Carnival of the Mobilists #172
The latest Carnival is now available at mobilestance.com. Do I need to say that there is some excellent reading? Take that as a given for the Carnival.
A couple of iPhone-related highlights though:
- Volker has an interesting look at where other mobile OS are in relation to iPhone
- Mobile Broadband Blog reports on the significant bounce that iPhone ads have given to AdMob
Enjoy!
Barcode scanning and shopping with the iPhone
Back in March, I read about Torrent Droid. This was the winner of a competition to develop an application for Android phones, the application being “A simple app to scan UPCs [barcodes] and match them with torrent files.”
Think about that for a second. This app uses the phone’s camera to capture a barcode, matches that with torrents from major trackers, then uploads the torrent file to the user’s server. So you’re strolling around, see a DVD, scan the barcode, and by the time you get home, you have a copy ready for watching. It’s pirate magic!
When will O2’s iPhone exclusivity end?
The Observer reported on Sunday that O2 is “racing to sell iPhone [3G] as new model looms”.
In context, MacRumors Buyer’s Guide currently says “Don’t Buy!” against the current iPhone. This is because it’s fairly certain that one or more new models will be announced by Apple at the World Wide Developers’ Conference on June 8th. The question is whether O2 will still be the sole carrier for the iPhone in the UK.
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MMS to be included with O2’s iPhone tariffs
Behold the power of Twitter! I asked @O2UKOfficial – which is O2’s presence on Twitter – a question this morning:
What’s the plan for MMS on monthly tariffs when iPhone OS 3.0 comes out? 1 MMS = 4 SMS as usual?
Is live BBC TV coming to the iPhone?
I saw on All About Symbian yesterday morning that you can now stream live TV over wi-fi to certain phones (Nokia N96 and 5800) via the BBC mobile site. Although it’s low quality, this is pretty cool. I tried it on my iPhone, but no luck. It appears that Realplayer streams are being used, which rules out access via the iPhone at the moment.
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Welcome to the new All About iPhone
The new site has been in development for a few weeks. I wanted to bring you a fresher look, with more focus on the writing, and easier access to the popular posts and comments. There will undoubtedly be a few tweaks required to the new layout; if you notice anything awry, please contact me.
It also highlights the ways in which you can keep up to date with AAi – via RSS, email, and my Twitter updates.
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all the writers so far – Steve, James, Jim, Andy, Gideon, Jane and Adam. Your contributions are very much appreciated. Thanks to Jim for the CSS tweaks and Matlock for the new logo. And thanks also to you, the readers, for sticking around. I hope you enjoy what you see here.
Best wishes, and thanks for reading,
Matt
iPhone OS 3.0 – how was it for you?
The dust has settled, mostly. Apple have made their big iPhone OS 3.0 announcement – covered very well by posts at Intomobile and iPhone, Therefore I Blog. The video podcast of the announcement has been released. And those who have installed it are rapidly finding more than Apple was prepared to demonstrate on Tuesday – internet tethering, finding your lost iPhone, better podcast scrubbing, uploading video. iLounge has a great gallery of screenshots.
Personally, I’m glad some of the frustrating omissions from iPhone OS are being filled (MMS, handling vCards, cut ‘n’ paste). It’s basic stuff but it makes a difference when it’s not present. But aside from filling in the blanks, what did Apple really announce on Tuesday?
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New review tweak for the App Store
We’re not really a breaking news site, but here’s a quick blast of relevant news – especially as we’re doing a few more reviews on All About iPhone these days.
Apple have released a new tweak to the review system on the App Store – reviews are now more pertinent to the current version, and receive two ratings – current and all versions (click image for bigger).
Hopefully there will be more tweaks like this to improve the App Store experience, as Apple works through the growing pains of managing a store with (at last count) 27,000 applications on it.
Head over to AppleInsider for more: http://bit.ly/f9L0y
Thanks to Andy for the tip.
Sync problems with single-name contacts
Well if Steve can have a rant then so can I! Is anyone else having a problem with single name contacts syncing to their iPhone?
The problem is simple: I have a contact on my iPhone, e.g. “Mum”, which is filled in as the First Name in Contacts. The Last Name is blank. That’s the way I want it.
The contact is also set up *exactly* the same way within Address Book. I sync with my Mac a few times, and everything seems fine. Then all of a sudden, on some random sync, the name will change from “Mum” to “Mum Radford”. Maddening!
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Carnival of the Mobilists 164
This week’s Carnival of the Mobilists is yet again chock full of excellent writing, plus another contribution from All About iPhone. There are stats galore, especially relating to mobile data usage from Tomi Ahohen and Chetan Sharma.
But the post of the week, and also my favourite read, was from Andrew Grill of London Calling. He reports on his “Eureka moment” with Twitter + mobile + search. There is a lot going on in the mobile location services space at the moment. We’ll also have article up on that topic soon, from someone working on an iPhone location app.
Read the Carnival at Ubiquitous Thoughts.