This week Google released a downloadable mobile Google Maps application for Treo smartphones. Perhaps proving that Palm OS is not dead yet, this is a great example of an application that can provide a better experience than a web browser. Overall the application is pretty quick, even on my poor old Treo 600. Local business integration and traffic are great. The Satellite view is kind of cool, but I’m guessing most users would stick with the street view. Bonus points for over the air install (i.e. no need to install from desktop and HotSync to the device). How to make…
Over 3 years ago, I posted my small collection of websites optimized for PDA or small screen viewing. Since then I’ve had a steady stream of visitors (recently averaging about 10,000 page views per month) and some great referrals from other sites, but the page and its contents were being neglected and needed a refresh. This past week I rewrote by bookmark system from an old database to del.icio.us. A short Perl script periodically grabs my del.icio.us bookmarks and creates the page content. Now as I discover new mobile websites, I can tag in del.icio.us and they’ll be picked up…
Dave Winer has recently switched to a Blackberry and is (re-)discovering what it means to read news and post to your blog from a mobile device. As they say, “What’s old is new again!”. I’m glad to see some renewed attention in this area; there is still a lot of room for improvement and innovation here. Dave hits a few good points, in response to the hypothetical question of posting from a Blackberry: I’ve seen a few blog posts asking why would you want to post from a Blackberry? After all, you could carry a laptop with you, and of…
About 5 months after acquiring SplashBlog, TypePad today announced the release of TypePad Mobile: Today we’re excited to announce the release of TypePad Mobile, a free application for your Palm, Windows Mobile or Symbian Series 60 smartphone that lets you post photos and entries to your TypePad blogs and photo albums with just a few clicks. I expect the new software will work very well. SplashData has a history of writing solid Palm OS applications and with this software being integrated directly into TypePad, should provide a smooth interaction for the user. I don’t have a TypePad account, so can’t…
Earlier this year, I discovered SplashBlog, a really nice mobile photo blogging client for PDAs. At the time, I thought it looked like it would be a great solution once they supported more systems beyond SplashBlog.com and TypePad. But, the 2.0 release included significant software as well as business changes. Now the application is free (was about $20) and you get a free SplashBlog.com account good for 100 picture uploads. Unfortunately, they’ve dropped TypePad and will now support only SplashBlog.com going forward.