Movies on flash drives
aren't looking like the next big thing, but Gemalto reckons its approach to getting DVD content on smaller surfaces is different enough to get noticed. In an admittedly bizarre release, the digital security firm has announced a new Smart Video Card for Italian carrier
WIND, which "embeds a DVD-compliant optical disc into the card body of a regular SIM card." The card can store practically any digital content (including video, software or URLs) and can reportedly be played back on any DVD drive. So what, we buy a new SIM card each time we're looking for a new batch of miniaturized content? Fabulous!
Are you a fan of Wikipedia? If you use it a lot, you may want to check out a new iPhone app that optimizes your Wikipedia experience on the iPhone. It’s called
iWik, and it works really well.
Basically the app optimizes your Wikipedia experience by displaying it in perfect format for your iPhone. The
iWik servers change up the content to look perfect on the iPhone display. Key features of the app include a search feature, an activity tracker, landscape viewing option, page marking, a save page feature and a whole lot more.
This app is totally worthwhile if you find yourself digging for info on Wikipedia from time to time. Might as well have the info formatted in a clear, easy to view format.
iWik is only $0.99, so it is worthwhile if you think you’ll get the use out of it. You can
check it out in the App Store. There is another similar app available now that I have not checked out yet. It’s called
Kiwi. It looks really good as well… and is
available for $2.99 in the App Store.
Some tipster managed to sneak their camera phone out to snag some shots during today’s internal Verizon employee briefing on the BlackBerry Storm. One’s a basic product shot, while the other two show the handset’s browser in landscape and portrait orientations. Sure, the shots sort of look like they were taken from the inside of a space helmet during a snow storm, but this person likely risked their job for these - high fives to them!
Don't go grabbing your plastic -- the darned thing isn't for sale quite yet -- but at least T-Mobile's giving us something to ogle on its site now with an official placeholder page for its
Pearl 8220. The red shown on the site does a good job illustrating that it's toned down enough to pass as a business device, but for anyone still worried they're going to blind their coworkers, black should be available, too. It's not as deeply satisfying as an "In Stock" sign, but T-Mob's offering a link to preregister for the phone, which'll presumably give you first dibs when it launches in the next few weeks.
HTC, not one to let
product leaks go un-validated, has today announced their
HTC Touch HD. Following on the
previous leak that had HTC preparing a WVGA touchscreen monster to add to its
popular HTC Touch
smartphone portfolio, HTC has confirmed that the HTC Touch HD is indeed on its way to stir up the touchscreen smartphone market. The HTC Touch HD is being billed as HTC’s entertainment-focused Touch smartphone toting a huge WVGA touchscreen display, 5 megapixel camera, GPS and TouchFLO 3D.
The HTC Touch HD’s flush-mounted (which all high-end HTC handsets will feature giogn forward) large, bright, and crisp WVGA display is expected to give other large-screened touchs-based smartphones a run for their money. With 3.8-inches of eye-dazzling real-estate, the gigantic widescreen VGA display will easily thrust the HTC Touch HD to its rightful place at the head of the touchscreen smartphone table. And, the 5 megapixel auto-focusing camera could give other high-megapixel cameraphones some serious competition.
HTC isn’t, apparently, going to take Apple’s success with their iPhone and iPhone 3G lying down. The HTC Touch HD goes straight for the jugular with that range-topping and market-leading 3.8-inch WVGA display (we still can’t get over the huge WVGA display!). The 5 megapixel camera (with autofocus) sets its sights on other high-end cameraphones with the intention of being the media-oriented handset of choice among power users. The quad-band (850/900/1800/1900Mhz) GSM/EDGE and dual-band (850/2100Mhz) WCDM/HSPA radios make sure that the HTC Touch HD will be getting its connectivity-on in whatever country you could possibly find yourself traveling through. And, with 512 MB ROM / 288 MB RAM on board and expandable storage capacity via the microSD card slot, the HTC Touch HD ensures that you’ll have plenty of room to take your pictures, videos, and music with you wherever you go.
