Widsets review: just another RSS reader?
I’ve just played a little bit with the application, but on the emulator only, and here is my first feedback:
Basically, it’s a kind of RSS reader for mobile, where you select on the server side the feed you want to read. In that case, a feed is called a widget but does not provides any interactivity.
- The first level of UI is really well polished, and gives great hopes about the app.
- The web site is an high end Web2.0 site. From the Web, you can browse widgets, select one, configure it.
- When you have selected your widget set, just press update to update it on your mobile..
But:
- The application does not work on my mobile! (big problem for a mobile app). Still waiting from feedback from the Widset team, but it seems that it’s linked to the usage of TCP which is not open on all operators network, instead of plain old HTTP.
- The first level just show you the icons, gives very few feedback about “whats new”. The onlylinformation that seems to be displayed - and not on all feeds - is the number of new articles in the feed. Once the first “waooow” effect is gone about the UI, you realize that it’s not so user friendly: the button are big but does not carry so much information.
- The “preview” widget from the web is just a static one. In fact, it’s a picture provided with the widget set. It would have been interesting to have a “real” preview
- When digging in, the second level of UI is not very useable too. For instance, on the weather widget, you see a list of days, and you have to select that specific day to see a two line information about the weather…
- The widget can not be configured on the mobile. Needs to go on the web site! Even if I really l ike the Web site, I think that there is plenty of uses cases where you need to configure such app without any access to the web site, for instance, when you have changed your location and want another RSS feed.
- No picture is displayed when reading the feed, except for the Flickr one.
There is an “SDK” available, where you can change the look and feel of the feed: color, icon, etc…
Widset haves a good Web2.0 site, but an average RSS reader: no picture display, lack of browsing methods….
So if I have to compare the three on this race up to now, Plusmo, Widsets and Bluepulse, Plusmo is still ahead of the others….
Upadate: Thanks to some information coming from widsets guys (see the comments), I was finally able to configure my handset. I had to change the default Orange access point to another one - which is strange, as all the other app worked well. Anyway, it works, and I must say that UI is great on mobile. Does not change most of my remarks, but this put another level in the level of polished UI in J2ME….
Technorati Tags: mobilewidgets javame j2me plusmo widsets rss
18 comments June 9th, 2006