14 DAY TRIAL // After Refresh Mobile impressed the public with their Mobizines service, that enabled the users to download mobile versions of magazines or websites, Hands On Mobile takes the idea a little bit further by presenting HOMBRE (Hands On Mobile Run-time Environment), that, like Mobizines, is a Java application that allows the download of websites or other content onto the mobile phone.
"If someone's already got a website, this is an easy way of mobilising that," says Eric Hobson, president and general manager of Hands On EMEA & SE Asia. "We can take a feed off a website, suck that up into a Java application, and have it dynamically updating, with a lot of the graphics stored in the application itself, so it loads up quite fast."
HOMBRE is very useful from many points of view. It can provide the users with random information and can even be used for advertising. Hands On was also talking to the Learning Skills Council in the UK about including training courses or job vacancy information into the service, hoping that this way they could provide useful information for young people.
Appart from that, Hands On also presented an application called Phame that allows users to post images, music or videos. They can also pay to download other people's uploaded content and vote for whichever they consider the best.
Another Java Application Hands On takes pride in is called Match Center Live. The application serves up football-related information such as news, results or latest scores, and could prove to be much better than the SMS alert service most operators have to offer. Considering the fact that football draws a great deal of advertising, advertisers might even sponsor such an application, and the users could in the end get it for free.