iPhone now running Windows apps, too

To some extend, I think it's a cool idea. Thanks to Citrix Receiver, Windows users can use Windows apps in their iPhone 3G. Citrix allows iPhone users to access Microsoft's operating systems from their PCs remotely. Citrix Community wrote last month: Our goal in delivering a Citrix Receiver to an iPhone is to ...

Sushi encyclopedia for the iPhone

Are you a fan of sushi, Japanese cuisine? (Sushi is vinegared rice, usually topped with other ingredients, including fish, various meats, and vegetables.) It's a good news for you. Shogakukan, major Japanese publishing company is about to launch a virtual sushi guide for the iPhone for iPhone and iPod Touch. You ...

Watch TV on your iPhone

Yeah, this app lets you watch TV on your iPhone. Mobile software developer, Makayama, introduces new TV application, called Television, for Apple iPhone and iPod Touch. Will cost you  $2.99 in the App Store, this app will allow you to download pre-recorded content from a number of TV networks. This application: includes ...

iPhone Buzz Week in Review - Week 52 2008

The iPhone Dev Team recently streamed a live video demonstrating an unlock of the iPhone 3G. They chose to stream the video so that no questions to the authenticity would arise. Before demonstrating yellowsn0w, a member of the iPhone Dev Team by the name of MuscleNerd streamed a video explaining ...

Reminder: iPhone 3G Unlock Due TODAY!

Jeremy posted this earlier in the month and linked to the video, and he’ll be back again when the iPhone 3G Unlock goes live, but until then, we just wanted to remind everyone (who’s never updated their iPhone from OS 2.0!) that today is supposed to be the day!

Well it is now official, the Dev-Team has updated their blog today to let you all know when the iPhone 3G software unlock will be released. Seems as if New Years eve is what they are aiming for.

• The target release date for the unlock is New Year’s Eve 2008.
• This unlock method is available to iPhone 3Gs that have 2.11.07 baseband or earlier, we did warn you.
• The unlock requires a jailbroken 3G iPhone.

Guess Times Square won’t be the only massive countdown going on today!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Reminder: iPhone 3G Unlock Due TODAY!

‘Large Screen iPod Touch Device’ in Fall of 2009?

TechCrunch claims to have heard from three independent sources that Apple will be releasing a "large screen iPod touch device" with a 7-9 inch screen. According to the site, one of their sources have actually seen and handled one of the prototypes. ...

Review: iPhone games for small kids

An iPhone or iPod touch is a great tool for keeping the young ones amused when you’re running errands, so it makes sense to invest in a few kid-friendly games. Jeff Merron looks at three, with Disney Fairies Fly soaring above the other options.

iLuv rolls out iHD171 HD radio with iPhone / iPod dock, iTunes tagging

iLuv has been on quite the roll of late with these radio clocks and whatnot, though we're a touch more excited than usual about the iHD171. For starters, this one tunes into HD Radio stations (you know, given how FM is so 2006), and it also plays nice with dock-connecting iPods and iPhones. You'll find twin alarms for keeping couples happy, a front-panel display, iTunes tagging support, jAura speaker technology, an auxiliary line input (3.5-millimeter jack) and twin 4-watt drivers. If all that's enough for you to exchange $199.99 for, you can do just that next month. Full release is after the jump.

Continue reading iLuv rolls out iHD171 HD radio with iPhone / iPod dock, iTunes tagging

Filed under: Home Entertainment

iLuv rolls out iHD171 HD radio with iPhone / iPod dock, iTunes tagging originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Dec 2008 18:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Quick App-ocalypse: Fartbox for iPhone… Seriously?

And Lo! When Apple opened the 1st seal, “Pull My Finger” was approved. When Apple opened the 2nd seal, “iFart Mobile” earned $10,000 a day. And when Apple opened the 3rd seal, there was silence in the App Store… except for a deafening cacophony of flatulence as Fartbox took to the field of battle.

Mactropolis has all the… graphic details, including sounds and languages (languages!).

Yeah. Um. Darwin kernel, BSD networking, OpenGL graphics, and the first new UI revolution in a decade, and farting is dominating the sales discussion and — doubtless — the funding pitch space.

Could the Hell Mouth hurry up and swallow us now-ish?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Quick App-ocalypse: Fartbox for iPhone… Seriously?

