Omio

Fringing Hell it’s VoIP on the iPhone

By Peter RosscloseAuthor: Peter Ross Name: Peter Ross
Email: peter.ross@trafficbroker.co.uk
Site: http://www.omio.com
About: Raised by wolves, in the darkest of woods, Pete eventually left the pack. He emerged into the world blinking and half feral with one true dream: to write about mobile phones on the Omio blog.See Authors Posts (32)

Good news for all you VoIP fans out there. Fring, an internet service and community has developed a pre-release iPhone app that allows iPhone users to get VoIP on the iPhone. The software will only work on jail broken phones (is that the right past tense?) and will allow iPhone users to receive and make VoIP calls via a Wi-Fi connection. The software also allows an iPhone user to chat via MSN, Yahoo and twitter amongst others messaging programmes.

Download the VoIP app from Fring

Improve the iPhone with Snapture

By Kate CrowleycloseAuthor: Kate Crowley Name: Kate Crowley
Email: talk@omio.com
Site: http://www.omio.com
About: Kate is one of Omio's resident mobile experts.See Authors Posts (196)

The iPhone is renowned for its crappy camera. If you have a jailbroken iPhone then this could be a thing of the past. Simply install Snapture (it’s free!) from the Installer.app’s Utilities section and you’ll be able to adjust stuff like digital zoom, greyscale, auto-rotation and burst mode. You’ll also be able to silence the shutter sound without silencing the whole phone, meaning you can take your covert photos without the fear that you’ll miss a call.

Source: Wired

Kleiner Perkins launches $100 million iPhone Fund

By Kate CrowleycloseAuthor: Kate Crowley Name: Kate Crowley
Email: talk@omio.com
Site: http://www.omio.com
About: Kate is one of Omio's resident mobile experts.See Authors Posts (196)

The US venture capitalist firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) has announced that it will be investing $100 million into developing iPhone applications. There’s been a lot of interest in Apple’s recent SDK launch, with over 100,000 downloads of the development software occurring in its first week of availability.

KPCB said the iFund would invest in companies with “market-changing ideas and products that extend the revolutionary new iPhone and iPod touch platform.” They reckon that the paid-for applications market could lead to the emergence of significant new companies. In June, Apple launches its AppStore which will allow users to purchase third party apps.

The fund will focus on location-based services, social networking, m-commerce, communication and entertainment.

Music companies are still unaware whether Apple will allow them to develop apps. Rhapsody and Napster both require software and digital rights management, so it’s very unlikely that we will see them appearing on the iPhone. There are grey areas though. Amazon and eMusic are iTunes challengers, but they could foreseeably fit within the development framework.

The SDK does not expressly ban music apps, but I don’t think any developer is going to be able to make a useful one. The apps won’t be able to access your iTunes library, or any part of the iPhone fileserver. Apple is also notoriously funny about moving music files between computers. In the beta version of the SDK, developers will have no access to iTunes-style functionality. It doesn’t look hopeful, Amazon.

New Windows Mobile Slingplayer - Coming Soon

By Kate CrowleycloseAuthor: Kate Crowley Name: Kate Crowley
Email: talk@omio.com
Site: http://www.omio.com
About: Kate is one of Omio's resident mobile experts.See Authors Posts (196)

Be bored no more! Sling Media is set to release an updated Slingplayer for Windows Mobile on both touchscreen and non-touchscreen versions. The new features are more optimised supports for newer handsets. There’s also the possible introduction of a new client for the iPhone. Sling are currently evaluating the iPhone SDK to see if this is possible.

For those of you who don’t know what SlingPlayer is, it’s a client which allows you to watch TV programmes on your Windows Mobile or Symbian mobile phone/PDA. More information and a free 30 day trial of the client can be found at the official site here.

Microsoft will license Flash Lite for Windows Mobile

By Kate CrowleycloseAuthor: Kate Crowley Name: Kate Crowley
Email: talk@omio.com
Site: http://www.omio.com
About: Kate is one of Omio's resident mobile experts.See Authors Posts (196)

Adobe’s latest mobile Flash runtime will be appearing on Windows Mobile handsets. It supports almost everything developed for Flash 8, so you can YouTube your tiny heart out.

