Webware

A company called Bango is trying to make it easier to get content onto your mobile phone.

On Thursday, the company, which specializes in providing back-end technology for mobile Web sites, introduced a link that users can put on regular Web pages to link their content to mobile phones.

(Credit: Bango)

The Bango Button, which is free for download on the company's Web site, is designed to be used with blogs and social-networking sites. The way it works is that a user puts the icon or "button" on a Facebook page, which then enables friends who visit the page to get photos, music clips, or other files that appear on that page on their handsets.

Bango formats the regular-size Web pictures for mobile phones. But it also allows users to link directly to a mobilized version of a Web site. Content providers can charge mobile consumers for the content they download, or they can make it available for free.

Bango Buttons should work on any cell phone that can access the mobile Web and allows downloads. Andrew Bovingdon, vice president of product marketing for Bango, said that most phones from most U.S. carriers, with the exception of Verizon Wireless, should work with Bango Buttons. Unfortunately, Verizon blocks many of its phones from downloading content from the mobile Web, which means that the Bango Button won't work.

Today finding content on a mobile phone is cumbersome and clunky. The way most people find ringtones or other content to download is to send a message to an SMS text code. The Bango button greatly simplifies that process, but it's not the ideal answer to making the Web more accessible on handsets.

Most Web sites accessed on a mobile device are simply stripped-down versions of regular Web sites. And the experience for users who surf these pages or try to find content on the mobile Web is excruciatingly painful. And the problem isn't likely to go away over night.

Apple has greatly improved the Web-surfing experience on its iPhone, which renders real Web pages on a full browser and lets people blow up images on the touch screen to read them. And Google with its new Android software and Open Handset Alliance also promises to improve Web surfing on handsets. But with nearly 3 billion cell phone subscribers in the world, it will be a long time before most people have access to handsets with better user interfaces or mobile browsers.

Bango's Bovingdon agrees that the mobile Web has a long way to go, but he says Bango's solution can serve as an interim solution.

"Eventually, I think the experience will be more like what we get on the PC," he said. "But we're not there yet. For right now, the Bango Button can help people find and download content they want today."

In September I reviewed Zinadoo, a free service for creating mobile Web sites with a ".mobi" domain. Zinadoo, and now MoFuse, which joined the mobile Web site creation space last week, give individuals and companies a chance to put their wares in a format that will render well from the mobile phone each and every time, from any browser.

So the question is: which service serves you better? The bird's-eye answer is that they both purpose WYSIWYG editors to make site creation painless. They've both worked well, every time. Zinadoo is much more bubbly, graphics-rich, and a touch more gratifying to use.

Zinadoo's bright WYSIWYG site design page is also well-designed

(Credit: CNET Networks)

MoFuse differentiates itself by emphasizing content through feeds; it wants to be the ".mobi" location of your ".com" site, particularly your blog. MoFuse populates the bulk of your mofuse.mobi site with that feed, though you can create static content and more capability is in the works. In many ways MoFuse caters more elaborately to users, who can add quickly widgets and redirect codes where serviceable to promote their mobile site. Customized ".mobi" domain names are also free with MoFuse, in contrast with Zinadoo, which charges 18 euros a year to drop the ".zinadoo" suffix from the URL. Zinadoo also sells text messaging credits. For the time being, MoFuse has shunned all premium services.

That's not to say it's shunned a business plan. Users can place ads from either the AdMob or Google AdSense with MoFuse's revenue sharing program; gains split straight down the middle. Zinadoo also places ads, but doesn't announce a revenue-sharing program.

While there are limitations to both sites in terms of interaction and universal click-to-call capability, MoFuse strikes me as a more practical and user-friendly site for the current clime, particularly for individual bloggers. Zinadoo, however, is better suited to create original content that's exclusively mobile.

A blog feed rendered through MoFuse

(Credit: CNET Networks)

My Zinadoo mobile app

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Culminating in a party at San Francisco's Rickshaw Stop last night, the biggest Web browser publisher from Norway--also, the only Web browser publisher from Norway--kicked off a number of beta versions. Opera 9.5 beta 1 and Opera Mini 4 beta 3 were made public yesterday, introducing a heap of new features.

