In the Beginning

When handheld computers went mainstream, developers had only one choice: Palm Pilot. Within five years, they had Symbian and Pocket PC (later Windows Mobile) to consider also. By 2009, there were no less than eight major operating systems for smartphones: two versions of Windows Mobile, two versions for Blackberry, iPhone, Android, Symbian, and webOS, not to mention traditional feature phones running various flavors of Java.

The Impact

Developers were forced to make the tough choice of which operating system to develop for. Making it harder, customers were scattered and were requesting versions of a variety of platforms, with no one platform controlling the market, unlike the desktop world. Until a few months ago, they had only one choice: develop for each platform independently, picking and choosing which to support, each with huge costs and unknown payback.

That, however, is changing. Developers now have three ways to develop cross-platform. And while these technologies are still in their early days, they will evolve rapidly.

HTML 5 and the Mobile Web

One option is to forgo installed applications altogether and develop mobile Web applications. HTML 5, with its access to local databases, makes this possible. There are two major obstacles to this strategy right now: first, ubiquity of HTML 5-enabled browsers and, second, a willingness among customers to accept it as a standard.

While the first will be solved with time and pressure from other OS platforms, the second is a bigger problem. The customer's willingness to accept Web-based applications is a psychological change that takes years to evolve. Device owners have been trained that cell phone connections are inherently unstable. In many places the connection disappears, and until that is resolved this mental adjustment cannot begin to take hold.

Flash

Adobe recently announced its push into the mobile space, with Flash-enabled browsers for most platforms and a Flash-to-iPhone-app compiler for Apple's smartphones and handhelds. This would allow developers to write all of their apps in Flash and then deploy on multiple mobile browsers and the iPhone via a compiled application.

This still suffers from many of the same disadvantages of HTML 5, because it requires a psychological change in customers to accept running apps in the browser. In addition, Apple's hard-nosed stance against Flash in the browser will impede this movement because it will require two completely separate creation processes.

Finally, for Flash to take hold, operating system manufacturers will have to start treating Web-enabled applications the same as non-Web-enabled ones. For example, launching Web apps from the home page must become standard.

JavaScript Native Apps

A new class of applications has arisen. These are native applications that are compiled for a specific platform but that use Web technologies for the user interface. This has the most potential. The most prominent one currently is PhoneGap. Other solutions include Appcelerator and Rhomobile, which uses the Ruby on Rails Web development language.

These technologies, all open sourced, enable developers to write back-end processes in the native code and all of the user interfaces in HTML, CSS and JavaScript. This application is then compiled into a native application. It can be uploaded to app stores, distributed via downloading and installed directly to the device.

The fundamental problem with mobile development isn't the back end, though. The backbone of all of these platforms is C or Java, which is generally portable if written with that intention. The problem is user interface development, which requires deep knowledge and understanding of each mobile device. Making the UI cross-platform solves the vast majority of problems associated with this kind of development. If you had to point to where the approach falls short, it would be that cross-platform applications don't feel "native," a shortcoming that would be solved by good design and better CSS work!

Conclusion

As the smartphone market evolves, we are unlikely to see a clear winner as we did in the PC business; and because of that, developers will be forced to write for multiple platforms. But for the first time in a decade, developers have options for multiple-device development. The cost and learning curve associated with writing native apps for every platform can finally be mitigated.

While all of these technologies are early to market, the writing is clearly on the wall. After more than a decade of discussion, the combination of Flash, HTML 5 and JavaScript will make "write once, use everywhere" a reality.

Guest author: Elia Freedman is the CEO of Infinity Softworks, the leading provider of software calculators, with over 15 million distributed. In its 13-year history, Infinity Softworks has developed applications for iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows, Palm OS and Windows Mobile. Elia writes about tech, mobile and running a business on his blog, eliainsider.com.

With all the news from the event, one thing was clear: RIM desperately wants developers to build for Blackberry and is now actively enticing them with a slew of new offerings designed to win them over.