Of course, HTC has endowed their HTC Touch HD with all the high-end trimmings we’ve come to expect from our favorite Windows Mobile smartphone maker. The HTC Touch HD sports aGPS, WiFI, Bluetooth 2.0, and a Qualcomm® MSM7201a™ CPU clocked at 528 MHz that should make quick work of running the Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional OS with the TouchFLO 3D UI.
Did we mention the HTC Touch HD featuring a humongous 3.8-inch WVGA display? Cupertino is going to have to play a little game of “catch-up” with their next-generation iPhone (iPhone Pro?)…
Here’s a quick rundown of the HTC Touch HD’s spec-sheet:
·
Size: 115 x 62.8 x 12 mm
·
Weight: 146.4 grams/5.164 oz with battery
·
Connectivity: Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE: 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
Dual-band WCDMA / HSPA:900/2100MHz.
HSDPA 7.2 Mbps
·
Operating system: HTC TouchFLO 3D with Windows Mobile® 6.1 Professional
·
Display: 3.8 inch Wide Screen VGA screen (480 x 800 WVGA)
·
Camera: 5.0 megapixel with auto focus – Second Camera: VGA
·
Internal memory: 512 MB flash; 288 MB RAM
·
Memory card: microSD™ memory card (SDHC™ capable)
·
WLAN: 802.11b/g
·
Bluetooth®: 2.0 with EDR
·
GPS: GPS/AGPS
·
Interface: HTC ExtUSB™ (mini-USB and audio jack in one; USB 2.0 High-Speed)
·
Battery: 1350 mAh
·
Talk time: WCDMA: Up to 390 minutes*** / GSM: Up to 310 minutes***
·
Standby time: WCDMA: Up to 450 hours*** / GSM: Up to 390 hours***
·
Chipset: Qualcomm® MSM7201a™ 528 MHz
We should be seeing the HTC Touch HD landing on European shores in Q4 2008, with the rest of the globe following suit shortly afterwards.
Find out more about the HTC Touch HD
here.
HTC just can't stop the leakage. That
Touch HD page was wild enough, but under the "Product Tour" section there's even more magic: instead of a Touch HD Product Tour, as the title would suggest, there's a colorful cadre of the unannounced phone referred to as the Touch 3G. Sporting a slightly refined design and, well, 3G, there's literally nothing else we know about the device. It does seem slightly different than the budget-friendly, EDGE-strapped
Opal, but it's all hearsay until HTC actually announces these puppies.
Update: Wow. Just when you though HTC was out of the woods, our friendly neighborhood tipsters have tracked down the full product page for the Touch 3G. Peep the new read link for every spec, dimension and salty tear direct from HTC. Highlights include a 2.8-inch QVGA touchscreen, Europe-friendly HSDPA, 3.2 megapixel camera and 14.5mm of thickness. Bluetooth, GPS, A-GPS and 802.11g WiFi all make an appearance as well.
ASUS is apparently prepping another high-end Windows Mobile 6.1 set, potentially called Galaxy7 (we've also seen Glaxy7 and Galazy7) for launch in the near future. The specs listed by pda.pl are from an informant, so take them with a generous helping of salt, though if it does prove legit, it's been well loved in the design phase. The Galaxy7 packs triple-band HSPA, quad-band EDGE, an enormous 800 X 480 touchscreen, 5 megapixel autofocus cam, 4GB memory, Bluetooth, WiFi, and a cute lil' trackball. At quick glance, it does look like a well put together thing, except we can't help but wonder how easy that trackball will be to use so low on the face, thoughts? We've also heard this could be launched by O2 as the O2 XDA Zest. We're sure we'll be getting an earful about this rather soon -- now that it's potentially been outed -- so check back soon.
