There are a number of apps for streaming radio from your phone, but Pandora is definitely one of the best. The app is based on the Music Genome Project, an effort to categorize and analyze the details about each song in existence - including its melody, harmony, instrumentation, rhythm, vocals, lyrics, etc. - in order to help you find more songs that are like the music you like. To do this, you just listen to some music using Pandora and rate your preferences. Pandora then suggests more songs you might enjoy. If you have diverse tastes, you can even create different Pandora channels - like one for upbeat hip-hop songs and one for your love of classical piano, for example.
Pandora's mobile application works on a number of different handsets from both Sprint and AT&T, including, of course, the iPhone.
We have to give a shout-out to one other music-based application in addition to Pandora: Shazam. This clever mobile application helps you identify the song you're hearing by having you hold up the phone to the source of the music, most often the radio. The app then "listens" to the song and identifies it for you. Shazam is available both on iPhone and Android, as well as other handsets if you happen to live in the UK.
You may be surprised to learn that Shazam wasn't the first application that could identify songs from your phone. Gracenote's MusicID technology has been around for ages, but it didn't have the easy-to-use UI of the Shazam iPhone application. That simplicity combined with the popularity of the iPhone in general, makes Shazam an app worthy of a download...and worthy of its own iPhone commercial, too, it seems.
The popular mobile browser from Opera is always one to watch. Having launched a software developers kit (SDK) for widgets this year, there's a chance for this mobile browser to take on the powerhouse that is the iPhone through its freely developed and distributed widgets that run within the company's mobile browser on any number of handsets.
The company is already far ahead of rival Mozilla Firefox, whose mobile browser code-named Fennec is still under development. Meanwhile, Opera's mobile browser is already being shipped on millions of handsets from major mobile manufacturers including HTC, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, T-Mobile, and more. The browser is also available for different types of mobile operating systems like Symbian, Windows Mobile, Blackberry, and Linux, making it the alternative browser of choice for many handset owners.
There are actually two mobile version of Opera - Opera Mobile for smartphones and Opera Mini for everything else. It's great that even low-end phones, which are all some folks can afford, can now include a better browser thanks to Opera Mini. Meanwhile, with Opera Mobile's features like offline browsing, built-in productivity tools, tabbed browsing, and the above-mentioned widgets, the next-gen mobile web experience is available to a wide range of devices.
However, one place you won't see Opera anytime soon is the iPhone. Although there was some buzz about an Opera iPhone app, if one even exists, it does so in violation of the SDK and would never get app store approval. Widgets would also make it somewhat of a competitor to the App Store itself, and that usually means a reject notice, if history tells us anything. If you ever see Opera on the iPhone, it will most likely be a jailbroken phone. We would still like to see that!
Read More Opera Coverage:
Opera Mobile News (mobile browser for smartphones): Opera Mobile 9.5 Unveiled
Opera Mini News (Opera mobile browser): coverage of both the Opera 4.1 and 4.2 releases
For mobile news on the go, we're big fans of what the New York Times has done with their iPhone application. This is a great example of what the newspapers of tomorrow can and should look like, if you ask us. You can view the most popular stories of the day or flip through the various sections of the paper with a flip of your finger. Articles are accompanied by full-color photos, too.
Although there are other mobile news applications out there, we've been excited all year about the initiatives that the Times is taking in attempt to stay relevant in today's digital age. For example, in October, the company launched their first API, making them a news broker just as much as they are a newspaper. More recently, they opened up their front page to outside content, an effort that helps blur the lines between news and blogs even further. We think that NY Times sets a great example for other old media companies trying to embrace the internet age...we only hope that it's not too late.
Disclosure: RWW is syndicated by the New York Times.
The i.TV iPhone/iPod Touch application, lets you view the latest TV and movie schedules from your area right on your mobile device. You can also rate shows, leave reviews, and recommend shows to others. The app was ranked as one of the top apps in the iTunes App Store 2008 list, too, coming in a #3 on the list of free entertainment applications.
i.TV just keeps improving, too. Last month, they added Netflix to the app, which lets you search the Netflix database, manage your queue, and add movies and shows to your instant watch queue for instant streaming on your Windows PC, Xbox 360, Roku box, TiVo® Series3, TiVo HD, or TiVo HD XL digital video recorders and select Blu-Ray players. They also integrated with Wikipedia in order to link to articles about shows, movies, and actors within i.TV. Best of all, it's free.
This app is one of the only ones we listed that's iPhone/iPod Touch-only, but it was worth including because of its simple, straightforward nature and the useful service it provides. i.TV appeals to everyone - even mainstream users, which is probably what makes it so popular. We agree it deserves the success it has received. i.TV has rapidly become one of our most-used apps this year, even worthy of placement on our iPhone's homescreen.
It was certainly hard to narrow down all the mobile web products to just ten, but we hope we provided you with a list of apps that were especially noteworthy this past year. (You can see more of our favorite apps here.) If you think your favorite apps were slighted, please share in the comments. Also, remember we didn't even touch on mobile gaming apps - that's really a different category at this point - but feel free to share those, too.
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Looking back on 2008, we can definitely call it the year of the Mobile Web. That designation, in large part, is due to the success of the iPhone. Although the