Although I’m always skeptical of security measures like Find My iPhone, it’s always nice to hear when they work. In this case, a fairly ordinary phonejacking in Pittsburg was foiled when the fools forgot to remove the SIM from their recently acquired booty. After the perps took off, the victim went home, booted up his Mac, and tracked them to a local Wal-Mart, then to a restaurant. Officers apprehended them there, where they found the iPhone and other stolen stuff.
At last, the security measures we thrilled to in Enemy of the State and The Net are coming to fruition!
Are you addicted to FriendFeed? Can’t get enough of Robert Scoble’s incessant posts? Want to keep up with them even when you’re on the go? Are you praying to the heavens that Facebook doesn’t screw up FriendFeed post-acquisition? Then Stir (iTunes link) might just be for you. Created by StructLab Stir is an iPhone app that allows you to get your fill of FriendFeed anytime, anywhere. You can use it in the bathroom at work (guilty), while watching a lame chick flick with your girlfriend (guilty) or if you’re on the couch and don’t want to walk the 10 feet to your desk (umm, yes, guilty).
Of course, it is hardly the first FriendFeed app for the iPhone, but it’s the first one I’ve looked at and it’s pretty damn good. Mind you, I only started using FriendFeed last week. Twitter [follow me] is still my micro-blogging platform of choice, but I quickly noticed that FriendFeed has some obvious benefits. And Stir takes advantage of all of them. Read More
Rumors had the launch of the Sprint-branded Touch Pro 2 pinned all over the calendar, but all signs as of late have pointed at a September 8th release. Sure enough, Sprint just sealed the deal: the Sprint Touch Pro 2 will be shipping in just over a week.
And just as we’d predicted, Sprint’s price matching T-Mobile here penny-for-penny: after contracts and rebates are said and done, your wallet will be $350 lighter.
Want to see everything the Nokia N900 camera has to offer, months before release? Check Flickr. No, really.
After an officially sanctioned Nokia N900 sample picture made its way to TwitPic, TheNokiaBlog got to sleuthing. Deep down in the photo’s signature data (known as EXIF data) the N900 prototype was identifying itself with a specific, if abstract, model number: 007 001.
Flickr makes this data fairly visible, with each photo having “Taken with a [whatever camera model here].” A quick jump over to Google, a basic search query limited to Flickr.com – and bam, dozens and dozens of N900 camera samples.
The photos don’t look too shabby, especially considering that they’ve still got 2 months to brush up the firmware.
Coming to an iPhone/iPod Touch near you this fall from the creators of the greatest game in history (Editors Note: Well, at least the greatest game in history involving hookers and drugs), Grand Theft Auto, is Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars. I guess it’s going to be an exact port of the DS title. Are you excited?
Obvious disclaimer: All of us here on the Crunch team are at all times primarily concerned with the well-being of all our friends, family members, and the millions of unrelated noobs who call Southern California home. However, as a site dedicated to bringing you, our favorite people, as much relevant news re: the mobile world as possible, we think it’s also important to provide these quasi-public service announcements from time to time as well.
Currently, firefighters are doing all they can to quell the raging fires, which are also threatening cell phone and TV / radio broadcast towers, as well as a historic observatory, situated on Mt. Wilson. In order to try and save these vital communications towers and famed observatory, five engine crews were placed in the fire’s path last night. For more, please tune into your local news station for updates.
Man – Chinese infotainment portal Sina has really had things locked down lately when it comes to getting crystal clear shots of unreleased devices. They got a full hands on gallery with the LB40 Chocolate two days before it was announced, and now they’re following up with an exhaustive (as in 39 blur-free snaps) gallery of Dell’s Android-powered Mini 3i.
It looks like Dell’s done a bit of Android theme tweaking here, though it seems that its mostly just color changes and new widgets. We’ve torn through the gallery a few times in search of a 3.5mm jack (we have a bit of a thing for’em), to no avail – let us know if you spot one.
Fans of the television show Lost will remember that a big part of season 2 revolved around the pushing of a button. Every 108 minutes you had to enter numbers and push the button or the world might end, was the line of thought. Of course, as time went on, people started to wonder if it wasn’t just some psychological experiment. A new iPhone game that involves pushing a button, is a psychological exercise, of sorts.
