New year, new buzz

Have you already noticed that WidSets is pre-installed in some of Nokia´s new models? Check out this video that Stefan has posted and you will see the demonstration of WidSets as a default in the Nokia 8800 model (note: the video is in Italian). Another demonstration of WidSets can be found in Imserba.com site, where WidSets has been tested on Nokia 6120c model and in geek.com site where new N95 8GB is reviewed. Majortomuk has tested WidSets on his phone and thinks that it is a very handy tool for his E61 model, I look forward to his comments how he will get on with our service :)

 

Symbianone and AnyGeo sites mention the widget developer competition that will still be up and running until the end of January. This competition allows our users to be creative and develop the coolest widgets in the century, try it out! In the last competition the winner created a game called Bombus that Paul Coulton talks about in his blog post.

                                                                                                                                                    

As there has not been any major news or articles written about WidSets lately, I have just listed a collection of links to the sites in which WidSets has been reviewed: stephenslighthouse.com, theregister.co.uk, nirmalksingh.blogspot.com, n95plaza.blogspot.com, kk-net.blogspot.com and googit.blogspot.com.

                                                                                                                                                                        

Thank you all for your posts and comments!

Latest buzz

I have to start with an article that caught our attention few weeks ago. New York Times had an interesting article:”Soup up your phone” that gives an overview of the use of widgets in cell phones. WidSets is listed as one of the most popular service to offer wide variety of widgets and many of our most popular widgets were mentioned. Worth reading!

Hindustan Times has listed “Five cool things you can do with your GPRS phone” and gives an overview of WidSets service and instructions how you can download WidSets to your phone.

Then I still found few articles that covers WidSets’ relaunch and changes in the service, read more in the following sites: symbianone.com, intomobile.com, aniway.com, nokiaflashgames.com and tech2.com.

Mashable had two interesting articles covering WidSets. First article discusses about the fact if WidSets can compete with AOL and Yahoo mobile which both are pushing their mobile portals for distributing users across their network, and are teaming up with mobile service providers across the world. And second article discusses about the improved mobile browsing experience and competition in the field of mobilizing the web content.

LBSzone.com describes WidSets as “THE Best solution for mobile device users and content publishers to get what they want anytime on their mobile...” (Thank youJ).  This article shows how you can easily stay informed with your favourite news resources or blogs with WidSets.

Manoel Dilson Lira´s blog has given very good description what WidSets is all about:  “it’s not only compatible with Nokia phones, it’s free and there are thousands of available widgets and if you want, create your own. Supported by a growing developer community and a well documented API, you can download the SDK and start coding. But, if you are not a geek or simply don’t have time for that, it’s really easy to create a new feed widget with just a few clicks. After that, you can keep it private or publish to other users also enjoy.”

Thank you all for the articles and posts!

Story of the WidSets relaunch continues..

Our official press release “WidSets has emerged from Beta with new features” was sent out this week and it immediately gained wide coverage in many different media and blog sites: CNN Money, Phone Area, Mobiles Phone Blog, Cell phone digest, Symbian Freak, Just another mobile blog, Mobility Site, TechWeb, SmartBrief , StreetInsider, TMCnet .. just to mention few sites because this list was endless, you’ll find rest of the articles in Google :-)                                                            

                                                                                                                                                         

Then there was a bunch of other interesting articles and comments of the relaunched WidSets.  Lifeblog writes about the experiences with our new service. Product reviews mentions WidSets on their site and tells about WidSets’ new refreshed look. Finally, Engadget Mobile, Plus Mobile and Virusoul all have the same post “WidSets comes out of beta“. “Y’all may as well check it out, no?”                                                                                   

And now after listing so many posts about the WidSets relaunch, I will move on to general posts and comments that have been written about WidSets. The 12 club gives a short summary what WidSets is all about.  Steve has written a great article of WidSets in his blog st101.com, including more detailed information of how the web feeds work. BenPlusBytes site reveals how to “keep up to date with latest news available on the Internet".

