All Articles in Web Apps

Mplayit [Facebook link] is a new online service that aims to let your Facebook friends share iPhone app recommendations with you — and then take it one step further and actually let you see videos, demos, and other information before you decide to buy it via the iTunes App Store.

Now anything with iPhone and Facebook in the title is no doubt attention-grabbing, but as the App Store zooms past 100,000, discoverability is going to need fixing, if not from Apple than from a ton of independent thinkers just so something (anything) can shake out. Is Mplayit it?

Mplayit introduces “playable discovery” for the iPhone today in its new Facebook app store and said it would add Android and Blackberry in the coming months. Rather than hunting and pecking for reviews and top lists, the Facebook page shows real “apptivity” that is going on in app stores so users can see which apps are receiving the most downloads, reviews, plays. In coming weeks, mobile users will also be able to see the “apptivity” within their social network so they can clearly see which apps their friends and family are most interested in.

Our guess is it will depend on how many popular apps they can really show off in a way that’s compelling for users. If you check it out, let us know what you think.

(And really, anything that keeps Facebookers busy, and not hitting “invite all” to spam online friends with random events on other continents — is huge.)

Add Vimeo to the list of YouTube, Ustream, and Stickam — sites and services making H.264 versions of their content available for iPhone and other mobile platforms either via the web or via apps.

We won’t beat that drum too loudly right now, but H.264, and the new video tags in standards-based HTML5 are where we truly hope the web is headed. No reason a service that prides itself on quality shouldn’t get there first.

It’s only staff picks for now, but we hope they keep going and get the whole catalog done. There’s nothing we’d like better than to be able to embed Vimeo on this site without readers — justifiably — complaining that it’s not iPhone compatible.

[via Android Central]

Looks like Google Wave, the big G’s cloud-based take on next-generation communication and collaboration, already works on the iPhone. No big surprise, though, it’s browser powered and the iPhone still has the slickest browser in mobile. Google even showed it off on an iPhone during its debut at IO 2009. TechCrunch, however, found this interesting little bit of behavior:

Just like with any Web page on the iPhone, you can save a bookmark on your Home screen, and it creates a little icon which launches mobile Safari to that page. When you save the Wave bookmark to your Home screen, however, something different happens. You go to Wave, but without the Safari wrapper which allows you to navigate to another page or search the Web. Instead, it looks more like a regular app and there is no way to navigate away from it. Everything else works the same as in the mobile browser version.

This feature, as TechCrunch states, has been available to iPhone developers for a while, and helps blur the line between highly localized WebApps, and highly cloud-dependant widgets. If you’re using Google Wave on your iPhone, let us know how it works for you. (And if you work for Google, send us an invite so we can try it.)

Search Google.com from your iPhone (or Android or webOS device) and notice the brand-spanking new Options drop-down on the top right. Tap it a list Google’s Mobile Blog says:

Finding the exact information you need sometimes requires filtering and refining your search results. Earlier in the year, we launched a collection of tools called Search Options which enable you to easily and quickly do this from a computer. Today in the US, we are making Search Options available on Android/iPhone/Palm WebOS devices so that you can slice and dice your mobile search results as well. For example, suppose you are shopping at a store for a camera, and you would like to see what users have been saying about a specific model within the past week. You can do this simply by searching for the name of the product. Then, on the search results page, use “Options” to filter by “Forums” and refine further by choosing “Past week”.

Let us know how it works for you…

[via PreCentral.net]

Google’s “Email 2.0″ service, called Google Wave was announced back at the I/O conference, and has now entered a limited beta (in terms of number of people invited, no telling how long the service itself will be in beta).

Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

Since Steve Jobs probably isn’t getting an invite anymore, if Google — or anyone else — has any to spare, please send them TiPb’s way and we’ll happily pick up the iPhone testing slack. (Shameless, yes. Joking, not one bit).

Now this is something from Microsoft that we’re really excited about — Office Web Apps that take the traditional second pillar of Microsoft’s business and launch it up into the iPhone Safari browser-compatible cloud.

