RSS, flickr and del.icio.us on a Mobile Phone

Roger Whittaker writes to tell us Engadget reports that Mobileglu is offering an interesting new service that gives users the ability to read RSS feeds, flickr, del.icio.us, and other sources of content in a mobile friendly format. Think this will lead to smarter content developers making their own sites more mobile friendly, or just a few lawsuits?

Comments

Risk of living off others' content

[biocute]

Think this will lead to smarter content developers making their own sites more mobile friendly, or just a few lawsuits?

Most likely these content providers will sit and see what comes out of this.

If it isn't popular, MobileGLU will die out itself; If it's popular, these content providers will invite MobileGLU to pay up, or file an injunction to shut it down while they start providing the service themselves.

Not many company can manage to live off someone else's content for free, the one that stands out is obviously the Beast, which is also constantly under attack by content providers.

To be successful, MobileGLU really needs to hit the market hard and fast, that is to make sure these content providers need its service more than it needs their content.

Re:Risk of living off others' content

[darkworm]

Hello there,

Justin from mobileGlu here. The idea behind mobileGlu is not to live off other people's content, we are just acting as a mobile aggregator for people's flickr, delicious, upcoming, RSS etc life online, and that relationship is one to many (i.e. one user many content), not many to many like public aggregators.

The main goal behind the project is not to leech people's content, but to act as a two-way hub between the user and the web service (e.g. allowing user's to post photos from their mobile to their Flickr account, and view those photos), and to help enable other web services to get mobilised as quickly as possible.

Hope that clear some things up?

Justin

Re:Risk of living off others' content

[MooUK]

Technically, any ISP works because of content provided by others at no cost to the ISP, whether that content is paid or otherwise.

Re:Risk of living off others' content

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

You can't file an injuction, you need to sue and have a judge impose one. Most of the time they are temporary (and the content providers can't get anything going within the time frame covered by most temporary injuctions) - the permanent ones are only if you lose, and then the damages would likely wipe you out anyway.

That being said, the decision made in the Nevada District Court in Las Vegas regarding the Google cache sets a hopeful precedent.

Opera mobile

[dotpavan]

Doesnt Opera Mobile do the same?

"Opera Mobile browser lets you surf the full Web on your mobile phone. And when we say "the full Web," we really mean the *full* Web. Equipped with Opera's Small-Screen Rendering technology, the Opera Mobile browser lets you access any site on the Internet, just like you do on your computer."

Re:Opera mobile

[op12]

Or even Opera Mini.

Opera Mini(TM) is a fast and easy alternative to Opera's mobile browser, allowing users to access the Web on mobile phones that would normally be incapable of running a Web browser. This includes the vast majority of today's WAP-enabled phones.

Instead of requiring the phone to process Web pages, it uses a remote server to pre-process the page before sending it to the phone. This makes Opera Mini(TM) perfect for phones with very low resources, or low bandwidth connections.

Opera Mini(TM) offers the same speed and usability as the renowned Opera mobile browser, and uses Opera's Small Screen Rendering(TM) technology to provide access to the Web. It has all the features expected of a browser, and more, such as bookmarks, browsing history, and ability to split large pages into smaller sections for faster browsing.

Re:Opera mobile

[JulesLt]

I think the difference is that the Opera browser shows the whole web page (inc. the ads subsidising said page, etc) rather than accessing the underlying data.

MobileRSS

[brokencomputer]

This is kind of like Mobile RSS.

Re:MobileRSS

[turnstyle]

You might also be interested in my app, Bitty Browser -- for example, you can also use it the other way around (ie, to embed mobile content within regular Web pages). -Scott

Re:MobileRSS

[wanorris]

There are a ton of RSS readers for various mobile platforms such as Pocket PC and Palm. The most useful ones also work offline, so you can read the feeds without having an open connection.

But I can't help thinking that while the proprietary approach of taking specific websites and ripping their content might work for a brief period, in the long run it is surely doomed.

The proper solution is websites that deploy CSS intelligently to produce pages formatted properly for small screens. That's what CSS and the whole separation of content from presentation is for: making sure the underlying content can be accessed through a variety of platforms in a manner appropriate to each one.

bloglines mobile is good enough

[BlackShirt]

frankly speaking, it is excellent. try to beat that.
1. create bloglines account, subscribe to couple of feeds.
2. swithch to mobile version
http://bloglines.com/mobile
3. read all your news in a friendly format (I mostly use it behind my PC as it is just so simple)
http://bloglines.com/myblogs_subs

Re:WWW = Wirelessly Wank to Wenk

[coolCoder]

Try Novarra's nWeb, its better than all others in rendering mobile content on the cell phones www.novarra.com

Great

[sulli]

Now we will have mobile 2.0 hype.

