Cooliris 1.5 for iPhone

It's nice to have friends :D Last night I got an e-mail from the CoolIris team. You know I'm a big fan of their product. So they launched a new version for the iPhone. With a new redesigned interface and tons of new features. Here are some of them:

* My Social, a brand new feature with complete Twitter integration so you can re-tweet, follow, and view public/friend timelines
* Search Bing, our News and Entertainment channels, or even Twitter for cool content
* Favorite entire feeds and Wall views to save searches for future viewing
* Search filter options for all search providers



For the full feature list and description, visit their blog. And for a DEMO of the program watch this. Hope you enjoy their product, and if you have any questions you can ask me, or ask the cooliris team directly @ cooliris.com

iPhone, Jailbreak and Nation Security

This is a must read! Did you know that you could bring down the US nation only by using your iPhone?
As usual Apple outdid themselves with their own bullshit and stupidity. I have written this article in romanian already ( which you can check out here) , but I'll just forward you to the original english text @ Wired.

Y Mess for Iphone

So a few days ago the new version of Yahoo Messenger for iPhone came out. Supposedly there are a few bug fixes and other small improvements but what made me curious was the new Push feature.
Taking advantage of the new API in 3.0 SDK they now made Yahoo use push directly. So if you receive a message or notification on messenger, even if the app is not running directly you will still receive a notification on the screen ( similar to the one for SMSs).
So I installed the update and went on to test it. I have to say that I'm quite impressed with how well the whole push thing works. I mean the delay between receiving the message and the notification appearing on the screen is only a few seconds..and that can easily be attributed to crappy signal coverage.
Another thing that I was really interested in was the battery consumption with Push. This goes both ways. Meaning that the Push itself uses quite little batter ..from what I saw only about 5-10% more which is quite decent. The problem appears when you send replies to messages you receive. Because every time you hit reply, the app reloads, and uses A LOT of battery.
With brightness set to 60%, 3G on, e-mail set to manually download, and a full charged battery I couldn't use the app for more than a few hours till it went under 20%. And as I said that's only because of the application itself , not because of the Push feature.
All in all , everything is ok but you can't rely on this app to chat for a whole day. Be sure to check this article in romanian if you can rgstuff.ro
Cheers Geeky

IPHONE OS 3.0 IS OUT

the iphone os 3 is now out, you can download it on itunes. for a list of the most important features read this.

iPhone 3G S and Iphone OS 3

Wow it's been a great day today, and it's only half-way through. Yesterday ( or late last night in my time zone) was the World Wide Developers Conference ( WWDC) at which Apple unveiled among other things, the latest and most powerful version of the iPhone.

The iPhone 3G S ( S stands for speed), is packed with new features, that make the iphone an even greater smart-phone. While there are quite a lot I will only note the ones that are truly great:

• 2x ( twice) the speed of the iphone 3g. Meaning you'll be able to load, view, edit and save programs/files/attachements/web pages much faster.
• a brand new 3MPX built in camera, with auto-focus/tap-to-focus and the ability to film @ 30 fps.
• new voice-controlled interface, for phone and ipod apps.
• longer lasting battery, up to 9 hours on wifi.
• improved accessibility features
• data encryption options
• built-in nike+ support
• faster internet access, the phone now supports 7.2 Mbps HSDPA
  

A few other features hidden around, you can watch the keynote at Apple.com. Other things worth noting:

It comes out with the new OS3. For a list of features and enhancements read this.

It's release date is June 19th, and the OS 3 release date is June 17th.

The OS 3 is a FREE upgrade for all iphone users.

The 3G S cost 199$ for a 16 GB model and 299$ for a brand new 32 GB model. ( prices according to At&t for new subscribers).

The OLD iphone 3G is now available with OS3 preinstalled for only 99$.

All fine and dandy, if you're a new user than this is the phone for you. But what if you're not? Is upgrading worth it? Here's a great article on the issue from TechCrunch.

iPhone Bug

This is probably the weirdest thing that ever happened to me on a phone, not just on a iPhone.

Today I was sitting next to a friend, both of us with iPhones. I was using the new Yahoo Messenger app while he was streaming radio over 3G. Meanwhile another person, outside of the building, with another iPhone sent HIM an SMS message. Now here comes the weird part: I received the message, and it displayed it with the contact info from my friend's phone. And I didn't even have that person's number on my cell!

Most people would jump and say it was addressed wrong or that I was using the other phone, but I wasn't and it wasn't. When the 3rd person came by, we all checked the addressing ( which was a reply to an earlier message), the numbers and everything.  When I checked my SMS app, the message was gone, it was never saved, nor opened, only displayed. Everything was correct, but I got the info/sms and my friend didn't receive anything. 

We then proceeded to test the phones in different scenarios to try and recreate the bug but we couldn't. I checked around the net for anything related to this but it seems this is the first ever.

PS: here's some info on the phones: all of them are 3g phones, my friend's and the 3rd person's being jailbreaked while mine is legitimate.

 If anyone hears anything about this I'd appreciate a reply or something. Cheers

Yahoooo Messenger

     As some of you may know Yahoo announced a few days ago they would be launching a new app for the iPhone, the Messenger app. Well today was that day and the app is out. You can find it on the AppStore, but right now it's only available on the US Store. So I decided to check it out.

