Englewood Cliffs, NJ – September 23, 2008 – KeyToss (http://keytoss.com), a fast-growing Internet start-up focused on the global smartphone market, announced the release of major features to its powerful, personalizable smartphone portal.
For the first time in a full-featured, mobile portal, users will be able to add virtually any link to their personal web pages, and share them with others.
KeyToss enables four types of custom links:
- links to mobile-friendly pages
- links to pages that are automatically converted to mobile format using one of four mobile transcoders
- links to user-selected news feeds
- links to Google Local searches customized to the user’s location
Users can choose from a set of pre-selected links, or enter their own links, either by typing them directly, or by clicking a bookmarklet while browsing from a PC.
Other new features include a Gmail status module and a mobile transcoder module. The Gmail module alerts the user to new messages in the selected Gmail account, and provides a direct link to the Gmail Mobile website. The mobile transcoder module gives users a choice of four mobile transcoders – Google, Mowser, Skweezer, and Phonify – to convert any webpage into mobile-friendly format.
The KeyToss mobile portal is available at http://m.keytoss.com. The service is free.
Currently in beta, KeyToss gives smartphone users a great deal of power and flexibility in personalizing their mobile homepages. The closest competing products are iGoogle and Yahoo mobile beta – both of which are working to catch up to KeyToss in power, usability, and feature set. WAP Review, a leading mobile review site, in reviewing an earlier release of KeyToss, proclaimed that KeyToss was a better service than iGoogle for smartphone users. One advantage of iGoogle cited by WAP Review was its integration with gmail; but KeyToss eliminated that small gap today.
KeyToss works great on Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, PalmOS, and Symbian.
“The smartphone segment of the mobile phone market is growing rapidly, but until recently, it’s been neglected by the major Internet players,” said KeyToss founder, Sam Kim. “Mobile websites tended to be designed for the smallest screens and weakest browsers. And more recently, major sites have designed simple, large-type sites for the iPhone. But smartphone users want to be able to do more, not less. Our users tell us we’re addressing a major need.”
Key features include:
Access to over 50 search tools in one search bar.
Tools include Google, IMDb, Amazon, Yelp, Dictionary.com, Wikipedia, Yahoo, MSN, and Yellowpages.com. Users can select which tools to include in a drop-down menu, and can access the full set of tools at any time using keywords. The major search players are unable to offer this major convenience to users. Even Yahoo, with its newly declared “open” strategy, is unlikely to give users the option of using competing search engines.
Localized searches.
KeyToss saves the user time by automatically sending the user’s pre-selected location for searches on Google Local, Yelp, and Yellowpages.com. The user can store an unlimited number of locations and can switch between locations with one click.
News feed summaries.
Add just about any RSS or Atom news feed, and control how to display it. Number of headlines, summary display, conversion of article links to mobile-friendly format, and choice of mobile transcoder. Users benefit from knowing what’s popular with the growing KeyToss community, which has shared over 1,300 news feeds.
Localized Links.
Location-aware websites allow users to customize content to their location, but typically require the step of entering additional information. KeyToss saves users time by embedding location information in the links. For example, when a user clicks on movietickets.com, the site will immediately display movie theaters in the user’s own location. If the user changes locations within KeyToss, the links automatically update.
Powerful browser-based desktop interface.
Users can benefit from a large screen and high bandwidth while designing and managing their custom mobile portal from their computers. Convenient bookmarklets enable users to add new mobile sites and news feeds to their portal with one or two clicks.
File Transfers.
KeyToss makes it easy to move documents, applications, and media files from the computer to the phone. This eliminates the need to manipulate memory cards or deal with cables and sync software just to move a single file.
Sports scores, weather forecasts, and stock quotes.
All customized to the user’s preferences, of course.