Phones

Windows Mobile Marketplace, free application updates

We have criticised the way in which Microsoft was proposing to deal with developers in the new Marketplace mainly because of the structure of charging developers to submit updates to their applications as we felt that it would stifle improvements to apps. Well the good news is The Marketplace team have just announced some more details around the ‘Windows Marketplace for Mobile’ which has put to rest the fears of this happening. This is what they have to say:-

Q: Do I need to pay the $99 fee again to submit an application update?

A: No, if your application has been previously certified and published in the catalog, you can submit subsequent updates without incurring any additional fees. The application update will be made available through Windows Marketplace to all customers that have downloaded your application in the past.

Q: I previously heard that you only had 7 days to submit a free update. Has this changed?

A: Yes, we originally communicated that only application updates submitted within 7 days of their publish date would benefit from a free submission. After talking to the developer community and better understanding the dynamics and frequency of application updates, we have decided to extend the original 7-day window and make it permanent. This means that if an application has been previously approved in the marketplace the developer can submit updates to it without incurring any additional fees.

via blogs.msdn and msmobiles

Software Review: SPB TV

Roughly 6 months ago I took a look at SPB Online. This was a package of several utilities bundled into one. Probably the most impressive of these utilities was a TV streaming program. Now SPB have released a full version of this function. Should you check it out?

Nokia 5800 software update available

Nokia has announced a software update to the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic to further improve the performance and add new functionalities to the device. The software update is immediately available for download on Nokia Software Update website (http://www.nokia.com/softwareupdate) free of charge.

Improvements in the new software version include faster data download from Internet, improved e-mail experience, better search experience with in-device search. Many additional features are also included in the software update listed after the break.

Kinoma to preview Kinoma Play for Symbian/S60 at CTIA Wireless 2009

Kinoma will offer visitors to CTIA Wireless a first-ever sneak preview of its Kinoma Play mobile media browser for Nokia’s S60 devices. Kinoma Play for S60, slated for launch on Nokia’s forthcoming Ovi Store, lets consumers see and hear their favorite media faster. It will be featured in Nokia booth #7553 at the CTIA Wireless show in Las Vegas, April 1-3.

Kinoma Play is a fundamentally better way to find, play and share all kinds of media — videos, music, podcasts, radio, audiobooks and photos — whether they’re on your phone, your home PC, or streaming from your favorite social media sites. It delivers an exceptional, touch-optimized media experience for leading sites like YouTube, Flickr, Picasa, SHOUTcast and Live365, and the built-in Kinoma Guide puts “the best of the web” within easy reach.

Unlocked iPhone 3G now on sale in UK

Play.com are now offering the iPhone 3G for sale without any simlock. That’s right you can buy the phone from them and use it with any UK sim card that you have like Vodafone, T-Mobile etc as it is officially unlocked and ready to use. This is not a software unlock so updating the phone will not break the unlock.

• This is a genuine Sim Free mobile phone and therefore unlocked to all UK networks.
• It is not unlocked from a UK or European network and is available due to EU legislation ensuring the sale of sim free mobile phones.

Now the downside is the price, a whopping £549.99 for an 8 Gig model and £599.99 for the 16 Gig, that’s pretty steep but at least there is now a way to use the phone legitimately on with your current network. One word of caution, a new model is rumoured to be just around the corner.

Skype for iPhone coming Tuesday

The guys over at cnet have managed to sit down with the application’s principal engineer before the announcement was made at CTIA 2009 to see Skype for iPhone in action and it will finally be available to download from the iTunes App Store sometime on Tuesday. While most of the features aren’t too surprising there are a few capabilities that are notably missing, and a few iPhone-only perks that are refreshing to see.

Calls on Skype for iPhone work only if you’re in range of a Wi-Fi network calls will not work over the cell phone network on the iPhone (but chatting will.)

Skype left a few more skills out of its maiden iPhone voyage. SMS, setting up a conference calling group, purchasing SkypeOut credit directly, and being able to field a second incoming Skype call are a few. File transferring and getting Skype voicemail native on the phone are two more. We expect to see at least two of these added in the next version, but we’ll hope for more.

Read the full details over at cnet news

Cropulator for iPhone and iPod Touch

The Apple iPhone ships with a decent camera. I took hundreds of vacation pictures using only my iPhone and they were all satisfactory. However, the camera app on the iPhone has no settings, so all photo editing must be performed on the Macintosh or PC.

Digital Film Tools has created a new iPhone app named Cropulator that enables the user to crop pictures on the iPhone using the standard pinch gestures. The price is $0.99 cents in the Apple iPhone app store. Below is the feature list from the developer’s website:

iSwap Faces – iPhone app is fun to use

Swapping faces in a picture used to require the skills of a Photoshop expert. The same task can now be accomplished on the Apple iPhone.

When the application starts, the splash screen below appears. Follow the instructions and pick a photo on your iPhone that contains two or more faces.

America’s largest wireless tradeshow starts next week

The largest wireless tradeshow in North America starts Wednesday in Las Vegas. Typically there is a lot of news that comes out of this conference, especially for devices and services for US carriers, and handsets headed for America. Some of the headline speakers include Mike Lazaridis the CEO of RIM (maker of the Blackberry), Robbie Bach who is the head of the Entertainment & Devices Division of Microsoft, and strangely enough Billy Crystal who is a comdian (i don’t know what he is planning to talk about). There was also some controversy surrounding another headliner at CTIA, Al Gore, former US Vice President and Nobel Peace Prize Winner initially wanted to ban the press from his keynote, but was forced to back down after an uproar from the chattering class threatened to overshadow his appearance. I wonder what he was planning on saying that was so secret he didn’t want anyone outside of the industry to hear?

Might this be the coming out party for Android? I seriously doubt it, after Android had such a poor showing at Mobile World Congress, but hope springs eternal. Pay attention next week for much more news.

iPhone: A Productivity Tool?

A great guy that I met through twitter has shared his experiences using the iPhone as a productivity tool. We all know the iPhone is a fantastic device for media but can it really cut the mustard as a smartphone? Wyatt decided to test it out with a project to create a study guide to get him through his Emergency Medical Technician re-certification course without carrying anything extra to class including the EMT book for the next 6 months. The catch here was that it had to be updatable as pre-hospital procedures change during an EMTs career and easy for any other EMT to understand if read.  You can read his progress to date over at his blog and it makes interesting reading. Especially when you consider the updates coming with 3.0.

via Wyatt’s Tech Corner