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Opera had finally demonstrated new Opera Mini for the iPhone at the Mobile World Congress.

In comparison to the default iPhone browser it looks pretty quick – Opera Mini loads the New York Times like 5x faster than its rival. Its main disadvantage is that it lacks the all-important feature pinch-to-zoom, and the only alternative is a method of double-tapping the webpages. Generally, the iPhone owners will find that the usual silky smooth scrolling through favorite webpages and responsive interface are maintained at the very best.

Unlike other platforms, the iPhone variant actually remembers the website you happened to browse last – the feature that will obviously be favored by a legion of iPhone admirers.

Company says as soon as beta tag is removed the browser will be submitted for approval. And it is not obvious whether Apple approve it or not, because it maintains the option of rejecting any app that “duplicates functionality” of the apps Apple builds into the iPhone. Opera co-founder Jon von Tetzchner has his own point of view on this:

“Opera Mini is the world’s most popualr mobile browser and users on the iPhone deserve a choice.”

On Thursday’s night Charlie Rose show featured an interesting discussion with Michael Arrington, Walt Mossberg and David Carr about the upcoming Apple iPad.

Michael Arrington is known as the founder and co-editor of TechCrunch. Walt Mossberg writes 2 columns for the Wall Street Journal. David Carr works as a culture and media columnist for the New Your Times. The 25 minutes long coverage reveals some interesting opinions that are worth to hear:

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Silicon Alley Insider reported recently that Steve Jobs visited New York City to meet with executives at The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times for discussions about bringing their content to the iPad.

Apple CEO held a dinner meeting with 50 representatives of The New York Times, though the visit to The Wall Street Journal was more low-key and the audience was very limited.

On Friday morning Steve Jobs also visited Time & Life Building to demonstrate an iPad to Time Inc. CEO Ann Moore and roomful of magazine editors.

It is obvious, that the goal of Jobs’ NYC visit is a content partnership. Since the iPad presentation, Apple has been working hard to broaden its content deals by pursuing book publishers and bringing textbook publishers on board. Currently the company apparently starts to focus its efforts on the magazine and newspaper industries.

Here is our live blog from Apple’s event:

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Rumors of the Apple tablet reaching new highs. MacRumors has found evidence that Apple acquired the domain name iSlate.com presumably in preparation for the new device. Remember how Bill Keller, executive editor of the New York Times, referenced an Apple slate two months ago?

MacRumors discovered that the domain was originally registered in October 2004 by Eurobox Ltd. In 2006 it changed hands to Data Docket, Inc. In 2007 it was transferred to registrar MarkMonitor.com, a site which handles registrations and trademark protections for Apple among other companies.

However Apple’s name was temporarily exposed as the actual owner of “iSlate.com” for several weeks in late 2007. It was quickly back, but MacRumors has found the historic record proving Apple ownership of the iSlate.com domain:

What do think? Is iSlate the name of Apple’s Tablet? Is it a good one?

iTablet rumors continue today, with the New York Times blogging that, according to an some Apple employee:

“I can’t really say anything, but, let’s just say Steve [Jobs] is extremely happy with the new tablet.”

Apple has had a tablet in the labs for years, but Steve Jobs and others didn’t see a mainstream market for the device or were not “extremely happy”. It looks like now the situation is different.

Moreover, the NYT post adds that former Apple employee has told them:

“You will be very surprised how you interact with the new tablet.”

Anyway we have to wait for another month. Remember? Rumors say iTablet will be announced on January 26th.

Bell Keller, Executive Editor of the NY Times, let slip on the still unconfirmed Apple tablet in a speech last week.

The New York Times speech comes from an internal “all hands” meeting at TheTimesCenter, which was intended to be off the record. However, the video was also provided to the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University. Skip to about 8:20, and you’ll hear:

We need to figure out the right journalistic product to deliver to mobile platforms and devices. I’m hoping we can get the newsroom more actively involved in the challenge of delivering our best journalism in the form of Times Reader, iPhone apps, WAP, or the impending Apple slate, or whatever comes after that.

Given the matter-of-fact way Keller refers to the slate, it sounds like a done deal versus a hypothetical.

via gizmodo, niemanlab

We all saw iPhone 3G “twice as fast” adv video. The funny thing is that in real world everything is much slower than in advertising.

However new iphone 3G is really faster than the old one: EDGE vs 3G.

During an interview to AppScout Greg Joswiak, Apple’s vice president, described that there is a priority list for IPhone’s functionality. And the copy/paste is there. It will be developed, it’s just a matter of time.

Some news about GPS. For now there is no such functionality to receive instructions where to go in real time. David Poga from New York Times thinks this is because of a small GPS receiver antenna inside IPhone. Joswiak doesn’t agree with that. He assumes that GPS module is quite competitive and is just like GPS modules in many other phones. This technical problem will be fixed quite soon, probably by some software from other company.

Firmware 2.0 is just released and we are all waiting for 2.1

via DeepApple