Widgets for Your Mobile Life

Over the last several blog posts we’ve been highlighting the many cool and useful features of Plusmo’s Mobile Widgets. We’ve included photos, reviews, and information on how to get Plusmo’s Mobile Widgets on your own phone.

We also have a great selection of videos that demonstrate the power and convenience of Plusmo’s Mobile Widgets. For example, the following video demonstrates the latest version of the Plusmo client, Plusmo 3.0 (which is still in beta):

Here are two other great videos that highlight some of our most popular Mobile Widgets for Pro Football (USA) and Cricket.

Stay tuned for more great videos of our newest Mobile Widgets!

Following up on our post about Plusmo and the S60 platform, Plusmo has been selected as a featured application by Nokia for its S60 devices. Plusmo brings the power of Mobile Widgets to users of S60 devices, so we are very excited to receive this recognition.

Stay tuned for more information about our Mobile Widgets and as always we love to receive feedback from our users.

Tomorrow Apple is launching their second generation iPhone, so given all the excitement around the launch we’d like to remind everyone about Plusmo’s exciting offerings for the iPhone.

There is no doubt that the iPhone is an exciting mobile phone, media player, and portable computer.  The iPhone has great hardware and software, and since all iPhone owners have an unlimited data plan and easy access to WiFi, the iPhone is a great device for Mobile Widgets.

Plusmo on iPhone

We’ve made all of our Mobile Widgets available on the iPhone.  Simply point the Safari browser on your iPhone to plusmo.com.  In addition to Widgets that deliver news, games, podcasts, videos, RSS feeds, weather, comics, etc., we’ve optimized the Widgets for the iPhone.

Customizing Your Widgets

Let’s look at how you can customize your Plusmo home screen with the Mobile Widgets that fit your preferences.  You can customize your plusmo.com home screen on the iPhone from plusmo.com through your iPhone (or on your desktop, also at plusmo.com).  Let’s look at a concrete example - I’d like to add a video widget to my home screen (see picture 1).  I simply click add more (at the bottom of picture 1), click on the category ‘Entertainment’ (picture 2), ‘Add’ ‘Videos Top Picks’ (picture 3), and voila, we’ve got video on our home screen (picture 4) and access to some great videos.  Simply visit plusmo.com from your iPhone and enjoy the thousands of Mobile Widgets available in a few touches!
    

(Picture 1)                      (Picture 2)

(Picture 3)                      (Picture 4)

Sports Widgets on iPhone

Some of our most popular Widgets for the iPhone are our Sports Widgets.  These Sports Widgets are very useful for keeping up with your favorite sport or team when you are on the go.  They give you quick access to all the statistics the most ardent fans care about and even offer play-by-play for live games.  Check out our Cricket and Golf Mobile Widgets:

Plusmo and iPhone 3G

The new iPhone lauching on Friday is exciting for many reasons: it is cheaper, has faster data speeds, and is just as slick as the original iPhone.  The most exciting feature accompanying the iPhone 3G launch is the introduction of the iPhone App Store.  The App Store will offer native applications built by third party software publishers, and Plusmo will soon introduce our native iPhone application.  The Plusmo native application will make our already exciting Mobile Widgets even better - we’ll be making use of the iPhone’s native features (such as location services and multi-touch) to make our Mobile Widgets even more fun and useful.

Stay tuned for more on our iPhone App, and as always, please submit any comments or questions.

Today Nokia announced that it is creating the Symbian Foundation to unite the Symbian OS, S60, UIQ and MOAP(S) to create one open mobile software platform (Plusmo is quoted in the Nokia Press Release, which you can find here).  Plusmo is a longstanding supporter of the S60 Platform through its S60 Widget Service where S60 device users can discover and use thousands of S60 Mobile Widgets.

What is the S60 Platform?

S60 is a the leading mobile operating system for smartphones.  Currently, there are over 200 million devices running S60 (you can find a list of all S60 devices here).  S60 supports Widgets through its browser software called Web Run-Time, which allows developers to create Widgets that access the special features of S60-enabled phones (such as contacts, location, and phone services) via JavaScript APIs.

