I can’t live without RSS. It has changed my personal and professional life and my ability to access personalized, sorted, timely information. Let’s put aside the fact that I can’t find an ideal mobile RSS aggregator solution yet - that’s not the subject here. I’ve been playing with some of the latest mobile widget services to see if there’s a reason for me - or information hounds like me - to actually use these things for more than just a novelty.
More specifically, are there certain RSS feeds or pushed data normally found on the desktop that are appropriate for the phone?
Blogs/News? Only if it’s synced to my desktop/web aggregator. If I digest news items, I don’t want them showing up on other devices again. That’s why I never use a native RSS reader, and why I can’t find a truly great mobile RSS reader (yet - Google Reader’s WAP version is getting there).
Friends’ photos? The phone is a personal device, so having the latest photos from my friends would be a nice touch. That said, I’m on my desktop a lot more than my mobile, and I want them there too. So if I’m RSSing photos, I want them synced up just like my news feeds. If I have to wade through previous photos to get to the new ones when I switch to my mobile device, it becomes a data hogging annoyance.
Sports? I’m the kind of guy who can wait till the day after for the NFL scores. If I were the kind of guy who wants to be in the action while mobile, I’d rather have streaming video or a real play-by-play app.
Local Events? Maybe I’m showing my lack of social prowess here, but I’m usually at home deciding what I want to do before I go out and do it. It’s rare that I’m out and about and say to myself, “hey, wonder what’s going on around the corner!” and redirect myself on the fly.
Weather? Not really - I’m always on my desktop before I go out, so I can hit up NOAA. While I’m mobile, I’m really more interested in hourly info or radar - more up to the minute things. If I want quick weather, there’s easy WAP sites for it, and many phones have home screen widgets that work just fine.
Mail? No way if it’s just a feed. I want full-blown access to my mail if I’m going to get it while mobile. Nothing would tick me off more than getting mail and being crippled as to managing it or replying.
I very much want to get into services like these:
Widsets’ development environment and generally good execution gets me kind of excited. But wading through their widgets and trying to come up with ideas to create my own led me to the brainstorming above. Now add some more reasoning to why I don’t dive in:
- My XV6700 already has crap battery life. I have push email turned off for that reason. I don’t want unneeded network access.
- I don’t miss data when it’s not pushed. If the phone is not going to go the extra mile and do things like pull down digital camera reviews while I’m in the digital camera section at Best Buy, it should stay off the network and save the power for when I want to actively browse the web, pull down my email, or (gasp!) make a call.
- My needs when mobile are very diverse. Sometimes I desperately need an IMDB lookup for some actor that comes up in conversation. Sometimes I need product reviews and price comparisons. Sometimes I need directions. Sometimes I just want content to pass the time.
So here I am, wanting to adopt these very cool apps but stuck with an un-synced chasm between my desktop and mobile lives and unpredictable, diverse needs that usually require hitting desktop-web sites while mobile. Mobile widgets won’t solve this. RSS won’t solve this alone. Any suggestions as to how I can start to love these things? Can they solve something I haven’t thought of?
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Mobile RSS…
Maybe podcasters have some hints for useful RSS applications for cell phones…….
Trackback by Phones 12.12.06 @ 1:57 amHI Rich -
What you are looking for is a tall order. We’ve tried to address a lot of these issues with a new product that is currently in beta called Siteline. It’s any RSS content delivered and cached on your mobile phone. It let’s you get most of your top items and next week, it will let you take another step as well. We’re not trying to address your searching or mobile browsing needs - we’re just trying to make it easy to keep your mobile world synced with your desktop computer/internet world.
You (and anyone that would like) can try Siteline for Windows Mobile at:
Comment by Jon Maroney 12.12.06 @ 11:06 pmHi Rich, have you taken a longer look at the diverse range of enthusiast-built widgets available for Bluepulse? Try installing the client and installing some widgets from your phone, or if you’d like to read up on some first, check out the 3rd party community site at http://www.bpwidgets.com run by a widget developer, which features many of the more popular widgets. It’s a verrrry diverse list.
Bluepulse and widgets written for it don’t push data and consume data when you’re idle, generally do smart things like show you the newest items in, say, an RSS feed first, and allow you to interact with the site publishing the RSS or providing the API that makes the widget possible.
For instance, the Digg and Flickr widgets for Bluepulse let you login and do many of the tasks you’d do when on your PC, without attempting to do some of the things that don’t make sense while on your phone (like reorg your photo collection.)
Comment by alan 12.13.06 @ 11:49 pmJon-
I don’t see a link there, but I assume you built a new mobile RSS reader? I like that you’re trying to keep me in sync. I’ll try to look for your app, or you can post the URL here.
Alan. Browsing through that widget site, I must say I’m impressed. There really is a diverse set of widgets available. I’m going to install Bluepulse and give it a shot. But as I said in the post, my main concern is trying to predict what I’ll need. Things like the amazon widget will really help comparison shopping (though I’d love a Froogle widget more).
So I think what I’ll do is try to cover a percentage of what I’ve needed in the past with a selection of widgets and see how much I need to use the browser with them installed. If I can reduce the amount of time in the browser by 50%, maybe that’s worth it for me. Thanks for your response.
Comment by Rich 12.14.06 @ 8:58 am[...] In the end, Apple’s slick use of widgets and a great web browser will probably run quite nicely on EDGE. Sure you won’t be able to sling to the device or stream hi-fi media unless you’re in a WiFi area, but with Apple’s ability to create intuitive software, it might start getting close to my desire to have widgets really start to predict and think and actually be helpful. [...]
Pingback by Mobilitee 01.09.07 @ 1:50 pmRecent news regarding the http://www.bpwidgets.com site mentioned above — it’s been taken down! Or repurposed, as the case may be. Bluepulse went a different direction, so widgets were falling out of favor.
If you liked the Amazon widget, Rich, you might also enjoy the full blown Java ME app it was turned into at http://www.mywebonthego.com. The widget was a ‘lite’ version of the full site. Still JavaVerified and still free.
See you guys.
Comment by Shaun 03.03.08 @ 7:58 pmLeave a comment
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