Friend of All About Symbian, Asri Al Baker from i-symbian.com, has done it again. As mentioned in this week's Insight Podcast, he has just published two more WRT widgets for launching advanced mobile website versions of Google services. This time he has created launchers for GTalk, Google's instant messaging service, and Google Calendar. These come after Asri's other widgets for GMail and Google Reader (which we reported on here and here). The websites utilised by these launchers are the default views found on iOS and Android browsers, but are available to any mobile browser, if you know the right URL's. Read on for screenshots and more.

Application icons are more useful on the home screen than generic bookmark icons.

Because these are simply mobile websites, one could keep these links as browser bookmarks and not go to the lengths of installing pseudo-applications. However, Symbian still fails to show favicons when bookmarks are added as shortcuts to the home screen. This leaves the user faced with a confusing row of identical icons (without extreme measures). Therefore, if you live in Google services, these WRT widgets have the benefit of using individual icons.

Google Calendar and Google Reader

Having spoken to Asri about his creations, there is the chance we'll see more of these widgets. He says he can also create launchers for Google Buzz and Google Tasks. However, HTML5 compatibility has been a stumbling block for other services. So we'll have to wait until Symbian gets its new web browser to see launchers for Google Docs, YouTube and PicasaWeb.

Google Talk

Google Mail

You can download the widgets by visiting the appropriate posts on i-symbian.com

• GMail
• Google Reader
• GTalk
• Google Calendar

David Gilson for All About Symbian, 8th December 2010.