           

s60.plusmo.com

Plusmo has created an S60 Widget Service which allows mobile users to easily discover and use thousands of S60 Widgets (simply visit http://plusmo.com from your S60 device).  All Plusmo S60 Widgets feature a simple user interface and one-click access to content and automatic updates, eliminating the need for constant browsing and wait times.  Further, the Widgets that are created on Plusmo’s S60 site also work on many other platforms, such as Windows Mobile and the iPhone.

Plusmo also provides a Widget Manager for S60 Devices (pictured above) which provides extended functionality such as offline access, device-native catalogs, etc.

Special Tools for Publishers at s60.plusmo.com

If you are a blogger or a content publisher, the Plusmo Widget Service enables you to easily create S60 Widgets in minutes.  Simply follow the directions listed at our tools page for content publishers.

Please stay tuned for our next blog entry when we’ll detail how the Plusmo Widget Engine improves upon the iPhone user experience.

What is a Widget? 

A Widget is a “thin” (in the software sense), intuitive software application that does one task very well (e.g., displays the weather, stock quotes, news, flight status, etc.).  (For another definition, please refer to Wikipedia.)  The major modern OSes (OS X, Windows, Linux) all offer ‘Desktop Widgets’:

What is a Mobile Widget?

A Mobile Widget is also a Widget, but Mobile Widgets have some special properties.  First, since Mobile Widgets reside on mobile phones, they have to take into account any special characteristics of the mobile phone, e.g., if the mobile phone has an accelerometer or a touch screen, then the Mobile Widget should respond appropriately to user touches or shakes of the mobile phone.  Second, Mobile Widgets have the power to make a general purpose mobile phone feel like a dedicated device for the specific service it offers.  For example, if a Mobile Widget offers weather reports, it should be responsive yet deep enough to make the user feel as if they own a dedicated weather report device.  Mobile Widgets have the power to turn a mobile phone into any number of dedicated devices! Here are some examples of Plusmo’s Mobile Widgets:

Plusmo’s Widget Engine

So now that we know what Widgets and Mobile Widgets, we can tell you about Plusmo’s Widget Engine Platform.  We build a Widget Engine platform that allows developers to easily create Widgets that can run on many types of mobile devices.  The Widget Engine is based on some of the most popular web standards, yet it is powerful and flexible enough to take advantage of many of the special characteristics of the many mobile devices it supports.

To find out more about Plusmo’s Widget and its Widget Engine, please head over to plusmo.com.  In the next few days, we’ll be blogging more specifically about Mobile Widgets, so stay turned!

We are proud to announce that our MLB and Professional Golf applications for the iPhone have been highlighted as Staff Picks by Apple. Our ultimate goal is to provide the best user experience on the iPhone, and we’ve designed our sports applications to give you quick access to all the scores and statistics from your favorite players, teams, and leagues. Check out our other sports application by visiting http://plusmo.com from your iPhone, and keep using Plusmo to get the new features we are continually developing.

Also, all of our applications are also available for other mobile devices through our new Plusmo 3.0 client. Download Plusmo 3.0 by visiting http://plusmo.com from your mobile device.

As always, feel free to leave us any feedback here.

Bat an eyelid to replay your favorite iPod tune with a new Japanese remote control that works in the blink of an eye.When a user winks, movement in their skin is detected by sensors clipped to their glasses or headphones, said Kazuhiro Taniguchi of Osaka University’s Graduate School of Engineering Science, who developed the “KomeKami Switch” or “Temple Switch”.

The infrared sensors then generate an electric signal that a micro computer uses to work Apple Inc’s iPod.

Wink strongly for one second with one eye to rewind, use the other to skip to the next song, or close both eyes to pause and play, Taniguchi told Reuters in an e-mail interview.

Via Reuters

A Dutch company has squeezed a display the size of two business cards into a gadget no bigger than other mobile phones — by making a screen that folds up when not in use.

The 5-inch (13-cm) display of Polymer Vision’s “Readius” is the world’s first that folds out when the user wants to read news, blogs or email and folds back together so that the device can fit into a pocket.

