What do you prefer: iPhone or Android?

Hey, Google is promoting their new mobile platform - Android.

Apple is coming out with their new chaper and greater iPhone 3G.

Many features, greate design and big companies are fighting each other to get the market.

A new article at iPhono called "Android vs. iPhone" will help you comparing these new devices and make your choice.

The 20 Great iPhone and iPod touch Applications

Apps that Cover Rumored 1.1.3 Features

In case you haven't seen it, here's a video highlighting the upcoming features in the 1.1.3 firmware release.

First let's tackle the hot apps of the moment—those apps that can already bring you the features rumored to be in the 1.1.3 update. The major new features appear to be the faux-GPS in Google Maps, multi-recipient SMS, and re-ordering apps on the home screen. Two of the apps above have been covering those features for quite some time (Navizon for GPS and Customize for re-ordering apps), and the third, iSMS for multi-recipient SMS, is a bit newer, but in addition to multi-recipient SMS, it offers quick-reply templates, emoticons, and a much more robust SMS management system. It does not currently offer MMS messaging, though there is an iPhone app (called SwirlyMMS) that is attempting the MMS road, though it's still a bit bumpy. MMS messages can be sent (though it requires a bit of setup), but so far not received.

• iSMS
• Navizon GPS
• Customize

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The only major new feature that's been discovered in the 1.1.3 update that isn't easily available through Installer is the new web clip feature that allows the user to bookmark a web page directly on the home screen. There are hacks around that accomplish this, but they're not the kind of no-brainer installations as the above three apps. The WebSearch app described below, however, is arguably a good deal more useful for what I need than the web clips, so I can happily do without for the time being.

Now that I've covered the 1.1.3 features (I'll include these apps in the sections below by category as well), lets move on to my 20 favorite iPhone apps.

Communication

Below we've got a more robust SMS client, a multi-protocol IM app, and a simple utility that adds push email capabilities to IMAP accounts—including Gmail.

• iSMS
• Apollo
• iMapIdle

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Multimedia

The multimedia list is a big one, so I'll just highlight a few. You've got a Last.fm client and scrobbler for your iPod, a feature-rich camera app, and a real-time lyrics app that automagically sucks lyrics for your music from the cloud.

• Books
• MobileScrobbler
• iFlix
• CameraPro
• TuneWiki

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Productivity

One of my favorites, the WebSearch app adds one-click search to any site, while Sketches is a great whiteboard tool and drawing pad.

• Sketches
• WebSearch

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Utilities

There are obviously quite a few great iPhone utilities, so to highlight just a few: OpenSSH is what I used to tether my iPhone data plan to my laptop; DropCopy is great for sharing files between your phone or iPod and your desktop; Installer, obviously, is the app that makes all of this third-party app business so easy; Navizon does the faux-GPS for Google Maps; and Customize covers app re-ordering and just about any other customization you'd want to make to your little iPod or iPhone.

• OpenSSH
• iTrac
• iPhoneHome
• iSpit
• DropCopy
• Installer
• Navizon GPS
• Customize

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Games

There are actually tons of games available on the iPhone at this point, but these three stand out as favorites because of their impressive use of the iPhone's animation engine or for just being plain addictive.

Gallery Name

• NES
• iSolitaire
• HuaRongDao

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Honorable Mention

For honorable mention purposes (I realize I already fudged a bit with 21 above), I wanted to point out FireflyMediaServer, an app that streams your iPod library to any iTunes library on a local network as a shared library (and which we showed you how to set up here). Dictionary is what it sounds like, a dictionary application that can search tons of installable dictionary databases (also available in Installer). Finally, for the students out there, iStudy is a simple flashcard app that also features downloadable content from Installer.

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The obvious argument remains, though, that the 1.1.3 update provides a much better integration of the features listed in the 1.1.3, and that's valid. Keep in mind, though, that you also sacrifice the wealth of great third-party apps, like push email for your IMAP account, when you upgrade to 1.1.3 before the jailbreak is a reality. That said, kudos to Apple for continuing to innovate the iPhone and iTouch, and I think we're all eager to find out what kind of system they're planning to work out once the SDK is official in February (as well as what other announcements regarding these two devices might pop up at MacWorld).

Got a favorite iPhone or iPod touch app I missed? Let's hear it in the comments.

Via lifehacker.com.

