WOAH! I just reloaded my default home page and there is now a yellow message saying “Netvibes goes mobile! Now, you can check your Netvibes page on your mobile phone or your iPhone at the following address: http://m.netvibes.com” and of course I had to see how they implemented it. Well, the quick answer is, AMAZINGLY WELL! [Updated: they now have a post on their internal blog.]
This was one of the first sites that I tested out when I first got my iPhone. It is my spring board to all news feeds that I’m interested in. It rendered fine when I viewed it as a regular old web page but it was a bit cumbersome to navigate and read through all of my feeds. Obviously this was something that the Netvibes Development team would be working on and they have, once again, pushed out a release that is outstanding. But, I believe that this release will not only make iPhone users happy (due to all of the nice AJAX and “rounded corners”) but also the regular mobile users.
UPDATE 08.31.07: It looks like if you go to the “m.netvibes.com” address via an iPhone, you get the iPhone interface automatically. If you go from a regular phone, you get the more WAP-py version. If you want to see what the iPhone interface looks like, point your browser to: http://iphone.netvibes.com.
I have taken a few screenshots of what I would expect a standard phone user to see (just a shrunken down Firefox window for now).
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As mentioned previously, ApolloIM has been updated from version -1 to -0.9 and now includes partial “suspend mode.” I have installed and tested it and it seems to work ok. However, the author clearly notes on his development site that there are some limitations to how well this works. If, for example, your iPhone enters a low-power mode (e.g., if you haven’t been using it for a while), EDGE and WiFi are shut down to conserve power. This will obviously disconnect you from the AIM network and while the app shows that you are logged in, you might not be. I recommend that you re-log on to ensure your connection.
There is a potential work-around to this but it will cause you to draw power more rapidly. Basically you need to be listening to iTunes and this will supposedly keep your EDGE/WiFi connections active. This is probably not ideal for most folks, but will work.
Currently I view this application as a great solution for quick IM sessions where you log in, have a chat for a while (actively) and then log out. If you don’t want to lose messages, probably a better way is to have your AIM logged in at a different location as well (e.g., a computer) so that you can ensure that you haven’t missed anything important.
Also included in this update is an improvement to the Conversation window. According to the author:
You no longer can type in the main window, and I may release another update very soon to use “text bubbles” like iChat uses. I have removed the keyboard button in favor of just being able to tap the main view to bring up the keyboard (or you can tap the sendfield at the bottom which,like MobileSMS, will bring up the keyboard).
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Gee, you learn something new every day. I was playing around with an installed RSS reader from the TappInstaller app and I figured I would see how Safari on the iPhone would react to an RSS feed. Boy was I pleasantly surprised! I had read that an RSS reader was being developed, but now I guess it is live. I am not sure when it came out, but it is exclusive to the iPhone only. Now, you can bookmark your feeds, click on feed links and enjoy a nicely developed AJAX feed reader right within Safari on the iPhone.
Unfortunately, I can’t supply screenshots from my iPhone yet…only from my computer. So, try to visualize this:
- Feed summaries for your feed are displayed with Title, Date Posted and the first two lines of the article
- Each feed item is clearly divided
- Total feed count is shown at the top with the name of the feed
- Clicking on the feed title shows the full article, complete with any images. Clicking on the linked title brings you to the feed source site.
- In the full article, you can go to the next and previous articles, within the reader (and it moves QUICKLY)
- Also, in the full article footer, you can go back to the feed summaries
- Seems like the entire feed is cached for quick access
My only complaint is when you bookmark a feed, it shows “.Mac Reader: [name of feed]“. I would rather it not put the “.Mac Reader” as the prefix. But that complaint is minor.
The reader is located at: http://reader.mac.com . If you go to that page on your iPhone, you get a message saying “If you’d like to view an RSS feed, just enter the feed URL directly into Safari’s address bar.” If you go there on a computer, you see this:
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I have reinstalled the Apptapp Installer mentioned in my previous post and it seems to be more stable now (of course I am not monkeying around in the bowels of my directory structure this time). It was updated to version 2.4 as of this writing. There are plenty of new applications now available for install including the first Instant Messaging client that has been released called “ApolloIM”. (I also did see that “SendSong” has been updated and now seems to work for me ["Chocolate Rain" is now one of my ringtones - grin -].)
ApolloIM is supposedly in its first “pre-beta” release (version -1, yes, that is “negative one” … nice coding humor, I guess). I have tested out this version a bit and it looks extremely promising. Some quick notes about it:
- You can add multiple IM accounts
- It can only support AIM right now
- You can have only one AIM account active (e.g., logged in)
- Current version stays online ONLY when you have the app running. As soon as you close it, you disconnect from the service.
- There are some slight GUI issues, which are being corrected (e.g., bottom of keyboard is chopped off; initial launch of app shows a strange image briefly)
- Disconnecting the service closes the app (or crashes it, not sure which one)
My “sources” tell me that a new release is pending. And it supposedly will fix a BIG issue of disconnecting you from AIM when you close the app. This new build will keep your connection alive, even after the app is closed. This is a BIG deal in my opinion.
Other suggestions and requests for changes that I have noted are: [click to continue…]
