The more I think about it, the more strange it seems that Apple DIDN’T include handwriting recognition from the start for iPhone. Although I guess it would have detracted from the ‘use your thumbs!’ interface of the device to have a stylus.
Anyway, one Chinese developer wouldn’t stand for it, and has developed their own handwriting recognition app for the iPhone, supporting both Chinese and Western alphabets.
HWPen is in beta, and you have to have unlocked your iPhone to run it, as it needs the Installer.app application. If that’s you and you fancy a go, head here (and then come back to tell us what you think).
Newspapers are dead! Long live… newspapers? There’s a lot of doom and gloom in the publishing industry, as newspapers grapple with declining circulations and flatlining classified ad revenues. However, the Associated Press reckons one solution may be the iPhone.
It’s announced plans to launch a news service called Mobile News Network, which will carry stories from local newspapers in the US, as well as national and international news from the AP itself. Advertising revenues will be shared out, and while it’s being designed for the iPhone, it’ll run on other smartphones too.
Surely someone should be working on a similar idea here in the UK? Apart from the BBC, I mean. It’d be good to see local newspapers here banding together for some kind of mobile-friendly service, maybe tied in with a larger provider of national news. Heaven knows who’d run it, mind, and divvy out the revenues. But still, at a time when print is a scarier place than it used to be, the iPhone and similar devices could offer one way out.
One of our favourite VoIP applications, fring, has just announced a pre-release version of its mobile VoIP software for the iPhone - hip hip hooray.
With the SDK now thoroughly out in the wild stirring up all sorts of development interest, a slew of mobile VoIP applications are sure to follow soon. Most of those however will not have the industry experience behind them that fring does, having spent the last couple of years commanding a very dedicated and growing userbase.
We like the fact that fring has made such an effort to continually update it’s software alongside technological hardware developments, so it’s no surprise to see that the company is quick off the mark with an iPhone version. The pre-release version has been developed in conjunction with the Holon Institute of Technology and the thinking behind launching so soon with a pre release build is to get feedback from the community.
So if you are an iPhone user who up until now has had a mobile VoIP shaped hole in your life, today is your day. Hit the jump to see a video of the application in action on Apple’s must have handset.
Continue reading ‘fring arrives on iPhone’
Mobile Today is reporting that from tomorrow, O2 will be slashing the 8GB iPhone’s price by £100 to £169, but only temporarily, in a promotion running until 1st June. It’s not a surprise, given that T-Mobile also cut the price of the device last week in Germany. It’s a bit of a swizz, since T-Mobile’s price cut was from the equivalent of £315 to £78. It’s presumably all about running stocks down before the 3G iPhone goes on sale in June, although it’s a little strange that the 16GB iPhone isn’t getting a price cut - it’ll reportedly stay at £329. I can’t help wondering who’d buy a current iPhone now though, when they could wait a matter of months for the new model…
For some iPhone owners, the only way it’d have an impact on their fitness levels is if they had to chase after a mugger who’s just nicked it. However, others are more sporty - and it’s they who’ll be celebrating the news that Nike plans to release its Nike+ fitness tracker application for iPhone and iPod Touch.
It’s already available for iPod as part of a partnership between Nike and Apple - it’s basically a gizmo that slots into your iPod and tracks how far you’ve run using an accelerometer, so you can analyse it when you get home. Like an extra-smart iPedometer, in other words.
Anyway, Stuff.tv has been at Nike HQ and confirms that the app will come out for iPhone and iPod Touch later this year. They reckon it’ll use the Wi-Fi in both devices to allow data to be uploaded to users’ training logs on the fly when you get home, rather than waiting till you’ve synched with your PC.
You might think that the point of buying a Blu-ray film is to watch it on a suitably large, high-definition telly in the comfort of your living room. And, well, it is. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get excited about the prospect of ALSO being able to use Blu-ray’s BD-Live feature to send copies of the movie to your iPhone for on-the-go viewing.
That’s the prospect held out by NetBlender’s new BD Touch technology, which they reckon will enable seamless PS3-to-iPhone transfers, albeit only if developers build that into the functionality of their Blu-ray discs.
It’s a grand idea, and crucially, it’s something the film studios are behind. I went to the Blu-ray Association’s press conference at the CES show in January, and they talked about the potential for BD-Live for this very purpose - format-shifting films in a way that wouldn’t encourage piracy. It’s coming, although how soon is anyone’s guess.
(via Engadget Mobile)
Mobile social networking is building up a head of steam, although it has to be said that much of the hype is focused on the mobile efforts of the big Web firms like MySpace, Facebook and Bebo, despite the fact that a lot of the innovation is coming from mobile startups.
iPhone offers an opportunity for the latter to grab some of those column inches. Influential tech blogger Michael Arrington is already on the case, with an enthusiastic post about an unnamed startup working on a social networking app for iPhone:
“It shows you everyone around you who has it installed on an iPhone (default privacy is set to off, but can be changed). Users can scroll through nearby users, and set filters for men, women or age ranges. If you find someone interesting you can pull up their profile and ping them. If they respond you can start a chat, on the phone or in person. Of course, they can also choose to block you.”
It apparently uses the iPhone’s built-in triangulation tech to identify nearby users, in the absence of GPS. Arrington also suggests that the startup has found a way around the fact that native iPhone apps won’t be able to run in the background when you’re using an iPhone. He’s not allowed to say how though. The shots above are mockups, apparently. Thoughts?
Hear that sound? It’s the sound of millions of iPhone owners’ brains clacking as they consider whether they’ll get away with giving their handset to their other half as a present, in order to upgrade to the new 3G model when it comes out. It’s a delicate one: a secondhand iPhone comes some way behind diamonds innit.
Anyway, the rumours about the exact date and nature of the 3G iPhone launch are mounting, with TG Daily reporting that it’ll be announced at Apple’s WWDC 2008 conference in June, priced at $399 for an 8GB model, $499 for a 16GB model, and maybe even $599 for a 32GB model. I’d be inclined to think they won’t bother with an 8GB version, though.
Oh, and it’ll apparently be 2.5mm thinner than the first-generation iPhone, with a buffed-up casing and a tweaked accelerometer, but the battery still won’t be removable. For shame. Although we’ve heard inaccurate iPhone battery predictions before - remember all those people claiming the first iPhone would have two of ‘em? - so there’s still hope.
Nokia’s long rumoured iPhone-beater was revealed during a presentation at the Evans Data Developer Relations Conference in California.
The phone will - as expected - have a touchscreen interface, but Nokia were keeping quiet about the other features.
In theory, it should be relatively simple to build a better iPhone. If you consider the component parts, the iPhone is a pretty mediocre phone with an exceptionally shiny screen and a novel input method. In theory, you should be able to get a better camera, make the OS user-modifiable and you could steal Apple’s lunch money.
In theory.
Unfortunately, as LG has discovered, just because you have a technically superior phone in many respects, you wont necessarily be able to reproduce that combination of slick interface and brand power that has made the iPhone a winner.
Still, it’s clear that Nokia are going to give this the old school try. When asked if Noia could match Apple’s 4 million shipped units, Nokia Forum VP Tom Libretto calmly replied that “We’ve done that since we’ve had dinner on Friday.”
Going by the faintly ludicrous codename ‘Tube’, the new handset certainly looks extremely iPhone-like. Time will tell if it can capture the imagination of the pubic in the way that it’s rival has.
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