... Read More

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MySpace Mobile Web gets better graphic treatment as part of a subscription download.

MySpace users can now e-mail, add friends, and edit profile information for free from their mobile phone.

MySpace Mobile Web beta became available this week, featuring a WAP browsing experience that's lighter, sparser, and more cost-effective than the downloadable version users purchase from their phone carriers for about $3 per month.

The free WAP version has a much more austere interface, which helps support compatibility across carriers and manufactures. I was able to check and write e-mail, search for contacts, edit my profile, and update my blog quickly and without incident on a Verizon LG flip phone.... Read More

Add as many widgets as you want with Plusmo's mobile app.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Plusmo's mobile widgets application is a cool way to read RSS feeds on your cell phone or PDA, but that's not the only reason it was named a finalist on the Webware 100 list.

In true Webware fashion, Plusmo's site offers hands-on excitement--the chance to publish and share widget mash-ups and create an iPhone widget from templates. Users can also make personal blogs available as a Plusmo widget, and can install a browser bookmarklet or Yahoo plug-in to snag feeds while they surf.

Getting started with Plusmo

Multiple carriers and platforms, small screen sizes, and a glut of information out there make quickly and easily accessing mobile content a downright challenge. That's why interestingly (and wisely), Plusmo steers clear of browser turf wars raging among third-party mobile browsers like Opera Mini (new review) and Minimo (hands-on review); a good move.... Read More

A portal to mobile-configured Web sites is all you get with Frog.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

From the many positive announcements written about Frog since May 2007, a fresh, interesting approach to accessing the mobile Web shouldn't have exceeded expectations, especially six months after the initial release. After all, GeekSugar, MobileCrunch, and The Boy Genius Report all gave Frog nods as a viable home page alternative. After trying it out for myself, all I saw of Frog were warts.

Unlike traditional browser solutions that optimize page viewing, Frog adopts a portal model for accessing the Web. Nine quick-launch buttons each take you to a Web site optimized for mobile viewing.

While creating a Frog account online, users can add button icons for favorite sites from scores of options (good.) Four, to be exact. The other five slots are chosen for you and won't budge if you try to swap them out (bad.) However, it might be less of a problem if you already use MSN Weather, Google, Orbitz, RestaurantRow.com, and Fandango steadily and don't intend to swap the orientation on the screen.... Read More

I'm surprised that more Web sites aren't mobile friendly. By now, all content management systems and blogging platforms should be creating lightweight versions of their hosted sites automatically for users that come in via a mobile phones or WAP browsers. And even major sites that do have mobile versions (like most of the travel sites out there, bless them) don't automatically redirect users there when they should.

But one can rant, or one can find a workaround. I choose to do the latter and find ways to get my favorite sites onto my mobile phone in the right format--free of the graphics and chrome plating that look so nice on my PC but only makes sites slow and unreadable on a mobile. The standard method is get to a site via the Google Mobile search engine. If you do this, the site is returned via a Google proxy that does a pretty good job of cleaning things up for a small screen and a narrow pipe.

Netvibes mobile

There are more modern mobile access methods worth trying. For example, Netvibes recently launched a mobile version, and I like its implementation. From a PC or a Mac, go to your Netvibes account and create a tab called "Mobile," and then copy your favorite feeds and widgets into that tab. On your mobile device, go to m.netvibes.com to view the content. Since I'm a Netvibes junkie and use it to read RSS feeds, I find this a decent way to get my favorite content on my mobile, even though my phone has its own RSS reader. More advanced Netvibes content--widgets, for example--doesn't display, however.

Google's custom home page also works on a mobile, and likewise will strip out advanced widgets. Yahoo has a mobile version of My Yahoo as well, but it doesn't work on all phones.

Tappity

You could do worse than to check out Tappity, a new mobile start page. Tappity lets you collect links to the sites you'd like to access on your mobile device. Sites that are already mobile friendly (for example, m.cnet.com) you just save as links. For sites that are not (such as Webware.com--sorry about that), you can ask Tappity to "mobify" the site, in which case it will link you to a stripped-down version of it. For the moment, Tappity uses Google's mobile proxy, but an upcoming release will use Tappity's own "mobilfier." You can also create links to site-specific searches, but it's a bit more complex to do so.

