Widget Platform MuseStorm Catches iPhone Fever
by Mark Hendrickson on May 19, 2008

The small screens of mobile devices are blurring the lines between webpages and widgets. So it should come as no surprise that MuseStorm, hitherto a platform for developing widgets for syndication across the web and onto desktops, is coming out with a tool for making iPhone-ready websites.

To be precise, MuseStorm isn’t exactly debuting a new product. Rather, it’s adding iPhone support to its existing Widget Studio, which can be used for a variety of environments ranging from the Facebook platform to the Mac dashboard. But unlike these other environments, the MuseStorm Widget Studio will be free for iPhone developers.

This is a peculiar departure for MuseStorm, which makes its money from charging large corporations on a per-impression or bulk campaign basis. In contrast, widgets made for the iPhone won’t even display advertisements or branding – just the MuseStorm URL.

The creation of MuseStorm widgets for the iPhone consists of the same PowerPoint-like interface users have come to expect. It’s not terribly novice-friendly, since there’s very little in terms of visual aides, and any moderately advanced customization requires knowledge of CSS and access to a server that will host your image and style files (MuseStorm offloads most of the content within its widgets).

I created a test widget for TechCrunch that exhibits the ever-so-stylish “Lazy Day” theme (one of 5 that come pre-packaged) but looks pretty crummy in a desktop browser. Pros of the tool include the ability to work on a live widget and publish changes in bulk. Deep analytics also tell you how many people have viewed your photos, watched your videos, clicked on your RSS feed items, etc.

On the con side of things, the fade and slide transitions chug slowly and there’s no way to have a fixed header (every user interaction involves a complete page change). It would also be good to have a point-and-click CSS editor and custom URL mapping.

If you’re a publisher or marketer looking to reach iPhone-empowered audiences, signup for the service’s private beta period here. The first 250 registrants will get in before public release.

Also see MoFuse, a service for porting websites – and blogs in particular – to the iPhone. More serious developers can also use frameworks like Safire

Consumer-oriented alternatives to MuseStorm include WidgetBox, Wix, and Sprout (although good luck getting the latter two working on the iPhone; they’re based entirely in Flash).

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  • Just a comment on our strategy here. Because we sell business to business and our competitors have consumer offerings, we were looking for a way for prosumers to go hands on with the product which is how and why we came up with the idea of making the iPhone offering available as a free offering. MuseStorm’s paying customers have been asking for ways to expand their reach to the iPhone, so this offering allows us to kill two birds with one stone.

    In terms of some of Mark’s other comments… prosumers we talk with appreciate the ability to edit the CSS directly using their own tools versus any we could provide. At MuseStorm, we are always conscious of walking a fine line between ease of use (making the platform easy to use by anyone) and allowing for pixel perfect control (which is what power users demand). The compromise we struck here was to allow power users to edit the CSS in a direct fashion, since they have the skills and inclination to do so. You can see the results in our widget for “Cirque du Stormee” which Mark included in his post. With only a little CSS editing I was able to get my application to a custom look and feel … something I could not do before for the iPhone (and believe me – as a gadget girl and early adopter of iPhone – I tried!).

  • Thanks for the plug!

  • The service is incredibly easy to use with some great results. Made me a couple of really nice widgets.

    Pity other platforms (Facebook, Yahoo!, Google) are not available for free…

  • Thanks for the tip! I tried making an iPhone widget of my RSS feed but it didn’t come thru….so I hacked up a work-around (ie, click HERE for my feed). :)

    I had selected the Text | RSS panel and figured that was enough. It wasn’t. I’ll have to look around for more.

    Data points,

    Barbara

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