First impression og 3G iPhone

USA Today’s tech journalist Ed Baig (one of three journalists Steve Jobs picked by hand for the first time Apple iPhone 3G) and the circular-Good Guy and I have a Usually meetings around dates iPhone. Last year, I saw an event shortly after he received the first iPhone. He was kind enough to me spend 10 minutes with him. This year I am still in him, and that our own 3G services still happen, I shook him mainly on the head, until the new phone fell from his pocket.

Okay, that’s an exaggeration. Baig did hand it over after some gently nudging.

Head-on, the iPhone 3G is exactly the same as the old iPhone. I realized, which are more integrated headphone socket and chromium-captain was still a little for the face seems more (if both phones are the same height and width) The great (and for some, I think that this is really great) Is the difference. This makes it much more verneigte black plastic, the phone is a little thicker than the iPhone 1.0 and should significantly improve the quality, feels remarkably different from the first iPhone ’s polished aluminum.

The room Ed and I were in was busy and warm, and I noticed that my slightly sweaty palms made the phone back feel sort of sweaty too. It also made it sit more securely in my hand. Still, with the two phones side-by-side, I noticed that the aluminum back on the first iPhone still felt silky smooth in my other hand.

A minor point, I’m sure. On the other hand, the iPhone’s cherished sexiness may have taken a bit of a hit. This iPhone feels a bit more like other phones you might hold and, with that slightly sticky feel on sweaty hands, reminds you that you’re just some guy holding a new Apple iPhone 3G in an over-crowded room.

Via hot-gadget.info.

Sensation! - Wooden Mobile Phone

One Russian man builds new cases for mobile phones from apple tree
wood. He fully disassembles the new devices and carve a piece-of-art
wooden cases for them, each small part gets its own wooden case - the
antenna, the sim-card, the battery.

 

 

 

A battery is hidden inside a wooden bar...

 

A sim-card comes in the smaller bar...

 

And antenna is also…wooden.

Via fast-world.com.

iPhone 3G Photos Are Fake, Fake, FAKE

Some frogsters* with no track record are claiming that this piece of scratched plastic—which in the photo looks like a cheapo LG cellphone clone wannabe—is the new iPhone 3G. Although it matches the rumored all-black and specs, we don't believe it's the real thing. The reason: these photos have been up since 12:04AM Central European Time and it's now 4:04PM. That's 16 hours up with no Cease and Desist order—and Apple Europe is as aggressive with leaks as Cupertino. In any case, check its back and tell us what you think after the jump.



Whatever it is, the back looks as bad as the front (including the deformed Apple logo), at least in these photos. We have a hard time imagining that anything like this could come out of Monssieur Jonathan Ive's brain. Or better said, we have a hard time envisioning us buying what looks like a soulless piece of machinery, even while the true soul of the iPhone is its operating system.

We will see if we get a cease and desist email—now that Cupertino is waking up—but for now, remember our first rule of rumors: never, ever trust them. [iPhon—Thanks Jean Paul]

* Yes, frogsters. You see, this is completely unrelated to the fake iPhone, but I'm in Madrid, Spain, and today is the 200th Anniversary of the uprising against the French occupational forces in Madrid, which started the revolution that kicked Napoleonic troops out of the country. So today it's frogsters, or the Spanish equivalent, gabachos. (And for the record, I love France.)

Via Gizmodo | digg story.

Nokia Internet Tablets get Ubuntu and Qt

The open source Maemo platform, which is used on Nokia's Internet Tablet devices, will soon support Trolltech's Qt development toolkit. Nokia says that the GTK-based Hildon framework will continue to be used as the primary toolkit for Maemo's user interface and core applications, but the Qt libraries will be distributed with Maemo so that third-party Qt developers can bring their applications to the platform.

Nokia is currently in the process of acquiring Trolltech and has some ambitious plans to bring Qt support to a multitude of mobile platforms. Nokia is particularly eager to enable development of applications that can target both Maemo and S60, a proprietary operating system used on Nokia phones.

We talked to Nokia development platform product manager Quim Gil who provided us with more details about this new addition to Maemo. "We want to explore cross-platform possibilities between S60 and maemo and we also want to check the interest in the developer community for Qt in the tablets. GTK+ and Qt coexist in the Linux desktop, let's try the mix in maemo. This is also a way to attract more attention from the KDE community, a sensible move especially if the Trolltech acquisition gets completed," Gim told us in an e-mail.

