Archive for the 'Cellular' Category
developers worldwide over an Internet-based service. This new addition marks another significant milestone for the company, which released the first generation of the iPhone device last year at the CTIA Wireless & Entertainment Conference in San Francisco. With this release, DeviceAnywhere brings the only solution to the mobile marketplace that offers developers a simple, direct connection to more than 1500 mobile devices - now including first and second generation iPhone handsets, to optimize their development efforts without having to physically acquire the devices.
With the addition of the new iPhone 3G, DeviceAnywhere users will also be able to capitalize on the latest new features available on the device. For example:
* Users can test downloading their application through the AppStore
* Users can test how fast their Web sites loads on the 3G network
DeviceAnywhere will be demonstrating the iPhone on DeviceAnywhere at the CTIA Wireless & Entertainment Conference in San Francisco, CA (September 10-12) in Booth #751.
According to William Ho, Research Director (Wireless Services) at Current Analysis: “Applications have become a major part of the iPhone’s appeal since the arrival of the App Store. Whatever the issues that Apple has faced over the performance of the iPhone 3G, it has done little to dampen the enthusiasm of application developers who have been creating more and more applications for the platform.”
DeviceAnywhere is a revolutionary online service used by thousands of mobile organizations and their developers. It provides access to real mobile handsets that are each connected to live networks. These devices are accessible remotely over the Internet, allowing users to interact in real time to ensure all development, porting, testing, and monitoring needs are met. The DeviceAnywhere service uses actual, physical handsets to provide developers with the same experiences as having the devices in hand.
“With the addition of the iPhone 3G to DeviceAnywhere, we are leveling the playing field for application developers around the world,” commented Faraz Syed, CEO of DeviceAnywhere. “It can be tough, not to mention expensive, for developers to get hold of the right devices on the right networks, so this should come as welcome relief for the many application developers who are building apps for the iPhone platform .”
To access the iPhone 3G, simply register to trial DeviceAnywhere, please visit www.deviceanywhere.com. Once registered, users have access to three free hours on the system. Existing users are able to access the iPhone 3G through their standard DeviceAnywhere subscriptions. Additional DeviceAnywhere features - such as monitoring and test automation - are also available on the iPhone 3G, empowering users to more efficiently create better applications and content for the marketplace.
For the millions of Americans that send MMS greetings everyday, the future has arrived. Today, Alltel Wireless, America’s largest network, announced the introduction of Alltel Avatars, a 3D animated MMS greeting service that allows users to choose from an extensive library of pre-produced greetings or allows them to use templates to create their own greeting using 3D avatars, photos, voice and more.
Alltel Avatars is powered by Vidiator, a leading 3G mobile multimedia platform provider and its Xend(tm) 3D hosted platform.
Greetings are available starting at only 99 cents, with hundreds of cards to choose from at launch. The service also provides users with the ability to add emoticons, personal audio tracks, and personal digital signatures to their messages. In addition, users can create an animated image from their photos, combine it with their typed or audio message and send to mobile devices or e-mail.
“Taking messaging beyond simple text, the introduction of 3D avatars represents the next evolution of wireless communications,” said Craig Kirkland, vice president of messaging and voice services for Alltel Wireless. “The vast level of personalization offered to our customers via Alltel Avatars provides them with a new vehicle to express their emotions, style and personality.”
Unique avatar-based content that Alltel is launching includes branded greeting card content, personalized greetings created using consumers’ own photos, advertising campaigns and corporate communications. Alltel Avatars is available to any Alltel MMS subscriber with a video enabled handset that can play 3GP files.
“3D animated avatar-based mobile messaging driven by Xend 3D goes well beyond simple text, and is the next big leap in mobile messaging. It enables carriers to easily bridge the gap between SMS and new “entertainment-focused” MMS messaging applications and advertising; and for consumers, we think these type of services will change the way people communicate with their mobile devices by allowing them to richly express their emotions through voice, animation and 3D like never before,” said Connie Wong, CEO Vidiator.
Alltel Wireless continues to provide choice and flexibility to the customer’s wireless experience with its exclusive “My Circle” feature, giving customers unlimited calling to and from any five, 10 or 20 numbers on any network for free. Alltel Wireless was also the first to offer Anytime Plan Changes, giving customers the flexibility to change their calling plans at any time, without extending their current contract.
To access the multimedia content associated with this release, please visit www.thenewsmarket.com/alltel. Registered members will find broadcast quality video for their purposes, free of charge.
Verizon also notes that customers can create up to 10 greetings, 20 distribution lists and 50 distribution members to receive messages.
Verizon relies on the Alcatel-Lucent 5150 Messaging Applications Broker (MAB) for visual voice mail, “Which provides enhanced notification and content delivery services for voice, text and video messages through an intuitive visual interface.”
