Jailbroken iPhones and iPod touches now have a new app: iSlsk. As rules aren’t part of the game for these developers, the iPhone can use the Edge networks when necessary for these bandwidth hogging apps. A shocker is that Edge works out to be only half as fast as WiFi… I would have thought it to perform much more poorly.
Read more at Wired.
This next release of the iPhone is going to really knock the phone market on its heels. There will (most likely) be:
So basically, the phone is going to be cheaper and far more awesome. Plus, Apple will be the sole distributor of iPhone software, so they’re going to be getting 30% of all software sales by 3rd parties. So, from this one phone, Apple will have these revenue streams:
I really respect Apple for not resting on its laurels. The iPod is, let’s face it, a fad. Rather than riding the iPod wave to its very end, they’ve used their momentum to catch the next big wave. With the shrinking of micro-processors, memory and power sources it was inevitable that devices would converge and we’d be listening to music through our phones.
…mobile TV? That’s the rumor mill churning in this latest Engadget post. I’ve heard other rumors about two cameras in the iPhone; one on the front for chatting (and easier vanity shots). Mobile TV, though? That sounds outrageous. It basically flies in the face of several logics. It would eat into the profits that Apple is getting from show purchases and rentals on iTunes. And would this be a direct data service or are they talking about putting in a UHF TV tuner? Please to also be adding radio and telegraphy thank you.
Update: At least they’re not bringing 500 channels of TV to your local accident-waiting-to-happen.
Wired has a nice intro piece on How to Geotag Your Photos. In it they give you rudimentary advice on software and GPS hardware. This is good, but it’s not great as there’s no unified solution. No one-stop-shop for geotagging your photos as they all require at least three different items you need to get to function. They go on to conjecture that this all could change with the iPhone (especially the next-gen 3G, GPS iPhone).
Not exactly like most people care about this kind of thing… It’s not often you hear, “you know, I’d like to know the origin of that corporate logo.” Still, until I really start talking about phOLO as a product (secrecy and all) I can you all in on some of the ethos that went behind the logo and perhaps the company as well.
Here’s the whiteboard sketch that lead to the final logo (which was realized in Adobe Illustrator):
My friends say I CamelCase too much with my product names and that has made me self conscious about alternative capitalization in general. Then, when I drew the face around the phOLO in the middle, I realized the OLO could be great, if capitalized, as eyes an a nose. You’ll notice the pupils in the eyes of some of the renditions. Those I determined to be overly creepy or cartoony. As it stands, pupil-less eyes look more like glasses which, I think, gives the logo a friendly look with some nerd-ish tendencies.
If you have known me, you know that I am a fan of the iPhone. I lusted after it when it was announced. I stood in line for it on the day it was released. I’ve sung its praises to anyone who shows the slightest interest. I do this because I see the iPhone as the future of mobile computing. There were computers long before the 1980’s, but it took the invention of the GUI before their popularity exploded. The internet existed in several forms far before Mosaic was released. I see the iPhone as an early indicator of what we can expect from mobile phones. Last November mobile phone subscriptions hit 3.3 billion. That’s not just a number, that’s a turning point — that’s half of the world. One reason the internet became so popular so quickly is that many people already had computers and modems, they just needed the software. Well, half of the world now has mobile phones; all they need now is a good reason to use them to their full potential.
When Apple released the SDK a few weeks ago a light went off for me. This is a development opportunity which is going to come only once and it’s coming right now. New iPhone software won’t be available for release until June. Handsets built for Android (Google’s OS and development environment for mobile devices) are right around the corner. Soon both the iPhone 2.0 software and Android are going to hit the market and it will be a race to see what the new killer app will be for these devices.
Finally mobile phone software is usable.