Tappity is also a community play. You can tag mobile sites so other people can find them.

Tappity doesn't work with RSS feeds, however, and that's a drag. Ideally one should be able to create a mobile home page that links to feeds where appropriate, but also mobile versions of sites where it makes sense. As I said in the headline, we need more options.

Tappity setup page

Burn baby burn.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Logging into Facebook to check up on my old college roommate yesterday, I noticed there was a giant message telling me to use Facebook Mobile. Technically, Facebook has had basic mobile features for quite some time (looking at your profile, reading messages), but my friends and I never bothered to use them, specifically because of their lack of support for my carrier T-Mobile. What is new is their mobile tab, which gives you live previews of what different parts of the site will look like on your device. There's also a Fire feature that lets you "set fire" to one of your friends. This won't send them into friend purgatory, rather it sends them a neat status message. It's the equivalent of poking them, and is another useless but amusing Facebook feature for saying hi to people you know in a peculiar way.

I have a few buddies who will get a kick out of the new mobile tab and the firing feature, and I'm sure most twentysomethings with smart phones and corporate data plans will be taking advantage of the mobile interface now that Facebook is actually advertising it. That is, at least until everyone and their brother gets an Apple iPhone in June.

Google Maps on Apple's new iPhone

(Credit: Declan McCullagh/CNET)

It's pretty obvious: Everyone's talking about Apple's iPhone, from its touch-screen interface to the "close to the ear" sensor to the fact that it's actually called the iPhone (since Linksys did get there first.) But from our perspective, one of the most fascinating and least-talked-about aspects of the just-announced iPhone is Apple's collaboration with Web giants Google and Yahoo on some of the new device's features.

More specifically, Apple has teamed up with Google to bring two of its most popular Web applications to the iPhone: Google Search and Maps. Google's famed search engine is built right into the iPhone's browser, as is Google Maps and its accompanying directory. There's no corresponding GPS on the iPhone, as there is on the Google Maps-enabled Helio Drift from Samsung, but it does have access to Google's satellite maps in addition to street maps.

As for Yahoo, the tie-in is not as tight--after all, no Yahoo execs are members of Apple's board of directors the way Google CEO Eric Schmidt is. There won't be any Yahoo software (i.e. Yahoo Maps) integrated into Apple's mobile platform, although there will be a Yahoo search option in the iPhone's Safari browser along with a Google search option. On the other hand, Yahoo has made some accommodations for the iPhone: users who have Yahoo Mail accounts will have access to free push e-mail services, like the sort found on BlackBerrys and Treos. The handset will also be compatible Yahoo's mobile application, Yahoo Go. Yahoo Go, which launched a beta of its "2.0" version in conjunction with this week's CES festivities, is designed to squeeze Yahoo's services into a mobile-sized package. It wasn't clear from the wording of Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang as to whether or not Yahoo Go will be pre-installed on the iPhone, but considering it's a free download on the Web, my guess is that it won't be.

The Google and Yahoo collaborations are probably most surprising because Apple has a history of creating its own applications and devices rather than partnering with other companies; as I recall, there was even some speculation that Apple would launch its own mobile service rather than partner with an existing carrier for the iPhone (it picked Cingular). When it wanted to sell music for its iPods, it opened up the iTunes Store instead of teaming up with (or acquiring) an already-existing service. It even created its own productivity suite--iWork--in direct competition with Microsoft's Office applications. That, of course, began to change when Apple began to put Intel processors in its laptop and desktop computers, a move that seems to get a general thumbs-up among the Apple freaks I know.

While the three companies do have occasional conflicts of interest--Apple's iTunes Store with Yahoo Music, and some of Apple's iLife applications with Google's Web apps (iCal versus Google Calendar, for example)--I don't think there's much doubt that partnering with two big Web figureheads will enhance the software offerings on the iPhone, especially when it comes to the bundled Google Maps. Apple is still a hardware company for the most part, whereas Google and Yahoo count the Web as their domain. It's far more efficient of Apple to partner with well-respected brands for applications like mobile search and maps, rather than to try to develop products of their own that will inevitably come under intense scrutiny. Those anti-Apple zealots can be pretty intense.