One of my early complaints with the first generation iPhone, which remains to this day, was the inability to send my “card” to another iPhone or smartphone user. Just days before the purchase of the Apple phone, I was able to transmit my contact card to any other Windows Mobile or Symbian user via Bluetooth or even Infrared. So why wasn’t this greatest phone ever allowing me this same convenience? Well, with no IR port and a severely retarded Bluetooth stack, it just wasn’t going to happen. What a shame and yet another ding against the Enterprise user by Apple.
Tapulous, a group of guys in Palo Alto (home to Apple CEO Steve Jobs), have thought that iPhones should be able to share contacts. Not just your contact but any of your contacts. The makers of the widely popular Twitter application for the iPhone, Twinkle, will be releasing a new application called friendBook. In its third application for the iPhone (the other the popular game Tap Tap), Tapulous brings a more powerful contacts manager to the iPhone. Not only will one be able to trade contacts, but better manager them right on the iPhone away from the connected computer. Easily find duplicates, merge contacts, and even dial a member of your virtual black book by a picture of the person, friendBook is surely to be a hit once on the App Store.
There is no immediate release date or pricing details for friendBook but rumor has it that the application has already been submitted to Apple and is merely awaiting approval. So look for it through the week and download it quickly! Who knows, Apple may deem this “bad” and remove it like it did Netshare. 
If you’re like me, you have most likely noticed that new sweet 3G iPhone drains a lot faster than the life changing 1st Generation iPhone did. Now I find myself plugging in my 3G into the car charger anytime I’m in my truck. I feel like I’m reverting to my Windows Mobile days.
Thankfully, Mophie, makers of external batteries for iPods and the 1st generation iPhone have updated its Juice Pack to work with the “twice as fast and half the price” iPhone! Giving your demanding 3G iPhone 350 hours of standby time, 6 hours of 3G talk time (12 for 2G), 6 hours of 3G Internet use, and 7 hours for Wi-Fi. The Juice Pack will give you much needed juice. Your iPod audio will now play for more than a day at 28 hours and you’ll get 8 hours of video play. Splendid, no doubt?
Ross Howe, Sales and Product Development Director for mStation/mophie says in its press release that, “Since its debut, power users of the iPhone 3G have demanded a product that will boost battery life for extended on-the-go use” . Howe continues, “juice pack 3G delivers this exceptional battery enhancement while keeping the unique style and feel of the iPhone intact.”
You can pre-order your Juice Pack for $99.95 at Mophie’s web site now.
For all you Twitter fanatics (yes, that’s me), there is something better for the iPhone. No, it’s not Twitterrific Premium as much as I would hope. It’s called Twittelator and unlike the former, you don’t have to pay for this to get the ad-free copy. Yes, Twittelator is free.
The great folks at Big Stone have decided that we all need a better Twitter client for the iPhone, and while I’ll readily admit it’s not as nice looking as Twitterrific, Twittelator works terrific! I immediately noticed that new tweets are rapidly displayed when you open the application. One of the biggest annoyance of Twitterrific is how it NEVER remembers my last position in the tweets list, so I tested that next on Twittelator. Guess what? It remembers. Nice. Thank you!! Another issue in Twitterrific is the keyboard disappearing when you hit the tweet ballon. No issues here.
The picture tweet works awesome as well. How many times have you lost pix for upload on Twitterrific due to a poor data connection? No worries mate, you just grab the picture from your photo library in Twittelator. Again, nice! You can also take a new picture within Twittelator as well. Twittelator fully resizes your picture to look normal on twitpic (see my first twitpic for proof.) Dude, did Big Stone like fully think this stuff out or what?
If you’re wishing brightkite would hurry up with its native iPhone app, don’t worry, Twittelator will get your geo-location down for you. Not as detailed as bkite, but still, nice.
Twittelator has an easy entry method to add all your friends into a tweet, built-in search for things or people near you, as well as the ability to see everyones tweets, featured tweets, or favorite ones. The great organization and in-depth information on each user far more than makes up for the not-so-fancy interface. And really, it’s not bad; we’ve just been spoiled by Twitterrific.
Now I have to see if Twittelator will make the long haul, but man, it’s already done a better job than Twitterrific. So much so, that I’ve just deleted it from my iPhone. If Big Stone wants to charge for this, I’ll pay!
This morning while being impressed with the fact my iPhone App Store app indicated I had an update via a 1 with a circle around it (much like when you have a new SMS message or email), I noticed something bad. Real bad. Looking in the iTunes Applications section, I saw that the storage path for my application was not the NAS (Network Attached Storage) server path I had specified for my music. Instead, it was on my local drive in the default iTunes folder in a new folder called Mobile Applications. Take a look at my Info window. The danger behind this is for those thinking they are securing their data from failure on an external RAID drive actually could lose all their applications with local hard drive failure. Yikes!
Knowing this, it is advisable to back up your local iTunes folder either through Time Machine (Leopard users) or a third-party application such as our favorite SuperDuper! While your apps are also stored on your iPhone, it is unknown if they can be restored from the device to iTunes after a re-installition of iTunes. Apple did not respond for requests to explain this in time for this post.