Called Button, the game is about as simple as they come. There is a big button on the screen, and when it lights up, you push it. So why would anyone want to play that game? No, the world isn’t going to end if you don’t, but you will potentially miss out on some free prizes. And pushing the button may just help you get through some mundane tasks throughout your day as well.
Wuh oh – things just got real. Just last week, two mysterious Palm devices showed up in Verizon’s inventory: the P101, and the P121. The P100 is the Palm Pre, so it’s a pretty safe bet that the P101 is a VZW-branded version of the same handset. But the P121? It may well be the Palm Eos, but no one knows for sure.
Making things that much more complex, a Sprint version of the mysterious P121 has just popped up in their inventory system, going as the P120. Taking it one step even further, it’s joined by another model: the Palm C40. Now we’re looking at three separate model numbers on two carriers, none of which we’ve got any concrete information on. Yeesh.
Israeli startup Cellogic, makers of the fine FlyScreen software, have spent the last 8 months or so developing a custom version for the Android platform to complement their currently Symbian-exclusive version. Today, the company is debuting the private alpha version of the Android-compatible program, and we have 1,000 invites to offer for those carrying around HTC phones running Android 1.5 (it works on the Samsung Galaxy too but is less optimized for that particular device).
So what’s FlyScreen?
Essentially, a collection of expandable widgets that comprise syndicated content (such as TechCrunch) and small apps that hook into Twitter, Facebook etc. You can use it to fetch the RSS feed of your favorite blogs, and thus be able to quickly access previews of published content, tag articles for later reading or share posts on Twitter and/or Facebook in just one click.
The BlackBerry Storm may finally have found its pricing sweet spot. The phone definitely was overpriced at $200 last year and even the $100 price cut a few months ago didn’t seem right, but $50?!? Yeah, I wanna throw mine into a wall and piss on the remains daily, but VZW isn’t going to have any trouble at all clearing out the inventory. You know why it’s only $50 right?
Unlike some people around these parts, I loves me some Twitter (psst, follow me.) Thing is, just about every time I get a chance to tweet, I can’t. Maybe my hands are covered in grease as I’m stuffing my face with a delicious burger; maybe I just don’t want to come home from a long day of blogging and have to squeeze my thoughts into 140 characters with my iPhone’s made-for-babies keyboard.
Voice recognition Twitter apps are intriguing, but none of the major Twitter clients have it yet (as far as I know), and I’m just not hardcore enough to drop money on any apps that might offer voice-tweeting as its sole functionality. Fortunately, an already worthwhile app has come along and solved all my problems via upgrade.
It’s no secret: there’s some Benjamins to be made on the App Store. In fact, the App Store is now a $2.4 billion dollar per year business, according to AdMob’s monthly mobile metrics report. Here’s another fun fact you probably already know: most app developers fade into the App Store abyss long before they ever find fame and fortune. Even if you ignore the junk apps and the million e-books each published as a separate app, you’ve still got a solid 5-10,000 apps clamoring to grab a piece of the App Store pie. Many developers feel like the App Store is akin to high school: an anarchic and ruthless popularity contest to see who’s got the biggest, well, um, you know what I mean.
That brings us to the $2.4 billion question: how do you succeed on the App Store? We’ve spent the last few weeks trying to answer that question and have come up with a list of tips and tricks that’ll help you edge your way into App Store glory. Now, none of these will replace making a good product or compensate for a million-dollar advertising and PR budget, but they’ll likely help you get noticed or keep your current momentum.
Here, in this glorious land of the free and home of the brave, there is generally one thing that most all Americans can agree on: the major mobile wireless carriers (AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint) suck leave much to be desired.
As more and more people come to depend solely on their cell phones and the related services (voice, data, multimedia), it becomes that much more important for the FCC to ensure that the wireless industry remains legitimately competitive for the sake of reliability, innovation, and most importantly, for all of us, the American consumers. Fortunately, by law, the FCC is required to report annually on the state of competition in the “commercial mobile services” market.
It has been a good two months or so since TomTom announced that they were making a GPS-boostin’, speaker-totin’ car cradle for the iPhone, and we’ve heard a whole lot of nothing since. Aside from a UK retailer preorders indicating that the cradle might cost £99.00 (roughly $161), TomTom has been pretty quiet on the matter.
