mobilemarketing

Looking for an easy way to get SMS, phone call, and battery life notifications to your desktop? Got an Android phone? Well, Android Notifier will do all that to your PC, Mac, or Linux box for free. All you have to do is install the appropriate software. You can send notifications via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, and choose which notifications you want to receive. You phone will then let you know whenever something happens on your phone. Android Notifier is a free download, but you’ll also need to go to the app’s homepage for detailed instructions on how to install the software and the QR code that’ll take you directly to the Android Marketplace.

[via Gizmodo and ReadWriteWeb]

You know the greatest thing about the R2-D2 Edition Droid 2? It comes with a Live Wallpaper that lets you shift into hyperdrive whenever you want. PUNCH IT, CHEWIE.

You know the greatest thing about the Internet? Said Live Wallpaper, along with a handful of other wallpapers from the R2-D2 Droid, have already leaked out for use on other handsets. Check out the videos of the somewhat ridiculous wallpapers after the jump.

The videos (and the leaked wallpapers, for that matter), come from user P3Droid over at MyDroidWorld.

First up, the aforementioned jump into hyperdrive:

(Oh man, I hope you can silence that. The idea is awesome. R2′s shout going off mid-meeting because you shook your handset the wrong way? Not so awesome.)

Interactive R2:

Millenium Falcon Asteroids:

Dying to get some Star Wars goodness all up in your not-so-special-edition Android handset? You can find the wallpapers in APK format right here.

[Via AndroidPolice]

If you’re one of the people who decided to wait on the leaked final build of iOS 4.1 in hopes that Apple would have an official release soon, good news: it’s go time. Just moments ago, iOS 4.1 broke out of its developer-only testing cage and into iTunes land.

Can’t remember what’s new here? Here’s a quick refresher:

• Proximity Sensor fix for iPhone 4
• Game Center
• iTunes TV Show Rentals
• Support for Apple’s new social network, Ping, built into the iTunes app
• HDR Photo taking, which automagically cleans up pictures by combining multiple, simultaneously-taken shots into one
• HD Video Uploads to MobileMe/Youtube over WiFi

Ready for the update? Hop into iTunes, and pound the appropriate button until you get what you’re looking for

I don't know if you have seen this video before, but I thought it would be fun to show it regardless. There are a lot of speculations of the 2020 vision. When the video was created there was no iPad, so it would be interesting to hear if that would change the landscape and if tablets are going to be a bigger part of our day to day life. Mocom2020 is a collaborative think tank about the future of mobile media and have put together a 5 minutes video to air their views.

Rating: Smash hit on the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic so far

Building on the success of the Moove MP3 player – which is only available for the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic at present, eyeSight is looking to offer other handset vendors its Hand Gesture Interface. The company is painting gesture as the next evolution in UIs now that touch is so well established. In particular, eyeSight sees its UI as highly suited to the operation of music players on smartphones. According to eyeSight’s CEO, Itay Katz, “The Hand Gesture Interface that offers interaction beyond touch, has been enthusiastically adopted by users of touchscreen devices.”

Consequently, the company is presently in talks with other mobile phone manufactures (besides Nokia) to license the Hand Gesture Interface for integration into smartphones.

The Moove MP3 player has been downloaded from Nokia’s Ovi Store by over half a million users in less than four months. The application has dominated Ovi’s Top Downloads list for the 5800 XpressMusic, according to eyeSight.

The UI enables users to play or stop tracks, as well as skip between songs by using simple hand gestures aimed at the device’s front-facing (videocall) camera.

For example, car drivers could operate their smartphone’s music player or satellite navigation system with a wave of the hand, and without looking directly at the device.

In the gym, people who are running , for example, can simply place the device on the treadmill deck and skip songs without even having to touch the device.

GoMo News wonders if the gesture UI is user configurable? We could envisage Brits taking great delight in giving the smartphone a traditional two-fingered salute in order to turn the player off.

It would appeal to our warped sense of humour.

While Google has a history of giving Android tasty names for its version names, it seems that they aren’t the only ones that equate green robots with food.

Today, ex-Google China president, Kai-Fu Lee, announced in the Wall Street Journal that he will launch a whole new mobile operating system based on Android, to be known as “Tapas“.

This isn’t the first not-quite-Android OS that China has produced — that credit goes to China Mobile’s OPhone — but Kai-Fu Lee believes that the new modifications — namely software that detects what city incoming calls are coming from, contacts that sync with Chinese social networks, and a music player that downloads and displays sing lyrics, karaoke style — will make his new OS stand out above the competition.

Sharp, Haier, and Tianyu agree with him, and have signed on as hardware partners.

I’m not sure why these modifications require a whole new OS, but who am I to question the ex-president of Google China? I’m certainly curious to see how this project pans out.

[via Into Mobile]

If you’re as eager for the upcoming T-Mobile G2 as everyone else was for its older brother, then you’re probably keen for any info you can get on its crowning feature: the QWERTY keyboard.

So it is with much joy that I inform you that His And Hers Android today posted some up-close images of the device’s QWERTY keyboard.