One of the biggest announcements made yesterday involved the launch of new APIs (application programming interfaces) for third-party developers. The APIs offered include a new advertising service, a payments service, location services, and the general availability of Blackberry's own Push service, which had never before been made available to outside developers. What this means is that developers now have the tools to build applications that rival those already available on many other smartphones today, most notably, the iPhone. In some cases, the Blackberry APIs even offer something the iPhone doesn't such as is the case with the payments service which allows you to pay for apps on your next mobile phone bill.

The location services include a geo-location API that will use cell tower triangulation as a backup for when GPS fails, making location-based applications more reliable. There are also services for determining your phone's location on a map and another that helps estimate travel time for driving directions. It's obvious to see how these types of services could help build new and useful mobile applications for the Blackberry.

Also revealed was the new Blackberry Advertising Service, an offering designed to help developers generate revenue from their mobile applications. Through partnerships with ad networks, developers can easily integrate mobile advertising within their apps and track the ad's effectiveness with an included analytics package. It's even possible for these ads to access the phone's core features. For example, you'll be able to initiate a phone call from an ad or add a calendar entry from an ad. That's an innovation that many other mobile handhelds are not yet offering. These types of interactions should have a clear appeal to the many business-minded corporate Blackberry users who are often more interested in getting things done than they are with playing mindless games.

That being said, the game-playing crowd isn't being ignored either. Also announced was support for OpenGL ES, a graphics API for 3D games. While this doesn't quite put the Blackberry on par with what's available for iPhone, it's a move that's designed to keep Blackberry at least somewhat competitive in the field of mobile gaming.

Other announcements included new support for mobile developers looking to build applications with the languages and tools they already know and use. Java developers will get a new GUI builder that lets them create mobile interfaces using a WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) editor with drag-and-drop capabilities. Adobe developers will be able to use the company's Flash Platform technology and Adobe Creative Suite tools to build rich, mobile apps as well. This is another area where Apple falls short - Flash still doesn't work on the iPhone. Instead Flash developers have to use special Adobe software to convert apps written in Flash to a format that's iPhone-compatible. Also, designers can now use Adobe Photoshop and Dreamweaver to build both themes and widgets using the new Blackberry Theme Studio 5.0.

Apps, Apps, Apps!

In addition to the RIM-specific announcements, a number of companies also used the Developer Conference as the launching pad for new Blackberry applications and related announcements.

Ebay, for example, unveiled a brand-new mobile app that lets you search for items, view descriptions and photos, bid, watch items, and more. It will also tap into Blackberry's now open Push services API to deliver real-time alerts as to when you're outbid on an auction. Considering that the company has already generated $400 million this year using eBay's iPhone application, this new Blackberry app should be a big hit among mobile users when it launches next month.

The popular location-based social networking service called Loopt also revealed a major update for Blackberry which includes something the iPhone can't offer due to the nature of the device: it runs in the background to continually update your location in real-time. This is one of the iPhone's biggest flaws according to critics, since so many mobile applications take advantage of always-on connectivity to track your location for the benefit of specific mobile apps. In Loopt's case, the app knows where you are in order to show you nearby friends and local businesses which you can rate. It even offers mobile coupons for the retailers and restaurants in your vicinity.

Finally, Xobni, the Outlook email search plugin that discovers social connections in your inbox, revealed their new Blackberry application, too. As with the desktop software, Xobni for Blackberry will let you find contacts in your address book quickly using Xobni Rank technology which returns results ranked based on frequency and freshness of your communication. The application will be made available sometime early next year.

The Blackberry Developer Conference continues until Thursday, so stay tuned for even more news over the coming days.

Really?

If you're an iPhone owner yourself, you're probably going to be taken a bit aback by these findings. For example, the study claims that "cool gadgets" make a person three times more attractive to an iPhone owner than a college degree. Meanwhile "old" gadgets are a turnoff to one in three iPhone users. And yet, if that person spends a little too much time with said gadgets, one in four iPhone owners will break up with them. One in three will do it via email or text message.

