iPhone OS 3.0 firmware announced
Apple recently announced the features in the next iPhone firmware release, dubbed 3.0. There is great anticipation as always when Apple announces new things, and this time Apple actually seem to have listened to the feedback of users.
Some new features include
- Push notifications
- Cut and Paste
- MMS
- A2DP (Bluetooth stereo sound)
- Notes sync
- Audio / video memos
- System-wide search
- Support for CalDAV
- In-game commerce
This will be released “sometime this summer”, and will be a highly anticipated update. It probably has something to do with the Palm Pre and the G1 coming out too.
You can see the pictures from the event at Engadget.
Twestival Stockholm — The Pictures
There is only one way of describing the Stockholm Twestival which took place last Thursday — a thundering success!
Everything from the organization of the event to the music and speakers were just fantastic. I haven’t heard the official sum of all donations yet though, but I’m sure that it was not bad at all, considering the amount of people who actually showed up.
It was a great opportunity to see some Twitter users here in Stockholm as well. Even though Sweden is a small country, there are lots of highly talented people working in all areas from marketing, IT and other fields. It just shows that Twitter and similar tools have such a huge impact on how people have chosen to effortlessly communicate and share. It is so easy to reach lots of people, not only from particular group, but anyone who wants to listen.
Seeing how Twestival just started as a simple idea on Twitter, it was amazing to see it literally explode into such a huge global event. It really comes to show how people can get events like these things done on a global scale bringing a great number of volunteers together with just a simple social web tool like Twitter.
The only sad thing is that I forgot to bring my camera for some odd reason. I couldn’t let a thing like forgetting the camera keep me away from taking pictures though, so I had to rely on my trusty ol’ iPhone to work its magic. Sure, there are phones with exceptional cameras with lots of “megapixels”, flash and image quality. The iPhone just isn’t one of them. The images are, well, not that great to be frank. The image quality is so bad that I didn’t even bother trying to get everything lined up and think about framing, since most images will still be blurry and grainy. Anyway, here you go.
Google releases Google Sync for iPhone, WM, SyncML
Google has just released a beta of their latest mobile service — Google Sync. This service makes it possible to sync your Google Calendar with your iPhone, Windows Mobile or other SyncML client, for free!
They use the Microsoft ActiveSync protocol, meaning that support is already built-in. To enable this on your phone right now, go to the Google Sync website and follow the straight-forward instructions. Be sure to backup your calendars and contacts beforehand though, since all information will be erased on your phone.
The easiest way to manage the contacts is to enable syncing them to Google using iTunes. Instructions for this are available as a part of the setup process on the site, so there is no need to worry.
The above mentioned process will enable synchronization of the default calendar only! If you want to access multiple calendars, or even imported calendars which are owned by others, you need to go to m.google.com/sync using your phone as the Google help pages suggest.
There is a problem however, this does not work with Google Apps domains. To sync multiple calendars with a Google Apps domain, first make sure that you are using the “English” language on the website. There is a link to switch if you don’t.
Second, don’t go to the page mentioned in the help section, but instead go to m.google.com and choose “Sign in with your Google Apps” link. When you have signed in, there will be a sync icon presented, which will take you to your calendar sync settings. From there you can add multiple calendars, which will then automatically be synced to your phone.
One downside of using Google Contacts instead of the local Address Book is that the photos aren’t synced properly. There is however an application available for Windows with no name that syncs the photos from Facebook to your Google Contacts account. While this might not be the best option, it definitely beats not having any pictures at all.
iPhone app: Joost
Joost a internet based TV service, which has been available for Mac and Windows for a long time now. It has now come to the iPhone, bringing a wide variety of contents from many places around the world.
The interface itself is quite nice, with the standard Joost graphic and colors. There are five different buttons on the bottom:
- Joost picks
- Popular
- Browse
- Search
- More
Nothing strange going on here — in fact, it’s almost the same layout as the Youtube app which comes default with the iPhone. The fun begins in the Browse section, where you enter a list of categories and genres which lets you very narrowly define what you want to see at the moment.
The quality seems to be very nice, but different video streams seem to be encoded differently, so the results may vary quite a bit. This test was however done on Wifi, so the quality when using 3G is still to be determined.
The app itself seems to be fairly stable, and has only crashed once so far. I have to admit to not have used it extensively yet, but it seems quite solid. Something that needs work however, are the full-screen widgets — the ones that are shown when a video is playing. I’m not sure what they thought when designing that part.
The browse section currently contains the following items.
- Film
- All
- Action
- Animation
- Classics
- Clips and Trailers
- Comedy
- Documentary
- Drama
- Global
- Horror
- Independent
- Science-Fiction and Fantasy
- Shorts
- Music
- All
- Classical
- Country
- Dance and Electronic
- Hip hop and Rap
- Interviews and Profiles
- Jazz and Blues
- Latin
- Metal
- Pop
- RnB and Soul
- Rock and Indie
- World and Folk
- Shows
- All
- Action and Sports
- Animation
- Comedy
- Culture and Style
- Drama, Docs and Reality TV
- News and Gossip
- Science-fiction and Horror
- Sexy
- Tech and Gaming
There is definitely lots to choose from, but I haven’t looked through much of it yet, so the quality remains to be seen. It seems that no live streaming is available either, but hopefully it will come in later versions. If I recall correctly, live streaming of TV was one of the corner-stones in the whole Joost project. It’s a very interesting first version though, with a potential to be something big.
iPhone app: Tap Tap Revenge
It’s time for the first iPhone game to be featured here. The game is called Tap Tap Revenge and is a music game in the spirit of Guitar Hero. The graphics are great and with the recent update, the game has become far more stable and a lot faster.
