Mobile marketing may have been proving its efficacy over the last few years. But for old-school marketers, the platform might seem a little too cutting-edge–more anime, less Disney cartoon. They don’t know where, or how, to enter the space and start deploying campaigns.

That’s where a new wiki, www.wikimobipedia.org, comes in. WikiMobiPedia aims to “provide a centralized, dynamic resource for buyers of mobile marketing, advertising and related products and services–so that they can easily access the information they need to begin the purchase process.”

WikiMobiPedia creator Jamie Wells tells us, “With our space moving so fast, I felt the industry would benefit from a place that “keeps up with mobile,so you don’t have to”… So far I’ve got most of the major mobile players involved–over 50 companies–in less than a month.”

As of this week, the site’s beta partners include AdMob, ComScore, HipCricket, the Mobile Marketing Association, Nokia, and Washington Post Digital. You see the entire list on WikiMobiPedia’s homepage.

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Smartphones are moving in status from high-end toy to practical device for the common man.

Regardless of income, U.S. consumers are increasingly adopting smartphones like Apple’s handset, according to ComScore. The commoditization of handsets is near now and marketers had better have campaigns to reach consumers on these devices.

ComScore reports that the strongest growth of iPhone users occurs among those earning less than the “median household income”–that is, between $25,000 and $50,000–at an increase of 48 percent. When it comes to smartphones in general, that same demographic of users grew by 5 percent, compared to the 3 percent growth of the overall smartphone market.

“One actually realizes cost savings when the device is used in lieu of multiple digital devices and services, transforming the iPhone from a luxury item to a practical communciation and entertainment tool,” said analyst Jen Wu. Added another analyst, Mark Donovan, “Lower-income mobile subscribers are increasingly turning to their mobile devices to access the Internet, email, and their music collections.”

I’ve mentioned how mobile is poised to become the de facto form of the Internet in a previous post. Specifically, I noted that the number of people using the Web via their phones instead of a PC was likely to rise. Nice to see firm figs that support this.

One odd figure: The number of people using their phones to listen to music actually dropped. Overall growth in this category was negative 0.3 percent. Seems like people don’t necessarily want an iPod blended into their phones. Instead, they want a handset that lets them use the Internet, check email, and be free from their computer.

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If you have ever, like me, been disappointed in the search results you’ve found when seeking some crucial piece of information while mobile searching – you will want to try out FIRXT. It is a mobile portal that let’s you customize your own search engine page and save it as you have designed it.

FIRXT truly makes mobile searching fun, easy and actually helpful.

The original home page at FIRXT.com contains 10 mobile search engines that you can use immediately. Google is at the top, followed by Yahoo! and so on. The starting off page is an Australian one (you can tell because it has the Australian National Public Toilet Map on the home page.) But the beauty of FIRXT is that you can move around the 10 listings, add new ones, delete ones you never use and then add to favorites a specific URL that is your unique FIRXT site.

Read the rest

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Of the myriad mobile sites and services on the horizon, those that capture my fancy are the ones that serve the most practical of purposes.� Needless to say, when I learned of PhoneFavs, a mobile optimized web portal and online bookmarking service designed for cell phones and portable gadgets, I was instantly� intrigued by the prospect of gaining mobile access to my frequently used and abused bookmarks.
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According to the site, PhoneFavs “allows you to view and use your bookmarks on a mobile device in an easy to use small screen format. You can store, organize and share your bookmarks and access them on any device, anywhere. You can even import your existing bookmarks from Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari and del.icio.us.”

Perhaps most conveniently, PhoneFavs additionally provides a mobile web directory, a mobile software store, and a mobile web transcoder that “mobilizes” more elaborate, larger web pages for optimal viewing on a small cell phone screen.

• Favs Portable Bookmarks: PhoneFavs lets you keep a list of bookmarks online in a mobile friendly format. Your Favs can be tagged, searched, shared and mobilized at your convenience. PhoneFavs’ bookmarking utility works best in combination with your primary desktop computer. With the browser buttons in place, you can easily save sites you might want to bookmark or visit later on your mobile device.
• PhoneFavs Mobilizer: The Mobilizer is a mobile transcoder that automatically adapts standard web pages for better viewing on a mobile device. It removes most images and formatting for greatly improved readability and faster load times. An icon on your Favs list will open your saved Fav with the mobilizer or you can enter any website address from the PhoneFavs homepage to browse the web in a small screen friendly format.
• Directory: The PhoneFavs mobile link directory includes over 300 handpicked sites optimized for use on mobile phones. There are over 25 categories and subcategories of destinations and you can suggest a site if we don’t have it listed.
• Mobile Software: PhoneFavs offers a mobile optimized software store. The store offers thousands of free downloads and commercial titles for many popular smartphones including devices running Palm OS, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry and Symbian (Nokia S60) platforms. Customers can download free trials and even purchase applications right from their handset.

Although it is customized for mobile access, PhoneFavs is said to work best in conjunction with a desktop browser. The PhoneFavs browser buttons allow users to quickly bookmark webpages or other content of considerable length and store it on PhoneFavs for viewing on your mobile device at a later time.

In addition to being free and able to safeguard the privacy of the sites visited and content saved, PhoneFavs is easy to use and a quickly addictive tool.

Visit� pfavs.com with your web browser and check it out for yourself.

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I thought I’d let everyone know that we’re expanding Mobile Marketing Watch!

Over the next couple of weeks look for some changes ok. We have plans underway to add a Mobile Directory. I’ll post more details in the coming days, I can tell you that we will have Free and Premium Subscriptions!

Back to normal Mobile postings tomorrow.

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