Taken on their own, it's hard to say whether these stats are indicative of anything about iPhone owners specifically, or if they could apply to any group of smartphone-owning mobile users. That's why the report compares the iPhone and Blackberry owners on each topic. When studied this way, iPhone owners beat Blackberry owners in every category where "winning" is actually the equivalent of being a materialistic, flaky, fickle dolt...well, at least in our opinion.

To spin the findings even further in Blackberry's favor, one of the questions involved asking the mobile users how they "see" themselves. 40% of the iPhone owners claimed they were an "intellectual" while only 36% of Blackberry users said the same. Propped up against the other results, it's an almost laughable claim.

Don't Buy this Hype

Clearly, this survey wasn't meant to be an in-depth examination of the smartphone toting population - in fact, it's more likely just a publicity stunt to generate talk about Retrevo. Given the questions asked, there were bound to be some "rather interesting" findings, no matter how the respondents answered. And by keeping the sample size to a low number - only 445 individuals - there's no guarantee that these folks are representative of the population at large in any way. After all, who signs up for online surveys anyway? While the panel of participants was distributed across gender, age, income and location in the U.S., what's undisclosed is how the questions were asked - was this done scientifically or were they leading questions designed to generate these sorts of results?  We'd bet on the latter.

Still, you have to wonder if there isn't a tiny bit of truth hiding in these numbers somewhere. Could it be that those who buy Apple's smartphone are a little more wrapped up in mobile life than those whose smartphone purchase probably had more to do with accessing company email in a timely fashion? That may be possible, but that wouldn't exactly be an incredible reveal if so, now would it?

We predict that it won't be long until Apple overtakes RIM as the leader in this hotly contested (and vitally important, in context of the Web's shift from PC to phones) market.

39% of the 4,255 people polled by ChangeWave Research said that they own a smartphone. This is an increase of 2% since June and nearly double the level of two years ago. 11.6% now say they plan on buying a smartphone in the next 90 days.

AdMob's report was particularly bullish on Apple, reporting that iPhone traffic now accounts for nearly half (48%) of all smartphone requests in the United States. The ChangeWave report adds some much-needed context into smartphone statistics, by reporting that RIM - the makers of the blackberry - remains the market leader in terms of number of devices.

More people are undoubtedly using the iPhone to surf the Mobile Web, but more people still own a blackberry device.

Perhaps the most telling statistic in the ChangeWave report, also happens to be the most qualitative. 74% of the iPhone owners that ChangeWave polled reported that they're "Very Satisfied" with their iPhone. Less than half of RIM device owners said that.

Given what these latest AdMob and ChangeWave reports found, it's clear that smartphones are poised to hit the mainstream in a big way in 2010 and beyond.

AdMob had reported that of the top 10 mobile phones in the US currently, half are touchscreen, 6 have Wi-Fi capability and 6 have mobile app stores. Apple's iPhone led the way on all of those fronts. Android, RIM and the likes of Nokia are all putting out similar smartphone devices now.

RIM still holds sway over the workplace, but Apple definitely has the momentum in the consumer market.

Photo credit: Andy Mihail

RIM, the company behind BlackBerry's wireless platform, including email and touchscreen technologies, is joining Adobe's Open Screen Project, a 50-organization-members-strong organization that aims to promote better apps for richer mobile, television, and desktop browsing experiences for users.

Also at MAX, Adobe and Nokia are jointly announcing the funding of more than 35 multi-screen applications as part of the Open Screen Project Fund. Several apps will be demonstrated at the show, including Twitter client Twittle, interactive map MyFestivalGuide, entertainment app SmartGrooves, frequent flyer app MileBlaster, real-time audience feedback app Live TalkBack, and many more.

Adobe is also announcing support for HTTP streaming and several new mobile-ready features, including multi-touch, gestures, accelerometer, and screen orientation.

Flash Player 10.1 is the first consistent browser-based runtime from the Open Screen Project that offers browsing of Flash-based web apps, HD video, and other content on smartphones, netbooks, other Internet-enabled devices.

Flash support is also expected for several other mobile platforms, including Google Android, Symbian, Palm webOS, and Windows Mobile. A public developer beta will be available for Windows Mobile, webOS, and desktop operating systems before the end of the year. A public developer beta for Android and Symbian should be announces early in 2010, with general availability and publicly available devices coming in the first half of 2010.

