What it is says on the Tino

At first glance, Golden Gekko’s new online-make-your-own-app service, Tino, seems like quite a natty idea, enabling anyone with a browser and a brain to knock up a mobile application in minutes. A closer look at the output of Tino’s app engine reveals that what you can create is about as much an app as anything Khalid Shaikh made for the iPhone. A package of content: yes. An app: no.

Of course, Tino’s model relies on the punter going back to make ‘ten apps a year.’ Why should I have to do that? For the same money I can hire a developer (like Morodo) to make one app that can be updated with new content OTA as and when I want. For that kind of money, why build an app at all? It would be faster and cheaper to build a website that configures for mobile browsers. And yes, Morodo can do that for you too.

Over at m-strat.org, Jose has written a great piece on small business mobile strategy that demonstrates, by example, the need for SMEs to embrace the mobile web. Something more useful then Tino might be a desktop or online tool that helped people create and manage simple mobile websites?