StickiWidgets

We just received an email about Clever Hippo. They claim to be a search engine for apps and widgets.

From their email:

Clever Hippo Application Search is a search engine for applications and widgets across the web. A more robust version of our Facebook search app, the new Clever Hippo searches the thousands of applications and widgets that are available for your favorite social network, mobile device, blog, home page, and desktop. Clever Hippo Application Search helps you find the apps and widgets that you are looking for.

After playing around with it for a few minutes, it does seem interesting. There is a fair amount of apps and widgets already in the search engine and there is a submission process for developers to get their apps/widgets included.

The search results are as expected and they have added a voting system for users to vote for popular apps or widgets.

Clever Hippo themselves have both a Facebook app and a HTML widget.

If you have ever used Facebook’s app search, you know how bad it is, which creates a space for Clever Hippo to fill. However, if Facebook ever fixes their app directory and search it will severely impact Clever Hippo.

Branching out to other platforms and systems is a good move for them, but it will be tough to compete with existing well established widget directories. At this point, it’s still better and easier to go to WidgetBox or Apple for specialized searches, among others. However, there is space for a cross platform app and widget specific search engine. So, if they do it right, it could still pay off.

For now, Clever Hippo is pretty basic. For us, its real benefit is that it is a replacement for the broken Facebook app search. We will have to see how they develop and grow the search engine to fill the app/widget search space while there’s little competition.

Some of you may find this amusing and some may not. Blendtec, the makers of the Total Blender, have been marketing their product by blending various objects and posting the videos online.

Below is the latest video.

For more videos, check out the Blendtec YouTube profile.

[via Coolz0r]

Developing for the Apple iPhone

Apple has released Web Development Guidelines for the iPhone. Developing web applications for the iPhone involves Safari 3 and Safari Web Kit engine.

From Apple:

“Developers can create Web 2.0 applications that look and behave just like the applications built into iPhone, and provide seamless integration with iPhone applications and services including making a phone call, sending an email, and displaying a location in Google Maps. Third-party applications created using web standards can extend iPhone’s capabilities without compromising its reliability or security.”

[via The Unofficial Apple Weblog]

iPhone Apps and Widgets Lists

iPhone Application List

From iPhone Application List:

“iPhoneApplicationList.com is a site dedicated to 3rd Party iPhone Applications.The iPhone has not yet been released but already developers have released some amazing apps.”

iPhone Widget List

From iPhone Widget List:

“The List is a reference site to find iPhone widget and app concepts on the web. We expect this list to evolve from prototypes and concepts to working web apps formatted specifically for the iPhone.”

[via Widgets Lab]