The Indonesian mobile market has more than doubled in the last year and for a lot of users there, their mobile phones are the most important on-ramps to the Internet. As InMobi points out in its press release, strong competition among carriers has brought prices down and made mobile phones more affordable in the last year. While the BlackBerry is generally regarded as a business phone with a focus on email, it is currently beating the more web-centric iPhone in Indonesia when it comes to mobile web usage.

InMobi estimates that the average user in Indonesia generated 592 page views, while the global average is only about 250. About 80% of all the handsets sold in Indonesia are web-enabled - though most of them obviously don't give users access to the rich experience smartphones can offer.

As for BackBerry's lead in this market, it's important to note that AdMob's last metrics report from July (PDF) points out that both Apple and RIM only have a small share of the Indonesian handset market. BlackBerry currently holds the lead against Apple, though, and judging from InMobi's data, it looks like it also has the momentum to extend this lead.

Said Nohe, "With the massive number of applications downloaded to date, the iPhone has taken an early lead in getting owners to adopt app functionality and make popular applications a part of their daily lives...Once users are hooked, they're very unlikely to give up their device - that makes mobile the next can't miss opportunity for marketers."

Compete affirms ReadWriteWeb's statement that iPhone owners are embracing paid apps. The research company suggests that users prefer to pay less than $5 dollars per app with the most popular downloads being entertainment, gaming, music, social networking and weather applications. With the iPhone's culture of app downloading, it's obvious why developers covet the featured paid app spot in any one of these categories.

The top free application in the App Store's social networking category is Facebook and 71% of those surveyed reported accessing the site from their mobile device. Nevertheless, Twitter usage appeared remarkably lower than expected. Compete reports that 85% of smartphone owners still prefer to access Twitter from their computer rather than their mobile device. "Of the smartphone owners who do access Twitter via their phones, 41 percent use the application to keep track of what their friends are doing, 32 percent use the service to keep up with current events and 19 percent tweet from their handset to build a fan base or promote their company." Given Facebook's recent slew of Twitter-like features, and the fact that Twitter has no official mobile application, perhaps the microblogging site is seen as a redundancy amongst this group.

Another interesting fact is that nearly half of the group was open to receiving location-based discounts and advertisements. Communities like Foursquare and Brightkite have already been exploring such ads as a revenue model. However, it will be interesting to see if they try to place their own ads or outsource the sponsorships to a location-based ad serving network.

Evernote becomes a single destination for every note you have, including video, pics, to-dos, audio message, web clips, and web bookmarks. All notes can be tagged and synchronized between your Mac or PC, the Evernote Web app, and your BlackBerry. You can access your existing notes by searching for keywords, filter by tags, or simply browse for them.

In The Field

Many of us have been looking for a mobile note taking application that would be useful "in the field", since that's where we take most of our notes. Often we can't type fast enough on our mobile devices to keep up, so we jot down notes on *gasp* paper. With Evernote for Blackberry you can simply take a snapshot with your device, add a subject, comments and some tags and save it for later. When you get home you can sync everything up and have it available on your desktop or on the Web.

Prior to using Evernote for Blackberry, some people used to snap pictures of people's name tags at various events for future reference. Now you can put those in a folder in Evernote and tag, comment and archive them.

But Does it Work?

Taking text notes in Evernote for BlackBerry is straightforward and easy as are snapshot and audio notes. Trying to recognize words in some written notes can be a little sketchy, but Evernote does a pretty decent job of finding key words through a simple search. Overall the interface is a little clunky, and there seems to be no (obvious) way to add content to existing notes using the BlackBerry. Those are the only major complaints we have with it, although not being able to add to existing notes on the fly is a real bummer.

What makes this app especially useful is the ability to sync everything at once. That alone makes it an app we will continue to use. When you add BlackBerry's tagging capabilities with GPS, it becomes very powerful note taking tool indeed. Imagine being able to geotag a note and how that could be useful later. Add some snapshots, maybe a short video or audio clip and you have the makings of a very serviceable blog post or report.

