Mobleo.net / Blog

Integrated Search etc.

Integrated Search
After analyzing usage statistics I have made a change to the mobile user interface . Gone is the web address bar which has been replaced with an extensible  search tool.

Currently the search tool allows you to choose from Google, MSN, and Yahoo search engines (mobleo will be added soon). Search results are fully integrated into the mobleo experience.  So far the reaction has been very positive. Hopefully the change wont be too upsetting to the few that utilized the web address bar which included myself. The user experience and usability seems to be much improved. If you have any comments or suggestions please let me know.

Standardized "Save to Mobleo" Section
I have also redesigned the mobleo "save to mobleo" section appended to the bottom of the surfed pages. Previously there were two styles, one for mobilfied/transcoded content and another for mobile content. The new design is basically a hybrid of the two previous designs and is now standardized. Once again I believe this changes results in a much better user experience but please let me know what you think.

Updated Bookmark Sharing Engine

I just spent the last few weeks updating the tag/bookmark sharing engine on mobleo and I finally released the code today.

New features include ...

• Surf history sharing -  Now your friends can see the sites you have visited if you choose to share your surf history with them. If your friends share their surf history with you you can see the sites they have visited as well.
• Messaging - You can now send/receive messages to/from your friends in your network.
• Updated user interfaces - Both the mobile and desktop interfaces have been updated to support the new features.

Please let me know if you find any bugs or have any comments and/or suggestions. This would be helpful.

Updated del.icio.us Support

You now have the option of mobilfying your del.icio.us bookmarks. Click on your preferences tab to set your preference. You can choose from none (pages displayed unmodified), mobilfy with images, or mobilfy without images.

Mobilfier Update

The mobilfier has been updated to pass through content already formatted for the mobile phone. A simple "Save to Mobleo" link, as well as a "My bookmarks" link,  now appear at the bottom of these pages. Basically now you can surf the mobile net using mobleo and you and bookmark just about everything directly from the page you are on as you surf. More updates are in the works.

Mobilfier Update

A few people have mentioned that they were having some trouble signing into various websites. I have made a few changes to the Mobilfier which should help. A few other unreported issues were fixed as well. Please let me know if you are having any trouble.

Where are the Social Bookmarks?

Another question that comes up often in various forms is "Where are all the Social Bookmarking features on mobleo?" i.e. the "Most Popular" list of bookmarks,  etc. This is a fair question and I will do my best to answer it here.

Mobleo currently allows users to share bookmarks with their friends if they wish, and they with you, but I have not released the other "Social Bookmarking" features yet. Mainly this is because I feel that mobleo has not reached critical mass. Meaning there is just not enough good data yet to release all the social features. It seems that spammers comprise a good portion of the early adopters and I am waiting until their contributions get lost in the noise of good data.

So, rather than spend time maintaining a list of popular mobile websites by hand, at this early stage I feel the time is better spent writing code and implementing other requested features. These other social bookmarking features will come in time, hopefully sometime this summer.
 

Creating bookmarks using email

Of the three methods available for creating mobleo bookmarks, by email, by using the mobilfier, or by using the "Save to mobleo" buttons on participating websites, the most often overlooked is the email method of creating bookmarks which I will explain in a bit more detail.

Each user of mobleo receives an email address of the form username@mobleo.net when they register. While surfing the web on their mobile phones users can email the links/urls to their mobleo.net email address to create bookmarks. The title of the email will become the name of the bookmark and the tag will be "New Bookmarks". Once the bookmark information is extracted from the email the email contents are discarded. In short any links/urls contained in an email sent to a users mobleo.net email address will automatically be turned into bookmarks.

Most mobile phone browsers have a menu selection for emailing the current web page's address making it simple to email your bookmarks to mobleo.

For more information on this and the other methods for creating bookmarks on mobleo please visit here.

Please feel free to add your comments and suggestions.

Mobleo V1 API Released

I have finally released V1 of the mobleo API for anyone interested in developing software/tools to work with mobleo. I have tested the API to the best of my abilities but I am sure there will be a few issues here and there. Just let me know of any issues you discover and I will fix them as soon as possible.

The API is versioned so I will do my best to keep the current API unchanged from here on out. As new features are developed it is possible that the previous versions will be deprecated.

Details on the mobleo API can be found here.

Save to Mobleo Button

Mobile webmasters...As requested, I have finally added support for a "Save to Mobleo" button. You can cut and paste this code into your web pages making it easy for visitors to bookmark your content. You can find the details here.

Please let me know if you use this code on your website so that I can monitor things on my end. The code has been tested fairly well but should still be considered beta. If you have any comments or suggestions I would like to hear those also.