May 2009 Archives

Is the Palm Pre an iPhone killer? That is the question many have been asking with the launch of Palm's first webOS smartphone just days away. Today comes word that the Pre, whatever else it can do, has just caught up to the iPhone in one important respect: it is said to sync seamlessly with iTunes, according to a new report by Fortune. Supposedly, iTunes treats the Pre just like any iPhone or iPod, except in one or two ways: it can't load DRM-protected media, for example—not such a problem now that Apple's abandoned selling copy-protected songs. Unlike with other smartphones that sync with iTunes, it looks this capability was built right into the Pre firmware.

PhatWare, a veteran software developer for smartphones, has released a new line of apps, called WritePad, for the iPhone and iPod touch. Titles include parent app WritePad as well as ones called WritePad Affairs, WritePad Events, and WritePad Notes. All three products use the company's WritePad text editor with built-in handwriting recognition and editing capabilities. WritePad Affairs, WritePad Events, and WritePad Notes are available now tough iTunes App store at an introductory price of $2.99 each through the end of next month. They list for $4.99. WritePad 1.8 Demo is currently available for free. Learn more about each of these applications after the break.

hExistentialism from Ayumusoft is a new puzzle game (think Bejeweled or Tetris) for iPhoners who like to pass the time with that sort of thing. According to the e-mail I received about the title, Ayumusoft is composed of (laid off?) music and tech geeks in San Francisco who used the free time opened for them by the economic crisis to put their heads together and develop the app. At $2.99, the game is a little pricy as these things go. It sounds like fun, though, and has received good ratings from those who've tried it out so far. See here at the iTunes App Store to learn more.

Mobile Spy 3.0 for the iPhone is an app from Retina-X Studios that brings big brother to Apple's smartphone platform. With the software users can track GPS locations, SMS messages and calls of children or employees inside a SSL secured Web-based control panel. After the software is set up on the iPhone, it silently records the entire text of all SMS text messages along with the associated phone number. Mobile Spy also records inbound and outbound call information with duration of the call and an iPhone's location through GPS (every thirty minutes) when a signal is available. Immediately after activities are logged, they’re uploaded to the user's online account. In addition to the iPhone, Mobile Spy is available for the Windows Mobile and Symbian platforms.

The iPhone isn't the best cell phone. It is, however, one of the best platforms ever devised for mobile applications and -- especially -- gaming. So much so, no other mobile computing systm comes close, especially when you take Apple's App Store and over-the-air delivery system into consideration. Slate's Farhad Manjoo recently posted an article highlighting some of iPhone games he finds most addictive. Not only are these apps adddictive, they're downright cheap -- almost a steal, really. There's Flight Control from ($.99), iShoot ($2.99), Fieldrunners ($2.99), and Strategery ($1.99) to name but a few. What titles do you find the most addictive?

iPrivus is a new application that enables iPhone users to input any complete phone number and quickly receive the person's or company's name registered to the number. After receiving a call from a number not in your contact list, iPrivus will also help you identify who just called. The app can even be used to identify unknown calls on your home or business landline phones as well as numbers received via text message that carrier Caller ID services do not identify. In addition to the iPhone, iPrivus also works on a Wi-Fi-connected iPod touch. iPrivus is not cheap, however: iPhoners can purchase a year's subscription at the App Store for $44.99. Wow. See below for a video of iPrivus in action.

Last week, a placeholder for a 32GB iPhone appeared on the T-Mobile Austria Web site. That is until someone caught the error and took it down. More proof that a new iPhone model is in the offing.

Rumor has it that the next-gen iPhone, which may ship early this summer, will also sport an upgrade in internal memory (to 256MB) and processor power to 600MHz (from 400MHz). It also may gain an electronic compass and a -- much needed -- improved camera with the ability to finally take video and an autofocus lens.

[via iPhone Buzz and tuaw]

The video above is a step-by-step demonstration of how Jorge Colombo drew a recent cover of The New Yorker magazine with Brushes—a $4.99 application available here to any iPhone and iPod touch user at the iTunes App Store. According to Colombo, he drew the cover while standing for an hour outside Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum in Times Square. See here to learn more about his process and below for the finished product.

 

Smartphones continue to grab center stage in the mobile market as worldwide sales keep climbing, while basic cell phones lag behind with recording-breaking drops in purchase volume, according to a Gartner report released on Wednesday.

Sales of smartphones shined in the first quarter, up 12.7 percent to 36 million units worldwide from the same period last year, while mobile phones overall hit an historic low of 269 million sold, a drop of 9.4 percent, according to the report.

Smartphone sales represented 13.5 percent of all mobile device sales in the first quarter of 2009, compared with 11 percent in the first quarter of 2008. Gartner analysts said positive performance by Research in Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) and Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) showed that services and applications are now instrumental to smartphone sales success.

