Beta Labs Releases My Mobile Site Widgets
Has the Beta Labs team been busy lately or what? I’m sure you’ve read about the updates that have come out of the Labs lately and we also got some GPS love with Location Tagger. Today brings a whole new app to check out. Actually, “app” is a poor term in this case so we’ll stick to their terminology and go with “extension”.
My Mobile Site Widgets is a collection of desktop widgets that run on the back of Mobile Web Server, also a Beta Labs app. Guest blogger and assumed leader of the development team behind MMSW Marton Szomolanyi covers the essentials over on Tommi’s blog so I won’t go into the nuts and bolts. Essentially this extension provides you with a nice collection of desktop widgets compatible with both Mac and PC. Based on the Yahoo! Widgets engine, MMSW works in conjunction with Jukka Eklund’s baby Mobile Web Server to view various content contained on your mobile. MMSW polls your device regularly to refresh content and uses a secure protocol, obviously. We also see some PC Phone-style functionality implemented as this widget pack includes a few that can initiate operations such as sending SMS and placing calls.
The timing couldn’t be better considering yesterday’s announcement that Nokia will acquire Trolltech. We’ve heard plenty of talk in recent history that Nokia is focused on becoming an “Internet Company” and now we’re seeing the next series of steps that Nokia is taking in order to do so. Mosh is, and sorry to put this bluntly, useless in my eyes and Ovi has yet to surface. The Trolltech acquisition has the potential to light quite a fire for Nokia’s internet development of course, and it will be interesting to see what happens. I would expect to see plenty more offerings in the same vein as My Mobile Site Widgets to come bubbling up from the Beta Labs in the near future. As I’ve said in the past, I love the concept of the Beta Labs. Use Nokia enthusiasts as a think tank; bounce ideas off them mid development and see what sticks. It really is a win / win.
Head on over to the Labs and give My Mobile Site Widgets a go.
My only negative comment is with regards to the name “My Mobile Site Widgets.” It’s already a marcom travesty that Nokia handsets are given Mercedez Benz-like monikers - we can at least do apps and software solutions the pleasure of getting a little creative! Where oh where is the marcom team to support all of this creative development?!? Ugh; I suppose that’s a rant for another day…
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