Who Wants an iPhone “Pro” Slider for New Year?

Form-factor-palooza continues! During the iPhone Round Robin, our best frenemy CrackBerry Kevin spoke extensively about his desire for an iPhone Pro:

know a big part of the iPhone philosophy is to keep it simple, but sometimes it doesn’t hurt to be a little more complicated, and luckily, tagging a product with “Pro” at the end covers the reduced intuitiveness of a professional device. At the bottom of the iPhone is a single home button. How about we toss a little Apple key to the left of it? Maybe when you hit that button you could get a few basic functions to pop up on the display… maybe like copy and paste? While we’re at it, let’s add a little back button to the right of that home key. The lack of a back key on the iPhone is one of my BIGGEST irks of all - you have to learn within each app the correct way to tap “back” to a previous menu (time waster). The most unified/simplistic means of getting back is via a back button. I know this is something that even iPhone fans (Rene, I’m looking at you) would like to see. Maybe add the ability to edit office docs natively - it’s not something one typically does on a smartphone all that often (more likely to view than to edit), but sometimes “Pro” users do have to make changes on the go. And last but not least, give it a flashing red light. In other words, make it more like a BlackBerry!

Seems he’s not alone, though Gizmodo certainly takes it to another level entirely: enter the slider! (Or re-enter, as we heard rumors of the iSlider back in July…) It’s not TiPb’s cup of tea. We’re still predicting an iPhone HD, but sans-slider. We highly doubt it’s something Apple would ever consider either, but we’re sure it would appeal to at least some of the HTC Pro/G1 crowd.

What do you think? Does the iPhone need it a big @$$ keyboard for 2009?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Who Wants an iPhone “Pro” Slider for New Year?

[Sponsored Post: Parrot Minikit Slim Portable Bluetooth Car Kit for iPhone 3G]

Sponsored Post: Parrot Minikit Slim Portable Bluetooth Car Kit for iPhone 3G

The Parrot Minikit Slim is a portable Bluetooth hands-free kit sporting a profiled, sleek design.

Thanks to its space-saving design, it offers countless uses: in the car, in the office and at home. Its highly intuitive interface will automatically connect to your Bluetooth phone when nearby. Fixed to the sun visor or laid on a table, it adapts to every environment and can easily be carried around in your pocket.

Once paired, the Parrot Minikit Slim automatically synchronizes its phone book with the contacts on your mobile phone. The phone book on the Minikit Slim is updated seamlessly whenever it connects. The entire phone book is available at all times thanks to the voice synthesis of the names (Text-To-Speech function). Practical and indispensable.

Parrot Minikit Slim Portable Bluetooth Car Kit for iPhone 3G is available from the TiPb iPhone Accessory Store

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

[Sponsored Post: Parrot Minikit Slim Portable Bluetooth Car Kit for iPhone 3G]

iPhone Nano: Clamshell? Fadell’s Revenge? TiPb of the Iceberg

We’re coming up on MacWorld awfully quick now (TiPb will be there, natch) and so the rumors are flying. Expectations have been decidedly lower than in years past due to the absence of his Steveness, but there’s one persistent rumor that just won’t go away: the iPhone Nano.

The universal response to these rumors has pretty much been “Meh.” Engadget wants to know what the deal is. Macrumors thinks that it’s just case makers riding Apple rumor coattails. Gizmodo doesn’t believe either.

The rumor won’t die, though, so: what if it were true? What would an iPhone Nano look like?

Our esteemed editor Rene has worried that an iPhone Nano seems like a non-starter because it would split the unified iPhone platform — forcing developers to plan for multiple screen densities and feature sets. That has been a recipe for pain on other mobile platforms (though, to be fair, Windows Mobile manages fairly decently), so it seems unlikely that Apple would do that. Then again, given the way the App Store is going, if any mobile platform can handle fragmentation right now, it’s Apple.

The common wisdom is that Apple is no longer interested in feature-phones for obvious reasons: the MotoROKR debacle, the fact that all phones will become ’smartphones’ in the near future, the fact that Apple’s selling the $199 iPhone just fine, thank you very much. I’m inclined to agree with all of these arguments. But the rumors. won’t. die. Plus, well, maybe, just maybe, Apple is blinking in the face of the tanking economy and thinking they need to actually release something inexpensive.

