This wonderful accessory plugs into the docking port on an iPhone (or iPod Touch), and turns Apple mobile platform into the holy grail of living room devices — a full programmable, multitouch universal RI remote. Included features are: an extensive library of IR codes, customizable buttons, and RF learning from other remotes. The accessorywill be used along with an app.
There is not much information about this gadget yet, but it will be officially announced at CES in just a few weeks.
Microsoft just released an official application of its search engine "Bing". The app looks really good and is well done. It allows you to find websites, images, videos, maps, shopping, news and offers step by step directions to navigate from one point to another! There is even a voice search, a business directory, ability to add pushpins and save locations.
Bing app is avaliable for free via AppStore (link).
On Tuesday, December 8, the official Playboy iPhone app hopped into the App Storу. Everybody can buy it for just $1.99.
The app is a scaled-down iPhone version of the largest selling men’s magazine, Playboy, and includes portions of the text from the following well known features … Playboy Interview, Playboy Advisor, 20 Questions, Party Jokes, Fashion and more.
However do not expect to see everything you can find in the magazine. Apple does NOT allow nudity in the App Store. So the application includes the Playmate’s intro, data sheet, preview pictures and exclusive behind the scenes preview video. Theresa Hennessey explained: “The pictures are all non-nude or cropped, either from the magazine pictorial or from the Playmate’s Playboy.com pictorial.” Read the rest of this entry »
Gameloft is having their own sale today with a few of their games reduced to $0.99. We're not sure how long this is going to last, so if you've been thinking about picking any of these up it probably is a good idea to do it now.
Here is a list of apps available at $0.99 for the Thanksgiving/Black Friday Sale:
There were rumors, that iPhone 4G will have integrated RFID chip. The Wireless Dynamics company has already created iCarte, RFID reader accessory for the iPhone and iPod Touch.
With iCarte we can send and receive information via RFID or NFC. This could turn the iPhone into a real electronic wallet. Here are spec details:
Geohot has released his BlackSn0w utility. BlackSn0w is an unlock for the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS. It supports the latest firmware 3.1 and 3.1.2 with baseband 05.11.07 and enables official tethering. Available for both Windows and Mac.
Here is a quick tutorial:
If you havn't done the jailbreak: go to blackra1n.com, download blackra1n, run it, follow the instructions (it is really simple) to perform the jailbreak. Run balckra1n app on iPhone and install BlackSnow.
If your device is already jailbroken - run Cydia, add repository blackra1n.com and install blacksn0w. That's it!
The latest version of blackra1n is RC3. It now has hacktivation support, 15 second speed improvement, Tiger+PPC support.
PS: If you just bought a new iPhone 3GS or have one that was made recently (approximately after 40th week after iPhone 3GS release): your device has a new BootROM. Unfortunately it is impossible to run regular jailbreak with this new BootROM. There is a sloution - tethered jailbreak. Everything including unlock will work fine. However every time you restart your iPhone, you need to plug it to a computer with blackra1n installed.
Few hours ago GeoHot left a new message on Twitter - he officially started looking for an exploit in the new baseband 05.11.07.
All iPhone 3G/3GS owners with native firmware 3.1 or higher will be finally able to unlock the phone. This also applies to iPhone owners who updated to firmware 3.1 or 3.1.2 by mistake.
Dropbox is a service similar to Apple's iDisk. It lets you store your files on a server and immediately share your pictures, documents or programs on different computers. It is quite popular on desktops. Now there is a version for the iPhone. The official free application is already avaliable in App Store.
So with iPhone you can download files, view them immediately, upload your own photos and videos to the Dropbox server, share links and sync it all with your computer.
It is a great service, especially because there is a "Basic" plan completely free of charge. With this plan you get 2GB of web space and it is absolutely free.
You can register and download the application for your desktop computer here (Windows, Mac, and Linux). Here is a link to application in AppStore.
