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SurfCube browser wins Microsoft Innovation Award, latest version packs YouTube punch (video)
If you're feeling too boxed in with Internet Explorer on your Windows Phone, consider checking out SurfCube, which brings your browsing experience outside the box -- literally. Since we last visited the app, an ad-supported version was introduced alongside the $1.99 paid version, allowing users to spin the browser without any commitment. This useful (and entertaining) functionality was enough to help the developer score a Microsoft Innovation Award for smartphone applications -- a feat it has accomplished twice before. Fresh off its win, SurfCube 3.0 debuted with numerous bug fixes, performance improvements, and -- perhaps most importantly -- YouTube support. It also claims to have the best tab support of any WP7 browser, a point you can judge for yourself in the video just past the break.
SurfCube gives Windows Phone 7 the 3D browser it needed so desperately
If there's one thing the 90s taught us, it's that these silly 2D interfaces are only a passing fancy, and soon everything will be VRML-based mirror worlds of our physical space. SurfCube is a small, tentative step in that direction, turning the browser into a fake 3D experience of sorts, with favorites on "top," and history and settings on the "sides," while the front face of the cube is, naturally, the browser part. You can get around with swipes and flashy tilt gestures, and for $1.99 on the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace it's hard to go wrong. Just remember our VRML warning, and start investing in MicroVideoGoggles Inc. stock with your carphone once you get home from the record store.
Switched On: It browsed from another dimension!
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment: Microsoft named its browser a humble explorer; Apple encompassed a whole safari. Do you get the sense that the developers of the 3D browser "SpaceTime" are setting their sights a bit higher?Most 3D browsers from the early days of the web, such as those from ActiveWorlds and Blaxxun Interactive, became best-known for avatar-based chat, in many ways the precursors of Second Life. 3B, a more recent effort, allows its users to set up web pages and photos on walls or billboards in various 3D environments such as Tech (think bridge of USS Enterprise), Beach, Lounge and what the developers call "Girly" (sort of a pre-teen girl's bedroom) presumably located in Hannah, Montana.SpaceTime, though, differs from all these avatar cyberplaygrounds, using 3D instead as a means to more visual web navigation. Large thumbnails of web pages float in front of a slowly drifting Cirrus cloud background; double-clicking them travels through space and brings them full-screen. Alone, this would be little more than eye candy, but SpaceTime's design goals kick in when you choose a search from one of its partners, which include Google and YouTube, Yahoo and Flickr, Amazon and eBay, among others.
