Firefox for Mobile – ‘Fennec Alpha’
So the Mozilla foundation have a new browser, aimed at mobile. It’s excellent news that we will have another browser entering into the marketplace soon.
Mobile web browsers are the first point of call for internet users in developing countries in Asia and Africa, truly giving people means to live and connect with family and business contacts. The mobile is also the first internet experience for many handset owners in India. There is a deeper penetration of the internet using mobile than desktop in these continents.
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Comparing Google Sync and MobileMe
Google’s over-the-air synchronisation tool – Google Mobile Sync – launched this week, enabling sync between your Google account and your mobile phone. Here’s a quick comparison to Apple’s OTA sync service, MobileMe.
Nokia’s take on the iPhone’s innovation
No, no, not another post referencing the iPhone’s AppStore – and in any case, Nokia for one can’t be accused of going all me too on that front, since every Nokia smartphone since 2005 has had a ‘Download!’ on-device store (just not a very successful one) – what I’d like to focus on here are the innovations in the iPhone’s form factor and how Nokia and others are responding.
Cast your mind back, if you will, to the momentus MacWorld keynote at the start of 2007 in which Steve Jobs announced the iPhone to the world. The three main points which stuck in my mind about Apple’s new creation were:
- The way in which the ‘too much plastic’ problem was overcome. Now, full-screen PDAs had been with us for years, and some Windows Mobile smartphones were just that – full-screen PDAs with a phone tacked on. But Apple brought us a full-screen, purpose-built phone that aimed to compete with the ‘plastic-ridden’ qwerty-keyboarded smartphones at their own game, but without a physical keyboard.
- Finger touch was now OK. After years of everyone saying ‘Don’t touch your screen, you’ll get it dirty/greasy’, it’s now not only OK, but indeed the only way to interact with your device. Radical.
- The iPhone interface, seamless from top to bottom, doing away with menus and finger-friendly throughout. Purpose-built, you might say, even though in reality it sits on top of a version of Mac OS X.
Review: iPingPong 3D
Somewhere between the antiquated simplicity of Pong (the original 2D video game) and the reality of fast and furious world class table tennis, there’s a happy middle ground. Represented for most of us by a cheery game of ping pong on the family dining table. Or here in iPingpong 3D, which has much the same feel. It’s slickly programmed and has a fabulously smooth interface but somehow it never really rises to world class, either as a table tennis game or as an iPhone application.
iPingPong 3D
Read on for the full review…
The false panic over Crackulous
Yesterday Hackulo.us released Crackulous, which strips the DRM protection from iPhone applications. This allows any application bought from the App Store to run on any other iPhone. Writing about this, The Unofficial Apple Weblog has gone with “Crackulous is released, chaos imminent”. I don’t buy that.
App Review: Talking Phrasebook
I’ve been fascinated by the use of handhelds to facilitate both learning and using languages for years. It all started with the first Psion and Palm PDAs, with appropriate English-to-XXX dictionaries, but with the advent of multimedia around the Year 1997, audio samples became possible for the first time. Space was a problem in those early days, of course. And the underlying platforms have evolved significantly. But the idea is still valid and CoolGorilla’s latest implementation on the iPhone is extremely slick. Here’s a brief video walkthrough of how it works:
App Review: iBonsai
In another facet of my existence, I practice a Japanese martial art called Aikido. The central themes of Aikido are harmony and calmness. So when Tyler Streeter asked me to review his app iBonsai, which grows a virtual bonsai tree on your iPhone, I didn’t rush to write it up, but took my time and serenely composed my thoughts…
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App Review: Peeps
I’m a fan of Coverflow – I really like navigating my stuff by flicking through pictures. Admittedly, it’s not ideal for every situation, and it some it slows things down. In May, I wrote in “Embracing Coverflow” about the suitability of Coverflow-style browsing for Contacts – pictures are how you recognise people, so in this case I think it’s a natural fit.
Now, Plausible Labs has released Peeps, which embodies many of the ideas I wrote about. After a bit of initial confusion with Apple (over the perceived use of the private Coverflow API), the app was finally published to the App Store in late December. Peeps is able to talk to your built-in Contacts list, so there’s no maintaining another list of people. It pulls in all the photos on first launch, and keeps them updated.
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MMS native app storms the App Store
I’ve been meaning to write about the options for picture messaging on the iPhone for a while, but that’s pointless now . A proper native MMS application was released on January 5th, and – unsurprisingly – it’s already the third most downloaded free app on the UK App Store.
I wrote in August that MMS sending was coming to your O2 iPhone. Ross McKillop wrote a web app (iPhoneMMS.net) that interfaced with O2; originally this just allowed viewing of messages, but was later expanded to include sending. He has now teamed up with Ed Lea, who wrote the highly-regarded TV Plus, to create a native version of the web app. And it’s superb.
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How mainstream is Cydia?
Here’s something I found a bit curious. Cydia is the unofficial twin of the App Store, where users with jailbroken phones can go to get software. Since the App Store debuted, several applications have made the transition away from it – unofficial apps have become official and available for download on the App Store. It’s also the case that some apps, e.g. PDANet and Podcaster, have appeared on Cydia following rejection from the App Store by Apple. But I haven’t seen this before.
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