Yo, Microsoft, step on the gas and get
Windows Mobile 7 out the door, would ya? Gartner's profile of global smartphone sales in the second quarter of 2008 reveals that RIM's BlackBerry OS has jumped over Windows Mobile to become the number two platform finding its way into pockets around the world, while perennial powerhouse Symbian carries on comfortably with the number one spot (and it's not
UIQ that's doing the heavy lifting there, if you catch our drift). As a percentage of the overall mobile market, smartphones account for the same 11 percent they did a year ago -- but the entire market saw growth, meaning that total smartphone shipments jumped a solid 15.7 percent over the same period. Well-earned kudos to RIM for knocking WinMo off its high horse, but seriously, Microsoft need only look in the mirror if it wants to know exactly how this came to pass.
Those following the
XPERIA X1's every move no doubt caught this as it happened earlier today, but for those that missed it, the Inexperia website has now posted most of Sony Ericsson's latest webcast, in which the X1's interface gets shown off to a far greater extent than we've seen previously. That includes a look at the phone's much talked about panel system and a glimpse of its video-playing abilities, plus some expected gushing about the phone's design, which is described as feeling like a well-tailored suit. Head on past the break for the video courtesy of Inexperia, and look for the whole thing to be available direct from Sony Ericsson on September 17th.
Throughout the month of August,
Nullriver’s NetShare application, which allowed iPhone users to utilize their handset’s 3G/EDGE connection as means of connecting their computers to the internet, was in a constantly wavering state of peril. After a brief (as in hours) stint on Apple’s App store, it was taken down. Days later it returned, albeit only for a brief while.
After nearly a month of silence, Nullriver is reporting that Apple has decided that NetShare is permanently banned from the App store.
I won’t get into the argument of whether or not Apple should be removing applications that do not explicitly violate the terms of service, because that argument is happening in a million places around the internet at any given time. I will mention, however, that this specific decision is absurd. Anyone technically capable of playing with NetShare is more than capable of jailbreaking their handsets and installing tethering applications of their own. This decision gives an entire group of people, uninterested by custom themes or fancy-pants video applications, a reason to jailbreak when they wouldn’t have bothered before. Without any real gain, the decision maker has essentially forced the tether-hopeful end user to cross into the realm of unauthorized use.
Way to go.
Tellme is a free, Microsoft-owned voice powered search engine. Want to find a local coffee shop? Call up Tellme and ask for it. Want to know the weather forecast? Boot up the
free BlackBerry application, hit a button, and say “Weather”.
In addition to local business searches, weather forecasts, movie times, and directions, TellMe has now added support for up-to-the-minute sports scores to the BlackBerry application.. Need to know how Kobe’s doing tonight? Hit up TellMe, and say “sports” and then “Lakers” - it’ll show up right on screen. Sure, sports scores tend to be what the search engines add once the idea well starts running dry - but it’s free, and it might just get you your sports fix when you’re stuck at dinner with the in-laws.
Back in July, T-Mobile Germany was putting the legal screws to VoIP provider
sipgate for requiring its users to jailbreak their iPhones in order to enjoy cheap calling over Wi-Fi networks (which is really just a roundabout way of fighting back at competition which is undercutting them). Well, T-Mo, the contested
King of Magenta, won the case, forcing the program out of iTunes App Stores Germany-wide. Of course it’s still available elsewhere, but T-Mobile could easily keep hunting this one down in other countries.
Other carriers could also take a clue and actively protect their voice revenues from sipgate and other sneaky VoIP providers. It’s situations like this that make me look forward to
Android’s Market, which will hopefully have fewer control mechanisms in place that could shut down apps for being too awesome.
Well I am really not sure what it is so appealing about
these shiny concept phones but I'm sure most of you agree with me that it is really pleasure to look at although we know it's hard to expect that such phone will land in the shops anytime soon.
Anyway, here is the another shiny concept phone that offers beautiful and sophisticated design and is named as 'Nokia BMW Video Phone'
It is extremely attractive device with a sexy shiny black finishing and an interesting metamorphosing form factor. This Ukraine's Evgen Designer's concept applies 'Push to Open' mechanism to rotate the display by 90-degree to convert it to shooting mode, something similar to
Nokia N90,
Nokia N93 metamorphosing for... .. .