Polymer Vision, spun out of Philips , whetted the appetite of gadget fans more than two years ago when it showed off a prototype. Now the gadget is in production and will go head-to-head with Apple’s  iPhone and Amazon’s ebook reader Kindle when it hits stores mid-2008.

Via Reuters

Plusmo is announcing tomorrow exciting new football widgets — one for the iPhone, and one for the web. Here’s an early look at the press release that will go out tomorrow!* * * * *

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Plusmo launches iPhone NFL, NCAA widgets

Also announces NFL , NCAA web widget for bloggers

SAN JOSE, Calif. – Plusmo, the world’s leading provider of mobile widgets, announced today the launch of free NFL and NCAA football widgets for the Apple iPhone. Plusmo’s sports widgets make it easy for iPhone users to get the latest action for all the teams, leagues and players. Users get live, play-by-play updates, game schedules, breaking news, game photos, search and more. A custom interface allows users to personalize the widgets and follow their favorite football teams.

The service is live at http://cfb.plusmo.com and http://nfl.plusmo.com

The Plusmo widgets are packed with iPhone specific features - they automatically refresh themselves with in-game progress updates and eliminate the need for users to constantly refresh web pages. The large icons make it easy to use on the iPhone’s tactile interface. The search driven portal with history personalizes the widgets and eliminates a lot of repetitive typing.

Plusmo’s NCAA and NFL service is also supported on nearly all web-enabled phones, including off-the-shelf feature phones and smartphones such as Symbian devices, RIM Blackberry devices, Windows Mobile smartphones, Palm Treos and Pocket PC-enabled PDAs.

“Mobile users love this streaming experience during a live game. The in-depth coverage, with content and graphics optimized for the iPhone, is superior to any existing mobile experience,” says Krishna Vedati, CEO of Plusmo. “Following a game using a Plusmo sports widget is the next best thing to watching it live on TV!”

NFL/NCAA widgets for Bloggers

Plusmo also announced the availability of its web widgets for NFL and NCAA football. Plusmo’s web widgets are easily embedded in blogs, websites and home pages. For example, bloggers can use these widgets to supplement blog posts with relevant live scores and team schedules provided by the widgets for any team. To add Plusmo sports widgets to a website, including a blog, publishers simply choose the team on the sports widgets web site. Plusmo e-mails them code, which they can simply paste into their page.

Evan S. Brunell, columnist and President, Most Valuable Network says “MVN is excited to be working with Plusmo on the Web Widgets because it allows readers to get instantaneous information on a live football game that they can follow while enjoying the blog experience.”

Plusmo widgets are mini web applications that offer traffic reports, store locators, games, blogs, specialized searches, live sport updates and much more. Content providers, media houses and bloggers can now extend their services to the iPhone through Plusmo widgets free within minutes.

Plusmo also enables users to create personalized widgets out of useful web services, XML/RSS based sources including news feeds as well as professional media, and user-generated content such as blogs, photos and videos, and other Web 2.0 content. There are currently 25,000 widgets available on Plusmo.

About Plusmo

Plusmo is a free mobile media service that delivers personalized rich mobile experiences through mobile widgets.

Plusmo launched in June 2006, and now gets more than 10 million mobile page views monthly. Plusmo enables people to extend social networking through mobile devices, anywhere, all the time on the move.

Simplest way to get mobilized — visit www.plusmo.com from any mobile device, download, register and personalize. Plusmo service is currently in beta.

Service is available on 2.5G, 3G and Wi-Fi

CONTACT:

Raghu Chandrapati
press@plusmo.com

Plusmo
4800 Patrick Henry Dr.
Santa Clara, CA 95054
www.plusmo.com

MobiCast and Plusmo will deliver live, ball-by-ball updates and cricket scores to internet/GPRS enabled mobile phones in India from ESPN Inc.’s subsidiary Cricinfo. To get the Cricinfo MobiCast on your cell phone, key in the URL http://ci.plusmo.com/ with your phone’s browser. (via Domain-b.com)