Apps & Services

Mobispine

Brett Hill

With an array of unique options and the ability to create mashups with Facebook, Flickr and more, Mobispine goes beyond the expectations of traditional feed readers.

Billing itself as a “mobile media browser” on its site, Mobispine (BETA) is a Java (MIDP2.0) application that tracks news, blogs and entertainment through RSS, RDF or Atom feeds. There are currently over 200,000 RSS feeds in the Mobispine mobile directory; users can easily search for and add additional feeds, which will then be added to the directory and available to the Mobispine user community.

I’ll take you on a walkthrough of its expected features, then get into some of its more distinctive touches.
Mobispine’s colorful GUI utilizes widgets to navigate the three main views: My News, Explore and Bookmarks.

My News displays the headlines from your subscribed feeds:

Explore displays a list of common categories for users to explore:

Bookmarks displays all your subscribed feeds:

Mobispine gives you the ability to search articles and feeds by specific tags and keywords. To use the search feature, press the left selection key on your Nseries device to bring up the Options, then scroll down and select Search.

When viewing headlines in the My News section or in the search results, you can expand the article by using the scroll key to highlight the article you want to read, and press the select button. The expanded view will display most, if not all, of the article and any included images. At the end of the expanded view, there are multiple icons - Read More, More from this source, Subscribe, Share Article and Close.

Users can also transfer existing RSS feed subscriptions to Mobispine from another online or mobile RSS service through an OPML file. Go to the Mobispine FAQ [1] to get detailed instructions on how to export your bookmarks into an OPML file from various popular feed readers, as well as instructions on how to import the OPML file into Mobispine.

Mobispine’s site online offers additional features, including the ability to sign up for a Mobispine blog, where users can post blog entries and upload multimedia content like pictures, videos, etc. The Mobispine site also allows users to browse the feed directory, view feeds, search feeds, rate feeds, comment on feeds, import and export OPML files, and also provides recommendations to suggest other popular feeds related to your interests.

Aside from blogging, one of the features that Mobispine touts to back up their “mobile media browser” claim is the mashup function. A mashup is a web application that combines data from more than one source into a single integrated tool. Mobispine mashups can be located by pressing the left selection key on your Nseries device, then navigate to Options > Settings > Mashups. They include popular sites and services such as Facebook, Twitter, del.icio.us, Flickr and Last.fm.

Mobispine minimizes the users’ data usage by downloading text-only versions of feeds; only when you click on a headline of interest will you download the article and any included images. According to their site, Mobispine’s bandwidth consumption is up to 20 times lower than other mobile browsers and RSS alternatives. When properly exiting the application, the Mobispine exit splash screen displays the data usage for that session, allowing the user to monitor their bandwidth.  This benefits all users, especially those that may be on a slower data connection, or those who do not have an unlimited data plan.

You can also access the current Data Usage at any time by pressing the left selection key on your Nseries device to bring up the Options, then navigate to Tools > Data Usage as seen below:

Mobispine is compatible with most (if not all) Nseries devices; I tested it on the N95. To get Mobispine, go to get.mobispine.com, or download the app to your computer and install through the Install Applications feature in the Nokia Software Suite.

Have you discovered similar applications that you find useful? Talk about them in the comments section.

[1] http://www.mobispine.com/Support/FAQ.do

One Comment

i have loved nokia phones for years and i have been a nokia user for years but these nseries phones make me fall in love all over again. I have to get one ASAP!
Daryl Johnson 12:25 am 10.08.08