Nokia is also actively sponsoring an Ubuntu ARM port that will bring the popular Linux distribution to Nokia's Internet Tablet devices. The ARM Ubuntu builds, which are being developed by Ubuntu's Handheld Mojo team, can be tested in QEMU or run from an SD card in an actual Internet Tablet device.

Via arstechnica.com.

Visual Search Engine Coming to iPhone in June

Evolution Robotics ViPR visual search technology is coming to the iPhone this June. ViPR allows you to take a photo of any movie, CD or book, send it to a server, and automagically get an email back loaded with information and links pointing to YouTube videos or iTunes Music Store links. It will also be deployed in Japan on KDDI's au camera phones this Spring. As you will see in the iPhone demo after the jump, it works incredibly well, even when the object is partially occluded:

It seems like the perfect software for the laziest people in the world, but it's one of those "oh wow" things that will make everyone smile when using it.

Breakthrough Visual Search Engine for Mobile Phones Takes Off Big in Japan

Pasadena, CA & Tokyo, Japan - April 17, 2008 - Evolution Robotics Inc., a leading robotics technology company, in partnership with Bandai Networks Co. Ltd, Japan's leading mobile content provider, announced today that KDDI Corporation is including the "ER Search" visual search engine on its new Spring 2008 "au™" line of camera phones, and has made it available for download for any KDDI customer with a prior "au" camera phone. This launch marks a dramatic expansion in the market for mobile visual search, which will enable millions of consumers in Japan alone to do online searches by taking pictures of everyday objects with their camera phone.

The deployment of this technology in the mass market also opens up an entirely new range of categories of services for mobile marketing, which is already projected to grow to $24 Billion worldwide by 2013. (Source: ABI Research)

ER Search is a mobile search engine operated by Bandai Networks and powered by Evolution Robotics' ViPR visual pattern recognition system. It works essentially like using a traditional search engine, but without having to type any text or go through complicated menus. Instead, users simply snap a picture of something they're interested in and immediately get back relevant content, all in the palm of the hands.

As an example, KDDI customers will be able to take a picture of a music CD that would return links relating to the artist, hear clips from the album and purchase songs to download on their phone. If they are shopping for wine in a store, they can take a picture of the wine label and get expert reviews and recommendations on the spot. Or, if they are browsing through a catalog and see an item they'd like to buy, they can order it immediately by snapping a picture of the item on the page.

"ER Search is an entirely new way for connecting consumers with content and companies," said Satoshi Oshita, CEO of Bandai Networks. "Because ER Search runs on mobile phones, searches happen when and where the customer is, as soon as they see something that they're interested in. Additionally, the fact that a customer simply has to click a picture of a product or advertisement, makes the search process far easier and immediate than anything that has been available before."

"We are very pleased to be working with Bandai Networks and are excited to see the momentum building in the Japanese market," said Paolo Pirjanian, President and CEO of Evolution Robotics. "Our mission is to take aerospace-grade technologies and make them affordable for mass market applications, and ER Search is a great example. We see this as just the start of a growing market for visual search in Asia and other parts of the globe and are actively working with our partners to expand the range of services that can benefit consumers and companies alike."

Bandai Networks had already deployed ER Search on over one million phones in Japan in 2007. With this deployment with KDDI, the number of users with access to ER Search will expand by millions more in a very short time, making it even more compelling for companies and advertisers to participate in the service.

About ViPR

The ViPR technology easily supports user-generated content so that users can take new pictures of objects, images, videos or even locations and tag them with links and content to expand the database. That content will then show up in the results returned to other users who take similar pictures, thus creating a robust world-wide visual database for communities to develop and access. (A video demonstration of Evolution Robotics' visual search technology running on Apple's iPhone can be seen at: http://www.youtube.com/user/EvolutionRobotics)

ER Search's versatility rests in Evolution Robotics' breakthrough ViPR visual recognition technology. ViPR is able to learn new objects and images on the fly (such as the cover art on a music CD), without the need for any special encoding such as barcodes or watermarks. Just as significant, ViPR performs well on low cost components such as the cameras used on most mobile phones today, even when lighting and other visual conditions are poor.

For the music search application alone, Bandai Networks has over 150,000 music CD covers already indexed in their database. Other mobile marketing and mobile commerce applications include providing content and links for print ads, book covers, DVDs, product packaging, movie posters, retail displays, business signs, etc. Even animation, streaming video or images from live TV can be supported.