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    mjelly creates mobile apps search engine

    Mike Butcher

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    Mike Butcher is the European Editor for TechCrunch. A former grunge rock drummer, he became a long time journalist, and has since written for UK national newspapers and magazines including The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The New Statesman. Mike is also a co-founder and shareholder of TechHub, a co-working space/service/community with several locations... → Learn More

    Wednesday, October 8th, 2008
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    Outside of the rather good iPhone App store, the problem with mobile applications is finding the bastards. Back in the day it used to be easy – there were hardly any. If you wanted a new app for your Palm Pilot you just went to PalmGear, or similar. Now there are thousands, probably millions, stretched across multiple platforms and handsets. Plus the reviews and ratings are getting locked in. The iPhone’s App Store is great, but all those reviews and ratings are inside that store. The same goes for GetJar. What we need is an aggregator / search engine which has Digg functionality so we can rate apps up and down and it’s independent of all the platforms and handsets.

    Uk startup MJelly has realised this and launched a search and discovery service for mobile 2.0 sites, software and applications at www.mjelly.com on the PC and, cleveryl, m.mjelly.com on your mobile.

    Founder James Coops knows his mobile stuff so this should be a good resource. In addition to listings of mobile web sites mjelly provides a free applications download service for mobile software, similar to the iphone app store, but available for a wider range of phones such as Nokia, Sony Ericsson, and Motorola.

    Slight problem though – until you guys all go visit and start rating the many listed apps there’s not a lot of data to go on. I also wanted more simple, straight pointers to “iPhone apps”, say. The interface could probably also do with a nicer sheen, but as this is a boostrap startup we’ll let them off for now.

    • anonymous

      you can browse iphone appstore without itunes here http://app-store.appspot.com

    • http://blog.mjelly.com james

      Mike, thanks for the post and the useful comments. We piloted the platform with ringtones and have had quite a lot of ratings for the best ones so the ranking system should start to make a bit more sense over time. We’ve deliberately made the web interface very simple, inspired by the early de.licio.us look and feel, and to leave room for new features. Shouts to Stu and Alan for being developer rockstars – looking forward to adding some new stuff we have planned for the site.

    • Sam Judd

      You say that: “mjelly provides a free applications download service for mobile software, similar to the iphone app store, but available for a wider range of phones such as Nokia, Sony Ericsson, and Motorola.”

      I am not sure this is correct, as this implies that they host the apps for download. I had a go at the site… whenever I navigated to an app and clicked ‘Download App’, it took me to an external download page belonging to the owner of the app – e.g. I clicked to download the Google maps application and it took me to the Google website.

      So it is not a “free applications download service” and so does not handle compatibility issues and the user will have a different user experience for the download at each external site they visit.

      Having said all that, there is a place for a link directory for mobile apps with Digg functionality, and I really do like the interface on the mobile site.

    • http://blog.mjelly.com james (mjelly)

      Hey Sam – thanks for the comment – you are right, we are focusing on the navigation and discovery part of the user experience at the moment and will look to start hosting apps ourselves over time as we build out the platform. It might be a good idea for us to flag to the user that they are going to a third party site for the download so thanks for the constructive input.

    • http://www.getjar.com Bill Scott, VP Sales/BD at GetJar

      Guys, we think it’s great that mjelly is helping people discover how to download mobile apps. Our developers will appreciate it. We’ve worked very hard for years to prefect the download experience through our website and wap site (and through App Stores that we’re building for mobile operators), but we’re always trying to improve our UI, so if you have comments please post them on the GetJar Forum. To clarify, GetJar has over 16 million downloads/month now. GetJar hosts Java, Symbian, Windows Mobile, Blackberry, Palm, and Flash Lite apps. Android apps are coming soon. For the record, we do host Google Maps for Mobile in our data center. All downloads from GetJar are hosted by GetJar.

    • http://blog.mjelly.com james (mjelly)

      I am a massive fan of getjar – in fact, we’d love to plug into getjar to drive users to their site to download the apps. (Bill i may give you a call!) Phoload.com, which was featured in TCUK a while ago is probably more similar in features, as well as sites like handango or mobihand.

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