Everyone else has one, so why not one more? Orange, a massive European mobile phone carrier that is now a subsidiary of France Télécom, is beta testing a customizable Ajax homepage product called Bubbletop.
The team building this is actually based near San Francisco, and also created the Pikeo photo sharing product. For some reason, they decided to break the story of their launch on a French blog with an interview/demo video that is also in French. The product itself, though, appears to only be offered only in English.
I can’t tell much about the product from the demo in the video, although it appears to be a standard module-based Ajax home page that also includes social networking features such as including a friends area in the left sidebar (I’m speculating - see screen shots).
This is an overly-crowded space (and now Google is now promoting their iGoogle product hard as well). But Orange has nearly 90 million mobile customers to try to push to their new online products. I’ll post more on this if I can get into the beta. Sign up to enter on the Bubbletop home page.
We also got our own little baby coming (early stage) but we are rolling out tons of features soon.
check out : http://inewsdaily.com
this is a good move from big corp. to stick their users on their property.
thnx,
iNewsDaily Team.
netvibes4life!
Also have any of these companies landed deals with computer manufactures? I know Dell does some stuff with Google desktop but it seems these would make great default homepages and could introduce the features to a whole new demo.
Why not just post screen shots instead of posting shots of the screen?
Judging from the screenshots, It Looks much more like flex than Ajax to me.
Hey Michael, you can watch an english version subittled of this video here : http://www.leblogdebezier.com/?p=147
Smokey, if you read the post, I’m certain you’ll figure it out.
I run http://www.myownsite.us
News feeds, weather, USPS/UPS/Fedex/DHL package tracking, bookmarks/favorites, stores most popular and recent links for both you and other MyOwnSite users, and has pre-selected content to choose from for those less RSS savvy folk
I think the major search engines have the greatest chance of success in this area. Google may be able to take the lead, but Yahoo would be more likely, since they already have that everything feel.
All I want is to create a widget for this with tabs. I want tabs within tabs within tabs, no way do I want to see everything at a glance when I open my browser.
Smokey - posting actual screenshots is so Web 2.0 - this is the new way - its WAY better!
have you check netvibes latest personalization options ! theses guys are definitly leading the market
Yeah, I doubt this is going anywhere anytime soon…
Netvibes is too slow and iGoogle is STILL just down right primitive. iGoogle added some themes recently (more like pcitures at the top of the page) but didn’t really offer any substantive improvements. I’m sticking with pageflakes for the time being. I see no reason to switch.
Beyond mobile Carrier Orange is a major ISP in Europe. What is funny thought is that France telecom has already launched two start pages
one for http://www.voila.fr
one by Orange (yes by Orange) http://www.my-be.fr/
more on TechCrunch France for extra analysis (in French sorry)
http://fr.techcrunch.com/2007/.....e-telecom/
charles - yeah - leading the market in undeserved hype.
I’m sure after seeing this Vodafone and Virgin will jump in line too.
Imagine a Virgin StartPage - Virginr.com
Netvibes is wonderful if you plan on using a desk/laptop computer, but it leaves you high and dry if accessed with a Nokia 770.
I’m wondering if Ben Metcalfe is behind bubbletop…
Who the hell is Ben Metcalfe ???
I wish I knew!!
By the looks of the video demo it’s definitely Adobe Flex. I like the idea that it allows you to bring out the information you want at the moment as opposed to the entire feed, and that you can see all public info shared by your contacts list really easily.
Looks cool, can’t wait to give it a spin.