment of its all-in-one portal for mobile phones at http://mobile.msn.com . The portal offers news, sports data, entertainment features, e-mail access, search, maps and instant messaging on one page.

When a user accesses this portal via a mobile phone, the portal detects the type of screen the user has and formats the portal to fit nicely onto the screen.

Microsoft and other large companies like Google are gradually pouring money into wooing mobile customers because global mobile marketing and advertising is forecast to increase sixfold to $19 billion by 2011 from an estimated $3 billion by the end of 2007 (according to ABI Research).

This move could be timed in accordance with Apple’s planned release of the super-usable Iphone on June 29, 2007, which is predicted to cause a large increase in mobile web usage.

Source: Reuters

YouTube Makes Some Videos Available on the Mobile Web

June 19: You can now view a selection of YouTube videos on your mobile phone at http://m.youtube.com/, according to Techspot . To make downloading faster, YouTube has reduced the resolution of the videos. The videos are sent to you in 3gp format.

The service is experimental and will be extended to YouTube’s entire catalog only if user response is good. YouTube also cautions users to check their data plan rates for exorbitant download charges.

Opera Releases Opera Mini 4 Browser

June 20: Opera released the latest version of its Opera Mini browser today according to Opera Watch , an Opera-affiliated web site. It’s called the Opera Mini 4 and is code named Dimension.

The new browser will work on any Java (and Windows Mobile) phone such as the T-Mobile Wing, the Nokia N95 or the Palm Treo.

The Mini-4 has been acclaimed by reviewers as being the fastest mobile browser in existence. Unlike its earlier version, which fitted a web page into a single column, the Mini-4 provides a scaled-down desktop page view with a zoom window movable on it. Once in the right position, the user clicks on this window to see the region zoomed on the mobile screen.

Download it free at http://www.operamini.com/beta/

New Services for Making Payment From Your Mobile Phone

June 21: Verizon has integrated the Obopay mobile payment service into its Mobile Web 2.0 service and its Get It Now Catalog. Obopay requires users to buy an Obopay prepaid MasterCard , then receives or makes payment from it according to user cell phone commands. (source: ComputerWorld)

mPoria, who operate mobile web sites for companies (similar to Yahoo Ecommerce stores), have built Paypal into their offering.

I suspect these companies are rushing to make m-commerce easy in time for the Iphone arrival on June 29th…

Have a good week, and don’t go out when the Iphone hurricane hits your area!

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