Widgets for wireless

The wireless Web is strewn with potholes and speed bumps, but John SanGiovanni hopes that widgets can pave the way.
SanGiovanni is the founder of ZenZui, a spinoff of Microsoft Corp. that will emerge from stealth mode last week at CTIA Wireless 2007. The company offers a downloadable application that allows users to customize their handsets with “tiles”-clickable icons that can be used to access content or navigate to a mobile Internet site.
“Browsing from a mobile device on the Web is a totally miserable experience,” SanGiovanni said. “We invented a completely new model of browsing content inspired by a high frame-rate interface.”
A favorite of fixed-line Internet surfers, widgets are quickly getting attention in wireless. The icons provide a single-click path to wireless Web sites, eliminating the need to drill down through carrier decks or triple-type cumbersome URLs on a handset.
ZenZui uses a matrix of as many as 36 tiles that serve as portals for content partners including Nike and the Fox network. The company hopes to offer as many as 1,000 content partners in the coming months, allowing users to go online to pick their favorites and personalize their handsets.
The advertising-supported application will be free and available both through carriers and directly to consumers later this year. The offering launches this week on Windows Mobile-enabled devices, but SanGiovanni said the company is working on Java and BREW versions.
“We’re powering it with a really cool ad-based business model,” SanGiovanni said. “These companies, both brands and agencies, have these huge budgets for wireless marketing that they literally cannot spend.”
And widgets provide an opportunity for even the smallest publishers to secure a kind of deck space. ULocate Communications Inc., a Framingham, Mass.-based startup, earlier this month unveiled a widgets-based, GPS-enabled application that provides local content. The company’s partners include Zillow.com and Eventful.com-two players that are far too small to get real estate on carriers’ decks, but can get a kind of “residence” on the handsets of consumers who choose those widgets.
What’s more, widgets can be far easier to build than stand-alone applications, according to uLocate chief executive Walter Doyle.
“We take a 12- to 18-month process (to create an application) and drop it down to two to four days, depending on the complexity level of the widget, then you’re on deck,” Doyle said. “We’re estimating we’ll have upwards of 500 widgets in the not-too-distant future.”
ZenZui is backed with $12 million in Series A funding from SeaPoint Ventures and other investors, and Microsoft continues to own a stake in the company. The firm is courting carriers, hoping to get deck space in exchange for shared advertising revenues.