Apple took a leap into the enterprise market last Friday with the release of the iPhone firmware 2.0, a free downloadable upgrade for current first-generation users and pre-loaded on the 3G iPhone. The vault was the inclusion of full native support for Microsoft’s heavily used corporate email server, Exchange. Now, business men and women around the globe would be able to get their email on their iPhone in real-time. In other words, when new email appeared in their Inbox on their Mac or PC at the office, it would also be on the iPhone. This method is termed “push” as in pushing email to your phone rather than the phone checking for new email every 15, 30, or 60 minutes per user defined settings.
Push email has its advantages, like being constantly up to date with your email, but it also has some nasty cons. Users that see a large influx of email coming in throughout the day will find heavy battery usage due to the constant pushing of messages. Instead of holding off at a minimum of every 15 minutes to get your email, now your messages are filling up your iPhone every minute a new message is sent to you. If you receive 10 messages in 15 minutes, your iPhone will have 10 active sessions with your Exchange server within those 15 minutes. Multiple this by the hours in your day of heavy traffic and you’ll notice a red battery on your iPhones screen real fast. Add the 3G iPhone to the mix and it may be at 20% by the end of lunch. Not that this problem isn’t reserved just for Exchange users, but also Apple’s new MobileMe is effected by this issue as well. Anytime high traffic email is pushed to your iPhone, your phone will be draining its battery very quickly.
There are ways around this battery dump for your iPhone. In the Settings section, you will find the third icon labeled “Fetch New Data”. Tapping this brings up various settings. The first is “Push” which lets you turn it on or off. If you have more than one push account, say your Exchange server at work and your personal MobileMe, you can tap the “Advanced” selection on the bottom of the screen and then individually disable push for each account to allow you to retain, say your work email to be pushed and not your personal mail.
Push technology is not a new problem for batteries and it’s one Apple needs to actively find a solution to. Other manufactures such a Research In Motion (BlackBerry) have made great strives in keeping the battery juiced throughout the day while still receiving lots of email. If Apple wishes to overtake the millions of BlackBerrys in the enterprise, it needs to get this battery drain plugged.
James Tagg, Truphone’s CEO, said: “What Truphone for the iPhone does is really simple but absolutely sensational: it gives people low-priced international calls, whether they want to phone someone abroad or avoid roaming charges when making calls from abroad.
“With just a few clicks to download and install Truphone, anyone can afford to take their iPhone on holiday this summer – or call their friends and family abroad,” he added.
Truphone enables an iPhone to make calls to any number over the internet instead of over GSM, at Truphone’s fabulous internet rates. The rates are especially competitive for international calls, including landlines in 40 countries at GBP0.03 [USD0.06] per minute and mobiles at just GBP0.15 [USD0.30] per minute. To Canada, the USA and China, even calls to mobiles are just GBP0.03 [USD0.06] per minute.
Making a call using Truphone is exactly like making any other call on the iPhone: a single touch to bring the dialler up on the touch screen, touch-dial the number or choose from the iPhone’s own address book, and a touch to start the call. [Visit www.truphone.com/iphone to see a preview video of Truphone on the iPhone.]
Truphone for the iPhone is available to download from Apple’s new App Store for free. There are no monthly subscriptions or other charges. Visit www.truphone.com/iphone for more information.
Truphone pricing
Wi-Fi calls to countries in the Tru Zone always cost the same amazing flat rate, from anywhere in the world. This means a Truphone call on your iPhone to Sydney or London or Moscow or Rio always costs just 3p/6c per minute to landlines and 15p/30c per minute to mobiles. The majority of the world’s mobile users are in the Tru Zone - it includes the UK, Brazil, Australia, Thailand, Japan, Russia, Hong Kong, almost all of Europe, and loads more countries besides. Calls to USA, Canada and China are even lower still: a flat 3p/min to call landlines and mobiles. Customers receive free credit worth GBP2.00 [USD4.00] when they first sign up for Truphone.
SvenOnTech has already told you about this fun loving group of guys and gals that believe there is an under estimated market in first-generation iPhones and now we’re telling you about its crazy ways with the newest Super Phone. Rapid Repair has fully dismantled a new 3G iPhone and completely documented it on its web site. With only hours of the release of the follow up to Apple’s widely successful smartphone, Rapid Repair has yanked its new treasure apart. For us! The great thing about Rapid Repair is that it doesn’t want all the glory for itself and is giving away instructions with needed tools on how to take apart your very own shinny new black or white iPhone. If your sense of adventure is high, or your pocket book with green stuff, then you may want to travel this road less traveled and give it a shot!
If you’re looking to upgrade your current iPhone to the 3G and desire to keep the new one in one piece but would like a discount on it, check out Rapid Repairs buy-back program. You could get up to $150 for your iPhone!