Read more:
Shiny Nokia-BMW Video Concept Phone - full story
As CTIA comes to a close, ASUS has finally made available the Windows Mobile 6.1 ROM for the
ASUS P527 on their downloads website. Owners of the ASUS P527 can now update their smartphone to the latest that Microsoft has to offer in the mobile world.
In addition to the improvements bundled with the Windows Mobile 6.1 mobile OS, ASUS mentions a handful of bug fixes related to media playback, voice calls, and date/time. The Windows Mobile 6.1 update also brings enhanced GSM/EDGE radio functionality, so ASUS P527 owners will notice a speedier data connection as well as a refreshed interface.
Grab the ASUS P527 Windows Mobile 6.1 update
here.
Cell tower triangulation can determine location data.
It looks like cellphone users - law-biding and nefarious types alike - may soon have legal precedent backing up their cellphone privacy rights. A federal judge ruled this past Wednesday that authorities need probable cause and a warrant in order to get at a cellphone user’s historical cell-tower location data. The case, involving a drug trafficker, affirmed a previous US Magistrate Judge’s ruling that any request for cellphone location-data (be it real-time or historical) be accompanied by a warrant.
“This is a great ruling for location privacy and for people who think the government should have probable cause before they track you,” said Jennifer Granick, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. And indeed the ruling could set a precedent that protects mobile phone users from unlawful requests for location-data.
The ruling shoots down government arguments that cell-tower location-data was no different from financial transaction records, which can pinpoint a person’s location at a particular time. That would avoid classifying mobile phones as “tracking devices” and allow the government to demand cellphone location-data from carriers as they do credit card purchases.
According to Judge Terrence F. McVerry of the Western District of Pennsylvania, a government request for any location-data related to mobile phones requires a warrant. But, the government is said to be considering their options, so don’t go gallivanting around thinking you’re protected just yet.
My Location just got better for all the applications that use Google's geolocation service!
In November 2007 we launched
My Location on Google Maps for mobile, and in the past few months, we've location-enabled other applications from third parties and Google. Hundreds of location-enabled iPhone applications, including the
Google Mobile App, use Google's database of cell towers to determine approximate location. And just last week we announced
Mobile Search with My Location, powered by the
Gears Geolocation API.
With today's launch, your location estimate will be centered closer to your true location, and we have also improved the calculation of just how good our estimate is. When we originally launched the "blue circle" on Google Maps for mobile, the circle usually stayed the same size no matter if you were in downtown Manhattan or rural Iowa. Now, the next time you're using Google Maps in downtown Manhattan, expect to see a much smaller circle that's also far more accurate. Conversely, when you're in a lightly populated area like rural Iowa, expect to see a much larger circle which also happens to be centered closer to your true location. Check out these screenshots to get a better idea of the before and after effects of today's change:
New York City -- a smaller light blue circle denotes that we're more confident of your actual location.
Slater, Iowa - the light blue circle is larger because there are fewer cell towers with which to determine your location, but the dark blue circle is more accurately centered in downtown Slater
So how exactly have we made these improvements? Mobile operators typically need a lot more cell towers in populous areas to service all the users. This means each individual tower provides a much smaller coverage footprint. On the other hand, in a very sparsely populated area, towers provide much larger coverage footprints. We've developed algorithms to try and figure out what the right circle size should be and are pleased to make this available to you today.
There's actually nothing you need to do to start enjoying the new improvements to My Location. Any application powered by Google's geolocation service automatically benefits from today's launch. Enjoy!
Posted by Zhengrong Ji, Software Engineer
If you love your iPhone, and can’t get enough of the App Store, Apple has reached a milestone with stunning speed. Last week Steve Jobs announced that Apple has seen more than 100 million downloads from the App Store so far. Impressive by any standards… But it gets more impressive. If App Store users continue to download at the current rate (was around 70 million downloads in August) that would mean the App Store would reach 1 billion downloads before the end of the first year. Not too shabby I’d say.
