March 27, 2007
ZenZui and the Art of Mobile Web Surfing
In the battle to create a better mobile Internet experience, a small start-up company and offspring of Microsoft Corp., is taking a game-like approach to browsing the Web on a cellphone. The Wall Street Journal reports.
"Split off from Microsoft's research labs, the new venture, ZenZui today will announce plans for a downloadable application that allows users to browse through mobile content such as sports scores, recipes and movie times, navigating through icons with their handset keys. After a trial phase, it will be available for the majority of the U.S. cellphone market by the end of the year."
Picture left is a a view of the ZenZui interface, which allows users to zoom in on Web content from their cellphones.
"Seattle-based ZenZui thinks it has a user-friendly approach. Its design allows users to zoom in and out of different clusters of icons, and even swap new icons in and out of the application through a Web site or their mobile phone.
In its current test phase, users will be limited to using 16 icons, sponsored and created by a handful of companies, including travel search site Kayak.com and Traffic.com, a real-time traffic service.
Eventually, ZenZui will publish the tools to allow any brand to create an icon, and the company expects to offer about 1,000 icons by year end."
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