It’s not new, but I just discovered this mobile FriendFeed client.  It’s called FFtoGo and the mobile URL is fftogo.com.  It wasn’t developed by FriendFeed but is the creation of Benjamin Golub. He was later hired by FriendFeed but FFtoGo remains independent. The code for FFtoGo is open source, there’s even a link to the source repository at the bottom of each FFtoGo page.

If you aren’t familiar with FriendFeed (FF), it’s a service that lets you roll up the various aspects of your online persona into a single web page and feed.  You point FF at your blog and your accounts on Twitter, Jaiku, Flicker, Facebook, YouTube, etc.  FF can bring in content from 59 services in all.  It aggregates all your posts and updates from the various services and makes them available on a web page (mine is friendfeed.com/yeswap) and as a RSS feed, Facebook application, iGoogle Widget, email feed and an iPhone web app.

FFtoGo is a faithful reproduction of the FriendFeed web experience but reformatted for mobile usability with  smaller page size and numeric access keys that let you jump to menu items with a single key press.  It’s highly configurable using a Settings menu.  You can control the number of items per page, whether to display images and if external links should be mobilized using the Google transcoder.  It’s a good thing the items per page option is available. The default of 30 items results in a page size of 44 KB, too large for many feature phones. The low Ready.mobi score is due almost entirely to the page size issue.  I’d like to see FFtoGo default to 10 items or less to make it compatible with more handsets.

Another FriendFeed mobile option is the official FriendFeed iPhone web app at friendfeed.com/iphone. Unlike many iPhone sites, FriendFeed’s works in other “full web” mobile browsers as long as they can handle its 250 KB page size.  The iPhone site quite usable in S60WebKit, although a bit of horizontal scrolling is required, but really shines in Opera Mini’s “Fit-to-width” Mobile View. I actually prefer the iPhone app over FFtoGo in both WebKit and Opera Mini (bottom image) because you can log into it with your FriendFeed password. Because FFtoGo is a third party application, it requires the use of your unwieldy and very mobile unfriendly 12 character, alphanumeric FriendFeed “Remote Key“.

With FFtoGo creator Benjamin Golub now at FriendFeed, I’m hoping we will see the release of a lighter weight official mobile version that works with all mobile browsers and does away with the need for the mobile key. Source: mjelly

Filed in: Wap Review Directory – Technology/Mobile/Mobile Social

Ratings: Content: Usability:

Mobile Link: fftogo.com

Ready.mobi score: 2 “bad”