As more and more new apps get added, and more importantly… as more
FREE apps get added, I think we’ll see the App Store reach the 1 billion mark well before the first year anniversary. With the iPhone now selling in countries all over the world, one can only expect big things for the iPhone and the App Store during the remainder of 2008. That said, with new touchscreen devices popping up all the time including the new
BlackBerry Storm, competition is stiff. Look for Apple to innovate and hopefully ‘blow our minds’ at MacWorld in January.
DataViz, developers of
DocumentsToGo has announced that they’re working on an iPhone version of their flagship software. The
DocumentsToGo Mobile Office Suite allows you to read and edit your Microsoft Office formatted Word, Excel and Powerpoint files. The app is already available for most other platforms including most BlackBerry, Palm and Symbian devices.
The software is ideal for writing, editing or changing important documents while you’re on the go. If you’re out of the office, no problem. Edit up that proposal and send it back to the office or to your client… Heck, even do it from the golf course!?
No release date has been given yet for the new iPhone app, but you can sign up for e-mail updates at the
DataViz website.
So it's really no big secret at this point, but we've now received confirmation that T-Mobile will be unveiling its first
Android handset -- presumably the
Dream, G1, or whatever they decide to call it -- at a press event in New York City
on September 23. The event is a whole shindig, too, kicking off in the morning and featuring "presentations from T-Mobile, Google and other company executives" followed by hands-ons with the real deal. Naturally, we'll be on hand in full force, so stay tuned!
Yahoo! Buzz is giving mobile users a new option to find out what’s hot on Yahoo! Buzz while they’re out and about with a new
Yahoo! Go widget developed using Blueprint, Yahoo!’s mobile development platform. The widget can be found in the “Yahoo!” or “News & Info” section of the Yahoo! Go Gallery Widget or by searching “Yahoo! Buzz” from within the widget gallery.
The Yahoo! Buzz widget will allow mobile users to see the top buzzed stories in various categories from the last 12 hours. By clicking on the stories, users will then be able to see a summary and image, and from there can click over to the publishers’ site to see the full story.
Long has been the plight of the Mac/BlackBerry user, with only the most rudimentary, cavemanlike tools available to sync their handset with their Apple computer… The official
Pocket Mac hasn’t been cutting it for a long time, and
Missing Sync isn’t much better. Well, word has it that some proper applications for Mac right from RIM should be due out in the first half of 2009, although details on features are skimpy.
The LAPD has been stereotyped as corrupt and brutal for years. How true that stereotype really is goes beyond the scope of our corner of the blogosphere, so we’ll leave that alone. But, no one can say that the LAPD isn’t embracing technology.
Mirroring
similar initiatives by law enforcement agencies
around the US, the Los Angeles Police Department has launched an anonymous SMS text messaging tipline. Upright Los Angelenos can now send SMS text messages to tip off the police to suspicious activity in their ‘hood.
LAPD officials told IntoMobile that text messages are anonymized through a third-party application provider, called TIPSOFT SMS, to ensure that the tipster’s identity never becomes known to LAPD. Tipsters simply send an SMS text message to the short-code “CRIME” (274637) with the body of the text message starting off with the word “LAPD.” TIPSOFT receives the text message, anonymizes the message, and then sends the tip to the LAPD. Users are assigned reference numbers sent back to them as a text message to confirm receipt of the tip. The LAPD can follow up on tips or issue rewards by sending messages to a tipster’s reference number.
A lot of the speculation regarding AT&T’s lag in launching the BlackBerry Bold has been centred around
optimizing the software for 3G reception, but as far as I can tell, the software works just dandy up north, and pretty much everywhere else in the world where the 9000 has been released. What sounds a lot more likely is that iPhone data traffic is jam-packing the AT&T network, making just about any other major launch impossible until they make upgrades amounting upwards of $1 billion. While RIM’s local network handled the brunt of BlackBerry data traffic through savvy compression techniques, the iPhone lacks the same back-end support, leaving AT&T to pick up the slack. Rumors are pointing to an
October 2nd. launch date for the Bold, but if it’s all dependent on network updates, even further delays are possible.