Sadly, there isn’t any info on how usable the keyboard is, but at least you get a good look at all the buttons, including the three customisable shortcut buttons.

As a refresher, the G2 will run a next-gen 800MHz Scorpion CPU (capable of besting the 1GHz snapdragons around today), and will be released at the end of this month, and will cost $200 on contract, $500 off.

[via Phone Arena]

Samsung knows you love a good AMOLED. They knows it well. A little too well, actually, what with all the recent shortages they’ve faced.

Samsung aren’t sitting around doin’ nothin’, though.

Samsung told the Wall Street Journal today that their new Mobile Display fabrication plant — set to go live in July 2011 — will increase the current AMOLED display production from 3 million units per month to a jaw-dropping 30 million per month. Yeah, that’s right, a 10x increase.

With these new production rates, Samsung believes that it will be able to keep up with the projected 700 million AMOLED displays that will be required in 2015.

Interestingly, the original article also stated that Samsung’s Super-AMOLED displays are actually available to any manufacturer, and not a Samsung exclusive, contrary to previous beliefs. I’m certainly happy to hear that, even if it could be a case of miscommunication within Samsung.

[via Engadget]

BT has launched iPhone and Android apps that give customers free access to its public network of Wi-Fi hotspots.

O2 has enhanced its O2 Priority Tickets service by launching an iPhone app that improves customers’ visibility of the service.

While it may not be as super-charged as the Samsung Galaxy S, this QWERTY-packin’ Android slider still looks to be a solid phone — even if we have only a few details on it at the moment.

“What details?” I hear you ask. Well, to be honest… very few. It’ll be priced around 200 Euros (no US pricing release details just yet).

There is no information on what processor it’s running, but for that price, don’t expect gigahertz speeds.

The rest seems standard for a mid-range device: 5MP camera, HSDPA, WiFi Bluetooth 3.0, and MicroSD. The best news is that it’ll run Android 2.2 (aka Froyo), the not-best news is that it’ll probably also run Samsung’s less-than-awesome TouchWiz 3.0 UI (coz Samsung love it so).

So why the excitement? QWEEEEERTYYYYYY!

I’m a simple man with simple tastes, it seems.

[via Into Mobile]

Tesco is to launch an iPhone version of its Grocery app, which lets users update their Tesco.com shopping account using their mobile phone.

The whole issue of how the public is being made aware of the ‘hidden’ augmented reality (AR) feature is also puzzling.

GoMo News visited its local Post Office to acquire the whole set of Great British Railways stamps and was hardly surprised to learn that the postmistress had no knowledge of the stamps’ “world first intelligent” nature.

For starters, there’s absolutely no mention of any computer compatibly on the stamps packaging, let alone details of how to acquire and load the requisite Junaio browser.

Eventually we enlisted the help of iPhone software developer, Steven Dow, of Stuck4words fame. He kindly downloaded the Junaio browser onto an iOS4 compliant iPhone.

The next task is to locate the correct ‘channel’ before the digital content can be viewed. We eventually found the Royal Mail channel although the Junaio browser has no ‘search’ capability to facilitate this.

Finally we pointed the iPhone’s browser at the stamps and … absolutely nothing. Basically, GoMo News can’t get this to work.

We agree with one of the comments left by our reader, Stan Timek. Rather than a video of Mr Cribbins reading a poem, surely the logical content to associate with a stamp would be a video message from the sender?

Obviously, Mr Timek has a vested interest in pointing this out because his company – Atomic Greetings, just so happens to offer this very capability.

Atomic sells greetings card which can play back a recorded video message on a PC. However, the firm appears to have re-invented the wheel with its own complex EVX technology.

As far as we can see, Atomic could use 2D barcodes and have the built-in code resolved by a clearing house such as Neustar. Then it would work on cameraphones, Mr Timek!

We look forward to a reaction from Metaio’s Tobias Eble about our experiences.

Mobile operators are reappraising their portal strategies as the latest mobile internet research from ComScore and the GSMA finds their traffic figures declining.

Rating: Rightmove finds iPhone owners are fair weather users Extremely chuffed that its award-winning iPhone app which has reached circa 800,000 downloads, online property comparison site – Rightmove – has launched a new mobile internet website. It claims the new mobile site [which incidentally isn't a .mobi] will enable Rightmove “to capitalise on the growing non-iPhone segment of the smartphone market.” The UK web operation has also noticed that iPhone usage climbs dramaticly on sunny days.

Justifying the new mobile site, Rightmove points out that smartphones account for just under 75 per cent of all new handsets in the UK. Not sure where it got that figure but it also observes that these handsets “include the popular increasingly popular Android phone models.”

So we pointed our Android phone’s browser at the mobile site’s URL -https://m.rightmove.co.uk [Note it's a secure page] – and gave it a whirl.

In its favour, this mobile site is extremely uncluttered but some of the text was so small you’d need a magnify glass to read it. At least, Rightmove has tried.

This is the bit that really puzzles GoMo News. The company says, “The site also boasts GPS functionality allowing users to specifically pin-point their exact location and map out available properties around them.”

