After 473 days of beta testing and many, many preliminary releases, the rich multimedia mobile browser Skyfire has just hit version 1.0. Though Skyfire’s biggest features (namely, its ability to handle formats like Flash and Silverlight) have been in since its early days, there’s enough polish and primp in this release to justify branding it with a whole number.
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From downloading videos and high-resolution photos, to online gaming and chatting with friends over instant-messengers, the mobile broadband networks of today are strong – but they’re starting to feel ancient. Today, AT&T clarified their plans to upgrade their network to deliver considerably faster mobile broadband speeds by way of HSPA (High Speed Packet Access). HSPA roll outs will begin later this year, firing up in full sometime in 2011.
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We’ve all heard of “sexting,” when teens send nude photos of themselves to each other via text message (well, MMS). Schools don’t like it, parents don’t like it, but, apparently, it’s all the rage among young people these days. Well, it turns out that sexting really isn’t that big of a deal; it’s merely a continuation of the age-old tradition of “exploration” and all that. A 2009 version of spin the bottle, if you will.
Zensify is a new lifestreaming iPhone app which lets you update, discover and track pictures, videos and comments across multiple social networks. Other apps have tried to do similar things. But what sets Zensify apart is that it shows the user trends within your social graph in the form of a tag cloud of key words. In other words it brings a lot more intelligence to your social graph. Suddenly, you can see a big trending topic amongst people you follow. I’ve been wanting something similar for a while and I’m not alone. David Winer recently Tweeted: “Wouldn’t it be cool if “trending topics” were localized to the people who are followed by the people you follow.” Well Zensify does this.
For geeks who a) happen to believe in Buddha and b) are able of reading Chinese, this must be excellent news: Buddhists can now actually buy a Buddha cell phone in China. The device is not a joke product, but it actually works and makes kind of sense (if you are a Buddhist).
Let’s say you’re going to Somalia for a family vacation, you know, just to get away from it all. Additionally, lets say you brought your Visa card for any transactions while you’re away, because cash is for suckers. But wait! When you go to buy that tiki-lamp that you haggled on for nearly an hour, you find that your bank has denied the purchase. Inconvenient? Sure. But how is your bank supposed to know it’s you buying a tiki-lamp, and not some high-profile identity theft extraordinaire? Ericsson, a Swedish-based mobile solutions company, wants to make the whole process a bit less kludgy.
As stated by Peter Garside, U.K. and Ireland regional manager for Ericsson’s IPX, this service uses a person’s mobile phone to provide a confirmation that he or she is in the country where the transaction is occurring. Ericsson will play middle-man with charging and transferring funds from banks to the mobile networks using the service, keeping a fraction of the money involved.
When I was a kid, I loved going to arcades and playing shooting games. Something about wielding a fake, plastic gun and mindlessly blasting away at aliens, dinosaurs, or zombies was truly exhilarating. Of course, as time went on, I became a more somber and critical gamer–I wanted “realism” and thought it was ridiculous I could kill 500 enemies without getting hit once myself. The wildly successful Deer Hunter franchise capitalizes on that sensibility in older gamers by offering a more realistic hunting experience. After years of developing the series for countless feature phones, Glu has finally brought Deer Hunter to the iPhone with Deer Hunter 3D.
This popped up this weekend but it’s worth a look. Apparently there’s a special manual that Palm and Sprint put together to train in-store folks how to sell the Pre. They won’t sell the phone to just anyone, mind you. Only early adopters and artsy hipsters with jobs AKA “non-IT Centric business users” should apply. Real business people should look elsewhere including the WinMo-powered Treo Pro.
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The conversation I had with a female roommate this morning, upon receiving the press release for the Samsung Gloss:
Me: Check this out! It’s called the Samsung Gloss. It’s a QWERTY flip phone built for the ladyfolk.
Her: Misogynist!
Me: It’s pink! It has flowers! It’s called “gloss”!
Her: Still. Plus, why is it called “gloss”? If they’re going off the idea that it looks like make-up, lipgloss comes in a tube. That looks more like a compact.