Evernote for BlackBerry is certainly worth a try, check it out for yourself. It is available on the Evernote site or from BlackBerry App World. Of course there are several note taking apps for the BlackBerry, but so far this is the best one we have found, especially among the other free apps.

WhitePages Director of Monetization & Mobile, Bret Moore, said, "While we have seen tremendous success and uptake from our iPhone and Android apps as well as the newly relaunched m.WhitePages.com, we wanted to design something new with the power BlackBerry user in mind."

WhitePages rep, Tyler Roehmholdt, said, "The app has everything you'd expect in a WhitePages mobile app - the ability to search hundreds of millions of listings to find people and businesses on the go - as well as a number of great new features to help Blackberry users be even more efficient."

Check out this demo:

This rash of mobile apps from WhitePages is part of a major rebranding effort that targets not only the company's visual identity (very humanly chronicled in the WhitePages blog entries) but also the range of services and products they offer. We look forward to seeing what's next.

The Blackberry app is initially available on the BlackBerry Bold, with versions for Storm, Curve and Pearl to follow shortly. The price is $6.99 for six months of service.

Here is the context. This relates to the big battle between Microsoft Office and Google Apps.

• There are 21 million BlackBerry users in 150 countries. Many are senior business people.
• Google is signing up 3,000 business users to Google Apps every day.
• Business guys usually live either on their Blackberry or in Outlook.
• Google wants those business guys to lose that last habit and to live in Gmail.
• Once somebody lives in Gmail, it is relatively easy to gradually entice them into other Google apps.

Key Features of the Apps Connector

1. Updates: Mail is pushed to your device.
2. Reading: Messages read on your BlackBerry show up as "Read" in Gmail, and vice versa.
3. Deleting: Messages deleted on your BlackBerry are deleted in Gmail, and vice versa.
4. Contacts: Synced between your BlackBerry and Gmail.
5. Folder/Labels: Select which folders and labels to sync.
6. Calendar: This feature is a one-way sync from Google Apps to your BlackBerry device.
7. Device management: Use standard BES Server features to enforce IT policy, push applications, remote wipe devices, etc.

What's Old and What's New

What do most users who have both Gmail and BlackBerry do today? They forward Gmail to their BlackBerry. That's okay, but they end up managing two inboxes, which is why the second and third features, while simple-sounding, are actually pretty critical to adoption:

2. Reading: Messages read on your BlackBerry show up as "Read" in Gmail, and vice versa.

3. Deleting: Messages deleted on your BlackBerry are deleted in Gmail, and vice versa.

Some early adopters have found ways around this issue, but Google had better make it super-simple if it is going to get mass adoption.

After testing, we can confirm that this works as advertised.

What's Still Missing?

As with many of these kinds of announcements, when you see what is possible, you end up wanting more, and the list of requests can be endless. But here are two features we wish for that do not seem like they would be too hard for Google to deliver. So, we asked Raju Gulabani, Product Management Director of Google Apps, to comment on these two:

1. Two-way calendar sync. Today, Google allows syncing from Google Calendar to BlackBerry. This may be useful to somebody who lives at their desk and is mobile only very occasionally. But for people who live outside of the office, this does not cut it. We want to be able to input data into our BlackBerry calendars when we're talking to someone or during those "time-fillers" such as waiting at an airport or in a Starbucks line. The BlackBerry calendar thus becomes our primary calendar. So two-way sync is essential if we are to rely on Google Calendars back at the office.

Raju was willing to confirm that this was a high priority and would be available in the second half of this year.

2. Tasks. Managing task lists is another classic "time-filler." If we could manage these via a native BlackBerry interface rather than having to go to a Google website, we could be mobile and connected to colleagues on multiple projects.

Raju was only willing to confirm that Google understood this usage case, but was not able to forecast a timeline for delivery.

Digging Below the Covers

We had four questions for Google:

1. Does this require Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES)? Yes, you need BES, but not the Exchange Server.
2. Does this use IMAP? No, it uses a "native" synchronization protocol.
3. Does this use Gears? No, it uses a "native" synchronization protocol.

