GetLeaflets: Must-Have iPhone App

Mike Davidson, the CEO of Newsvine, and I were comparing iPhone stories over dinner and drinks tonight in Seattle. He showed me a beta version of GetLeaflets, a site launching today, and I was hooked. Just direct your iPhone browser to getleaflets.com and you’ll see a menu of icons very similar to the iPhone main menu.

The site contains a directory of services: search, flickr, New York Times, Upcoming, del.icio.us, etc. There is also a feed reader optimized for the iPhone where feeds to any site can quickly be added. And the site also has a directory of other useful iPhone applications that have nothing to do with the site – PocketTweets (Twitter), Digg, etc.

The service does more than redirect you to other services, though. Each application, if possible, makes use of any open APIs to minimize page load times and get right to the content. The Flickr app in particular does a very nice job.

The service is still young and they say they’ll be adding many more icons in the near future. If this becomes a platform, it would be nice to see a director of hundreds of icons over time that users can choose from.

You can also run a demo simulation of the service on a normal computer, but you must be running Safari 3 to do so. My recommendation is to set up and customize you account from your desktop/laptop computer. When you have it just like you want it, log out and then log in from your iPhone.

See ZenZui for a similar idea around mobile browsing…but GetLeaflets is here and available now.