The most welcome feature in the game is definitely the online play capability. In this mode, one can battle many players in three different difficulty modes. If you don’t have the song being played in the current room, it will be downloaded automatically. This works very well, as long as the song download isn’t interrupted.
You will definitely have lots of fun for hours with this game, it’s free and available in the App store! There is really no excuse for not trying this game.
Changes in the released iPhone 2.2 update
So the new iPhone 2.2 firmware was released this morning, and here are the news:
Enhancements to Google Maps
- Street view
- Public transit and walking directions
- Display address of dropped pins
- Share location via email
Enhancements to Mail
- Resolved isolated issues with scheduled fetching of email
- Improved formatting of wide HTML email
Other
- Improved stability and performance of Safari
- Podcasts are now available for download in iTunes application (over Wifi and 3G)
- Decrease in call set-up failures and dropped calls
- Improved sound quality of visual voice mail messages
- Pressing the Home screen button from any Home screen takes you to the first Home screen
- Preference to turn on/off auto-correction in Keyboard Settings
The best news is that they seem to have fixed the auto-fetch for Mail which broke with the 2.1 update!
Update 2008-11-21 13:40
So, as anticipated our friends the misfits have recently released the long awaited 2.2 update. We can confirm that this update SHOULD NOT be applied using iTunes if you want the chance of a soft-unlock in the near future.
If you want to keep that option of a ‘soft-unlock in the near future’ available but you want the new features of 2.2, you will be able to update to 2.2 using a PwnageTool created custom ipsw file that disables the baseband update. You will be able to do this using an updated version of PwnageTool that will be released sometime soon.
Oh no…
Update 2008-11-22 15:43
iLounge.com has an in-depth review of the changes in the 2.2 update.
Update 2008-11-23 11:58
QuickPwn for 2.2 released!
iPhone app: Stanza
The time has come for an e-book reader to find its way to my iPhone. It’s called Stanza and has a built-in online library which contains lots of free books and magazines.
The main library can be sorted by titles, authors and subjects. It also remembers the latest opened books. When viewing a book list, they are shown in a list with the book cover.
The coolest feature with Stanza is the ability to directly download thousands of books from free online libraries. The libraries can be sorted in different ways and of course searched as well. The easiest way to find something interesting to read is perhaps the Most popular section which shows lots of well-known titles.
There is also an online section for news papers. It contains popular magazines such as Wired, the Wall Street Journal and Time Magazine. Using Stanza for reading news seems somewhat strange, since all articles are formatted like a traditional news paper, which makes it difficult to navigate around the contents properly.
So how about the most important view — to actually read the downloaded books? I found that the default view of black text on white background was too bright and uncomfortable for the eyes. After some tweaking, I found that black text on light gray was just the thing.
I read the book When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth by Cory Doctorow, and it was surprisingly easy to read on the small iPhone screen, as long as it is tilted to the side. Now there is no excuse at all to not be reading at least one book a month!
Oh, and Stanza a free download from the App Store.
iPhone app: Backgrounder
What if you have an iPhone application which you want to have running in the background when you switch to another program or even turn the phone “off”. With Backgrounder, it is now possible.
Backgrounder is a simple application which can be installed using the Cydia installer, which is available after you jailbreak your iPhone. Just search for backgrounder and install the application. When you start an application you wish to keep in the background, just press and hold the home button until a message pops up telling you that backgrounding has been enabled for the application.
When you want to leave the application, just click the home button as usual. This time however, the application will keep on running in the background and lets you do other things! To return to the running application, just tap it on the Springboard as you would be starting it from the beginning. Presto!
iPhone app: NemusSync
The first app to be featured here is NemusSync. It is an application used for two-way synchronization between the calendar in your iPhone and Google Calendar. It can be invoked manually by launching the application and tapping on Sync Calendars, but there is also a command-line client, which can be set to run at specific intervals for automatic sync.
The advanced menu makes it possible to only do a one-way sync if needed, as well as set the default calendar. There is usually no reason to muck around here if you don’t have special needs.
Adding an account is as easy as entering your Google account information and tapping on the Get Calendar List button. It will download all calendars associated with that account, and it is just a matter of selecting the ones you want. All selected calendars will be created locally as separate calendars in the iPhone, which makes it easy to distinguish between calendars, as well as adding events to specific calendars.
NemusSync requires that you unlock your iPhone! It is then available for installation from within the Cydia installer.
Spotify — the future of music
Spotify, now in public beta, takes a whole new approach to music. All music resides on the Spotify servers, and as a user, you stream the music using the internet.
Where it gets interesting is that you can either pay a fixed fee and listen all music you want without any interruptions. There is also a free option, where short commercial messages are inserted between songs in intervals which seem to be around half an hour.
Since the software is in public beta, you need an invite to use the service. If I happen to have an invite, I will of course share it with commenters to this post. There is another option though — paying for the service for a month. If you like the service after using it for a month, just continue paying or terminate the subscription. Your account will then become a free account, and you can continue to use Spotify, but with the ads injected.
There is a Windows and Mac client available at this moment. There have been reports that the Windows version works fine in Linux using Wine, so definitely try it out.
So how does is look like? The following view shows what is new in Spotify.
The next image shows the top list. This can be customised to only show a specific country or the whole world.
The main album view looks like the following. On the top, there are five top hits for that particular artist. It is followed by all albums available, and singles follow. The next section is devoted to albums where the current artist has one or more tracks, which are highlighted.
I have some suggestions to make Spotify even better (in no particular order):
- Last.FM integration.
- Music browser (browse by genre, year, artists etc.).
- Mechanism to correct faulty tags.
- Social part where users can share songs, playlists and watch each others listening habits.
- iPhone application
Some of these points seem to be in progress right now, but time will have to tell what will happen in the future when the services goes mainstream, which I am sure they will, as long as they can provide a smooth service without interruptions and errors.