Too many people who have 3G phones – don’t use 3G.
It’s disappointing that too few carriers worldwide have bothered to expose free services to their subscribers – that actually drive interest in the service, preferring instead for consumers to move about in their Internet Walled Garden.
I’m starting a series of posts that will take you through some of the best mobile web applications out there so you can give your phone a fair shake.
WidSets - The Best Slices of the Internet on Your Phone
Widgets have expanded from your desktop (Macs/Konfabulator), to the web (Pageflakes/iGoogle), and now they can be found on your phone!
Widsets is a service which serves up widgets specifically designed for a phone. It currently has thousands of widgets up for selection ranging from traffic alerts, news, blogs, gossip, restaurant reviews, weather reports, and if you don’t find what you’re looking for - it has a studio for you to create you own widget!
My favourites - a Flickr widget which enables quick access to photos, a Wikipedia widget for looking things really quickly, and the TechCrunch widget – which allows me to get my tech news fix daily.
One thing I can appreciate about surfing via WidSets, is that all the content is formatted for mobile – which means quick loading, intuitive interaction, and no horizontal scrolling needed.
Kyte.tv – Broadcast Live Streams From Your Phone
Kyte.tv lets you create your own live TV shows and broadcast to your blog, website, or any medium which supports it. You can either choose to upload a video or do some live streaming from your mobile phone.
You don’t need fancy hosting, bandwidth, or audio/video equipment to have your own live show, or even a lot of technical knowledge. I managed to start my own TV station on Kyte.tv in a matter of clicks, and trust me – it is really simple.
If you’re not the kind of person who’s into creating your own TV show, Kyte.tv also offers access to a whole library of featured and user generated content. Everything streams directly to your device without having to download the media file. At this point, the content offerings aren’t very extensive yet offering mainly video podcasts, but it has a few big names like Robert Scobble onboard which makes for some good viewing.
You also don’t need to be broadcasting video. You can push out photos, audio, text, or anything else you want to share with the world from your mobile to your website.
Join us soon for the next installment of ‘On-The-Go – the best mobile web apps reviewed’
Special thanks to David Lian, for loaning me a Nokia N93i (this phone rocks) for a couple of months to do this writeup. No – this post is not sponsored by Nokia.
[tags] mobile, kyte, widsets, widgets, phone [/tags]
September 22nd, 2007 at 12:19 am
Thank you for this abstract!
It describes pretty good what kyte.tv is all about.
What’s your channel? I would love to watch your shows!
Also, you know that you could embed it on most websites, also on this blog.
Please let me know if you have any suggestions on how we could improve kyte on the web or on the mobile!
Also, I would love to hear what your thoughts about our facebook app are:
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2428876514
Thank you for getting back to us!
Marius
September 22nd, 2007 at 7:11 am
I had to look up the definition of 3G just to know what it meant: third generation of phones. But the article was pretty complex for someone not already knowledgeable in phone terminology. I believe my phone might be 3G, based off of how recent it is, and that it’s able to access the web. But other than guessing that it’s 3G, how would I know for sure? If I’m the only one that’s behind the times on such things, never mind. But if others aren’t in the know either, perhaps a bit of back-story might help. Thanks.
September 22nd, 2007 at 7:34 am
@ Sherri,
What kinda phone do you have?
Could you provide us with information such as the make and the model number?
Btw, 3G phones to me are phones capable of a pretty fast internet connection!
September 22nd, 2007 at 9:20 am
@Marius – Sorry, I had nothing interesting to record so I deleted my station after I created it :)
@Sherri – You can also check your phone manual. If it can access the internet with EDGE, WI-Fi or CDMA you’ll still be able to use all the programs (Make sure you have an affordable data plan though). Thanks for the feedback about the background. I have added a link about 3G to Wikipedia. Hopefully that helps anyone else who doesn’t know what 3G is.
September 22nd, 2007 at 11:27 am
@ James! I can hardly believe that!
Anyways, thank you for checking it out!
Cheers
September 22nd, 2007 at 9:48 pm
i’ve seen widsets offering twitter applications and the interface is very easy to use. pity that i don’t have a 3G handphone to test it out.
September 24th, 2007 at 3:36 am
@ syahid ali:
you don’t need a 3G phone to check out kyte.tv.
October 14th, 2007 at 5:31 am
hey kyte.tv’s new wap site is up now you can use kyte form just about any phone.
June 13th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
i discovered Rocketalk couple of months back and i guess it is a gr8 application, not only it let me send voice msgs across but i relly digg the media galleries. you should see the kind of things ppl post in them , i guess since creation of media is so easy as you use use ur phone camera to to shoot and then directly upload stuff.
September 4th, 2008 at 7:08 am
RockeTalk: I had been using Rocketalk now since last couple of months. I love the application, you just cant get enough of it, lots of users to talk to and best of all no money for sending out audio , video msgs from rocketalk to rocketalk. All of my friends hang on rocketalk now .. hehe
January 26th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
My friends and I use Rocketalk. We leave it turned on most of the day. The best part is the one to one messaging that we can send in our voices. Sometimes we are at the mall and we share the scenes. They have communities also but we have not used them yet. Audio and photos are the best!