Tag Archive for 'widgets'

MSN Direct tech preview brings widgets to WinMo

Published by Stuart Houghton on February 13, 2008 in Applications and Mobile internet. 1 Comment

screenshot_topstories.jpgRemember MSN Direct and those funny SPOT wristwatch PDAs Microsoft were trying to flog a few years ago?

No? Well, to be honest they’d slipped our minds too. It seemed like a good idea at the time - internet-enabled widgets that downloaded little snippets of information like weather reports, stock prices and news headlines and displayed them on a digital watch. Unfortunately, the watches were a bit pricey and not much of the technology ever made it across to the UK.

The MSN direct service is still going, however and Microsoft clearly think there is some mileage to be had from their little widgets - they have just announced a technology preview of MSN Direct for Windows Mobile devices.

The tech preview is a free download and should work with any non-touchscreen Windows Mobile device.

Once installed it will use your phone’s data connection to grab updates for your chosen widgets. Widgets can be cycled through using the keypad or joystick and any links within the MSN Direct content (usually to more MSN content) can be opened in Internet Explorer with the click of a button.



Yahoo! Go, to go

Published by Stuart Houghton on November 16, 2007 in Messaging and Mobile internet. 0 Comments

yahoo goYahoo! has released version 2.0 of its Yahoo! Go app for Symbian and Windows Mobile devices.

Although still considered by many to be ‘that other search engine’, Yahoo! has been steadily adding to its portfolio of interesting web apps and Yahoo! Go offers several ‘widgets’ that act as mini portals to your Flickr photos, news & sports, Yahoo! email (is that exclamation point annoying you as well?) and web search functions.

You can also upload photos to Flickr directly from your phone’s memory and a well thought out map widget offers traffic reports, GPS integration and route planning as well as localized search functions (e.g. ‘find the nearest pub to my current location’)

The News widget offers a variety of sources is also a fairly capable RSS reader if you want to add your own.

How useful you find the mail widget will depend greatly on how committed you are to non-Yahoo! email services, but if you are a heavy Flickr user then widget that alone would make this a worthwhile download.