What do you get when you mix HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Opera, select cell phones (for now) and a Vodafone Group’s R&D lab, Betavine? Mobile Widgets!
For anyone who has ever wanted to develop a mobile web-app but lacked the specific technical skills, Betavine’s new Mobile Widget platform may just be what you’ve been waiting for.
So what is a Mobile Widget? Betavine defines them as:
Essentially, Widgets are the new touchpoint for how users will access the internet on their mobiles. They are mini Web applications that reside on the phone but can be personalised to easily fetch relevant information from the web and present it to the user. They require a device to have a Web Run-Time (WRT) environment which enables them to behave like applications (rich GUI, can be used offline) yet are as easy to code and update as a mobile internet browser site. Consequently, widgets can deliver relevant, ‘always on’ services to users – they are typically based on 1-2 use cases, for instance, a simple weather forecast or an Amazon search feature.
Take Carsonified’s “Slimline Twitter Search” Mobile Web Widget, Twiggy, for example (screenshots above). Ryan Carson and Co. built Twiggy in just 4 days (as opposed to the multiple weeks and/or months that a “full” app might take). Twiggy “is a simple mobile widget that allows you to search Twitter, right from your phone.” According to Carson, Mobile Widgets like Twiggy are the future of mobile app development:
The importance [of Mobile Widgets] is that [they] offer web developers and designers a whole new market to build for: non-iPhone devices (1M+ and growing). Also, the widgets, because they’re built in open web technology (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) will work on any device that has the Web Run Time. There is an exciting initiative called BONDI which is helping all the device manufactures agree on a set of API’s that will be consistent across all devices, that will give mobile widget developers access to device level functionality, like location and contacts. This means someone could build a mobile widget and it would work on a huge array of devices.
Furthermore, Vodafone (via Betavine) is currently offering mobile developers a chance to win £20,000 in its new mobile widget contest. Not only do they walk home with that hefty chunk of change, but:
The winner will receive a commitment from Vodafone to promote the widget to users in one of Vodafone’s major markets. Two runners up will also receive a £1,000 cash prize.
All developers submitting widgets will also have an opportunity to make their entries available through the Vodafone Widget Manager Beta application, which is currently being rolled out across a range of 10 popular S60 handsets in Germany, Italy, South Africa, Spain and the UK.
The competition started began back on Feb. 2 and runs through April 30, 2009. For specific rules and more detailed information, head on over to the Betavine contest site. What are you waiting for? Start Mobile Widgeting!
awesome
not really.
So where it to find,
Interesting…. Is it not the same as app platform created by Apple?
But one observation… the era of User generated content has ensured that marketers have outsourced their work to the users
Carsonified have behaved a bit shadily on this one… it looks like they were paid to promote this stuff but they haven’t disclosed a commercial relationship.
We have been completely upfront from the beginning on this: yes, we’re partnering with Betavine. We’re proud to, mobile widgets are very exciting.
you partnered with them means they paid you? that would explain your ‘excitement’ a lot more…
Netbiscuits (www.netbiscuits.com) has been doing this for a while now
Unlike Betavine, it’s completely web-based – no SDK download necessary but Betavine has two obvious advantages (a) it’s free and (b) it’s Vodafone
Four days? To make a search form? Four days? Really? Is that ½ day to code and design it and then 3.5 days of self-promotion?
It actually only took 2.5 days to design/build it. That was from scratch, not knowing *anything* about building mobile widgets.
Maybe I’m missing something, but aren’t they just bundled up HTML/CSS/JS and images? If that’s the case, what’s the cost of ‘not knowing *anything* about building mobile widgets’? Maybe you could explain what the pain points were compared to, say, building Twiggy as a simple hosted webpage?
I’m pretty sure I could copy and paste the html from search.twitter.com to a text editor in under 2.5 days. And if it took two and a half days, why does this page and your own Twiggy page both say 4 days? Is this some kind of historical revisionism now that you’ve realised your original claim made you look inefficient and slow?
Alternatively you could always try…
http://search.twitter.com/
Self-promotion-and-ignoring-the-bleeding-obvious FAIL.
Zembly (http://zembly.com) has been able to do this for a while now.
Qualcomm are touting their system called Plaza.
Bluepulse have been doing something similar for a while now.
“easy reach” mobile platforms are not new.
The bigger question is whether these widget platforms enable innovative experiences or merely enable the creation of many “me too” subtle variances of the same mediocrity. E.g facebook platform – some great stuff, most of it is regrettably trite and hinders the good stuff being found
Hi Lars –
The difference here is that we are talking about W3C standard Web widgets (see http://www.w3.org/2008/webapps/wiki/Main_Page#Widgets), not a proprietary single-vendor platform. These widgets will supported across an increasing number of platforms and devices – and are based on open standards being developed in W3C.
Hi Daniel,
I hear you and your standard response.
But you are not answering the fundamental question: Will we see useful fun apps or more “punch the monkey, pirate day ha ha ha buy your friend”.
The platform gives the tools but does not incent useful apps.
http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/rich-tehrani/google/android-developer-contest.html
And 20k is somewhat underwhelming to Google Androids total $10 Million purse.
You may argue that Android have yet to have any great hits, but it did motivate alot of smart people to at least think beyond “buy my friend” apps. It also debugged their developer support a treat for sure.
Lars J.
Can anyone name 1 such initiative that Vodafone has done that hasn’t failed? Their entire R&D and global initiative is a major fail. They hired a VP from microsoft so that they could ‘look more like an internet company’ — bad news, microsoft isn’t an internet company!