Building and testing mobile application can be tricky and time consuming.  With the literally thousands of different handsets from Nokia, Apple, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Blackberry, LG and dozens of other handset manufacturers on a broad range of mobile carriers, the task of designing a universal mobile application is almost impossible. Additionally develpers can choose to build “native applications” on one of the many mobile OS (such as Symbian, BREW, J2ME, Apple. Here are a couple of resources that help:

• Adobe Device Central CS4 – Flash
  Allows you to test Adobe Flash applications on a varietey of handsets
• Java Device Test Suite – Java
  Sun’s device test suite for testing J2ME applications
• DeviceAnywhere – Any
  Excellent but expensive. Allows you to test using actual (real) devices via a Java Swing interface. Have a huge library of phones (and carrier networks) you can choose from.
• Mobile Device Emulators – Any
  Not as good as the real thing but definately less expensive. Here are a handful of mobile emulators you may want to test on:
  • WinWap Smartphone Emulator
  • OpenWave Browser
  • Nokia Browser Simulator
  • OperaMini
  • Microsoft Pocket PC Emulators
  • Online Mobile Simulator
  • Online WAP Browser

Every once in a while it is good to remind clients that there is no “one size fits them all” widget. In fact, not only are there different general widget platforms, but each platform has its own widget types and technologies. There are generally four common types of widget platforms. Two established and two emerging platforms. These are:

• Desktop Widgets: These widgets run on your computer desktop
• Web Widgets: These widgets run on a web page, blog or social network
• Mobile Widgets: These widgets run on your mobile phone
• TV Widgets: These widgets run on your TV set

Web widgets are either universal (run on most web pages) or platform-specific (run within a specific web environment such as iGoogle, widgetbox or Netvibes). Web widgets are generally written in Adobe Flash or Javascript/HTML. Some platform-specific widgets also have an XML component.

Desktop widgets usually run on a specific widget platform. These platforms are either OS platform-specific (Windows Vista, Macintosh OS, i.e.) or use a widget engine (such as Yahoo Widgets!, Opera, i.e.).  As I mentioned, the “widget engine” can be part of the operating system (Vista, Mac) or run on multiple operating systems. Third party widget engines that run on multiple platforms (Yahoo Widgets!, Opera) must be downloaded and installed by the end-user, which an be a barrier to distribution.  You can also have “native” Windows or Macintosh widgets, which are essentially stand alone applications than run on specific operating systems.  These “native” widgets, though rare, are usually written to address operating systems than do not come with a built-in widget platform (Windows XP).

Mobile Widgets, as the name implies, run on mobile phones (primarily the iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Mobile devices and the Nokia S60). Several mobile platforms are available. Yahoo Mobile widget platform runs on the iPhone, Windows Mobile devices and the Nokia S60 phone! Yahoo is one of few companies to support third-party mobile widget. Widgets are also available on Opera’s Mobile 9.5 platform which runs on Windows Mobile, Nokia S60, and UIQ. Additionally, MOTODEV Studio for WebUI from Motorola allows you to deploy widgets on Motorola’s open mobile Linux platform using Java ME, UIQ and Native Linux.

TV Widgets represent a emerging new platform recently announced by Yahoo! and Intel. Yahoo is currently the only platform with plans to support TV widgets on certain HDTV models from Samsung, Vizio, LG Electronics, and Sony. TV widgets will live at the bottom of your TV screen and will be turned on or off with one click of the button! Initial widgets will include the obvious news, weather, stocks, sports and photos (Flickr).

For a complete, more comprehensive list of widget platforms visit: http://go.metablocks.com/widget-platforms

The new Apple iPhone 3G hit the stores on July 11 and despite some technical glitches has been quite a success. By Sunday, July 13, Apple announced that iPhone 3G sales surpassed 1 million units is just three days.  Apple also said that iPhone and iPod touch users have already downloaded more than 10 million applications from the App Store.

More than 800 native applications are currently available for the iPhone and according to Apple, more than 200 are offered for free and more than 90 percent are priced at less than $10!

These are pretty impressive numbers for a “new” platform!  You’ll find applications in obvious categories such as social networking, games, news and entertainment, photography, business and media on Apple’s newly launched App Store (accessible via iTunes).

We are currently working on a handful of iPhone development projects (and I am sure dozens of other developers are as well) so you can expect the number of iPhone 3G applications to keep climbing!

Tags: iphone, iphone+3g, mobile

Here is a quick roundup of a couple of recent interesting widget news and trends:

• Book Widgets for Authors: Authors use widgets to help promote their books and online communities.
• What’s Next For The NYTimes Online: Excellent example of comprehensive social media marketing by the New York Times! More and more companies are beginning to realize that social media outreach needs to be comprehensive and broad in order to be effective.
• Understanding Widgets: Not a trend or news piece but nice short post that helps “frame” widgets for those thinking about have one developed.
• Enterprise Widgets: I liked this piece about a new and emerging breed of widgets – widget being used within the enterprise!
• Political Widgets on Facebook: Makes absolute sense this election season, I think every politician should have their own widget
• Mobile Widgets?: Kind of – Nokia labs launches widget initiative that tries to integrate your desktop with your phone (build on the Yahoo! widget engine). I am more interested, however, in seeing widgets move to mobile platforms in more meaningful ways.

We’ll cover some of these trends in more detail in upcoming weeks!

Tags: trends, widgets, mobile, politics, enterprise