What about the cost?

[xoip]

We just heard M$ tell us that Cell phones were too expensive and that they were going to save us with WiFi+Voip.
Now we have a service that will cost a fortune in many markets.
Which is it?...too expensive or attractively priced?

Re:worked for Google. Still leeching.

[gflammer]

Google has never moved past the leech stage, they dice up content sucked from anywhere they can find it. Their ads are spam. The user did not ask for them; GOOG gets paid for them. The Anti-leech http://www.customizegoogle.com/

/. RSS

[SoulMaster]

I'm using my Nokia 9300 and /. RSS right now and have been for at least a month. The simple way is to peronalize a Google Home page a add all your RSS feeds to it. Then, log in to your google account from any WEP browser and volia, google reformats your pages for you. Even forms and images come through just fine. This whole message was posted using it. -S

Re:worked for Google. Still leeching.

[ceejayoz]

Google has never moved past the leech stage, they dice up content sucked from anywhere they can find it. Their ads are spam. The user did not ask for them; GOOG gets paid for them. The Anti-leech http://www.customizegoogle.com/

Slashdot has never moved past the leech stage, they dice up content sucked from anywhere they can find it. Their ads are spam. The user did not ask for them; Slashdot gets paid for them. The Anti-leech http://www.customizeslashdot.com/

websites on mobile...so stupid

[abandonment]

ok, i just signed up for the 'web access' on my new v3 razr phone through my local provider a few weeks ago.

this so called 'internet on phones' is even more ridiculous than the concept of playing games on celphones.

1) the web-browser is SOO slow - takes a LONG time to initialize...
2) they make you navigate through 3 or 4 screens before you can even type in an 'http://' address, each of which is hideously slow and probably costing me money because it's actually navigating some website on my providers network
3) viewing an image heavy site like flikr on a phone? you've GOT to be kidding me - let alone the fact that most celphone users are paying by the kb...

all adds up to 'yet more hype around celphones' that basically is a waste of time and money for the consumer.

no thanx

Re:websites on mobile...so stupid

[john-da-luthrun]

Try Opera Mini - a java-based browser that should work on any modern mobile phone. From your mobile phone browser - once it has finally booted up and you have made it to the address input page - go to mini.opera.com.

Re:websites on mobile...so stupid

[abandonment]

>> Learn to use your current phone. It makes no sense to visit one website to find another, if theres no link there.

thanx, but i DO know how to use my phone. it's not rocket science.

There are no options to set a home page, no options to customize the startup behavior.

I go to the 'web browser' on my phone, it doesn't give me any options but their default list of urls that I can choose - it doesn't give me an 'http://' prompt, it immediately thinks that I want one of their default pages...

Yes this is the providers page - they don't say that it is, but it's quite obviously their 'default start page'.

It says 'rogers 'navigate' on the page and the links are all obviously html links (wap versions)

my options are:

- hot picks (for what?)
- get music & tones
- get games
- get graphics
- get email / chat
- get tv / video (yeah right)
- my subscriptions
- get info
- search
- graphical view (as if the text version wasn't slow enough)

i have to click 'search', which takes me (eventually) to another page that gives me a search box, or i tab down to the next link which has

- go to http:///
- go to https:///
- Yellow Pages
- canada411.com
- takeataxi.com
- city info
- ibm (why would i want to go to IBM's site?)
- time zone
- mygasprices
- dictionary.com

so in order for me to get an 'http://' prompt, i have to:

- launch browser - takes approx 15 seconds to get to the first page
- navigate the crap-ass menus - navigation on the phone is SOO laggy it's ridiculous. each link you click takes about 10 seconds to load.

so after I spend approx 2 minutes of link navigation, i finally have an http:/// prompt to actually type in the website.

Note that I'm getting billed for EVERY one of these pages that I have to navigate through prior to actually get said http:/// prompt, which is something that they do NOT mention to you when you sign up - you think you're actually only paying for the 'real' internet pages that you visit, but NOOOO.

celphone providers need to realize that their crap-ass service is hindering more than helping the adoption of these devices as the 'end all be all' that they think they are.

With that said, I'm actually going to try out this opera mobile that some people have mentioned - i've heard good things about it, perhaps it will actually let me set how I want to surf the net instead of being told how I am by my provider.

News?

[Captain_Chaos]

AvantGo has been doing this for many years! I remember using it when I bought my Palm V at JavaOne in 1998. It'll take any web page and let you read it on your PDA (or smart phone).

-1 stupid

[metamatic]

Flickr already has a mobile phone interface, what's the point of building another?