I like posting screenshots, and loading them on the front page of my blog kills bandwidth. I’ll give you one sneak peak here, but for my sake, just click on continue reading below. Now if you got a direct link to this page, then this doesn’t concern you at all. Enjoy this review/rant
Ok let us begin. When you first open up the application this is the boot screen:
Not very exciting, but it gets better. You’re given the option to sign in as an existing user or create a new account. Since this is my first time testing this out, I’ll sign up:
Yes I posted my user name, feel free to add me! I would love to talk to more of my readers. As if the emails and comments weren’t enough ::grin::
Now they ask you for some personal information in case you ever need to reset your password. All they want is your email and phone number:
See that little rectangle in the corner? I’m assuming that’s where a button is supposed to be. I just hit options and it reveals all my choices. Not going to post such a boring screenshot, but here is the home screen! I already have mail!
Who can it be, who can it be! Paris Hilton? Free Viagra? Nope, just Ben welcoming me to the network. How nice.
Let’s check out the chatrooms … what’s this? Cyber sex! Oh joy!
"My Place" = MySpace; I’m not going to enter in any information just yet, but here is what it looks like anyway:
My widgets:
Nice set of defaults, but let me see what other ones are available:
That’s a lot of bloody widgets! Now onto webcams … what can these be?
Ohhh Paris, I love France. You can take your freedom fries and throw them in the garbage! I’ll take my fine wine and cheese thank you very much.
Great so now I can check my mobile phone every 15 minutes to see if this monument is still up! Maybe I should just make it my wallpaper, the memory will last longer. Ok enough hate, what about Dave Winer’s black tar heroine for internet users: RSS
I’m a technofreak, let’s see what default feeds they have under Technology:
Very impressive! Any more?
And now for gypsy news:
Adding an email address is as easy as selecting your provider and entering in your logon info. Too bad I already have the wonder official Gmail app that Google built. Sorry buddy, you’re not getting installed
Ok let me see how the IM client works
Great! Here in America all my friends use AIM. I have a total of maybe 3 buddies combined on Yahoo and MSN. Now in the international market this might be amazing since Europe is dominated by MSN and Asia + Middle East go gaga over Yahoo. Here is the wonderful about screen. I see they’re up to version 2.0 … no beta … congratulations for not being a Web 2.0 company! Wait a minute … no business model; you had me going there for a sec.
And you know I couldn’t resist this, I needed my cyber sex fix!
Ok now here is the rant. Opera Mini 3.0 is perhaps the most kick ass mobile application … period. It can access MySpace perfectly; hell it can access any website perfectly. That’s what so beautiful about it. It makes the mobile experience for lack of a better word, perfect. Opera Mini has an RSS reader too! Now as for widgets … I really love checking the weather every hour, don’t you?
Sorry to be harsh, but this is not what I was expecting when I read this on Tech Crunch or on Mobile Crunch. I was expecting something magical and interesting. Why would I use your application to send messages to my friends? To save on money on text messaging right! Do you know how much mobile internet costs a month? That money saved is cancelled out immediately.
So please, can someone tell me, why is this a kick ass product? I would much rather install Opera Mini on my friend’s phones then this. We already text message each other … we all have MySpace’s and FaceBooks. Why should we join yet another social network? You know that’s a fantastic idea, someone call the guys who own MySpace and FaceBook and tell them to make a mobile phone application that already has a large community behind it!
Take this advice from someone who is actually 20 years old and applications like this are built for my generation. All my friends have mobile phones, yet I can count the number of people I know who have mobile internet enabled cells on one hand.