Skyfire, creator of the free downloadable PC-like browser for mobile devices, has released Skyfire Beta 0.9. The new version is aimed toward MoSo‘s, and has added a feed aggregator for news, media, Facebook and Twitter. You can also update your Facebook and Twitter accounts straight from the Skyfire client.
The new Skyfire comes with preset feeds from Digg, ESPN, Google News, Hulu, YouTubeand Yahoo! News. Real-time updates from these sites are displayed on the start page, and you can customize it to display whatever feeds you want.
Where previous versions of Skyfire were geared towards presenting any type of video and multimedia content, this version addresses the problems of viewing large chunks of text on a mobile screen.
From the release:
Skyfire CEO, Nitin Bandari called the new client “an industry first in mobile browsing. Now you can share one-to-one via SMS and share one-to-many via your social network. Mobile browsing has traditionally been about viewing Web pages. Now, for the first time, Skyfire enables users to stay connected with their friends in real time – both share and receive. We enable interactive social browsing – videos not just plain text – just like you do on your PC.”
“We went out the door delivering rich media – whether it was video, images, or audio – Skyfire delivered it to your phone just like your PC browser.” said Tracy DeMiroz, Skyfire VP of Marketing. “In this release of Skyfire, we concentrated on improving the experience of reading text in Skyfire. The strides we made now give our users the best of both experiences whether they are watching a show on Hulu or reading an article in the New York Times.”
What we think?
One-click access to services from the home screen is something every service wants. Unfortunately, the home screen is a running battle for space between operators and handset manufacturers, so one-click access from the opening page of a mobile browser is the best most people can hope for. Integrating MoSo’s onto Skyfire is a great idea – it’s one idea that can only drive traffic up.
