AT&T's (Yes, AT&T's) New 3-D Web Browser

A slightly different way to surf spring from an unlikely source.
By Matt Ransford Posted 03.28.2008 at 4:03 pm 2 Comments
AT&T's Pogo: Photo by Techcrunch

Against all odds, AT&T is entering the browser market with an application called Pogo. The hitch isn’t in faster rendering or better Web standards, but in a three-dimensional interface for organizing your windows, bookmarks, favorites, and history. Think of it like Coverflow with a z-axis for the websites you visit.

Instead of tabs at the top, you get a scrollable strip on the bottom which displays thumbnails of all the sites you’ve visited in a session. You can pop that up into a three-dimensional view and drag the sites around into collections. Each collection can then be associated with a tag; that tag can be applied to any page as you browse in the future to add it to the tagged collection. Your can manipulate your history and searches the same way.

Whether the visual tricks prove to be useful will likely play out once the beta becomes public. The early word online is “what’s the point”? We’ve seen this kind of fancy rendering subbing for better organization before—in my experience it’s more a processor drain than an easier way to find things.

[Via Techcrunch]

2 Comments

Comments

dontbother
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 03/29/08 at 3:30 pm

This is just an attempt by AT&T to familiarize and befriend web users with themselves in their broader scheme to stake claim of the entire medium. I assume they think that their fancy browser will take off and be loved by people who will then be more willing to allow them to control the web.

AT&T has nothing to do with the world wide web except for the fact that they have been striving to own it for years, so if their 'sudden interest' comes as a surprise to you, well, it shouldn't.

Reject this attempt by a corporate juggernaut-- its a wolf in sheep's clothing. At any rate, it appears to be another visuals-heavy waste of processing power that isn't worth bothering with in the first place.

2 out of 3 people found this comment helpful
Russian

from Fairfield, CT

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 03/30/08 at 7:32 pm

I guess it would be kind of cool to play around with it for a few days, but after that it will just be annoying. People like simplicity and speed, this is totally the opposite of the two. Only teenagers would really like this(those who have powerhouse computers) but otherwise those with normal computers will still prefer speed over interface. Sorry AT & T, this just wont cut it. :(

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