Review : Tech Buzz Widget
Earlier during the initial launch phases of the Ovi store, I mentioned the need for a simple RSS and content management app for Symbian based phones. Immediately I was contacted by few developers who all had great RSS apps to showcase but none of them were exactly what I was looking for.
Enter Tech Buzz Widget from Mippin.
Although Tech Buzz is not exactly an RSS reader, per se, but it does a great job of delivering the latest news right to your phone. Mippin which advertises itself as “the fastest and easiest way to get your favorite web content on your mobile phone” has created several other similar news widgets including the all popular The Guardian widget for Ovi. They’ve kind of mastered this whole widgetin’ thing.
Installation:
The installation file is only 0.467 MB and you can download the file directly from the Ovi store. The widget is compatible with Nokia N97, 5800 and 5530. The N97 widget has the advantage of showing the latest news on the main home screen and dynamically refreshing the contents. There is no registration required and you can immediately start using the widget.
Features:
There are total of six content categories ( Tech, Mobile News, Symbian, Gadgets, Gaming, and Tech Videos) and it is very easy to switch between different content channel from the main home page. One of the main advantages of the Mippin widget is that they are extremely battery and connectivity friendly. The widget by default is designed to refresh content every 30 minutes and then caches the content to a local disc. This way you can still access the content while offline in a faster fashion. The refresh rate can also be customized from 5 minutes to 24 hours depending on user preference.
The content is mainly collected from mainstream media outlets like BBC or The Guardian and blog networks like TechCrunch and Techmeme. The articles are also formatted to fit on a mobile phone screen with the link to the original source at the bottom of the widget.
The application is free but Mippin monetizes it with small and non-creepy mobile ads that appear at the bottom of the page. I didn’t mind the ads and I don’t think many other will either.
Conclusion:
Tech Buzz by Mippin is a great widget to access the latest news quickly and efficiently. Although all the upcoming Nokia phones starting with the N97 come pre-loaded with various news widgets , Tech Buzz offers you more flexibility and has more than 63 million articles in its database from sources that you probably didn’t even know they exist. I am also a huge fan of its offline caching system and I expect many other applications to adopt this technology in near future.
The only real limitation with the widget is the lack of the ability to customize different feeds and contents. I would also like to see an option to eliminate repeated contents within the database.
Mippin is doing a lot of great things in the this space and their apps/widgets are available to download across all major mobile platforms.
