The United States is suffering, with two foreign wars, a crumbling economy, and soaring budget deficits. What would you expect congress to be doing in a time of such national turmoil? If you guessed introducing asinine laws about shutter noises on camera phones, you would be right. The Camera Phone Predator Alert Act has been referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce by Rep. Peter King (R-NY). There are similar laws in effect in parts of Asia but this law will have absolutely zero effect on “camera phone predators”

The main reasons this bill is a dumb idea include: this bill does not apply to all digital cameras (only camera phones), most camera phones have video capture and there is no requirement for a video alert sound, and lastly most cell phone speakers are too quiet to alert anybody more than a couple of feet away, if you have ever tried to listen to music through the iPhone’s speakers you’ll know what I’m talking about.

A similar bill was introduced last year, but failed to gain any traction. To Representative King I would like to say good luck and as a tax payer, I would like to thank you for focusing on the really important issues at a time like this.

Source: Phone Scoop

Well he we go again, more talk of Flash coming to an iPhone near you, this time, in an interview with Bloomberg at the Davos, Switzerland event, Adobe chief Shantanu Narayen describes development as a complicated two-way process rather than maintaining the previous image of a one-sided effort that would depend on App Store approval before it could launch.
"It’s a hard technical challenge, and that’s part of the reason Apple and Adobe are collaborating," he says. "The ball is in our court. The onus is on us to deliver."

So there you have it, have Apple changed their opinion on Flash, will we at last be seeing full Flash integration in the Safari Browser, will MMS follow and surely straight after that Copy and Paste, time will tell.

via Appleinsider

A new release in the iPhone App Store this week brings one of the 80’s biggest stars to the iPhone, and sadly it isn’t from Mr. T, it’s from MC Hammer. Hammer  who has had a bit of a comeback recently thanks to his adoption of web 2.0 technologies (such as twitter and Myspace).

The app seems very similar to President Obama’s election app.The five sections of the Hammer Time app include a news section, a calendar of Mr. Hammer’s upcoming appearances, a link to his Twitter feed, but the best part is the Media section. That section includes 8 Youtube videos featuring the hip hop superstar’s greatest hits like, Pray, Too Legit To Quit, and of course You Can’t Touch This. The app is available now for free from the App Store.

Source: Gizmodo

Don’t forget your heavy coat, it’s going to be a cold one.

How did I know that? Because I have SPB Weather. A great weather utility from the people who brought us Mobile Shell and Time, Weather integrates fully into your Today screen or (appropriately enough) Mobile Shell, Pocket Plus, and Diary. Read on for the full review.

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Before any of you iPhone fans flame me let me start by saying that I’m not an iPhone hater, in fact I have iPhone as a second phone. However, the iPhone isn’t everyone’s cup of tea and even if you do want an iPhone you may not want to make the jump to the O2 network in order to get it.

So we’ve been asked frequently in the past what’s the best alternative to iPhone. One of the best features of the iPhone is its excellent and generously sized display. With that in mind we’ve got 5 iPhone hopefuls for you.

LG KC910 Renoir 

• 3 inch hardened glass touch screen
• 8 mega pixel camera with a Xenon Flash
• LG interface

Samsung M8800 Pixon

• 3.2 inch touch screen
• 8 mega pixel camera with a dual LED Flash 
• Samsung interface

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic

• 3.2 in touch screen
• 3.2 mega pixel camera with a dual LED Flash
• Symbian 9.4 Series 60 5th Edition

HTC Touch HD 

• 3.8 inch touch sensitive VGA screen
• 5 mega pixel camera
• Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional

Samsung i900 Omnia, 8gb and 16gb

• 3.2 inch touch screen
• 5 mega pixel camera with a LED flash
• Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional 

Posted by: Matt (courtesy of eXpansys)

Brandon over at Pocketnow has put together a video of Mozilla’s upcoming mobile browser currently known as Fennec. As this will be the mobile version of Firefox its pretty exciting to see what they have in store after the huge success of the desktop version. In the video, they give you a tour of Mozilla Fennec Alpha running on an HTC Touch Pro. Although the program is totally unstable and difficult to use, you get some glimpses of what Mozilla has in store for its upcoming mobile browser, which brings several elements of Firefox 3 to handheld devices.

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The guys over at Mobile Divide have posted a video of the Palm Pre and it is by far the best video of the phone that we have seen to date. Its over four minutes of pure Pre goodness and now after things had calmed down in my mind its all of a frenzy again with desire and want for this amazing looking phone. Check out the video after the break, its well worth a look.

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Microsoft has new invention idea and filed a patent application for a device that bridges the gap between your desktop computer and your mobile phone. The device is essentially a small  computer with its own CPU and OS, but when docked with a compatible mobile phone it can create a powerful computing platform, that can interface with a number of peripherals, including keyboard, mouse, monitor and others. The Patent Application titled “SMART INTERFACE SYSTEM FOR MOBILE COMMUNICATIONS DEVICES” sounds like a beefed up version of the Redfly desktop Smartphone Terminal that Celio was showing off at CES a couple of weeks ago.

This seems like a natural progression for computing as our mobile phones become more and more powerful. Just as laptops started out as lumbering expensive supplements to desktop computers, but now a laptop can replace a desktop in terms of cost, and speed. It’s easy to foresee a time when smartphones can also bridge that gap. Maybe this device will help herald in a new era of computing, one which a lot of us in the tech community have been waiting for for a long time.

Source: Unwired View