What does "native" synchronization protocol mean for the market? Native in this context means proprietary. Basically, it means that this synchronization is unavailable to any other webmail service provider.

When Can You Get This?

This is currently in customer beta testing and will be launching in the Google Apps Premier and Education Edition (at no additional charge) in July 2009.

Alternately, you can choose to download the CloudPrint driver to your PC and save the files to the CloudPrint server before you travel so you'll have them ready in advance.

With the new partnership between RIM and HP, the CloudPrint service will come to BlackBerry devices in the form of a software download which will be made available to BlackBerry Internet Service subscribers and BlackBerry Enterprise Server customers. Of course, CloudPrint includes support for the new BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5.0, also launched this week.

There's no word yet on how soon the technology will become available. However, at the time of writing, HP's CloudPrint site at cloudprint.hpl.hp.com has gone blank, stating only "thank you for your interest" along with a link to HP's home page. Perhaps that means they're making changes to it now.

Geotagged Tasks

The most important and interesting new feature that comes with reQall Pro is its ability to assign a location to a task. You could, for example, assign the location of your favorite store to a shopping list and then reQall will organize your to do list accordingly.

Memory Jogger

One of reQall's distinguishing features is its 'memory jogger,' which looks at a user's situation (calendar, time, location), and then tries to alert the user to the most relevant items on the to-do list.

Pro users will also be able to send notes to reQall by email.

Free Transcriptions for All

Users who don't upgrade to the Pro version will still get free voice transcriptions (Jott, which offers a similar function, now charges for this feature), as well as an updated interface for contact management and the ability to add recurring events to reQall.

Verdict

Like so many other iPhone apps, reQall will surely benefit from the 3.0 firmware update once it is released in the summer. Without notifications, the app is only half as useful as it could be.

For now, however, reQall is still a very good task manager (though it might not suit everybody's taste), and its voice transcriptions and the ability to send and receive messages from a multitude of different locations (including IM and this Firefox plugin) set it apart from a lot of similar apps.

Whether this will be enough to steal users away from more established services like Remember the Milk remains to be seen, but if you aren't locked into a particular service yet, reQall Pro (you automatically get a free 30 day trial when you sign up for reQall) and its mobile apps are worth a closer look.

SocialScope

Forget TwitterBerry, the latest and greatest Twitter app for Blackberry users is the brand-new Socialscope, now in alpha. SocialScope not only integrates your Twitter feed, but adds in Facebook status updates as well. When you launch the application, you're immediately taken to your friends' timeline where you'll see their avatars, latest tweet, and timestamp. Tabs at the top let you switch between your feed, Facebook, replies, and DMs, or the main SocialScope feed which includes both Twitter and Facebook combined. You can easily reply and message others as well as favorite tweets. There's also a cool option to add users from these social apps to your phone's address book.

You'll need an invite code to get in - try following @socialscope on Twitter then DM'ing a request to them.

SlingPlayer Mobile for Blackberry

SlingPlayer's iPhone app may have made the headlines, but flying under the radar was the announcement that their Blackberry app is now in public beta, too. If you have one of the supported devices and a SlingBox at home, you can watch your home TV and DVR recordings right on your Blackberry smartphone. If you want to test it out, it's available now as a free 30-day trial. Afterwards, if you want to purchase the application it's $29.99. 

Unify4Life

Unify4Life turns your Blackberry into a remote control. There are actually two applications available: AV|Shadow and Garage|Shadow. AV|Shadow gives you control over your home's audio/visual equipment, including your TV, DVD player, radio, DVR, and more. It even provides an interactive guide for TV listings, search, and favorites. The Garage|Shadow, as you might have guessed, turns your Blackberry into a remote control for your garage. This one doesn't appear to be available yet, but AV|Shadow is...although it will cost you. It's being sold for $99.99.

