MeOnGo (for ‘mobile email on the go’) is a WAP-based, mobile emailing service. It works with most of the popular email services (Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, Rediffmail, Indiatimes) and these can be accessed using POP/IMAP. You don’t need to download/install any software on your phone. All you need is any GPRS/EDGE/3G/ CDMA based phone with a mobile WAP browser. To understand how it works, check out this section on their website. MeOnGo comes from a Ahmedabad based MVAS (Mobile Value-Added Services) solutions provider called Net4Nuts, whose clients include leading telcos (Airtel, Idea, Hutch, Orange etc).

Meongo believes that they offer two key advantages as compared to various other mobile email providers. Firstly, their service works on any browsing enabled phone, whether XHTML OR WML based (webmail offerings from leading email providers work typically on XHTML phones). Secondly their service does not require a phone client and hence is less susceptible to phone/OS incompatibilities. They have a couple of offerings- a free version aimed at individual users and a corporate version for enterprises. The basic service in both cases is free – individual users have a restriction on the no. of mailboxes they can configure while enterprises have a restriction of users they can authorize for access. Future plans include a premium services with a monthly subscription (app Rs.50/ for individuals & Rs. 100/user for enterprises). MeOnGo claims to have 30K users across 100+ countries, growing at the rate of 2.5K per week. Bulk of their users are from emerging economies, with India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Kenya, Israel, South Africa, Bangladesh & Indonesia featuring in the top 10 countries. About 90% of the usage is related to checking/reading of emails and the balance 10% comprises of all the other email actions (delete, reply, forward etc).

Here’s another web map to whet your geo-spatial appetites. Its called the Internet’s Black Holes– a reference to the 15 countries around the globe that exercise internet censorship to further their own political agendas. The countries (just in case you are curious) are – Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Iran, Libya, Maldives, Nepal, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan & Vietnam.

I stumbled across this map on a ‘social photo discussion’ website that someone tipped me about. It’s called Phoja and is based out of Melbourne, Australia. Phoja allows users to post photos (from the web or from the mobile) and start a discussion around it or seek advice. It also offers a community driven popularity index for all photo submissions.

Other maps/visualisations covered earlier on this blog

– World Web Map 2007
– World Web Trends Map
– Periodic Table of the Internet