Because 3/4 of the world practically lives on Facebook, we’re bound to miss important information from time to time. More recently, Facebook greatly opened up it’s API allowing 3rd parties to better tap into the potential that Facebook integration could allow. Today, Facebook land get’s one of it’s best features/widgets/applet yet in the form of an App Store widget.
As you’ve probably already gathered, the widget of sorts lets you browse through App Store all within Facebook. Now, going through 100,000+ apps by itself within iTunes is daunting. Through a Facebook widget seems even more daunting. Alas, the creator of the widget, Vitrue, has designed it so you only dive into the “featured apps” for the respective categories, reducing clutter and hopefully improving overall enjoyment.
For App Store junkies and Facebook-a-holics, nothing is more perfect than calling this a match made in heaven. For family and friends of already addicted people, it’s best you get use to seeing the back of that person’s head even more.
Tried the new widget out? How’d you like it?
Gizmodo > Mobile-ent
- December 16, 2009 10:08 am
You know, I’m not an “anti-protect your property” kind of person. I understand credit is needed where credit is due. With that said, the sad and downright maddening circumstances surrounding by far the best weather widget on the Android Market — Beautiful Widgets by LevelupStuios — are enough for me to voice my displeasure here. Time and time again we see companies wasting corporate dollars and time pursuing stupid ass lawsuits that won’t benefit anyone.
With that past us it is with great sadness that I announce HTC sent LevelupStudios a C&D over Beautiful Widgets. It was a nicely designed Weather + Clock widget that mimicked HTC’s widget found on Sense UI supported Devices. LevelupStudios used their own know-how and help from a few other outside developers to create their own version allowing non-HTC devices to share in the same weather + time sexiness their HTC toting brethren enjoy. In all honesty, a lawsuit because the two products were extremely similar isn’t all that surprising, however, I as well as many others expected HTC to ignore it as it’s not going to do any financial harm to HTC. No one is going to by a non-HTC device simply for Beautiful Widgets.
The only stipulation I can find fault with in LevelupStudios is that they were charging and therefore profiting on a design that even though was coded in-house, was a more or less copy of HTC’s weather widget. Even still, HTC could have added a clause that said either reduce Beautiful Widgets to free or remove it from the Android Market completely. That would have been a much better option. At $0, even less harm (read: none at all) would have been done to HTC or their profit margins and non-HTC users could still rock the weather + clock widget. Now I as well as countless Beautiful Widgets users are going to have to find illegitimate ways of getting the same style and functionality on our devices. If you’re a new Android user whom doesn’t use an HTC device, I’d pick up a copy of Beautiful Widgets now before it is removed from the store.
Nice job HTC. Now you simply come across looking like a typical corporate asshole.
Android Central
Mobile browsing is usually a painful ordeal full of copious amounts of scrolling mixed with equally copious amounts of time waiting for pages to load. The latest batch of smartphones from Apple and Android toting phones have taken huge strides in this regard. However, there is always room for improvement. That’s where Bytemobile is stepping in. Bytemobile has developed and released a “Widget Bar Application” that is designed to make mobile browsing less of a pain and more of a joy. Said application can be placed on any portal or off-portal web page meaning operators can focus on the customers’ needs at all times. Will this widget bar take off? It doesn’t look that big of a deal to me personally. But who knows, this could be the next Google. For more info, head on over to Bytemobile.
Source: Mobile Whack, Bytemobile
