BlackBerry Cool

I have to continue to ask. Who thinks Viigo is useful in the least? I’ve installed it several different times, but think it’s one of the least useful applications available, primarily because it does a million different things, but none of them particularly well. Protip for Viigo developers: do 1 or 2 things excellently. Say no to the rest.

Thank you very much for the comment Josh, we appreciate the candor. It’s unfortunate you aren’t getting the same level of satisfaction the vast majority of Viigo users do. Essentially, what you say we should do, do 1 or 2 things excellently, is how we have come to be the most popular third party application on the BlackBerry smartphone. That one thing is to bring content or services that are dispersed around the internet and make them available in one location (Viigo), in a fashion that is easy to access, always current and mobile friendly. As such, Viigo will continue to add new features at a services level on the front end, such as Craigslist to keep to the subject of the blog post, while our engineers optimize the platform at the back end so as to continually improve the performance of the application.

Josh, I couldn’t agree more. First off, I was a big fan of Viigo last year because it provided content that was previously unavailable to BB users. However, with the introduction of app world and a new found enthusiasm for mainstream BB apps, the availability of content has grown. As a result, I now gravitate towards programs that deliver content in a form that is natural, intuitive and full featured (after all, an RSS feed is not the best way to view some content). Here is a rundown of Viigo’s content categories and a list of apps that, in my opinion, provide a better experience…

RSS – Viigo does win in this area, but there are other free options that work well, like Upvise & FreeRange.

News – AP ($2.99) is great because it downloads the full articles. Reuters is similar and free

Weather – Weathereye, Weatherbug, BB push notification are all free so pick your poison. I personally love BerryWeather ($9.99), its worth the money.

Sports – This is the only one I struggle with. Mobile sites work well (ESPN, CBS). GetSportz is not bad, but I am not sold on its updating speed yet. I am sure someone will come up with a pure “scores and schedules” type app soon.

Entertainment – AP/Reuters for news. Poynt for movies, etc

Local – Business? Poynt. Traffic? Google Maps! Opentable will have a BB app soon.

Flights – Worldmate Live for travelers. Airline mobile sites work perfectly well for the occasional traveler.

Stocks & Finance – Bloomberg or iStockManager, both free, both awesome. Pageonce ($9.99/yr) has its own app that works very well.

Podcast – I am not a podcast person, and since this has always been a “future” feature, I will defer judgment until it has been up and running for a while. I hear Stitcher works well though.

Yes, having all these programs takes up more space, but the user experience (again, in my opinion, no offense to Viigo) is better. All that said, if you want an all-in-one app, Viigo is still the best option.

As Viigo adds items to their program, does the install end up being much larger? Or is everything handled on their servers? I’m asking because I don’t have much room left on my Bold and would rather not install a program that keeps growing. How big is the install file?

RT @BlackBerryCool: Viigo adds Craigslist to their ever-expanding application http://bit.ly/jQucr

Thank you Sr for the Podcast plug in regards to Stitcher. I found a new app for net pod on the go.

Phreqd,

no new features we add do not affect the application size. it is as you suggested, handled by the servers …

cheers.

Ahmad Nassri.
Director, Web Services.
Viigo Inc.

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