Slacker Radio

We just introduced to you to Slacker Radio's iPhone app, but it's available for Blackberry, too. This free music app lets you listen to your favorite radio stations on the go whether or not you're connected to a wireless network. That's possible thanks to Slacker's station caching, a unique feature that lets mobile users store favorite stations to a memory card allowing Slacker to play without a network connection. This option also boosts battery life and enhances the application's performance. Learn more at slacker.com/mobile/blackberry.

BeamReader

BeamReader, a PDF reader application, has been around for awhile, but just recently launched out of beta. With this application installed, you can read PDF email attachments or documents stored on your memory card without needing a data plan in order to do so. In addition to the native PDF viewing, BeamReader is also a file manager which lets you organize and access other document formats, too, including Microsoft Office, images and audio/video files. (Note: viewing Office documents requires Documents to Go, which is preinstalled on Blackberry OS 4.5 and higher)

Stockstream Mobile

Oh, and in case you decide to use your phone to actually get some work done, the new Stockstream Mobile application, which comes in both a regular and Pro version, lets you get real-time streaming market data, stock quotes, news, charts, and company research on your handheld. The news comes directly from Reuters and you can sign up to be alerted when there's new information about your tracked investments.

Bonus: Cool new Blackberry Hardware, Zeemote

Zeemote isn't actually a Blackberry application, but it's worth a mention. This bluetooth-enabled controller works in tandem with your Blackberry smartphone to allow for improved smartphone gaming by means of a separate controller. The controller has four programmable buttons. a joystick, and runs on two AAA batteries.

Well, a lot has changed in the Mobile Web application world since then. The Apple App Store launched in July '08, prompting a wave of new third party iPhone apps. And we've seen innovation from Apple's mobile phone competitors: Google's Android (which has multiple app stores), Nokia, and Blackberry, and others. So what are your favorite Mobile Web apps and sites circa November 2008? The ReadWriteWeb authors list their faves below, plus we polled our friends in Twitter (subscribe to our Twitter account @rww).

Mobile Apps & Sites Favored by RWW Authors

Richard MacManus

iPhone apps:

• Last.fm - still my favorite music streaming app, and the iPhone version was upgraded in September
• YouNote - handy note-taking tool, multimedia
• Diamedic - iPhone app for diabetics that records my glucose levels and insulin shots
• Weight Tracker - enables me to keep track of my daily weight
• Groundwork - iPhone version of Basecamp, which works via 37Signals' API. Note there are another couple of third party Basecamp apps for iPhone: Minivan and Projects from appremix. Also see Jason Fried's comment here on RWW for suggestions for Blackberry and Windows Mobile phones.
• NYTimes - nice example of a native iPhone app for a media publication, although ironically it always seems to get stuck for me when I click to the Technology section!
• Gmail, via iPhone mail

Browser-based:

• ReadWriteWeb iPhone version (powered by MoFuse)
• Google Reader
• Mobile Twitter
• Mobile FriendFeed

Frederic Lardinois:

• Evernote - great for making a quick note of addresses or restaurant menus by just taking a pic of them
• Pandora - even better now that they added 'genre' stations
• Fring - having Skype on the iPhone has saved me a few times
• Google Reader
• FriendFeed mobile
• Google Earth - for the sheer beauty of it

Sarah Perez:

For iPod Touch:

• Twinkle
• Twitterifc
• mobile Facebook
• Byline for RSS (offline).
• mobile Google Reader
• mobile FriendFeed
• mobile Gmail

For Blackberry:

• mobile facebook
• mobile flickr app
• Live search
• twitterberry

Rick Turoczy:

• Shazam - "remains one of my favorites--and most often used. Admittedly, sometimes I simply use it to be mystified by the black magic of how it correctly identifies incredibly eclectic tunes."

