Crave

The widgets story has always locked icons and links in a race to recover your most-wanted data quickly and accurately. When it comes to cell phones, there's been no clear winner, only trade-offs. Mobile browsers such as Opera Mini and Skyfire promise rich desktop search augmented by straightforward links to favored sites, while well-designed widgets applications such as Yahoo Go supply clear paths to tightly-focused content, some of it user-customized.

The most recent update improves Zumobi's speed and accepts personalized tiles of RSS feeds.

(Credit: Zumobi)

Seattle-based Zumobi and Swedish newcomer Squace are two companies I spoke to this week that are pitching icons over links. On Wednesday, Zumobi announced a version update that gives the graphics-rich widget application a performance-based tummy tuck--technically, a rewritten threading architecture.

The efforts have paid off. Now, zooming into a widget "tile" from the 16 square interface produces a much smoother, faster rendering than earlier versions, a strong complaint of mine.

Zumobi has also continued to tighten its offering with a functional Zero Menu, which serves as Zumobi's tile manager and gallery. Smarter work flow patterns list available gallery tiles by category type, like humor, news, and finance, and a new installation methodology drops Zumobi onto Windows Mobile phones about 30 percent faster than before. The most exciting addition is a Web tool to create and port user-generated tiles of RSS feeds.

I'm pleased to see that Zumobi, which has always been a juicy piece of eye candy, is beginning to purse its brain, too.

In Squace, each cell represents an RSS feed or personal Squace site.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Squace

Operating in roughly the same quadrant, Squace beta takes a more micro view of getting to online content. The application interface is a simple grid of 45 cells to 150 cells, depending on the phone's screen size. The personal or preset content you add from your online Squace account fills in each tiny square in alphabetical order and lightly etches on the letter to help you keep track (see image).

Hovering over a cell pops up the content name. If it's a blog, you'll be directed to a second screen where scrolling over a cell pulls up the titles to individual posts. This, too, is currently alphabetized, making the chronology of news items unclear.

Unlike Zumobi, you may add as many links as you want to Squace; the extras spill onto following pages. There are tabs for tags, messages, and reaching out to contacts in the budding social network. There's also a search icon, a called-out ribbon for storing favorites in teeny squares, and a very easy online interface for creating personalized content like the private site Squace CEO Aage Reerslev demoed of his daughter's day care.

Squace looks promising, though time-stamp filtering and the capability to add content from the phone interface are notably absent. As for the geometry, Squace's tiny squares may give way to a squint, but it's an intriguing form factor that's despite the uniform sameness is designed very well.

If you missed the hands-on review of the release version of Zumobi's quick-apps for Windows Mobile phones, here's your chance to see it in action in this First Look video. You'll see the app's rich graphics and interesting design. If you can overlook the slight rendering hiccups, Zumobi is yours to download for free.

>>See all First Look videos

Quickly search for local fare from Zumobi's widget interface.

Surfing the Web on a cell phone screen can be the laggy, draggy pits, but companies like Zumobi want to make it a rush. The announcement of Zumobi's first full release (for Windows Mobile 5 and 6) brings the Microsoft-birthed, now Microsoft-partnered platform for delivering mobile content closer to the dream.

I've been following Zumobi's young career for some time and happily, its character is catching up to its glitz. Version 1.0 corrects many of the beta's more glaring errors, including major functionality potholes that are now mostly paved over.

For the uninitiated, Zumobi is a grid of 16 thumbnails that users access by zooming into a quadrant and then zooming in again to an often-customizable "tile," each of which is populated by the content partner and updated several times a day. For instance, Amazon's tile operates a portable-book store that also links to Amazon's mobile site. AP News, MTV, Epicurious, and Flickr are other well-known brands.... Read more

Article updated and corrected on January 22, 2008 at 3:10 pm PST.

Microsoft and Zumobi, a content distribution platform for mobile phones, announced on Tuesday a partnership that will preload Zumobi (download here) on select Windows Mobile phones.

Zumobi's downloadable app (available now for Windows Mobile 5 and 6) offers an interface of 16 tiles to help users access key content quickly. Each tile is a widget that's entirely programmed by developers and partners--like Amazon.com, Flickr, and AP Sports--and which is subject to advertising banners. Zumobi's big innovation is the navigation that zooms into tiles by quadrant and then by tile to access the widget. There are some weaknesses to this approach, noted in my initial hands-on review, though Zumobi's interface is indeed as "lush" as the marketing claims.

John SanGiovanni, Zumobi's co-founder and vice president of products and services, did confirm that the product will receive several upgrades before it ships on undisclosed Windows Mobile phones later in 2008. Users should expect improvements to Zumobi's zooming navigation and download speed, and extended content categories, such as another sports score widget.

Zumobi's partnership with Microsoft should hardly come as a surprise. Its zooming technology was born and incubated within Microsoft's research womb, IP Ventures Group, before spinning off under the leadership of CEO Eric Hertz. Although Microsoft hadn't been funding the Seattle start-up directly, it did maintain a small stake, which explains why Zumobi's development is currently focused on the Windows Mobile platform (a J2ME version is in the works.)

It's hard to predict the next Twitter or Facebook, and that's what makes massive overnight, now-we're-worth-fifteen-billion-dollars success (or not) so gosh darn breathtaking. I mean, did Facebook know it was going to be Facebook?!

So my point is, we go on what we've got when predicting which software is going to turn heads. This list has been compiled partly by educated guesswork and partly by whimsy. Chances are, the software that ends up meaning something to people, we've never seen coming. It's probably not even a glimmer in its developer's eye.

If I turn out to be wildly off-base in my predictions, even better. Groaning at gross miscalculations from tech's crystal ball is part of what makes making them so much fun. Without further ado, here's the lineup.

The long-awaited beta for the Zumobi (download it for Windows Mobile 5+ from CNET Download.com) mobile widgets platform (at least awaited by me) became available Friday to Windows Mobile 5 and 6 users and developers who register on the site.

Zumobi, like Yahoo Go (which just moved out of beta) and Plusmo, is an experiment in mobile widgetry that cooks up an interactive recipe for getting wanted Web content fast.

Zumobi's twist is part interface, part monetizing. The app opens to a grid of 16 tiles, each its own app readied for your click. Four tiles cluster around a central hub, what Zumobi likes to call its "flower." To access an app, click--I mean zoom--into the nearest "flower" foursome and use whatever navigation your phone provides to draw up the app you want.... Read more

It's a good time for talented developers. Architects of Web and client-side apps have their choice of dazzling users on not one, but three cutting-edge mobile platforms. There's no shortage of opportunities to create custom Safari apps for the iPhone, and add them to our growing collection of iPhone apps, of course. Developers can also now download the Android SDK (for Mac or Windows) to start measuring and mixing an app for Google's new mobile platform. Inspired developers have a chance to earn a share of the $10 million in prizes offered in the Android Developer Challenge.

Pretty soon, developers will be able to fit code into Zumobi, another open mobile platform that organizes the app interface into 16 zoomable "tiles," each representing a program that will open at touch or tap.

Developers and users, let's hear from you. Which is the coolest platform idea, and which the easiest to program? Does Android live up to the hype? Does the Microsoft-backed Zumobi have a chance to compete against Apple's iPhone and Google's Android? Lay it all out in the comments below.

Correction: In the original version of this post, we made an error regarding the Android Developer Challenge prize money. It has since been corrected.