Um, how? This isn’t an application, it’s a web site. How is the mobile browser relaying GPS information? It’s a breakthrough if true.

This is an interesting insight from Miles Shipside, commercial director with Rightmove.

He says, “We have observed patterns of traffic during the Summer months whereby on hot days our website traffic dips but iPhone traffic jumps, as people are home-hunting outdoors rather than inside at their computer.”

Aha. Fair weather users, then. Shipside adds, “The move to a full mobile website is the logical next step following the success of our iPhone and iPad applications, and allows us to extend the reach of our agents’ properties even further.”

Significantly Rightmove will be launching the new site with a mobile marketing campaign using mobile specialists, Yodel. Rightmove doesn’t mention exactly how Yodel plans to do this.

We’d love to know how the Rightmove site does the GPS bit, though.

Opera Mini, the world’s most popular mobile browser, is now available on more than 60 mobile phone models in Brazil through a partnership with TIM — one of Brazil’s leading carriers. Dubbed as “Navegador TIM,” the co-branded application will be available either as a free download or will be preinstalled on phones used by TIM subscribers.

Gather up a group of people who make their living through web design, and they’ll probably all agree on at least two things: A) touchscreens aren’t going anywhere, and B) designing web stuff for touchscreens sort of sucks. Native apps have, in a sense, spoiled users; with things like drag-and-drop and basic touch gesture recognition almost laughably simple to implement in native apps, web app developers are left to hack in such features themselves or risk having their app seem dated from the get-go.

Today Yahoo! is looking to make things a bit less painful with the latest release of their open-source User Interface library, YUI. Here’s the problem: most of the web was built before touchscreens became popular, so it was up to touchscreen browser developers to ensure compatibility. Now, that may seem trivial; a mouse click and a touch screen tap are pretty much the same thing, right? Right — but they’re also totally different, for one important reason: mice are point-and-click, touchscreens are point-to-click. When you click down with a mouse, you generally click down on a specific element intentionally, expecting that element to react in some way. When you tap down on a touchscreen, you may be interacting with an element — or you might be panning around the page, trying to zoom out, or any one of a dozen behaviors that all look pretty damn similar to an input device.

Here’s how the touch browser guys solved it: rather than firing off a mouse-click event when a user taps their finger down on the screen, they fire it based on when they lift their finger up. That oh-so-seemingly-slight difference makes all the difference in the world, giving the system time to parse whether the user is panning, zooming, or actually trying to tap on the thing they tapped. Alas, it also makes doing things like drag-and-drop in Javascript quite a bit more intense. It’s by all means doable; it just generally means reinventing the wheel with a big ol’ nasty hack.

Along with a laundry list of other features (see below), today’s release of YUI 3.2.0 brings support for touch events — that is, code that knows to fire the very instant something is tapped (rather than when the finger is lifted), making things that support drag-and-drop, flicking, and sliding a whole lot less of a chore to build.

YUI 3.2.0′s other new tricks:

• Capability-based Loading: Allows certain code to only be bundled/executed for certain browsers. Yes, IE6, everyone is glaring at you.
• Support for the latest beta build of YUI CSS Grids, one of a number of projects aimed at making the process of building layouts in CSS suck a whole lot less.
• Flash-based file uploader

YUI 3.2.0 has plenty of other tricks up its sleeve, but it’s not exactly bullet-point friendly stuff. They’re the sorts of things that you’d primarily be interested in knowing about if you were about to build something with it — and if that’s you, you probably already know where to find the details.

The news is good for iPhone jailbreakers everywhere this morning — but for Apple? Not so much.

Just minutes after the iOS 4.1 update became available to all, iPhone hacker pod2g has revealed that they’ve discovered a new bootrom exploit, with all recently released iOS hardware seemingly being vulnerable. In less geeky words: the iPhone 4? the new iPod Touch? If it was built anytime before today, it’s theoretically jailbreakable — and there’s not a whole lot Apple can do to fix that.

You see, there are many dozens of components in any iOS product that can serve as a means for jailbreakers to get their tweak on. Most of the components that can potentially be exploited are stored in a rewritable state; if an exploit is discovered, Apple can simply push out a new firmware update, overwrite that rewritable chip, and bam, exploit patched. A very, very small handful of the potentially exploitable components, however, are not rewritable. If an exploit is discovered in one of these components, no one — not even Apple — can fix it on hardware that has already been shipped.

The exploit in question here seems to focus around the boot rom, which, as you might have guessed from the preamble, is one of these non-rewritable components. Apple can patch up this exploit in any new hardware before it leaves the factory (they’ve shipped revised hardware as a result of similar exploits in the past), but once that boot rom is flashed and the phone is assembled, it’s a done deal.

From here, the iPhone Dev Team and the rest of the hacking community should be able to churn out jailbreaking software for just about any recently shipped iOS device. Once the exploit is made public, Apple will almost undoubtedly begin shipping hardware with revised boot roms eventually (last time, it took seven months) — but until then, expect a whole lot of jailbreaking to go down.