Hidden on Twitter amongst the chatter about today’s lunch menu and the best spots for happy hour lays a mound of up-to-the-minute user generated commentary on just about any major topic. While
Twitter Search helps you wade through this endless torrent of tweets from within the browser,
Mustache Inc’s iPhone application
Summizer aims to squeeze that functionality into a package more friendly with on-the-go use.
Once you’ve punched in the topic of interest, Summizer uses the Twitter Search API to dig through the database for related tweets. If you’ve got a topic that you search for more often, you can save that search for later use for the sake of sparing your thumbs. Summizer also automatically pulls down the latest trending topics from Twitter, giving you a quick and easy way to see what’s on the collective mind at any given moment. It’s currently focused solely on searching and trend watching, so it doesn’t offer any means of logging in, tweeting, or following users.
While the application currently sits at version 1.0, an update was submitted for Apple’s approval just last night. Version 1.1 introduces automatic updates, link viewing without leaving the application, and the ability to view more tweets from any user you come across. I’ve been playing with the update throughout the evening, and everything seems to work well.
At $4.99, the price may be a bit steep for the general Twitterer. However, if work, research, or just plain old addiction have you digging through Twitter regularly, the time you’ll save with the native interface and saved search features might make it plenty worth the cost of admission. Personally, I’d love to see Mustache Inc. partner up with the folks behind Twinkle (Tapulous) or Twitterific (The Iconfactory) to get this functionality integrated into one of the popular iPhone Twitter posting/following applications.
Once again, this week's
How Would You Change delves deep into the mobile realm, so we figured we'd give you folks a heads-up of the latest posting. OpenMoko's Neo FreeRunner is the subject of this week's discussion, and with so many possibilities, we're certain a few of you out there have something to add. Prove us
right over on Engadget Classic.
The latest addition to the ever growing apps-for-android project is
WebViewDemo, a small application that aims to demonstarate how developers can incorporate web content into their applications.
A WebView uses the same rendering and JavaScript engine as the browser, but it runs under the control of your application. The WebView can be full screen or you can mix it with other Views. The content for your WebView can come from anywhere. The WebView can download content from the web, or it can come from local files stored in your assets directory. The content can even be dynamically generated by your application code.
More detailed information and code examples can be found over on the
Android Developer Blog.
The
apps-for-android project is a growing collection of sample applications that aim to demonstrate the capabilities and features of the Android platform.
Previous Apps-For-Android updates include:
Divid & Conquer
Triangle, SpriteText and Downloader
Photostream
AndroidGlobalTime
WikiNotes
We're not particularly inclined to believe them, but the whispers that Apple is about to bump the top-end iPhone capacity to 32GB are getting harder to ignore -- especially since 8GB inventory is drying up, leading to speculation that's it's going to be dropped as soon as next week. We think the timing's a little odd on the heels of the
Let's Rock iPod refresh, but considering the rampant speculation that Apple was forced to bump the nano to 16GB and drop the
"limited edition" 4GB model entirely at the last minute in response to the
new Zune lineup we suppose it makes competitive sense. AppleInsider also says customers will once again get the option to activate in-home, but we haven't heard anything about that -- we'll see what happens in the next few days.
So check it. In the past I hated BlackBerries. I thought they where the ugliest smart phones on the market. In my opinion that all changed when RIM got smart and decided to make their form factors a little more SEXY. I was a PALM fanatic until my Treo 650 decided to crash every time I made a call, entered a calendar item, went on wikipedia, etc. I was [and still am] very disappointed in the direction PALM was going. The PALM OS was a POS and ACCESS kept tickling our [the PALM community] asses with promises of a new OS called ALP. I couldn't take it anymore so I called Verizon and said let me try a Blackberry. The next day I got a Pearl 8130 and for a week straight my goal was to make my BB sick. I discovered bPhone a theme that made your BB look like an iPhone. I quickly downloaded it, then took my PALM and chucked it.
Figures for total NetFront product installations and device models are as follows:
