A lot of iPhone ‘Wow’ moments seem to come along on weekends. I’m not sure why - maybe all those hyper-clever devs get bigger blocks of time to play with - but anyway today offers up another one …
Video wallpaper on the iPhone.
Anyone remember when Microsoft first demo-ed video wallpaper on Vista? I thought that looked pretty amazing back then. But video wallpaper on your phone - crazy. Lord knows the effect this will have on battery life, but it is another sure-fire ’show off your iPhone’ must-have sort of app.
It comes courtesy of the new vWallpaper application, developed by Skrew. The app is touted as just for testing and preview on its own settings page, so it is pretty alpha and has its quirks, but it works. It gives you video wallaper! Check out this great Video Demo of vWallpaper in action - made by MMi forum member dirtybird1977.
You can currently choose from two videos to use as your wallpaper - one with exploding balls of flame, one with drops of water rippling outwards. Some clever folks over at the EIC forums have already figured out what files to replace and where if you want to switch to a custom video of your own.
moleskine - the iPhone notes program that allows you to organize your notes and goes way beyond the built-in notes app’s abilities - has just had another major update, with a number of great new features added.
My favorite new addition is that you can now add voice notes. It’s excellent to be able to create a folder for a particular subject, and then create both text and voice notes within it. Camera / video notes are due to be implemented in a future version soon as well.
Another of the best new features is the ability to re-order your top-level notes folders. Previously, these were shown in the order they were created and you couldn’t change it. Now you simply tap on the top status bar to toggle on and off the ability to re-order them using the iPhone’s standard drag bars.
The New York Times has an excellent article today on the current state of smartphones and the brewing battle between Blackberry-maker RIM and Apple for world dominance. The article points out well-known statistics such as…
–worldwide smartphone shipments jumped 60 percent in the last three months of 2007 as compared to the same timeframe a year prior
–the iPhone grabbed 17.4% of the US smartphone market in its first six months
– and, while 54% of Blackberry users are very satisfied with their devices, a whopping 79% of iPhone users are.
The article discusses the challenges RIM faces as the iPhone’s long-awaited ability to use MSExchange approaches, as well as some of the steps RIM is taking to maintain its dominance. These include an upcoming 3G device and the possibility of a touch screen interface.
It is a good read and worth hopping over to the Times. There was one line in particular that grabbed my attention.
textReader is a new, fairly basic eBook reader app for the iPhone. It allows you to read large text files or text file formatted ebooks, as well as Palm doc (.pdb) files.
This is a ‘low frills’ sort of app that is not (in this version anyway) going to win your heart with slick features - but if you need an app that will load large text files quickly, and serve as a basic but perfectly usable ebook reader, then this may be a good choice.
Here’s the iLoveMMi iPhone theme, a tribute to the popular iPhone forum site ModMyiFone.
It’s a Summerboard theme, created by MMi forum member evolutonarymc. The theme is very bright and busy, and uses some of the big typography that we’ve seen in recently popular Summerboard themes like Leaf.
This one is available on Installer now, and if you guessed that it’s via the ModMyiFone source, you’d be spot on.
Allright EIC themer type people, let’s see your best efforts …
So we’ve got it on authority that the second-gen iPhone is already well into testing, and numerous units are floating around in super secret pockets. A trusted source got a chance to check one out, here’s what we’ve heard.
That’s the opening of Engadget’s post earlier today - that also says we might see the V2 iPhone introduced or even shipping by as soon as July. Between this, and all the various financial analysts comments this week, it really does seem like more and more ’smoke’ is pointing towards Apple announcing the new 3G / V2 iPhone at the WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference) next month, and seeing it available to but within a month or two after that.
Pool - the billiards game for iPhone - has been updated to Version 2.0 today. It has added quite a few major new features, and has also now switched to a limited free version, full version only available via donation / activation model.
I’ve only tried the new version out for a few minutes (though I’ll get to know it real well tonight I’m sure) - so far the biggest new features are:
There’s now a two-player option and play vs computer option
There are Plus and Minus buttons at the top of the table that make it easier to fine-tune the angle when lining up your shot
More options to choose from
You can now go from with a game to the settings and main menu without having to exit out of the game itself
Up until late last night, I hadn’t used the iPhone terminal application - Term-vt100 - in quite a while. Reason for my lack of usage being laziness - as it had major password issues (which made it unusable until you found the right fix to apply manually) under the 1.1.4 firmware, and I just couldn’t be bothered with searching for and applying those fixes. I think it may have been the same under the 1.1.3 firmware, but can’t recall for sure.
Last night a new version of it popped up in Installer, and the good news is this version has fixed the password issues - so you can happily use the terminal app again without any need to look around for and mess around with manual fixes. I believe the fix is part of the Term-vt100 package’s move (along with many others) from the Conceited Software source to BigBoss’ source - see HERE for details on this changeover.
According to British "Register Hardware" Carphone Warehouse is out of 8GB iPhones and wireless operator O2 is moving quickly in that direction just one week after a major price drop.
Twitxr is a new application that’s entering into the very crowded and competitive photo-sharing / micro-blogging / social networking categories. Its service is described like so:
Twitxr is a services that allows you to stay connected with your family and friends. With twitxr you can share a moment, a picture, a thought, instantly with your mobile phone. Where are and what are you doing your friends now? Twitxr tells you.
Sadly, my first reaction to that is a jaded sort of ‘oh, another one’ - but I am a sucker for new apps, and especially for those with possible social networking benefits (meaning those that promise to make things quicker / easier in these areas). One of the things that caught my eye with Twitxr (apart from the odd name) was its promise to make it easy to update several services at once - like Twiitter, Facebook, Flickr etc.
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