12. Getting Social with Skyfire

Early smart phone users tended to browse the Web for basic information, such as for addresses, directions, opening times and other information that was useful. But when you look at the Web in a desktop browser, it’s as much about sharing information and connecting with people. Skyfire takes some steps in that direction by letting you add Facebook and Twitter to the list of feeds on the start page and it also has some simple tools for sharing information.

To start with, you need to associate your Facebook or Twitter account with Skyfire. This will add Facebook status updates and tweets from people you follow to the list of news feeds on the start page (if this gets overwhelming, you can use the Filter drop-down to choose which feeds are visible). Now you can click Update My Status to send a Twitter message and update Facebook at the same time. 

You can also send a link to the page you're currently viewing to Facebook or Twitter from the Share menu. You get the option of adding a short comment to explain the link and the URL is shortened to a custom Skyfire URL to fit into the character limits for messages. You can also send a link by SMS, but oddly not by email–which would have been a useful way to send links back to yourself to look at in a full Web browser.

There's a "Share this article" link for all the RSS feed stories on your start page as well. It’s easier to click this than to find the (oddly named) Page Online command from the Share menu, but we’re not sure if many people will  want to share something as soon as they see it rather than after they read the story and the links mean you see fewer stories on the start page.

You can share the old-fashioned way, by downloading images to your phone. You do this by pressing and holding the cursor or choosing "Save image" from the Actions menu when you have an image selected. This doesn’t work for password-protected files, though.