We’d prefer a native Microsoft Office for iPhone at this point, of course, but a free (ad supported, though hopefully not with 15-30 sec. un-skippable commercials…) version online? That’s a great “good enough for now”.

Microsoft has just begun showing off the tech preview, though Techcrunch says the mobile version is still in its infancy:

We mentioned in our original post in July that the ability to use products across the OS, browser, and mobile device is a key part of Microsoft’s strategy. We actually demo’d the Sharepoint-based version of PowerPoint on an iPhone and it was disarmingly sleek. While this functionality has already been established for Sharepoint, the SkyDrive-based apps are still being developed to work on mobile browsers. Microsoft says it will be done by the time the product launches next year.

With Google’s Web Apps really raising the bar (and bringing the competitive pressure), it’s not surprising to see Microsoft pushing back. And, hey, maybe Apple could get in the game and start doing something more interesting with iWork.com as well…

Determined to maintain their place atop WebApp mountain, Google released a new service today as part of their Labs testbed, and again it helps push forward just what’s possible using cloud services (online data) and interactive front ends (AJAX in the browser). Google Blogs says:

Fast Flip [http://fastflip.googlelabs.com/] is a new reading experience that combines the best elements of print and online articles. Like a print magazine, Fast Flip lets you browse sequentially through bundles of recent news, headlines and popular topics, as well as feeds from individual top publishers. As the name suggests, flipping through content is very fast, so you can quickly look through a lot of pages until you find something interesting. At the same time, we provide aggregation and search over many top newspapers and magazines, and the ability to share content with your friends and community. Fast Flip also personalizes the experience for you, by taking cues from selections you make to show you more content from sources, topics and journalists that you seem to like. In short, you get fast browsing, natural magazine-style navigation, recommendations from friends and other members of the community and a selection of content that is serendipitous and personalized.

Right now they’re providing content from New York Times, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, Salon, Fast Company, ProPublica and Newsweek, but the news we’re excited about, and indeed have come to expect from Google is this:

We’ve also made a mobile version of Fast Flip [http://fastflip.googlelabs.com/mobile] with tactile page flipping for Android-powered devices and the iPhone, so you can browse on the go. This is accessible at the same address.

Now if this were combined with something like Google Books, lets say…

A couple more pics after the break. If you try it out, as always, let us know what you think.

[Thank Muero for the tip!]

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Looks like YouTube is following parent-company Google’s increasingly awesome mobile optimization initiative, announcing an iPhone-friendly version of the dominant media site. According to their official blog:

Just visit youtube.com from your mobile phone, and you’ll be taken to a new website specially designed for your device. You can log into your account, view your favorites, and discover and share new videos quickly and easily with whoever you choose. It’s part of our mission to create the best possible YouTube experience for you, whether you use the site on your computer, in your living room, or on the go.

Since Google’s own Android, as well as Palm’s Pre, use the same Mobile WebKit foundation as the iPhone, YouTube hits three advanced platforms with one code-base.

Nifty.

[Via PreCentral.net]

Google’s own Google Voice app for the iPhone was infamously rejected from the iTunes App Store, so what’s the world’s leading Web 2.0 giant going to do about it? Release Google Voice as a WebApp targeted at the iPhone’s advanced Mobile Safari web browser, of course!

According to David Pogue of the NY Times, much as they did with Google Latitude when that application was similarly denied entry into the App Store, Google’s river is finding a way around Apple’s rock:

Already, Google says it is readying a replacement for the Google Voice app that will offer exactly the same features as the rejected app—except that it will take the form of a specialized, iPhone-shaped Web page. For all intents and purposes, it will behave exactly the same as the app would have; you can even install it as an icon on your Home screen.

So, will a WebApp be enough for you Google Voice users, even one as good as Google can likely make?

David from ironicsans sent word that his genius Google Voice bookmarklet for iPhone Safari has been given a fairly awesome update:

Now there’s a script people can run (with instructions) that will convert your entire Address Book into Google Voice Speed Dial bookmarklets. It saves them to an html file that can be imported into Safari Bookmarks, rearranged or edited however you like, and then synced with the iPhone. Easy.

Check it out and let us know how it works for you!