Both ApolloIM and MobileChat were jailbreak applications for chatting on the go with your iPhone/iPod touch. Alex Schaefer, ApolloIM's founder, has recently joined the MobileChat development team. In a blog posting by the developer of MobileChat, he said that both applications underwent "friendly competition" and that, while there was no clear winner in the iPhone IM business, users got the benefit from the ongoing competition.
Now that Alex has joined the other team, you can expect that MobileChat will only get better. The post goes on to mention that Alex will be working on stability and user experience for the application.
There are many mobile-specific magazines. I haven't seen any that write only about iPhones. However in Japan many iPhone-specific magazines have been available for over a year. Taking into consideration that iPhone 3G is avaliable in Japan for a bit more than a month.. Very nice.
Exit Games has a multiplayer gaming platform, called Neutron, on PCs, mobile devices, game consoles, and BREW phones. It works across devices and hardware, so you can play someone on their PC via your handset. And now it's ready for the iPhone. Today it was announced that the Neutron system of social network-like gaming now has iPhone support, or will as soon as developers code for it.
This is a telescope for iPhone 3G. Costs just $19 and zooms by 6x. Just snap the unit to the back of the iPhone 3G and get to work. Here is a link to product page.
Here are two photos from wired.com, one without telescope and opne with it. Looks really nice.
MSNBC recently spoke with several GPS manufacturers about their plans to develop a turn-by-turn GPS solution for the iPhone. Such a program is likely some months away. Several of the 'bigs' in the business — TomTom, Garmin and Magellan — are interested.
"We have made our navigation system run on the iPhone; it looks good and works very well," said Dutch-based company TomTom, in a statement to MSNBC.com. "We will have to look more closely to Apple’s strategy before we can say more about what kind of opportunities this will bring us,:".
"We’re always looking at new phone platforms to expand into for Garmin Mobile, but we don’t have any announcements regarding the iPhone at this time," said Jessica Myers of Garmin International. Magellan spokesman Raphel Finelli said the company does "not have immediate plans for this, but we are looking into it."
With Simplify Media installed on your computer you can stream your home iTunes library to your mobile device wherever you may be. It will supposedly work over EDGE, 3G, or WiFi
Simplify Media for Mac/PC is a free download. Only the first 100,000 copies of the iPhone version are free to download, after that it will be $3.99.
Today Twenty08 released a new instant messaging client for the iPhone/iPod touch. MobileChat (iTunes Link) allows you to connect to multiple IM services, including:
AIM/ICQ/.Mac/MobileMe
Windows Live/MSN
Yahoo
GTalk
Jabber
This application is well known to many iPhone users. This application is feature rich, allowing you to take and send images or IM a phone number from any of your 10 supported IM accounts. Application cost is $2.99.
NEW YORK (AP) -- Best Buy Co. will start selling the iPhone on Sept. 7, becoming first U.S. chain to do so outside of Apple Inc.'s and AT&T Inc.'s own stores.
The announcement by Best Buy expands the availability of Apple's vaunted phone to 970 full-size stores and 16 smaller Best Buy Mobile stores. It's also a coup for the Minneapolis-based chain, which has been upgrading its cell-phone departments.
Last week, Best Buy announced it had completed a two-year conversion of its stores to include upgraded cell-phone departments under the Best Buy Mobile brand. It has upgraded its computer systems to handle cell-phone activation and spent 250,000 hours training its employees.
On August 22, 20 new countries will start offering the iPhone 3G for sale. Here's a list of the countries that are expecting launches that Friday (and their associated carriers, in parentheses):
Qik has released its mobile video streaming application for jailbroken iPhones to the public. The service allows users to broadcast video live from their phones using Wi-Fi or the EDGE network which can be viewed on Qik’s site or through its embeddable player. Unfortunately, the application is only compatible with phones running the 1.1.4 firmware.
Users running the 2.0 version of the software will need to wait for Qik to release a compatible version, which the company expects to do in the near future. Unfortunately, it’s likely that the application won’t be available through the official App Store, as Apple still hasn’t enabled video capture using the phone’s integrated camera.
There are many solutions like battery packs and rechargeable hip holsters for iPhone and iPhone 3G. However, the new case from Mobile Fun has one advantage over all of these other devices—it can be charged by the sun.
The case itself features a sizable 1500mAh battery pack that they claim can be charged by the sun in as little as three hours. It also has a mini USB to USB cable that allows you to charge from your PC or hook up other gadgets for a quick shot of sweet solar juice. The case is slated for release in August in both black and white versions for around $54.
Disable airplane mode before installing Prior to installing the iPhone OS 2.0.1 update, make sure that Airplane mode is not enabled on your iPhone. Having Airplane mode turned on can result in a non-functional phone when the update is applied. You may receive the error message:
“Information for activation cannot be obtained from the iPhone”
Fortunately, you can disable Airplane mode from the emergency screen if your iPhone is put into an inactivated state by a problematic update.
“iTunes could not update the carrier settings on your iPhone” Several users are receiving the error message “iTunes could not update the carrier settings on your iPhone. An unknown error occurred (OxE80000001).”
If this error occurs, try clicking the “Restore” button in iTunes rather than “Update.”
Winterboard is amazing. Saurik, the developer of Winterboard, has just added dynamic backgrounds. Your background can now be an HTML web page using webkit. The possibilities are endless. He threw together a small theme called “Saurik” that fades in and out between two images as an example. But so much more can be done with this.
Comments from Saurik:
So, while staring at the desktop, I realized “wait, why don’t I make that a website? then you could do all kinds of neat things with it!”. This dream has been made a reality with the latest version of WinterBoard. There is a new file you can add called Wallpaper.html which puts a UIWebDocumentView behind SpringBoard.
It is similar to the previous one. Same idea. The slim chip-and-circuit gizmo hugs the rear of your SIM and messes with the signals that go between it and the iPhone (or, indeed, a large number of other GSM and 3G phones) in a way that unlocks the device. Brando's product still requires you to cut your SIM to make room for the chip aboard it, but it looks a fairly simple operation. Costs just $21.
At Apple's iTunes online store, Britney Spears and Shakespeare are separated by just a few clicks. While an episode of "Desperate Housewives" will cost $1.99, a series of lectures by renowned University of California-Berkeley philosophy professor Hubert Dreyfus is absolutely free. A single song by pop diva Rihanna is 99 cents. The price of a course on modern theoretical physics by Stanford University quantum mechanics professor Leonard Susskind? Free!!!.
Apple calls it iTunes U, an unsung but popular feature of iTunes. Audio and video downloads of classroom lectures are available to anyone who wants to listen to them through a computer or an iPod. Though the program has existed on a smaller scale for a few years, it now offers more than 50,000 audio and video tracks - course lectures, language lessons, speeches - from scores of universities and colleges. Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, Yale are there. Beginning in the fall, both UC-Berkeley and Stanford are planning expansions to their respective digital lecture programs.