                                                                                                                                                         

SolSie highlights WidSets benefits in an article “Widgets to Your Mobile Device” by saying:  “The service is simple and effortless as possible and totally free. You can use it as much as you want, create as much as you want, and share with others to the point that you can’t share anymore.”  (Well said!). Firedbeef has reviewed “The best mobile media web applications” and WidSets was listed as one of the writer´s favorite applications. Flashlight in the dark blog gives a great overview of WidSets with an article “Widsets: Bringing Widgets to Your Phone”.                                                   

                                                                                                                                                                      

George S. writes about his experiences with WidSets in Blogvasion, Sony Ericsson blog: “When I first heard about WidSets, I must admit I could not understand what it was. From a short description that I read, I understood that WidSets was an application that would deliver web content to a Java-enabled mobile phone. Sounds pretty nice, but not too exciting. However, within a minute after I had installed the WidSets client on my Nokia E90, I felt why it was difficult to understand what WidSets was about. Simply, you cannot imagine an existence of such an innovative and powerful application for a mobile phone”. (Thank you!)

                                                                                                                                                                      

And I will finish this press section with two words that I found from Online Journal blog’s short summary of WidSets:”Worth exploring”! Thank you all for your posts and comments!                                       

                                                                                                               

   

                                                                                                                                                               

                                                                                                                                                         

                                                                                                                                                          

WidSets relaunch buzz..

WidSets’ relaunch has raised a lot of buzz and discussion in different blogs. I have listed a bunch of previews and comments that have been posted of the revamped WidSets service.              

                                                                  

Let’s start with Kristen Nicole’s blog post that gives a great summary of the relaunch in Mashable: “Nokia’s mobile widget platform WidSets is getting ready to relaunch later on this month, and it will include a pretty hefty overhaul with several new attributes for search and discovery, as well as usability of the site and its distributed widgets. This will also act as WidSets official launch, as it emerges from beta……”                                                                                                                

MyFknSpace gave a full overview of the upcoming relaunch. Darla Mack, Vowe.net and Mobile Zeitgeist all revealed how: “WidSets is coming out of beta”.  Some more bits and pieces of the WidSets renewal were also mentioned by The Dark Furie, NSeries Wom worlds and On: Digital+Marketing. Teezeh Dot De was giving a notice about possible relaunch hiccups in their blog: “Nokia will nix the beta from its WidSets service tomorrow. Expect some minor hiccups” (Thanks guys!).                                                                                                                                    

Then we have few blog posts about "first touch experiences" with revamped WidSets service: FlexRIA writes about the new Explore feature in WidSets: “What I’m amazed here is the WidSets Map, The Flash widget discovery interface” (Very useful, we think so too!). Then we have a post of less positive experiences with new WidSets service in Vox. Finally, thank you for the congratulations Darla Mack and Nokia Beta Labs (Tommi)!  And Thank you all for your comments!! 

                                                                                                                                 

                                                                                                                                                                                 

                                                                                                                                        

      

Latest Press&Buzz

had a great article about WidSets: “Fast, easy internet on cellphone A Content Aggregator Service That Provides Almost Instant Access To The Net “(Pune edition, September 10 2007, page. 18). This article gives two excellent examples how you can stay on top of things before others with WidSets: “For instance, you could impress people with your knowledge, like Aniket Thakur, a PR executive with Adfactors in Mumbai does. “In my line of business I have to deal with several journalists on a day-to-day basis. It gives me great deal of pleasure to surprise them with the latest gossip even before they hear of it,” he says. Or it could help you keep pace with the latest real estate prices, like Raman Kumar, a broker in Bangalore who keeps minute-to-minute updates of prices with the ‘Bangalore Real Estate’ WidSet.                                                                                                   

Sprites & bites has a posting called “Widgets on your mobile??”, which gives a short overview about WidSets to all widget fans.

D-Mobile Marketing shows good marketing opportunities with WidSets: “The beauty of it in the realm of Mobile Marketing is that anyone can go to the site and publish a feed to their site. A company logo can be added and, in a matter of minutes, a mere mortal can build another pipe to a smallish but growing mobile community.”

Also Travis Choma has reviewed WidSets in his blog by saying: “This is the freaking coolest app of the bunch! I cannot speak highly enough about it. Basically it’s iGoogle or netvibes for your phone. But these guys new exactly what to do to make it nice for the phone. You select the widgets you want, and bam, you get nice icons on the main screen, one screen holds two or three widgets and you can scroll left or right to move to other widgets you have selected..”

Last WidSets buzz update - from me

Jarmo Jokinen from WidSets was interviewed by inbabble, and the results can be found in a couple of postings. Part 1 covers WidSets in general,  where Part 2 goes into lots of details about what the service is all about.

And then to something totally different :-) T3 has a great article called "Widgets - on your mobile!" where the say (among many others things) that "Nokia's mobile masterminds have squeezed our favourite desktop extras onto our phones... There's something to please everyone, from Flickr feeds to football updates, and the interface is slick and simple too. Check it our now at WidSets.com!". Thanx!

