iPhone users have it made. They can whip up sports scores or the weather to get up-to-date information wherever they are. Ok, we admit, anyone can do this-but iPhone users just look cool doing it, thanks to their little widget-launching icons. Now, Windows Mobile users can join in on the fun.

 

Today a company called Zumobi launched a free version of its beta software (also called Zumobi) that brings a similar widget system to Windows Mobile phones, which it calls "tiles." Better yet, Zumobi puts a spin on the whole widget/tile idea by allowing users to send tiles to each other.

 

Currently, there are tiles for news, stocks, Amazon.com, flight information, a blackjack game, Flickr, and Family Guy voice-clips-among others. We clicked "AP National" to check some quick news, and found that although the software had a brief lag, it ran surprisingly well. Other tiles can be added from the Zumobi Web site.

 

We gave the beta a test this morning to get a feel for what to expect in upcoming releases. Right now, there are four Zumobi areas, each with four tiles that create a 16-tile view system. When all of the tiles are together on the screen, it looks like you're about to play a game of memory.  On a touchscreen phone, you can select a tile by clicking on it, but if you don't have a touchscreen phone, you can also punch in a corresponding number: 1,3,7, or 9.

 

Navigating with the tiles is quite enjoyable on a touchscreen. Clicking a Zumobi menu tile zooms in to a group of four application tiles. Another click on a tile will launch its associated application. A finger drag across the screen will shoot you to another section of four tiles.

 

Wondering why you can get this software for free? So were we. Each launched tile has a small, albeit unobtrusive, advertisement at the bottom.

 

Zumobi also comes pre-loaded with an Amazon tile, which seems more like spam than a useful program. Nor did we care for the "Celeb Watch" tile. Thankfully you can replace these tiles very easily. You just need to visit gallery.zumobi.com and select a new tile, then click "Send to my phone." We chose a hangman game, and it arrived in about thirty seconds. Then we replaced the lame "Celeb Watch" tile with Hangman.

 

At the bottom of the screen is a menu which expands to reveal an inbox for sending and receiving files. Right now, the touchscreen feature doesn't work in the menu so we had to result back to our navigation pad. Sections like "Popular" and "Select" have a "Coming Soon" label on them so we're excited to see what fills the void.

 

Overall, we see some potential in Zumobi and hope to see more applications arrive from its SDK in the future. Stay tuned for our full review, and check out Zumobi for yourself at www.zumobi.com.