Let’s start with the assumption that Apple will be good to their burgeoning iPhone/iPod Touch platform and not fragment it into multiple screen sizes and form factors. What then?

If you’ve been following the Apple news of the past few months, you may remember some of the Papermaster hiring saga, namely that he’s replacing Tony Fadell, who wanted Apple to create a much less ambitious iPhone based on Linux.

Here’s a thought experiment: imagine if Apple followed Fadell’s original plan for a bit before abandoning it, developing the iPod Classic OS just enough to support basic phone functionality (or, alternately, stripping out most of the iPhone OS to make it a featurephone OS). If they had, then the plans for such a phone would be sitting on the shelf, waiting for Apple to notice the economy tanking and consumers wanting something less expensive. Fadell’s basic iPod + Phone would sport a fully functional iPod Classic slapped onto a featurephone and frankly that would appeal to a lot of people. On the outside, it looks exactly like a classic iPod, on the inside, a simple phone.

There have been a few sets of people who have been resistant to the iPhone’s charms. One of the larger groups: people who still adamantly love their RAZRS because they’re small, sexy, and because they’re flip phones. This group of people still believe that the iPhone is “Too much phone for me” and want something simpler — even if it’s only perceived as simpler. Give them a flip-phone with a real iPod on it and, well, they’d buy. Oh yes, they’d buy.

I’m still not sold that it’s going to happen. Apple famously isn’t interested in the low end — until they are. The iPod Nano and iPod shuffle are huge sellers for Apple and their obvious quality helps the Apple brand. If they can pull the same thing off with a clamshell phone, it would be a Pearl Flip killer.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iPhone Nano: Clamshell? Fadell’s Revenge? TiPb of the Iceberg

Five top tips for new iPhone users

Get a brand new iPhone for Christmas? Here are a handful of our top tips to help you make the most of it.

iPhone apps round-up: Fog-and-draw apps

A pair of apps let you virtually fog or steam up your iPhone screen and then draw images and messages on it. Meanwhile, Zephyr from Smule takes that same concept and adds a social-networking angle.

On Twitter and SMS and Why it Shouldn’t Matter to iPhone Users

In case you haven’t read it already, our editor-in-chief, Dieter Bohn, has an outstanding article up at sibling-site WMExperts highlighting his top 5 reasons Twitter is better than SMS (and vice versa).

There’s a lot of intertube fuss about SMS lately, as a recent New York Times article once again shone the spotlight on the disgustingly dirty price gouging (and potential fixing) that goes on when it comes to SMS rates in North America. Basically, SMS (at 160 bytes/characters) is ridiculously cheap for the carriers to transmit, no matter what the scale, and yet the prices have doubled from $0.10 to $0.20 on many networks over the last few years. Voice, by contrast, involves much more data and is much more “expensive” in terms of infrastructure costs. North Americans will pay ludicrous sums of money for “cheap” SMS but not for “expensive” voice, so the carriers take advantage.

Dieter points out that the cost, community, compatibility, control, and context of Twitter give it a clear advantage of SMS, even as the discoverability, dilution of quality, dropping 20 characters, downtime, and potential delays in notification (outside the US) make it still far from perfect.

Flaws and all, Dieter is moving towards Twitter (@backlon) and away from SMS. Am I going to do the same? I already have (@reneritchie) and without really considering it. But here’s the thing — I have considered that not only should I not have to consider it, I don’t think any iPhone user should. (Or any @theiphoneblog follower either!)

I mentioned in my return to the iPhone 3G Round Robin final review that one of the things I’d like to see for the iPhone is a Mobile iChat app, but really taken to the next level. BlackBerry PIN messenger is what puts the “crack” in CrackBerry.com and an always on, multi-tasking Mobile iChat client would go a long way to putting some in the iPhone as well. Beyond that, however, Apple is famous for being the one company that really understands something truly significant for consumer end users:

The interface is the application.

There’s already an SMS client on the iPhone, and guess what? It already kind of looks like iChat. If Apple stuck a Mobile iChat client on as well, it could look functionally identical. So why, then, would Apple need to add that client? Some Twitter clients looks functionally very similar to iChat already as well. Why, then, would we need separate Twitter clients?

