MobiFrance points us to this intriguing company: http://olo-computer.com/. It looks like they’re intending on developing a low-cost sort of Netbook, but with a difference — it will be powered by the iPhone. The idea is you plug your iPhone into the bottom and it not only becomes the touchpad for the Netbook, it also powers the thing entirely, the rest of the hardware is simply a keyboard, screen, and a few other bits to make it all run.
The idea is nice but very far from being implemented.
Categories updated to 2.21. The only change is that the Backgrounder app is now optional so that those of you that didn’t like having this app could uninstall it without uninstalling categories as well. Of course, if you uninstall it, the backgrounding option inside categories will be ignored.
iDicto (AppSore link) is a the most simple and easy-to-use powerful sound and voice recorder. Now you can enjoy this application free for limited time.
Other features supported by iDicto are:
Record, replay your ideas, notes, reminders on-the-go
Adjustable recording quality: Best (44.1kHz), Good (22.05kHz) and Low (8kHz).
Unlimited record time
Wi-Fi sync
Rewind during playback
Pause and continue during playback or recording
Rename recordings at any time
Group and sort your recordings
Show the date, time, recording length directly in the recordings list
Volume control
Auto saving
While transferring files you can select the time period during which auto-lock will be disabled.
The South Park guys have cooked up a killer iPhone application. It's not yet available in the iTunes App Store.
There is ability to stream clips, grab wallpapers for your device, read news, and browse the complete episode index. Also: choose character likenesses as "contact images" for your iPhone -- assign a face to the phone book entry of your choice. An incoming call from best friend displays Kyle or Cartman and more.
TouchType (iTunes Link) is a new app available now in the App Store for the low price of $.99. Now all that is left is some SMS landscape love.
Here’s a brief overview of how it works: Open the application and you get a landscape mode keypad, get your email groove on, tap the send button and it automatically sends it to the email application. Type in the email addresses and you’re all set.
This is all great. But it would be much much better to see this kind of functionality in Mail. app, rather than separate standalnone application.
Update: Four landscape email front-ends popped up on the App Store last night, including this one:
Launcher: Folders instant loading! Integrated with backgrounder for folders. There is now an option in the settings to "keep resident". When set, the folder only loads once per respring. After that, it stays running in the background (uses no CPU but uses some RAM) to provide instant loading (no load times). Note that this does use more memory so use it sparingly. I suggest that it is ok for 1 - 4 folders but I would not background 20 folders. If you do and have problems, just go back to settings and disable this option on some of the folders you don't use as often.
Sounds like we should use Categories + Backgrounder. In this case folders will open very very quickly.
G-Map is announced recently. Hopefully it will show up in AppStore soon. Among the features are:
Stand-alone electronic map that needs no internet connection
Large-capacity map data enables easy search of desired location and route
Real 3D View of intricate major intersections and highway junctions
Smart location search powered by a search engine
POI
Detailed information on restaurants, hotels, and leisure destinations provided with Premium POI
Search by phone number and latitude/longitude
For now developers say that the covered area is: Buffalo, NY/ Cincinnati, OH/ Cleveland, OH/ Columbus, OH/ Nashville, TN/ Pittsburgh, PA/ Rochester, NY/ Boston, MA/ Hartford, CT/ Middlesex, NJ/ Nassau-Suffolk, NY/ New York, NY/ Providence, RI/ Wilmington, DE.
iPhone-Backgrounder (available for jailbroken iPhones via Cydia Installer) brings another much-desired functionality that Apple's not allowing for legit apps—the ability to run in the background.
This is very usefull for iPhone applications like Skype (Fring), MobileChat, IM+, and many others.
To enable backgrounding for the currently-running instance of an application, press and hold the menu/home button until a message pops-up stating "Backgrounding Enabled". Note that only the current instance will be affected; if the application is terminated and relaunched, the new instance will not have backgrounding enabled.
To properly terminate an application instance that has backgrounding enabled, press and hold the menu/home button until a message pops-up stating "Backgrounding Disabled".
Issues:
Application immediately quits when holding menu/home button:
One possible cause is having the Intelliscreen application installed with the "App Launch Boost" option enabled. This option can be disabled in Intelliscreen settings on the "Performance" page.
Application "XXX" runs fine in the background for a while, then suddenly quits:
This is most likely due to the device being low on available application memory (RAM, not disk space). This can be caused by either having too many applications running at the same time, or by using applications that require a lot of resources. Unfortunately there is no fix for this issue, other than to avoid having too many backgrounded applications.
First of all Apple has addressed one common request within the iPhone's Keyboard settings, allowing users to disable the iPhone's auto-correction.
The other feature is for Japanese market - Japanese emoji icons. The lack of emoji support has been blamed as part of the reason for slow iPhone adoption in Japan.
The third new feature is Street View. It allows users to view panoramic street level photographs in select cities within the Google Maps application.
Hopefully we will see more new features in this and next beta's of 2.2 firmware.