Marshall Kirkpatrick:

• FFtoGo.com
• m.netvibes.com
• slandr.net
• Fring
• http://www.techmeme.com/mini

Nathan DiNiro, RWW Jobwire

• m.shizzow.com
• GMail for BB
• TwitterBerry
• Google Maps for BB
• Google Talk for BB
• Pocket Express for BB - Handmark, I think

Friends of RWW in Twitter

Rudy De Waele: facebook app, google maps, twitterrific, ocarina (all iphone) and QIK (Nokia N95)

Steve O'Hear, editor of last100: BBC iPlayer, Nokia Mail (push), Twitterific

Tom Tague, Calais: Remember the Milk (bbery & iphone), instapaper (let's me catch up on stuff I should read), twitterific

paulbradshaw: Shozu, JoikuSpot, Google Maps, Qik, ZoneTag

Chris Osborne: my top mob apps (symbian): fring, goog maps, shozu, nokia sports tracker, vodafone sat nav. in 'emerging' category: flyscreen

dekkerd: qik, brighkite, twinkle, ziibii apps, dropcard, friendfeed, greader. all iphone

Windows Observer: Tiny Twitter Google Maps

mobile jones: QIK, Google Maps, Sprint Backup Service, Mobile Gmail, Flyscreen - 5 is too short a list and these are not in order.

keithbohanna: NetnewsWire, Truphone, GMaps on iPhone, Twitterfon

Ginger Sorvari: Google Maps (#1 by far), WeightWatchers, Twitter, FB, SI.

David Owens: 1) Google Maps 2) Instapaper 3) Byline 4) GoConnect 5) London City #iphone

Pádraic Brady: Tweetie for iPhone is pretty good - splits up dm/replies/friends feeds separately and its performance is pretty good.

Aaron Grabein: Photoshop.com Mobile, http://is.gd/8ZC9, is great for photo uploads (Win Mo) and TwitterBerry, Facebook, Google Maps

Susan Puccinelli: My two faves are Google Maps for Mobile and CalTrain+ (though of course its only relevant to those of us in the Bay Area who use it)

janetleejohnson: Smub - http://smub.it (any smartphone), twitterrific, Google Maps (iPhone)

Matt Wiseley, EditMe: (Android) dgMoney http://is.gd/8ZzD/ BlueBrush http://is.gd/8ZA4/ QuickList http://is.gd/8ZAI

Conor O'Neill: Nokia Maps, Gmail Mobile, Twibble, Qik, eBuddy, Truphone, Shozu

Jajah: @twidroid (Android)/@twitterfon (iPhone), Facebook, @my6sense (iPhone), @strands, @jajah http://iphone.jajah.com

Sherry Main: for iphone: facebook, twitterific, wordpress, scribeshare, google maps

egrommet: still like shozu and sportstracker (nokia)

Duncan Heal: 1st gen iPod Touch 2.2: Twitteriffic, Facebook, Safari, iChalky, AIM

Jorge Escobar: Gmail (IMAP) and Google Maps on Windows Mobile 6

localinsurance: facebook app, blackbird, twitpic

Susan Beebe: 5 Favorite Mobile apps (iPhone): BeejiveIM, Evernote, Shazam, fftogo.com, RTM (remember the milk), YouNote, koi pond, camera bag

Stephane Delbecque: BlogIt for iPhone is very cool. TypePad web app for iPhone is not bad either. :-)

ChadHusseinCapellman: what about LEAST FAVORITE mobile web apps? I'd be speaking about the mandatory Verizon Wireless start screen instead of my favorites.

Sean Power: i would be considerably less productive without the Google mobile suite (reader, talk and mail)

davefleet: Google Maps; Google Talk; Jott

geoffmcqueen: I like Brightkite, but wish they'd use Gears GeoLoc info in PocketIE. Also, m.Facebook.com, Skype & SPB's Traffic Monitor app for WM6.

Tell Us Your Faves!

We hope that you spotted a few interesting sounding apps in the above list that you'd like to try out! Please list your favorites in the comments below, as well as your opinions about the state of Mobile Web applications and sites.

Top image credit: MichaelMarlatt

Too bad. I'd dreamed he'd be using Twitterberry to share tidbits from NSA briefings ("OMFG @Biden - can you believe Libya is at it AGAIN?!"). At the very least, I was hoping he could liveblog his own inauguration: "12:03 pm - Putting my left hand on the Bible, raising my right. Then bringing both hands over to the keyboard to type this. Roberts is starting to look impatient."

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