Born to be Wireless

Yahoo Go, the mobile portal, is undergoing some major changes, resulting in what can only be called a relaunch to some degree. The service is currently down, as Yahoo works on getting the new mobile portal ready for the official launch tomorrow. Entitled Yahoo Go 3.0 Beta, the new features will include the obligatory new UI, which has been optimized for the mobile phone.

But the big announcement for Yahoo Go is the inclusion of Mobile Widget Platform, granting access to third-party widgets. These widgets will be accessible on both Yahoo Go and the regular Yahoo mobile page. So far, widget partners include eBay, MySpace and MTV. The mobile widget platform has also been opened up for developers who would like to create mobile widgets as well. The full-feature SDK for developers will be available in the next few weeks, and I’m rather anxious to see how developers will utilize the new mobile widget platform.

Yahoo does seem to be among the first of the major companies to come with third-party mobile widgets to this extent. Several mobile companies have adopted the heavy promotion of mobile widgets, including Nokia, for mobile portals because of their ability to package together a set of features in an easy access format.

Other new features include personal vitality and status updates, which gives you an at-a-glance view of what you missed: how many new emails do you have, how many Flickr photos have your friends added, what upcoming appointments are on your calendar, etc. The content for your mobile modules is also customizable, so you can choose what snippets (weather, news, etc.) you’d like on your home page.

The move to enhance the mobile start page, especially with the addition of mobile widgets, gives Yahoo a compelling usage of its mobile network, and a strike against other mobile startups hoping to gain traction from similar models for delivering content. Will the leveraging of your existing Yahoo content, such as email and friend updates, be a deciding factor for you, or do you avoid the mobile portal format all together?

Labels: widgets, Yahoo

Labels: iphone, leaflets, widgets

Users eager to get their hands on an iPhone may have June 29 circled on their calendars to mark the mobile device’s announced ship date. But for software developers, the most significant date in the build-up to the iPhone’s release was easily May 30. That’s the day Apple CEO Steve Jobs took the stage at the D: All Things Digital Conference near San Diego and announced that his company is working to make its eagerly anticipated mobile phone open to outside developers, reversing months of skeptical statements about third-party involvement.

For software makers, the latest pronouncement by Jobs, though lacking specifics, couldn’t be more welcome. It indicates that they’ll have a chance to create versions of their apps—or come up with entirely new programs—that will run on what potentially could be the most popular mobile device since Apple’s iPod.

Jobs’ encouraging words to developers came during a Q-and-A session at the D: All Things Digital conference, an annual gathering of tech industry heavy hitters sponsored by the Wall Street Journal. Asked by an audience member about the possibility of third-party companies creating iPhone apps, Jobs suggested that was a distinct possibility in the months following the device’s June launch.

“We’re working through a way [to support third-party development],” Jobs said. “We’ve got some pretty good ideas that we’re working through, and I think sometime later this year we will find a way to let third parties write apps and still preserve security.”

Whither Widgets?

As with many specifics about the iPhone, the details on just when and how developers will be able to create programs for the mobile device are still up in the air. Chief among the questions: Will Apple release a developers’ kit for the iPhone? Next week’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco figures to shed some light on that issue, with the New York Times reporting that Apple “intends to announce that it will make it possible for developers of small programs written for the Macintosh to easily convert them to run on the iPhone.”

What the Times’s source refers to as “small programs” is still in question, but it’s possible that this refers to Mac OS X’s Dashboard technology, in which small “widgets” written largely in the JavaScript scripting language grab basic data from the Internet and display it in an attractive interface.

But beyond simple software such as widgets, the question remains: what kinds of full-blown apps would be appropriate for the iPhone? One of the post-interview questions during Jobs’ appearance at the D: All things Digital conference last week was posed by Blake Krikorian, the CEO of Sling Media, makers of the Slingbox video-streaming product. Sling has created remote SlingPlayer applications for cell phones running the Windows Mobile and Palm operating systems.

While the company hasn’t announced any specific interest in creating a version of SlingPlayer for the iPhone, Krikorian’s question to Jobs complained about the limited bandwidth on the iPhone’s built-in EDGE cellular data network. (Jobs responded by praising the speed of EDGE and pointing out that when an iPhone senses a Wi-Fi network, it attempts to join that network and use it for data transmission instead.)

Labels: iphone, ipod, steve jobs, widgets

A Framingham company that provides location-based services for mobile applications, has created WHERE, a GPS widget for the cellphone that allows people to find events, weather forecasts, and directions targeted to their location.

The company, uLocate Communications Inc., said WHERE is now available on some Sprint phones. It provides a single page that serves as a "mobile neighborhood" on the cellphone screen, and is designed to give cellphone users more power in exploring their surroundings.

Already, content companies like the real estate data website Zillow.com, and event-listing website Eventful.com are using WHERE to make their content relevant to a mobile user who may be browsing a neighborhood or looking for something fun to do -- without having to tap in a bunch of information about their location and interests on their phone.

Labels: gps, lbs, widgets