The Jakarta Post has an interview done by Budi Putra, whom I met in Singapore at the end of June. We dicussed WidSets and the whole widget space, in general. Budi has a version of that interview on his blog, which is open to anybody.

And the one (out of many) discussing the WidSets SDK, this one by Mobile Phone Development. The article shows that we have gone a long way since we launched, and doesn't start too well "....When WidSets was released about a year ago I must admit I wasn’t that impressed. Why? Well, most of the widgets were just RSS feeds...  For some reason, hidden behind the recent news of WidSet’s millionth user, the SDK was released... This has unleashed the full power of WidSets to anyone... So why would you bother? First of all, it should abstract away some of the difficulties/differences of developing for multiple Java ME phones. Secondly, it comes with an implicit discovery mechanism so people can find your widget". Well said!

Cowboys and Engines has a review about WidSets with this Summary: "If widgets are the way of the future - then you couldn't ask for a better interface. It's still in BETA, but fairly stable. Give it a shot".

And I'll end with a couple of ones with a great subject, the first one is from software.mobile called "Excited about WidSets" (that Tuomo already spotted) and the other one is from Fionas Digital Foorprint and called "Widsets - weeeeee!".

As always, there's so many blogs, but so little time, so I apologize for not featuring all of you writing about WidSets. Also, this was my last posting over here at Press & Buzz, more information about that in the blog. Thx, guys & gals!

More updates

I'll quickly jump in time to July/August, covering the article on WidSets by Business 2.0, which spread quite widely around the world. It covers 31 Web 2.0 startups from around the world - including WidSets. It actually has some facts wrong, but the profile on WidSets proved that it doesn't matter what people write about you, as long as they write about you :-) There's also a mashup showing where those startups are, on a map.

And then back to June.

KillerStartups has a nice article covering WidSets, saying "...Just by seeing the cool sites and how easy it would be to choose those sites for downloading on my mobile, I wanted to sign up. They also have a great FAQ and seem very customer-oriented. I was impressed by every part of this site and service... Why it might be a killer: Time is money and this site brings the web to the mobile phone for instant updates and information.". Thx!

TechTuga has an article about WidSets,  where they go through the basics, as well as mentioning the blog on WidSets. The information about WIdSets as an organization was slightly incorrect, so I'll continue on that by providing a link to some slighly outdated information from our web site :-)

Redes & Telecom has covered WidSets in an article called  "Nokia trae a Espana WidSets" after we'd had some nice exposure in Spain, and some of the great guys in Nokia Spain had been mentioning us to lots of people - thx!

Gonzalo Tejeda at Biggonzitabambam (I hope I got that right) has covered the above story about WidSets in his "article". I don't think I've covered a blog from Bolivia before, so I wanted to do that now.

Steve Clifford blogs about WidSets in his posting called "Access Website Updates On Your Phone" like this: "Having gone though the process, it is very easy, you create an account... then you type in your mobile number, and then you receive a text with the link to download the application on your phone using the phone web browser... On your Mac/PC logon to your account select what you want... I myself chose Twitter and Jaiku. Once you have chosen, load the phone app...  and of you go, get the updates right on your phone! There are many options but the best way to learn is by doing!"

RedSymbian has a posting called "Widsets - Telefoniczne Widgety",  where WidSets is covered quite widely, all the way from getting started, to working with the Dashboard, widget options, traffic monitor, and so on. Great!

Communicaciones World has covered WidSets in the article "Nokia apuesta por la evolución de la Web 2.0 en el móvil". 

Long time, no buzz

It has been a looong while since the last post, and you can blame that all on me. I'll try to go through the huge batch during this month.

The announcement of the Jaiku widget received so much traction in the blogosphere, that I (again) have to throw my hands in the air and just ask you to Google "Jaiku WidSets" or used Technorati. There's a lot written about it!

SEFanatics has written an article called "WidSets - Mobile Widgets", which discusses widgets in general, and the how WIdSets has been taken into use: "... I just tried out these mobile Widgets with my Sony Ericsson M600i and I'm quite impressed. The WidSets Java app works great on my phone. I also tried out few Widgets and they worked well too. I'm sure I will use this service more..." 

Jeremy at LooseWire blog has some good analysis in his article called "A Shift to a Mobile Web". Among other things he mentions that on the mobile "a smarter way would be to find new ways to deliver the information via the mobile phone (WidSets...)".