Microsoft already has its own Flash-esque technology in Silverlight, but that won’t be ready for mobile deployment for some time. Steve Jobs has made it clear that he’s not keen on Flash or Flash Lite, so this is a good move by Microsoft. They’re distancing themselves from the competition, and appealing to the market.

Source: Adobe.com

The iPhone Software Roadmap

By Kate CrowleycloseAuthor: Kate Crowley Name: Kate Crowley
Email: talk@omio.com
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Apple have just uploaded yesterday’s SDK event. You can view it here.

If you can’t be bothered to watch the video, or just hate Steve Jobs’ face, here’s Omio’s synopsis of yesterday’s shenanigans.

1) You will only be able to run one third party app at a time, and when you leave the app to do something else on your iPhone, such as answer a call or check your email inbox for the fiftieth time that day because surely you’ll have one this time, the app will close.

2) You can’t access the mobile phone network with the apps; you’ll have to rely on WiFi.

3) Amazon asked if they could build an app which would allow users to buy songs from the Amazon MP3 shop. No answer has been forthcoming.

4) Developers can only use the Apple APIs, and only in the way that Apple says they can use them.

5) iPhone Human Interface Guidelines have been published. Since only registered iPhone developers can see this, Tech Crunch have kindly embedded the document in their article, which you can read here (scroll down to the bottom).

Google Gears Mobile

By MattyBcloseAuthor: MattyB Name: Matt Bortone
Email: matt.barr@trafficbroker.co.uk
Site: http://www.omio.com
About: I've been a fan of mobile phones...since the beginning. Being a poor sharecropper's son, I'm less gadget-obsessed than some of our reporters who seem to have developed an unhealthy attachment to the idea of the HTC Diamond. Instead, I'm interested in the way mobiles have changed our lives at work, at home and anywhere else that people cooler than me go.See Authors Posts (60)

Google has brought offline apps to mobile phones. This is a separate undertaking to Android, their mobile phone platform.

Google Gears allows developers to create apps that run on Firefox and Internet Explorer when offline. Initially it will only support Pocket IE running on Windows Mobile devices, but eventually it will expand to other browsers. Presumably this will include Safari on the iPhone and Opera Mobile, but there’s no clarification on this issue yet.

On its launch, several partners (including Zoho and Buxfer) introduced mobile apps which can run on Pocket IE even when not connected to the network. Zoho Writer, which first went offline on Google Gears in August, will now be available for Windows Mobile 6. The offline version is read-only.

In the pipeline are a Google Gear’s version of Google Docs, and offline desktop versions of Gmail and Google Calendar.

Adobe and Microsoft risked being left behind, since they had yet to announce mobile versions of AIR and Silverlight. Microsoft obviously realised this and made a countermove with the announcement that there will be a mobile version of Silverlight for Nokia phones.

Here’s Google’s Charles Wiles introducing Google Gears:

Source: TechCrunch

Macworld’s Editors Discuss iPhone Apps

By Kate CrowleycloseAuthor: Kate Crowley Name: Kate Crowley
Email: talk@omio.com
Site: http://www.omio.com
About: Kate is one of Omio's resident mobile experts.See Authors Posts (196)

Since Apple is planning to announce its iPhone application plans on Thursday, Macworld’s editors have listed their 25 most-wanted programmes. You can read the list at PC World.

The list includes AIM-style messaging, a PDF viewer and a unit converter. Access to an alternative phone service is strangely absent. Inadvertently the list serves to highlight how limited the pre-installed applications are on the iPhone. Expect users of other brand’s smartphones to look at the list and shake their heads in smug disbelief. If Apple’s application review process differentiates between pay-for and free apps, to the detriment of the former, here’s hoping that after Thursday we see a lot of free (useful) applications.

iPhone = Fourth Most Popular Web Platform

By Kate CrowleycloseAuthor: Kate Crowley Name: Kate Crowley
Email: talk@omio.com
Site: http://www.omio.com
About: Kate is one of Omio's resident mobile experts.See Authors Posts (196)

The newly released Net Applications numbers show that the iPhone is now the fourth most used web platform. Windows is still very much in the lead, with over 91% of the pie. These numbers are for February. In January the iPhone was at just 0.01%. Not a bad percentile increase.

Source: Market Share