Newsboy: The coolest way to read the news

MobileGroup Inc. (MGI), a Philippine-based mobile applications development company, recently launched "Newsboy." This Java application allows users to easily read the day’s news on their mobile phones.

Philstar.com and a number of newspapers have partnered with MGI to make their news content available on Newsboy.

This revolutionary mobile service will surely benefit busy people who need to be updated with the latest news stories. Since Newsboy is installed on the phone, mobile subscribers can literally go anywhere and still have access to their favorite newspaper at the touch of a finger.

The menu-driven interface of the application makes it very easy to use (perfect even for non-techies). A "Save" function provides users with the capability to store specific news articles as well.

Mobile subscribers of Smart can download the Newsboy MIDlet by simply visiting the Smart WAP site. The Newsboy link can be found under the "What’s New" category.

Upon clicking the Newsboy link, details and information about the application will be displayed and the user just needs to click on "Download Newsboy" to start the download and subsequent installation process. Once installed, the user can click on the Newsboy icon and select the Smart GPRS connection.

This service will also be available soon for Globe and Sun subscribers.

Newsboy starts by displaying the names of the different news partners. A user can simply highlight and click the preferred news partner to browse the articles’ titles for free.

The full text of an article is then loaded when a user clicks on its title. Each downloaded article costs only P2.50.

The software engineers of MGI designed Newsboy to run on most MIDP 2.0-compliant phones from various manufacturers such as Motorola, Nokia, O2, Sony Ericsson and Samsung. It has been tested on several handsets the list of which is available on the Newsboy WAP site (wap.newsboyonline.com).

MGI has a support hotline – (632) 751-4050 –to help users configure the application on their phones.

The Newsboy content is also accessible via a WAP browser. Users just have to open wap.newsboyonline.com and the same news content is displayed on the phone’s WAP browser. This is ideal for handsets that are not able to run Java applications.