Get the full story here at InternetNews.com.

The search portal puts the brakes on its Java-based mobile app project. Get the full story here at InternetNews.com.

Piper Jaffray analyst sends the Net into a tizzy over his claims of a touchscreen table from iPhone maker. Another Silicon Valley veteran analyst thinks Apple may have a "super iPod" up its sleeve. Get the full story here at InternetNews.com.

Author: Michelle Menga

On the heels of news that Yahoo temporarily put the brakes on its Java-based mobile app development, the company just announced voice-enabled oneSearch services for its Yahoo Mobile iPhone application and for BlackBerry devices. The promise is that phone owners can search for flight numbers, local restaurants and Web sites by asking for it.

In addition to using voice to conduct a search, the Yahoo Mobile iPhone app lets callers customize the “My Interests” tab by voice as well. This is done by clicking on the “add anything” button and saying the topic of interest, and then selecting the relevant content to add.

Get the full story here at InternetNews.com.

Effort aims to strike back against the wildly successful upstart in smartphones. Get the full story here at InternetNews.com.

What's the strategy for increasing market share for the iconic iPhone in the long term? Get the full story here at InternetNews.com.

Tired of shelling out $30 a month for data services to send and receive e-mail and surf the Web from you iPhone? If so, you may be in luck. Rumor has it AT&T, the exclusive carrier of the iPhone in the U.S., is considering offering a less expensive $20 plan.

While $30 gives you unlimited data access (5GB in actuality), the supposed $20 plan will likely cap the amount of data you can send and receive over AT&T's cellular network. A cap would certainly be welcome to those families with more than one iPhone.

With voice plans for the iPhone starting at $40 per month and no way to share data plans, it would offer users some savings. Now if only there was a pot of data, not just voice minutes, users in the same family could share.

The upcoming upgrade to the iPhone firmware promises to bring a host of new features to Apple's smartphone and its sister device, the iPod touch. We also know that Apple will likely release an upgrade to the iPhone itself, with more memory and other enhancements this summer. But what about the iPhone touch's hardware? Does Apple plan to give it a boost as well? Well, if the Internet rumor mill is correct, the answer is yes. According to reports, Apple may add a built-in camera to the iPod touch. This jibes with Apple's supposed plans for a better camera with video-taking capabilities (at last) for the iPhone.

As promised, Sling Media has released a version of its SlingBox software client (already available for the BlackBerry, Palm OS, Symbian S60, and Windows Mobile platforms) for the iPhone and iPod touch.

With SlingPlayer Mobile installed on an iPhone, those with a Slingbox device attached to their television will be able view 'placeshifted' cable, satellite, or digital video recorder (DVR) content remotely anywhere in the world through a wireless broadband - 3G cellular or Wi-Fi - Internet connection on their smartphone.

In the case of a DVR, for example, users can not only watch recorded shows, but pause and rewind live TV or queue new recordings from their smartphone as well.

The Sling Player client for iPhone goes for $29.99. See here for more info.

Looks like Apple is getting ready to put the push notifications of the iPhone 3.0 software through its paces. It has sent an e-mail to select developers testing the platform upgrade inviting them to test the new feature through a beta build of a future version of the Associated Press application for the iPhone and iPod touch, which is supposed to allow the AP to push breaking news to users. See here and here for more.

SBSH Mobile's rolled out its first application for the iPhone and iPod touch, SafeWallet ($5.99, available here). Already available for the BlackBerry and Symbian/S60 smartphone platforms, SafeWallet is a secure storage application designed to help you manage all your private data—such as credit cards information, online passwords, bank account info, registration codes, ATM PINs, emergency contacts etc.—on your smartphone.

The software uses 256-bit AES encryption and offers pre-defined templates that allow you to add/edit/remove fields from existing information cards. It also includes over 250 icons and offers quick access your most used cards.

A rapidly growing number of Americans are shopping over their mobile devices. Those people who have iPhones can now download an application from the founders of FreeShipping.org and Coupon Sherpa that gives them free shipping codes and price discounts when shopping online.

The app, which is free and available now at the iPhone App Store, is also ideal to conduct a price comparison and see if you can get a better deal online versus an in-store purchase. The free shipping app features coupon codes for price discounts as well as free shipping deals from participating merchants.

Users can search by store or category.