Want to know some more about Apple’s upcoming iTablet device? There are many rumor names (iTablet, iPad, MacBook Touch, etc), but not much details. Site ilounge claim to receive some new rumors from a reliable source:
Apple has created at least three separate prototypes of its tablet computer.
Version 1 was designed with a 7” screen, which was judged to be too small. The latest version has a 10.7” screen.
It runs iPhone OS.
There have been reports that it looks like an iPhone. They’re sort of true. It looks like an iPhone 3G, complete with a curved back.
It will come in two different variations: one with 3G networking capabilities, and one without 3G networking capabilities. Think of the 3G version as a bigscreen iPhone 3GS, and the non-3G version as a bigscreen iPod touch.
Screen resolutions will obviously jump considerably from the iPhone and iPod touch 480x320-pixel displays, enabling easy reading of full-sized book and magazine pages, plus cropped newspaper pages. Expect something like 5-6 times the resolution of an iPod touch or iPhone screen (720p or thereabouts) and 7 times the touchable surface area.
It is designed to expand the iPhone and iPod touch media concept to its next potential level: as a slate-like replacement for books and magazines, plus all of the media, gaming, app, and web functionality of the iPhone and iPod touch.
It is not meant to compete with netbooks. It’s an iPhone OS media player and light communication device.
Apple is currently planning to announce it on or before January 19, 2010, and to use an iPhone-like hype buildup period to start selling it in May or June.
It is apparently awaiting a final green light from Steve Jobs; chances of it appearing in the market are believed to be 80% at this point.
Electronic Arts released several screenshots and some info about new upcoming iPhone game: Need for Speed Shift. This is a racing game similar to Need for Speed Undercover.
Here is the official list of avaliable cars in the game:
After days of silence, the DevTeam has finally updated the official blog, writing a little phrase:
Update: We’re currently working on PwnageTool for 3.1, and will be sure to let you know when it’s available!
Good news! PwnageTool is a utility to jailbreak iPhone with a custom created firmware. So what we know for now is that DevTeam is creating a new version of PwnageTool for firmware 3.1. No dates or deadlines as usual. We will keep you updated.
Recentrly we've talked about Nokia and their willingness to enter into direct competition with the iPhone releasing new devices based on Linux. Now on the official Nokia website we can already pre-order the new mini tablet N900.
The operating system is the Maemo 5, that is based on Linux. It has an ARM Cortex A8 processor with 256MB of RAM for applications and other 768MB in virtual memory, so total is 1GB. So the multi-tasking is guaranteed. The graphics uses Open GL | ES 2.0, which is quite good.
The new operating system is much more flexible compared to Symbian. The Web browser is developed by Mozilla and is capable of playing Flash 9.4 movies and animations.
It looks like an iPhone but lacks the Home. It also has a sliding QWERTY keyboard. The screen resolution is 800 × 480 pixels (16:9). There are two cameras. The main has 5 MP with Carl Zeiss optics, Tessar lens and two LEDs for flash. The onboard memory is 32GB but can be expanded with microSD to additional 48GB.
The target price (tax excluded) is 500 euro. Nokia N900 will be available starting from October.
Here's a video that shows the Maemo interface in action:
China Unicom published a press release which officially announces that the company has come to an agreement with Apple to sell the iPhone in China:
On 28 August, the Company and Apple reached a three-year agreement for the Company to sell iPhone in China. The initial launch is expected to be in the fourth calendar quarter of 2009. This will provide users with brand new communication and information experience.
The carrier will offer two different iPhones to its 141 million subscribers. Neither Apple nor China Unicom will reveal specs on the phones (WiFi?) or pricing.
Nokia owns half of the world's Symbian based phones market. However Nokia, in order to "compete with the iPhone", has decided to invest all the forces in a new system, replacing the classic Symbian: Linux.
Some sources have claimed that Nokia will present its first high-end phone based on Maemo, a version of Linux for mobile devices, at Nokia World next week in Stuttgart, Germany.
Officially, however, Nokia has decided not to submit any news or devices with this new system out soon.