I’m a big fan of the T-Mobile G1 but to say that the selection of quality games from the Android Market has been underwhelming (at best) would be sugar-coating it. Luckily none of that really matters any more, as Android finally has a decent NES emulator.
After we broke the story of the Palm Eos’ existence back in April, the information came pouring in. Alas, one thing that no one could seem to nail was a release date.
AT&T is playing with black magic, and some of its closest ties may get burned. AT&T will be launching the HTC “Lancaster”, powered by Google’s Android platform, making its way to retail stores in August of this year. Having AT&T’s first Android-powered device being released soon looks like this isn’t something that AT&T is setting on its back burners. This may be mildly damaging to Apple as they’re working on contracts and negotiations with AT&T for continued exclusive support for the iPhone. So is this AT&T’s way of showing Apple that it hasn’t become a one-trick pony, relying largely on the success and popularity of the iPhone?
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According to the Guardian, O2 has scored the exclusive on the Palm Pre for the UK. It’s been quite a while since we first saw a GSM variant of the Pre at MWC, but things have been quiet ever since. Beating out Vodafone and Orange, O2 – the UK’s largest mobile provider- hopes to stock the upcoming Palm device by the holiday season. But that’s not the only must-have handheld that the UK mobile operator will be carrying this year. Assuming Apple announces new hardware next month, O2 will also carry the latest iPhone before the Pre launches later in the year. This is going to be a stellar year for smartphones and I’d better start saving my pennies.
Japanese telecommunications giants SoftBank and Docomo unveiled their summer 2009 line-ups last week and were followed by the country’s No. 2 carrier, KDDI au, today. While SoftBank is to roll out 15 new cell phones this summer and Docomo even presented 17 models, KDDI au showed only 8 new candy bars [JP] in the morning. But some of these are amazing.
Move over, Nokia N97. Your bigger, badder, unannounced brother is on the way – and one of our sources at Nokia has just clued us in on all of the details, from worldwide launch targets to hardware specs.
According to Palm’s little accessory guide here, non-Palm micro-USB charging solutions won’t work. What the hell? I can’t just plug it into my computer? That Touchstone dock is cool, but I don’t want to have to carry it everywhere I go. Besides, weren’t we supposed to all be moving towards a unified charging solution? I guess like with all highly-anticipated products (like Android, or the President), we have to be ready for some letdowns along the way.
Let’s hope it’s just a fib to sell more of Touchstones. There’s more Palm accessory stuff here, and plan info etc, so if you’re curious and the grill is still warming up, go do your thing.
[via Gear Diary]
I was about to ignore this email from Microsoft but it seems there is a nugget of wonderful info in there. Remember when we said you could share your apps with four friends – behavior that essentially works on an iPhone and the App Store when you sync to the same iTunes instance? Well you can’t. OK? You can’t. Be quiet.
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A man once told me that I could not have my Cupcake and eat it too. He was obviously dead wrong. Today’s big buzz on the Android front is that the official OTA install package for Android 1.5 (lovingly known around the internets as ‘Cupcake’ update) is now available for direct download and manual patching. For those of us who have waited patiently for the official patch but just can’t wait another day for it to come over-the-air, it is our day of rejoicing. At long last, we get to sink our teeth in to that green sugar-coated muffin, complete with video recording, on-screen keyboard, an expanding library of widgets, and stereo bluetooth support (to name a few additions).
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The GPS Navigation system has become a utility that is essential to travel, whether it be daily commute or cross country excursion. Once seen a luxury, this now-necessity has been a sweeping success all around the globe, allowing the world’s atlases right at your fingertip with near surgical precision in tracking and guidance. TeleNav, established veteran of the GPS marketplace, has really taken the time to make a fully functioning turn-by-turn system for the Android platform. Availability is currently limited to the G1, though we assume they’ll branch out to other devices as Android grows.
Something called the “iPhone 32GB” was spotted on T-Mobile Austria’s Web site; it has since been removed. This is huge news because… well, it’s probably not huge news, no.