S.M. Schrama has posted on article on the Web 2.0 weblog called "How to create you own Widsets" with a link to a longer article in another blog called Tech Interest, which unfortunately didn't work too well for me.

There was a huge amount of articles covering our release of WidSets in China, one of them being called "Nokia leads mobile Internet innovation, by PhoneArea. Google on that title, and you'll find the rest.

There's an article in "Kontoret på nätet" called "Innehåll till din mobil", where they briefly cover WidSets mentioning that the phone they used wasn't listed as supported on the WidSets web, but they just tried, and it worked. You can thank our great guys in the lab for that!

The article "Voipblog.it sul tuo telefono cellulare" covers several widgets we have in our Librarry, as well as the one they have made themselves, for their blog.

Kyke at Kykesthinking has written an article called ""Widgets y dashboard" showing his pretty crammed WidSets dashboard, as well as a sample from a Mac Widgets dashboard. And there is of course a widget created for that blog, too.

TheNextWeb conference was really packed with media doing interviews, and some of them appeared on the Net quite late. Here's one,  and no, I'm not drunk in it, I just have a permanent jetlag from all the exhaustive travelling :-)

Lots of interesting updates

There were many interviews made during TheNextWeb conference in Amsterdam. Here is a video interview made by Edo from TV4B. If you can stand watching me for a while, you will get all the latest information about WidSets by watching this video. Thanks Edo, you were very good in creating a relaxed atmosphere!

RadioFreeAmsterdam interviewed all the companies on display at TheNextWeb conference. The result is a hefty podcast (more than an hour). If you're interested in what I had say, you'll find it at around 55 minutes (or somewhat after that). 

LiveSolutionsevents.nl had arranged lots of interviews around the theme "where is the web going". I found some old announcement about them covering TheNextWeb, let's see if I can find a page with the interviews. Maybe they erased mine, since I only talked about the mobile internet...

Carlos Eduardo from Chromewalker has written an article called "Widsets.. a vision of the future to come?", where he describes the difference between browsing and using WidSets.

Pocketfreak.dk has covered WidSets in an article called "Widsets - widgets till smartphonen", where they have tested quite a few features, as well as created a widget for their blog (of course).

Victor Donselaar at Personal IP Communications blog has written an article called "Widget mania", where he says "...And I have to say, Widsets is great (check it out!)... One thing that struck me with Widsets is that it was extremely straight forward to get everything up and running. Probably the easiest setup of a rather complex process ever! I showed it around in the office and it was spreading like fire :-)". Great, thx, Victor, and I hope that you have found out about the sharing features by now!

... and more ...

I'll cover just a few "1M stories" here that I want to mention separately, and then I'll go back to the "normal" stories.

Mobile Monday covered the 1M story, and I happen to have a "sweet spot" for MoMo. We have presented WIdSets in MoMo's in Helsinki, Boston, and London, and those guys are just doing a great job. 

"Technology for girls" is in itself an interesting name for a site, and Hilary has a story called "WidSets brings communities and the creative spirit of Web 2.0 to mobile phones".

Darla Mack has noted that her widgetized blog is quite visible. Well, of course it is, it's a great blog! And thank you Darla for the congratulations about WidSets reaching  the 1M user mark!

It seems that quite a few lady bloggers have discussed WidSets, lately. Great! Bena Roberts from GoMo News discusses the Foreca widget and how she met with Tiina from Foreca. I do like the style of this blog, and if the ladies look anything like the (cartoon) pictures, I would not mind meeting with them, either :-)

We have congratulations from Marc Orchant (Hi, Marc!) regarding reaching the 1M user limit. he discusses WidSets in one of his many blogs, Platform Agnostic. I must admit have great respect for people updating several blogs, since I have a hard time updating only this and the main WidSets blog!

Svartling has written an article called "Test av WidSets för mobiltelefoner", where he discusses widgets and gadgets in general, and then goes into describing WidSets more in detail.

Connected Internet has covered WidSets quite widely, including the chat and email widgets, as well as the WidSets developer site. And apparently the widget these gyus created has quite a few readers, too. Great!

The Chinwag Live event was quite widely covered, and I was notified by the lovely Deirdre Molloy that the podcast is available both from Feedburner and Itunes. There are also pictures available from the event in Flickr.

Lastly, so many covered the 1M mark in their blogs that I simply couldn't go through them here, but thank you so much, all of you! In addition, I'm have a terrible backlog of other articles, but they will be covered as soon as possible, too.