Archive for January, 2008
Big week for Webwag! After the yesterday announce that Webwag was finalist of the GlobalMobileAwards, we just announce today our new iPhone version. You saw a video some time ago, but now this version is live: just point your browser to http://iphone.webwag.com (or http://webwag.com with your iPhone) and you’ll have access to your exact same account on your mobile. OF course, this works also on your iPod touch.
We created a user experience close to the default iPhone user experience, but with the full Webwag features:
- You can add/remove new tabs
- Add new widget
- A first preview level with number of unread articles in your feed
- Dynamic icons for some widgets: flickr, weather
Now, webwag covers a wide range of mobile and web device: web browser, mobile version (java me) and iPhone.
Try it, and tell us what you think!
We also launched the first step of our new Webwag V2, with some nice features:
- resizable columns
- variable number of columns
- enhanced discovery
- new themes
Identificateurs Technorati : webwag, iphone, ipod, wireless
January 23rd, 2008
Webwag has been selected as a finalist in the “Best Infotainment portal” at the Global Mobile Awards. The final of this famouse competition will take place during the next 3Gsm, in barcelona, in February…
More on the offical Webwag blog
And the globalmobileawards site
January 23rd, 2008
This iRiver unit presented during the last CES looks great. There is even a touchscreen that serve as a remote controller, but you can display much more info on it: RSS feed, weather, video, etc… Sounds a great widget platform, for your digital life…
Through multiroom (in French)
January 14th, 2008
Finally, we had a chance yesterday to access to Yahoo!Go 3.0 SDK. As a frequent reader of this blog, you should know that Widgets is a favorite topic, so I was curious and excited about achivement of Yahoo!Go 3.0 and his SDK.
The home screen is really good, looks great. Very nice theme, with a background image and a caroussel of “widgets”. Things become bad you start to dig into the content. In fact, what is Yahoo!Go3.0 is very similar to Yahoo!Go 2.0: an enhanced browser to the yahoo content. All pages are similar to wap page, but with some improvment in the navigation. There is however some specific part that have some higher capacitities, like the “map” part which contains a GoogleMap type navigation.What really kills the experience is that the answer to every keypress (and I’ve tested this on an N95, which is usually a very fast phone) takes too much time!
So now , let’s look at the widget part and the SDK: in fact, what is promoted as “widgets” is in fact some enhanced xml/wap pages created with the “BluePrint” language. The good thing is that pages can be easily integrated within the Yahoo!Go content, and can also benefit from the integrated advertising feature.
So Yahoo!Go 3.0 is more or less an enhanced mobile browser without Ajax capacities, and these widget are XML component that can be part of the page. One of the benefit of such basic approach is that these “widgets”, can be deployed even on simple Wap/xHtml pages. The bad thing, is that it’s quite impossible to do “real widget”: very little interaction possible between the application and the user, no local caching, no access to phone features…. Seems like a step back in the times “before ajax”. Does it really make sens to build a download app if you just provides a browsing experience?
Identificateurs Technorati : yahoo, mobile, mobilewidgets
January 10th, 2008
From Techrunch:
January 9th, 2008
A great piece of reading (discovered through AboutMobility weblog): CTO Handbook — How to care for and feed your CTO
He defined three types of CTO:
- The Technical Founder - the person that wrote the code that got the
company off the ground. Has sweated to give the alpha/beta/product life
and as a result any criticisms are effectively received/interpreted as
“Your baby is ugly! Now where’s your Corn Flakes so I can piss in them
too!” Is never far from code.
- The Visionary - sometimes seen as the flake without any “real”
deliverables. Is never far from a whiteboard. Can write code but
shouldn’t.
- The Figure Head - parachuted in, probably did or was associated with
something impressive in a semi-related industry. Doesn’t know most of
the company but is on a first name basis with most flight crew. Is
never far from PowerPoint.
The next game, just like CEO is doing, is then to think which part of these description fit in your profile!
January 9th, 2008
According to Techcrunch, Yahoo is the latest entrant in the mobile widget race. Basically, the “big” part of Yahoo!Go 3.0 is the support of widget, and the availability of an SDK for developpers.
So it will be interesting to see this. Yahoo!Go was already huge and slow, so let’s hope that 3.0 won’t be too big this time.
It’s also interesting to notice that MyYahoo does not seems to allow (unless I’ve missed something) third party widget development, while Yahoo!Go mobile allows it…. 
Let’s wait tommorow, and “a few weeks”, to get an access to the SDK. In the meantime, if you want to experiment mobile widget now, don’t forget to check webwag: http://webwag.com/mobile and http://api.webwag.com
Identificateurs Technorati : mobilewidgets, yahoo, yahoo!go
January 7th, 2008