Mobile Widgets
Widgets are small, single-purpose, highly graphical and interactive Internet-enabled applications. Apple's Dashboard for OS X was the commercial pioneer of the widget phenomenon, though MIT's Project Athena was the actual inventor, back in the 1980s. (See the Wikipedia entry on GUI_Widget for more information.)
Widget engines are the technology platforms on which widgets are deployed, the most well-known of which is Widsets, a well-funded Nokia spin-off with no monetization model in sight. While Widsets is available for free download, it only works on the latest smart phones. Furthermore, Widsets requires download and installation procedures likely to baffle most mobile phone users, and which could be costly for mobile phone users without all-you-can-eat data plans.
The one operator-deployed widget solution is Celltop from Alltel, a regional US operator. The left softkey label on the idle screen is "Celltop," which launches the widget engine, reputed to be UI One from Qualcomm. The engine starts with a branded animation and sound effect, lasting several seconds. Celltop emerges, with two side-by-side applications, each laid atop a subtly three-dimensional gradient bubble See http://mycelltop.com for a sexed-up demo of the experience, though you should know that though Celltop looks like the demo, it's not nearly as responsive.
Each Celltop widget is a single data application. Several "cells" ship with a new Celltop handset, including Inbox, Call List, Weather, and different sports, including Rodeo. Celltop has two modes, Navigation, and Application. In Navigation mode, one can slide the display left and right between the subscribed widgets, with an associated "whoosh" sound effect. Pressing the center select button enters Application mode, where the selected widget expands to take up the entire display. Widgets update automatically in either mode, though in Application mode, more data is obviously visible. In an as-yet unreleased Usable Products Company study of Celltop, updates were sluggish, and the data was sometimes stale. The Search cell is not yet available.
Celltop sets a low standard, being the first deployed solution. However, there are non-deployed solutions from several providers, including Nokia's Widsets, Mobidgets, BluePulse, Openwave's MIDAS, Opera Widgets, and the just announced Microsoft spin-off, Zen Zui. All have received some amount of hype.
Come to MAPOS in San Francisco 26 – 28 June, 2007 to learn more about mobile widgets, and attend a very special workshop devoted to widgets that I will be moderating. This workshop is an exciting full-day strategy session that starts by teaching the background, advantages, and challenges of each of the major platforms. It continues with group design sessions for widgets on today's—and tomorrow's phones. It wraps up with a round table discussion on policies and pricing: what should widgets cost, and also their use on a regular basis. The brightest minds in mobility will be there, so please join us! Email me to receive a 25% discount from Informa on the MAPOS US event.