All Things Digital has released a new iPhone and iPod touch application in the iTunees App Store. Co-edited by Wall Street Journal columnist Walt Mossberg and BoomTown blogger Kara Swisher, the AllThingsD.com site launched in 2007 as the online extension of the annual "D: All Things Digital" conference, started by them in 2003. The app makes exclusive content from AllThingsD.com and the D conference available for iPhone and iPod touch with a range of features and tools including:

 Kara's BoomTown, John Paczkowski's Digital Daily and Peter Kafka's MediaMemo blogs and video

 Walt's Personal Technology and Mossberg's Mailbox columns, his videos and his Mossblog

 Katherine Boehret's Mossberg Solution column and videos

 Ability to post article links and text descriptions directly to Twitter and Facebook, or to email them to a friend

 Galleries of D conference videos and photos including the full 2007 historic joint appearance by Steve Jobs and Bill Gates

 Live D7 conference coverage throughout the May 26-28, 2009 event.

 

Developed using the NewsGator iPhone Media Application Framework, the All Things Digital app is designed to contain all the news and reviews from the Web site. As on AllThingsD.com, each journalist's section is identified by specific color schemes and headshots, including stylized icons that emphasize each writer's personality and beat. Customized navigation enables users to choose their favorite sections and personalize the content.

In related news, there is now a The Wall Street Journal Mobile Reader for iPhone. You can download the application, which promises to offer essential news; WSJ video, radio and Podcasts; and the ability to save and share articles here.

This week, Slacker Radio updated its free application (available here) for the iPhone and iPod touch. The app provides streaming access to over programmed 100 stations and lets users create custom stations based on artists or songs.

New features include the option to view song lyrics for Slacker Radio Plus subscribers. It also offers visual and performance enhancements, such as a larger album art view, a recently played stations folder, a streamlined interface, faster transitions from song to song and the option to disable sleep mode.

With this release, a number of users thought Slacker did away with the old "now playing" view which provides a song preview. In fact, there are now two of these views:

1) The original view, which features the current album art, a preview of the "up next" album art, the volume slider and the settings button.

2) A new "full screen" album art view, which eliminates the preview of the "up next" album art, the volume slider and the settings button in favor of the largest possible album art view.

You can toggle between either view with a "double-tap" on the currently playing album art to select the view you like best.

Movie studios often tie their latest product into cell phones and smartphones through related content, such as games, wallpapers, ringtones, etc., to build excitement and word of mouth for their latest film. A recent example is the release of a new game for the iPhone and iPod touch called Land of the Lost: Crystal Adventure.

This free title (available here) is tied to the upcoming Will Ferrel vehicle "Land of the Lost," which itself is based on the Saturday morning television show from the '70s, which those of us of a certain age (like yours truly) remember fondly.

In the puzzle-driven game based, you must help Rick Marshall (Ferrell) overcome an array of obstacles—including pushing blocks, building bridges, and navigating around hurdles—to make your way through the 25 Sleestak (alien-type creatures) temple levels and reach what the developer's describe as a crystal. They say part of the fun though is collecting the smaller crystals, which adds to your points and can get your name featured on the leader-board.

Of course, in addition to the game, the app includes access to clips and photos of the film.

The financial management service Quicken Online is now available in app for the iPhone. The free software, called Quicken Online Mobile, promises to allow users of the service to more easily manage their money by giving them access to various financial tools when on the move from their iPhone or iPod touch.

Here's a list of features:

 Immediate access to accounts, from checking to credit cards and loans

 Ability to add purchases and track spending when mobile

 Geolocation of nearby ATMs, saving costly surcharges

 An extra layer of security that goes beyond industry standards

 

See here for details on the application and the video below to watch Quicken Online Mobile in action.

Quickoffice has split its eponymous mobile office suite for the iPhone in half for those who require Word or Excel-compatibly to create, edit and read documents but not both. So while Quickoffice goes for $19.99, you can now pick up Quicksheet or Quickword from the iTunes app store for $12.99 each, a savings of $7 over the full package. As with Quickoffice, the component apps will support in-application upgrades once the iPhone 3.0 software is released. That will give users the option upgrade to the full Office suite at a later date if become interested.

Accidentally drop your iPhone in a pool or some other body of water? Spill a drink on it? Well, if this happened to you in the past you were out of luck. The only way to replace your smartphone was to pay full price for a new model—$499 for a 16GB iPhone. Now, according to a new report, you can swap out your water damaged bit of Apple goodness for the far more reasonable price of $199 when you’re out-of-warrenty. That sure beats having to lay out five Ben Franklins for a new iPhone.

The iPhone is becoming an ever more suitable tool for business users, even at the enterprise level. The App Store is full to the brim with useful productivity apps. We help you narrow the field by suggesting the 50 best. Get the full story here at Datamation.com.

The mighty iPhone lost its status as the top-selling cell to Blackberry, according NPD. Get the full story here at Datamation.com.

The e-mail contact manager utility will be available for BlackBerry devices later this month. Can an iPhone version be far behind?Get the full story here at InternetNews.com.