Yahoo lets developers build standalone mobile widgets

By Giselle Abramovich

September 11, 2008

Yahoo exec Marco Boerries at the CTIA show. Picture by TechFever Network

SAN FRANCISCO – Yahoo has expanded the capabilities of its mobile development platform Blueprint to drive the development of widgets and mobile Web sites.

Instead of just being able to create mobile widgets that run within Yahoo's flagship mobile application Yahoo Go, developers can now use Blueprint to build standalone applications for Java, Windows Mobile and Symbian devices.

“Blueprint is very special because it has a faster development time,” said Marco Boerries, executive vice president of Connected Life at Yahoo Inc. "It allows for the creation of a beautiful user experience.

“It also runs on thousands of devices so there’s none of that making separate applications for the iPhone or the BlackBerry,” he said.

Yahoo is using Blueprint internally to develop iPhone applications and is in discussion with Apple on how to make Blueprint for the iPhone available to other developers.

The company also announced the preview availability of Yahoo oneConnect, the new social address book that brings together a user’s circle of friends, their lives and all the ways they communicate into one seamless, easy-to-use application.

Yahoo oneConnect is now available in the Apple iPhone App Store and is also expected to support additional devices in the coming months.

With Yahoo oneConnect, users can integrate all their contacts, send instant or SMS messages, post their status and view the latest activity from their favorite social networks - making it easy to stay connected and in the loop.

"Developing applications for the fragmented mobile ecosystem is a Herculean effort that often results in developers creating an application that serves the least common denominator of mobile devices with a poor user experience, and an inability to effectively scale," Mr. Boerries said.

"Yahoo Blueprint solves the most challenging problem plaguing today's mobile landscape,” he said. “Now with one click, you can write once and have mobile services run across a critical mass of devices and operating systems, potentially reaching millions of users.

Yahoo has outlined the following reasons developers should use Blueprint:

- Faster development time – develop mobile content quicker and more efficiently
- Beautiful user interface – optimizes and renders the presentation of content based on the unique device capabilities
- Powerful feature set – such as maps and location based services, with more features expected to become available in the near future.
- Thousand of devices – runs across a wide range of phones, from smart phones to low-end devices
- Completely open - anyone can develop their application, with customizable features and monetization options

Yahoo Blueprint contains a full SDK for third-party developers.

By submitting Blueprint applications to Yahoo's mobile widget gallery, developers can make their applications available potentially to millions of mobile users around the world.

To date, mobile users have downloaded applications written in Blueprint across thousands of mobile devices from manufactures including Research in Motion, Nokia and Motorola.

Yahoo has teamed up with leading mobile Web development houses Crisp Wireless, MNet and Netbiscuits to offer their extensive client list the ability to have their mobile Web properties developed on Yahoo Blueprint.

These partnerships should allow for a substantial increase in the distribution for the enablers' clients.

These partnerships are the latest step in Yahoo's efforts to link developers, publishers and carriers into an integrated mobile ecosystem.

“We want to turn everyone into mobile users,” Mr. Boerries said. “The development platform wis our effort to create global mobile monetization."