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.
In Seattle, not if.
Is the Iphone marketplace going to be able to compare to the FaceBook widget market place?
- Face book widgets have their own VC’s now….
- will Iphone have the same? and opinions?
Check out http://www.mockdock.com - similar idea
Mike — I see you still need to get the hang of that iPhone keyboard!
They need to get themselves some leaflets.mobi
Isn’t the iPhone so perfect it doesn’t need such applications?
And why they called them applications, while it is just a website?
mojits.com is also worth a look.
sounds like http://www.appleopolis.com
Thanks for the lead. How did you like our humble little town?
If you like that check out http://appmarks.com
Shouldn’t it be “and drinks tonight at Seattle” instead of “and drinks tonight if Seattle”? I know its obvious but sometimes we all make mistakes!!!!
Does the iPhone cure cancer?
Am I missing something? Other than the weak detection ( onload is/isnot iPhone ) I don’t understand how this is iPhone ONLY? AJAX renders quite nicely in Opera Mini, which is available for anyphone.
Taking a look at GetLeaflets, it is definitely the best of the pack. I feel that mockdock runs rather slow and mojit lacks a user friendly interface. GetLeafLets packs everything in once.
does this kind of articles really keep building traffic?
I tried this on safari 3 for windows xp and every time I get on the sign up screen to type my email, safari crashed.
I looked into the error report and looks like some compat issues.
This is just like whoreallycares.com except it only targets the few nerdtrons who camped out overnight for an expensive and limited device.
snore..
Now we know why apple released Safari for Windows.
Interesting will be watching to see how well this does.
http://www.iphonapps.com for a similar (but more primitive) idea…
Disclosure: I work for Blue Flavor.
That having been said, I wanted to point out the key difference between our product, Leaflets, and products like mojits.com and mockdock.com. While those sites aggregate third-party apps in one place, we have built out own apps. We have a great deal of experience in development of both traditional and mobile web applications, and we’ve leveraged that experience into a set of nine (with more to come!) original applications — many of which piggyback off services you may already use (Flickr, Upcoming, del.icio.us, etc.).
Those other sites are an entirely different thing. They are provide a sort-of “launcher” for apps other people have written. That’s not to say they’re not useful — they may be. But we are writing apps — they are providing a place to launch apps from.
Nice work, excellent execution… the major thing missing here is support for OPML import. I’d have to say with that, it might end up my default RSS reader on the iPhone. May also want to look at personalization-it would be nice if the user could customize with the ability to add/remove feeds to the top level menu.
We just launched our public beta for a similar site today, Launchrz. We also allow you to create your own personalized home page with the applications you choose on it and allow registered users to rate various the various iPhone applications as well. Check it out at http://www.launchrz.com
I’m one of the engineers behind Mojits, and wanted to say that Leaflets looks great, and the original content is both well chosen and tastefully done.
As Jeff mentions, Mojits differ’s from Leaflets in its primary goal: Mojits aims to create a user community allowing you to find the best iPhone widgets based on other user’s feedback.
We admire Leaflet’s creation of original widgets, and have always intended on creating our own in good time. In the meantime, keep an eye on http://www.Mojits.com for a new, easier to use interface in the near future, as well as numerous innovations and new features.
Kudos to Leaflets for helping to push the iPhone experience forward.