Opera: There's a good chance you've visited Facebook on your phone

Opera has released a report on the state of the mobile web. And considering the company claims more than 44 million users for its Opera Mini cellphone web browser, Opera's in as good a position as any company to report on mobile web usage.

There are two trends that are particularly noteworthy. First, 77% of all traffic was to full web pages, not stripped down mobile pages. This probably shouldn't be that surprising, since Opera Mini renders full pages pretty quickly and lets users zoom in and out to read the fine print. And while WAP might have been pretty exciting a few years ago when there wasn't as much rich media content on the web, and when mobile internet connections were significantly slower, those days are long gone.

The second trend is a bit more surprising. 40% of worldwide traffic was directed to social networks. In some countries including the US, South Africa, and Indonesia, that number was as high as 60%. Now, it's not like we didn't know that social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Orkut, and Bebo were popular. We just didn't figure people would be spending half of their mobile web browsing time visiting them.

What sites do you visit regularly with your mobile web browser?

[Via: VentureBeat ]
[Tag: ]

DivX Mobile Player 0.90 released for Windows Mobile

For years TCPMP was the reigning champ of Windows Mobile video players. The program is light weight, customizable, and can handle practically any video codec you can throw at it. But the developers of TCPMP have moved onto the commercial CorePlayer. So when we saw that there was a new version of the DivX Mobile Player, we figured we'd take it for a spin and see how it stacks up.

The application is pretty. Like really pretty. When you load it up, DivX Mobile Player will automatically detect any videos on your device which it can play. It will then create thumbnail images form the files to make your video list easier to navigate. Unfortunately this can take a while and the program doesn't respond to taps very quickly while your phone or PDA is busy grabbing thumbnails.

The video playback screen is sparse, which is a good thing if all you want to look at is the video. You get a black background, a scrollbar, two menu buttons, and your movie. You can watch your videos in fullscreen mode and get rid of the toolbar buttons. And you can adjust your colors and a few other settings. But there are some important features that are missing, like the ability to adjust your aspect ratio. Seeking also takes an excrutiatingly long time.

We're not quite ready to throw away TCPMP yet, but the DivX Mobile Player is worth keeping an eye on. The latest version features improved power management features, which should help improve battery life while watching videos. The DivX Mobile Player is also available or Symbian devices, but the latest version is 0.89. An update shoul be coming soon. You'll need to register for a free DivX account to download the mobile player.

[Via: Pocket PC Thoughts ]
[Tag: ]