Archive of TheNextWeb.org
Written on June 13, 2008 – 10:30 am
David Petherick, Contributing Editor, United Kingdom
Google Reader has changed. Accessing my favourite feeds on my Nokia N95 this morning, I found something unfamiliar on my screen - as illustrated below on an iPhone browser simulator.
So what’s new? Well, firstly, here’s what the old one looked like:
The new look allows one to swap views between the ‘classic’ old style view to a feed view, where each individual feed you have subscribed to is shown, with the number of unread stories shown for each resource, or a ‘tags view, as shown here, where the categories and tags that you assign to your feeds is presented.
This last feature is one I really appreciate, as it means that I can jump straight to the topics that I’m interested in right now - which of course may change. The fonts are a lot bigger than previously, which I find a bit tedious, as I don’t enjoy having to scroll to see ten headlines - I like seeing them all at the same time - it sort of misses the point not being able to read quickly. I’m sure Google will be adding the ability to customise the display or set defaults, and I also think that adding the ‘three buttons’ at the bottom of the page, or ot least having quick shortcuts to provide these functions will be appreciated.
Nice additional functionality, and very much focused on making the way you view content very personalised, but it could benefit from a little more flexibility in terms of font sizes and rapid one-handed navigation aids to get through the content.
Point your mobile phone to Google Reader.
Update: See Google Reader Blog for news of what was announced on Monday as a Beta for iPhones “and other mobile phones with advanced browsers”.
I hope you like that post!
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Written on May 28, 2008 – 1:07 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Swedish start-up Squace has introduced a new way of browsing the internet on your mobile. They’ve developed a service that allows users to browse without typing. Instead of a list of headlines, Squace shows a grid of little squares.
Each square is linked to a Web service such as a newsfeed, web site, game or widget. When you hover over one of these squares, a pop-up revealing the connected content and share feature appears. With a click, users open a new page with the desired content. According to the founder, Aage Reerslev, it’s a “game-changer”.
He might be right. Mobile browsing isn’t easy for not so tech-savvy people and Squace has been putting quite some effort in developing a new way of intuitive browsing. The company was founded in 2006 and privately funded by more than 30 private investors. While developing the service, it was thoroughly tested. In a study by the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, participants were asked to solve 10 information-searching problems. With Squace, they did it with up to 88 percent fewer clicks in nine out of ten problems, and up to 78 percent faster in eight out of ten problems, compared with a leading carrier’s mobile Internet portal and software.
Although the statistics are impressive, I’m not totally feeling this new way of browsing yet. Especially when it comes to news, I prefer to see a list of headlines. It’s quicker for me to scroll to list like this than to hover over a dozen squares. Yet the sharing function does gets me excited. With a few clicks, my friends receive the content I want to show them. Also, I can easily bookmark interesting pages. But of all of this is only worth it if my friends join. How can I lure them into the world of Squace? Maybe they would come and check it out if I could put a widget with my shared Squace items on my blog. Solutions like these will help Squace to become viral. There’s your new top priority, Squace team.
Written on April 20, 2008 – 11:00 am
Guest blogger, sharing views on The Next Web
This is a guest post by mobile marketeer Peter Evers
After Russell Beattie’s post about the end of Mowser, a mobile transcoder, last Monday, a lot of bloggers reacted fiercely on his controversial viewpoints about the end of the mobile web. As a mobile marketing professional I feel kind of obliged to write about my view on the future of the mobile web.
Let’s start with a short recap about what happened this week. On Monday Russell Beattie, founder of Mowser, an application that transcodes normal websites to mobile websites, announced that Mowser has stopped. In this very personal article Russell came up with different reasons for the end of Mowser, such as lack of funding and personal debts but mostly Russell’s lack of confidence in the future of the mobile web. Russell states:
…I don’t actually believe in the ‘Mobile Web’ anymore, and therefore am less inclined to spend time and effort in a market I think is limited at best, and dying at worst. I’m talking specifically about sites that are geared 100% towards mobile phones and have little to no PC web presence. Two years ago I was convinced that the mobile web would continue to evolve in the West to mimic what was happening in countries like Japan and Korea, but it hasn’t happened, and now I’m sure it isn’t going to. In other words, I think anyone currently developing sites using XHTML-MP markup, no Javascript, geared towards cellular connections and two inch screens are simply wasting their time, and I’m tired of wasting my time…
With this kind of powerful expressions, the commotion he caused in the blogosphere doesn’t come as a surprise. Almost every mobile blog I’m subscribed to wrote about it. Especially the articles at MobHappy, MobileMarketingWatch and mocoNews.net were worth reading, But what is Russell actually saying? If you read his text carefully you might have understood that the thing he isn’t confident about is browsing mobile-only websites on two-inch screens.
I can say that I don’t believe in mobile-only websites with no or little PC presence too. If a website is only visible on a phone and not or hardly available on a PC, people probably will not know about its presence.
(more…)
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The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show of, the future of the Web. (
