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.
It takes a second to realize that what you see on Dashwire.com's cool gray interface is content from your mobile phone. That's probably because you're not used to reading it so easily.
There on Dashwire's spacious Internet dashboard are your photos and videos, contacts, bookmarks, and SMS and call history laid out in movable AJAX tiles. There are ringtones you can click on the Web to play on your phone, and text messages you can reply to with your keyboard, and which are tagged with your identifying phone number so your friends know who sent it.
You can e-mail photo links from Dashwire, too, without your friends having to sign up to the service to view them online. Contacts you add online materialize in your mobile address book. Another groovy part: Dashwire auto-saves your content, effectively backing up your phone.
Now it's time for the secret sauce: how your content gets there. Dashwire begins as a mobile app that most users will probably download over the air. It installs, and then syncs to your personal page on Dashwire.com, which you've configured by registering your screen name and number on sign-up. The synching took a little time, and might take more if your mobile network is lagging. Photos and videos take the longest to upload, and even longer the more you've got. Have patience; the wait is worth it.
Dashwire works remarkably well, but it doesn't do everything yet. For the moment, it only supports Windows Mobile 5 and 6, and subscribers have to specify their carrier and device model when they register. Dashwire doesn't manage files or programs, or perform certain small tasks like deleting photos from the phone or reading and initiating e-mail. You can't expect perfection from early closed betas, but you can expect novel ideas.
Read mail, SMS, and back up phone content from Dashwire's dashboard.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
Myxer introduced a new feature at DemoFall: a widget to instantly upload photos, videos or ringtones to mobile phones.
(Credit:
Myxer)
It's aimed at people who want to make money on things like wallpaper and ringtones but don't have the technical know-how or the resources to distribute it themselves. Mobilized by Myxer is a delivery platform that can push any content to any phone. They've promised to keep up on the constantly fluctuating mobile standards and phones that enter the market so you don't have to. The only requirements are that users own the content they want to distribute, and know how to drag and drop the content into the publishing wizard.
And, hey, it's got an endorsement from Tay Zonday, the Internet phenom behind "Chocolate Rain" who sells the ringtone version of his song for $1.99 through the service. What else could you ask for?
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