From a user-perspective, abstracting an application away from the pipes that feed it is a huge win. Take Mobile Mail for example, you can setup a Gmail, Exchange, MobileMe, or other email account, yet the app itself looks and functions the same regardless. Add one account, take another away, and the user experience doesn’t change. This means that, behind the scenes, you can pretty much muck around with the pipes, improve them, swap an old one out for a new one, drop a troublesome one for a reliable one, all with very low impact on the front end — maybe even no impact at all. It’s transparent to the end user.

Now imagine there was a presence client on the iPhone — I’ll stick with calling it Mobile iChat to keep it simple. You set up your SMS account, your Twitter, your AIM, MobileMe, Jabber, Google Chat… whatever and then you have one consistent UI that elegantly handles and presents your conversations to you. If one pipe disappears, like Pownce, you just delete that account or foward to another. If a new pipe shows up, like BlackBerry announces PIN-like messenger for the iPhone (breathe Kevin, breathe!) you just add it in.

There are, of course, a bunch of reasons why this isn’t likely to happen, and lots of people who prefer to keep their cookies all in separate jars anyway. My personal belief remains, however, that this is the future, and the iPhone is the device that’s going to bring us the closest and the fastest to that future.

Of course, there will always be a place for “better” dedicated client apps that provide unique, rich features focused on a single protocol, but who knows, with push email, maybe all inter-personal text communications could eventually fold into a single unified, consistent, experience. It would, at the very least, be nice to have as a hyper-productivity meets connectivity option. wouldn’t it?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

On Twitter and SMS and Why it Shouldn’t Matter to iPhone Users

Intel Launches Low Cost Quad-Core Mobile Processor and New Core 2 Duos

Over the weekend, Intel added five new mobile CPUs to their product line. The most notable addition is a Core 2 Quad Q9000 processor which is a quad-core processor that runs at a speed of 2.0GHz and is available for only $348 in 1000 unit lots. The...

iPhone Dev Team Speaks Out

For the first time ever, the complete iPhone Dev Team finally got together and met each other face to face. They gathered recently and gave a presentation at the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin.

Keep in mind the video is 58 minutes long and they do go pretty deep but it is definitely a interesting thing to check out. My favorite part of the whole thing comes in around the 2 minute 30 second mark: there are 180 IP addresses inside Apple that the Dev Team have tracked who have “updated their quickpwn and pwnage tool on a regular basis”.

Very interesting indeed.

[Via Gizmodo]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iPhone Dev Team Speaks Out

Review: A trio of iPhone GTD apps

With the latest book from Getting Things Done author David Allen hitting stores Tuesday, we look at three lower-cost apps that offer to boost your productivity the GTD way—CheckOff, GTD 2 Min Timer, and Habits.

Vaja Making the Case for iPhone Nano?

Not to be outdone by the Apple media server rumors, the iPhone Nano rears its tiny mutant form again, this time on the website of case-maker Vaja. Does this add weight to the rumor, or simply volume? MacRumors rightly points out:

While it may be that Vaja is simply taking advantage of the hype surrounding the iPhone Nano, the rumors have been persistent over the past few weeks. While Apple does not give case manufacturers information about unreleased products, Apple must contract out to factories to manufacture their hardware. It is believed that it is through these contracts that case design specs are often leaked ahead of time. As we’ve said before, case manufacturers have a huge financial incentive to have cases ready in time for new product launches.

Macworld is only a week away (though even if the rumor is true (and we’re still not holding our breath) we may have to wait until Apple — and Steve Jobs — hold another special media event to know for sure.

Are you getting convinced yet? Or just tiring of the rumors?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Vaja Making the Case for iPhone Nano?

Magnetic / detachable lenses suddenly make cellphone cameras fun

Not that we haven't seen patently absurd lens attachments for mobiles before, but we've yet to come across any that were this universal (and be to honest, this useful). Sure, one could argue that a detachable wide-angle, fisheye or 2x telephoto lens made for a cellphone camera is more likely to do nothing than something, but we prefer to look on the sunny side of things. In other words, it's totally worth $16.99 just to be able to make your subjects pause as you whip out the correct lens for the occasion... which you're photographing on your C905.

[Via OhGizmo]

Filed under: Cellphones

Magnetic / detachable lenses suddenly make cellphone cameras fun originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Dec 2008 09:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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