    The first thing you must remember is that YAHOO! is NOT THE SAME THING as YAHOO! MESSENGER. I had no idea there were two apps flying around, both official yahoo stuff. The first one "Yahoo!" would actually be cute if it wasn't utter crap. It's an app designed to give you all your yahoo stuff, such as e-mails, news, messenger, flickr, etc all in one app. The idea is nice, the design is actually very nice but the implementation is very bad. The app is slow, refreshes all the time and  I actually made it crash twice by pressing two buttons on the screen at the same time. You don't get any notifications on new messages and well ..it's simply useless. The only thing it would be good at ( in my opinion) is for reading the news but of course you can do that via Safari or any of other 1000 news related apps.

    The second app, and the one I was originally looking for is Yahoo!Messenger. Their icons are the same except the Messenger one has a yellow smiley on it. Well this app is great. Though a friend of mine complained it was sluggish, I didn't experience any problems with it. The design is great, simple and direct, you can change your status, you can even host a link, you can send pictures ( tried it and it worked great) either from your library or by taking a pic right there. Aaaa it still has a few more features but I don't remember them right now. Anyway it really is excellent, supersedes Palringo and OneConnect and especially Fring.

 If you want a full list of features, and some more info you can visit the Y! Messenger Blog. Oh and I also embedded the presentation video for the app. Cheers

iPhone OS 3.0

       Hello. A few days ago, Apple had a developer conference in which they revealed the new software for the iPhone and iPod touch. the 3.0 OS that will be released some time this summer, and alongside it the new 3.0 SDK ( which is already available as a beta). I have to say it's packed with features, some useful some not so much, some that should have been there from the start, but overall it's going to be a nice release, fixing many problems and making life just a little easier. Here are some of the most waited for and most important features you can expect :

• First of all for developers, the SDK features about 1000 new APIs for you to use while coding. These include, the ability to insert a google map into your app, the ability to add in-app payments ( such as for subscriptions and buying new levels for a game) and many many more.
• Now for the average consumer. Well they added the so much awaited and anticipated copy/cut/paste feature that works across all basic applications. You can now select part of a text, or the whole text and paste it wherever you like whether it is in a note, sms or e-mail.
• They also added MMS support. Yes you can now send multimedia messages, sounds, pictures and even contacts over the cellular data network.
• They finally added search across many applications, not the least being the iPod app.
• Alongside search, or as an extention, they added Spotlight. Yes the same spotlight as on the Mac OSX. Every time you drag towards the right of the home-screen you'll go to a whole new screen where you can search in the entire phone for a name, a number or an address. It finds everything from contacts and songs, to calendar appointments.
• Another new and awaited feature they added p2p ( peer to peer) connectivity  over bluetooth. You can now play multiplayer games over it, and if i remember right you're also able to send contacts via bluetooth from one phone to another.
• They tweaked around different apps, added the "landscape" mode for the keyboard ( meaning the big keyboard) in apps such as SMS and E-mail so you can now write easier and faster.
• They also added some extra support for different calendar appointments stuff ( i never use those)
• They added Push support for many many apps and now developers can encode push into their apps for you to use.
• Safari has a few improvements such as phishing filters.

 There are many many new features alongside these but these are probably the most important and most sought after ( alongside Flash support which is still nowhere near in sight). If you want to watch the whole keynote you can find it here.

In case you were wondering, this update is absolutely free for everyone that has an iPhone ( including 1.0 firmware), and costs about 12$ for the iPod Touch. And it will be shipped some time during Q2 or even more likely Q3 of this year.

That's it. Cheers

iPhone Apps

Sorry I haven't written in such a long time but I haven't actually done anything lately. Got an older Gigabyte motherboard, with an AM 2 socket and an AMD proccesor , but for some reason it doesn't work and i have yet to figure it out. Basically it only worked once.

Anyway in the last few days two apps for the iPhone came up that are really nice.

The first one is Google Earth. It was launched a week ago, and is available for free on both iPhone and iTouch from the Apple App Store. It's exactly the same as the computer version, but it also uses the built in accelerometer for a few special things that you should check out.

The second one is Cooliris ( PicLens). You know I'm a great fan. The cooliris project was first an add-on for Firefox and IE, but now it comes as a stand-alone app. It's design fits perfectly with the whole Apple-ish feel. For more info on Cooliris you can either check out their homepage or this post Again this is a free app, you can get it at the App Store.

I'll do a post on Windows 7 as soon as I get the time

oneConnect by Yahoo ( Y! Mess for Iphone)

             I am really not in the mood to write anything right now, so I'll keep this really short. Yahoo came out a few days ago with a new version of Messenger designed for the iPhone. Unfortunately it only works in the US right now, and I think you might get taxed for some services but I can't be sure cause I couldn't find a way to test it on my iPhone even after downloading it from the US App. Store. The app itself has a nice UI , it uses the SMS service for messages ( at least that's the way I saw it) and has a few other features. You can check out an overview of it right  HERE! ( For some reason I can't link to this site so you just copy paste this in your browser : http://www.ymessengerblog.com/blog/2008/09/10/oneconnect-yahoo-messenger-for-the-iphone-and-a-whole-lot-more/ )

           For the rest of you who are not living in the US/ who don't want to get taxed for extra services , I recommend Palringo, which is a very nice, easy to use and ergonomic app that you can download for free at any Apple app store. Nor does it have any hidden charges, and it works with Y mess, MSN, Palringo service, and a few other widespread social networks.