It looks like we might be hearing more soon, though. The product has just made its way through the FCC’s torture tombs, indicating that the product is on the last leg of the development cycle.
Fun fact: The TomTom cradle should work with the iPod Touch, giving it the navigation abilities generally reserved for its better connected, contract-required bigger brother.
We’ve got good news, and we’ve got not-so-good news. The good news: PhoneArena just got their hands on 6 screen shots showing off a handful of devices making their first appearances in Verizon’s inventory system. The not-so-good news: They don’t really answer any questions. In fact, they raise more questions than they answer – but we still love us a good leak!
A couple of devices that have already been confirmed (or, at least, are pretty much undeniable) make an appearance; namely, the Storm 2, Touch Pro 2, and Omnia II. Outside of phones that highlight the fact that everyone is just strapping some form of “Two” onto the names of their popular handsets and calling it a day, the Samsung Convoy and two mystery Palm devices also show up: the P101, and the P121. We can assume that one is the Pre – but what’s the other? The Palm Eos, perhaps? Read More
There are few things more coveted in the iPhone developer world than the top spots on the App Store sales chart. Sure, there’s only one way to go once you’ve hit the top; but while you’re there, you’re riding high. You get to sit back, relax, and watch as Cupertino’s little talkbox prints out money.
But how much are those spots worth, exactly? How much do these top Paid Apps bring in? Read More
Just as we wrote about yesterday, Chinese telecom giant China Unicom has just officially announced that it has reached a deal with Apple to sell the iPhone in China. They did so as an aside in their earnings announcement, which you can find here.
Some details not revealed yesterday include that this is a 3-year deal between China Unicom and Apple, and that the first iPhones will ship sometime in Q4 of this year (the report yesterday had said October, which is certainly a possibility). Not stated is whether this will be the iPhone 3GS or the older iPhone 3G. Recent reports had indicated that either way, the device would not come with WiFi functionality (which had supposedly long been one sticking point between Apple and the Chinese carriers).
Big news from Japan’s mobile phone industry today (Friday afternoon Japanese time). Various Japanese media are reporting that NEC, Hitachi and Casio are in talks to merge their cell phone operations to become Japan’s second biggest manufacturer, following Sharp.
Reportedly, NEC plans to integrate its cell phone business into a tie-up that already exists between Hitachi and Casio. According to rumors, NEC wants to take a majority stake in the new entity, which would then control about 20% of the Japanese cell phone market.
Nearly two weeks after submitting the app to Apple, Facebook’s totally revamped 3.0 application is finally live on the App Store, according to the app’s developer Joe Hewitt. You can download it now here. The store currently shows that the app is version 2.5, but if you click the Download button anyway you’ll get the new version.
The new application brings a slew of new features, making it what may be the most useful app on the App Store (be sure to read this post) for our full review. Among the additions are Events, which have frustratingly been omitted from previous versions. Now you’ll be able to look up where your Events are, and you can also respond to them and see which of your friends are attending (for anyone who has ever had to boot up the web version of the site just to look up an Event address, this is a big deal. You can also post video directly to the site if you have an iPhone 3GS — a feature that will likely see the number of videos on Facebook increase dramatically.
Although I’m always skeptical of security measures like Find My iPhone, it’s always nice to hear when they work. In this case, a fairly ordinary phonejacking in Pittsburg was foiled when the fools forgot to remove the SIM from their recently acquired booty. After the perps took off, the victim went home, booted up his Mac, and tracked them to a local Wal-Mart, then to a restaurant. Officers apprehended them there, where they found the iPhone and other stolen stuff.
Are you addicted to 
Obvious disclaimer: All of us here on the Crunch team are at all times primarily concerned with the well-being of all our friends, family members, and the millions of unrelated noobs who call Southern California home. However, as a site dedicated to bringing you, our favorite people, as much relevant news re: the mobile world as possible, we think it’s also important to provide these quasi-public service announcements from time to time as well.
It’s no secret: there’s some Benjamins to be made on the App Store. In fact, the App Store is now a $2.4 billion dollar per year business, according to 
Here, in this glorious land of the free and home of the brave, there is generally one thing that most all Americans can agree on: the major mobile wireless carriers (AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint) 
