Mobile widgets are apparently the next big thing in mobile-land. They’re applications using iPhone-style icon interfaces to provide access to all manner of news, services and content. If this is new to you, check out WidSets, Yahoo Go and Zumobi.
Actually, there’s more reason to check out Zumobi now, as it’s just launched for BlackBerry devices, broadening out from its base of Windows Mobile phones. It works in the same way: you get space for 16 widgets (or ’tiles’) in the application, and can choose from a gallery supplied by Zumobi itself.
Although some of the news and sports tiles are fairly US-focused, there’s also games, and tiles for Web 2.0 services like Facebook and Twitter. WinMo users have been pretty excited about Zumobi since it launched on that platform, so it’s good to see the technology spreading its wings onto other handsets. Next stop iPhone?
The makers of Zumobi have entered into an agreement with Microsoft that will see their novel, tile-based mobile browser appearing on WIndows Mobile 5 & 6 handsets.
Zumobi is a sort of combined portal-cum-rss reader that fetches web pages and massages them to mobile-friendly dimensions, browsable by a unique tile-based interface. When we last took a look at Zumobi here at Pocketpicks we were impressed by its looks and ease of use but worried about a lack of content and customisability.
There is no word yet on whether Zumobi will be appearing as just another bundled app or if it will end up being a major part of the future Windows Mobile interface. The fact that it looks a bit ‘iPhoneish’ at first glance might point towards the latter, if you were a cynic.
When we took a look at the beta version of Zumobi, they were touting its targetted advertising ‘features’ - fingers crossed Microsoft don’t decide that ads are the killer app that WinMo needs to take on Symbian and the iPhone.
Zumobi is a new mobile browsing app that offers an unusual interface and uses cached data to speed up online usage and give the option of offline browsing as well.
Rather than a traditional browser, Zumobi offers a set of sixteen ‘Tiles’, each containing a link to some specially-formatted web content. The user can ‘zoom in’ on a set of four tiles, then zoom further to bring up the relevant page.
There is a Flash demo here that should give a flavour of what that it looks like in practice.
Zumobi’s servers cache the data for your preselected tiles and the mobile app caches it onto your phone so you should be able to keep up to date even if you are in a blackspot or on board a plane.
It all sounds like good fun, but any walled-garden approach to the web lives or dies on its range of content and although Zumobi claim partnerships with big players like Flickr and Amazon, the ability to add your own content could prove crucial to this service taking off.
Targeted advertising is also presented as a feature and while it is admittedly better than spam it’s hard to picture many people walking around thinking “Ooh, do you know what? I could just go for some targeted advertising right about now.”
The beta version launches on the 14th of December and you can sign up here.
