Get free widgets on your mobile now

If you're familiar with the gadgets and widgets on Windows Vista and Mac OS X, you'll be pleased to hear that the same functionality is now available for your mobile.

WidSets says there are now over 1,400 widgets available, free of charge. The mini-web applications can deliver friends' Flickr images, news headlines, Ebay bid updates, sports results, or other services direct to your mobile.

The Nokia-owned WidSets service is currently compatible with more than 300 mobile phones. Nokia N73, E50, E60, E61, and E61i phones have a link to WidSets in their Download! folders. Future Nokia smartphones will have WidSets embedded, Nokia revealed in April .

To get WidSets widgets on your phone you first need to register at www.widsets.com , and then download the free Java application over the air to your phone. The widgets displayed on your phone screen can be selected online, or via the mobile interet directly from your phone. You can either choose from one of the widgets listed on the WidSets website or create your own. Currently, only 10 per cent of the listed 1,400 WidSets widgets have been developed by WidSets themselves - 90 per cent are user generated.

WidSets set up

"Users can create their very own widgets from the WidSets website in just 3 minutes," Kaj HeGe Häggman, business development manager of WidsSets at Nokia, told Tech.co.uk.

You can build your own mobile widget using a combination of pre-existing templates and RSS feeds from the sites you wish to access - with no programming experience required. A more advanced developers kit will be introduced in the summer, ahead of the full WidSets 1.0 release.

WidSets revealed to Tech.co.uk that it has been in discussions with various social networking and content sharing sites to develop interactive widget services further - including using cameraphone features for some chat applications.