Andrea Bauer

The number of iPhone applications recently reached 10,000, but these applications did not get there easily. Once a developer completes an app, its placement in the app store is subject to Apple’s unspecified review criteria. If it gets approved, chances of it being duplicated and made available for free are high.

TouchType, a program that allows iPhone users to type emails in landscape mode,allowed for an easier to use keyboard than the default touch keyboard. The $1 app made the developer 70-cents a sale. A week later Firemail was introduced, which did exactly what TouchType did but was available to download for free. It turned out TouchType was under Apple review for two months while it took Firemail less than a week to get approved. Apple didn’t respond to questions regarding this or similar cases.

Copyright is difficult to enforce for determing whose application is first in Apple’s store. In previous cases, people relied on getting out there first and establishing intellectual property rights. But in Apple’s case, this is hard to do. Maybe we’ll see law schools develop a concentration for iPhone App Store rights soon.

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You’re looking at the BlackBerry Application Center, RIM’s answer to Apple’s App Store and Google’s Android Market. Same basic concept as the other two—you browse and buy applications that enhance your BlackBerry experience.

The Application Center—we’re running out of variants of the term “application store!”—is set to debut with the BlackBerry Storm software version 4.7. All application data will be stored at the carriers’ locale; RIM is totally out of the loop as far as that goes. It’s supposed to differentiate the Application Center from the App Store in that regard—carriers can put the applications they want on their own little store.

So there you have it, RIM’s attempt to cash into the nascent application craze. I can’ tell if it’s going after Wall Street (well, what’s left of it) or Main Street with this, and the Storm more generally. As if this one BlackBerry (out of how many?) will capture the same type of minshare that the iPhone already. Then there’s the G1.

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This application for the iPhone (and iPod touch) costs $1,000 and does nothing but put a rotating red gem on the screen.

The name of the app is I Am Rich, and it’s developed by Armin Heinrich.

It's all about distinction!

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At Google, it’s all about speed. That’s doubly true for mobile applications. Google made some improvements to its mobile search, making it load faster on most mobile browsers. It does this by caching the page.

Google also added an iGoogle link to its mobile homepage. It also now allows you to customize and rearrange the widgets on the mobile version of your iGoogle start page so what you see on your mobile iGoogle can be different than what you see on your desktop. (You have to set this up from a regular computer, but can basically drag and drop widgets around to your liking).

This should make iGoogle a much more viable mobile start page. And, arguably, you need a start page with shortcuts to your favorite content on your mobile browser more than you do on your desktop. It’s just faster that way.

Below is a longish Google video with a demo of the new functionality (skip to about 1:44 in, when the actual demo starts:

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Garmin’s Tele Atlas bid following Nokia’s Navteq offer has implications for IP mapping in these emerging mobile applications: 1)Personalization and customization, 2)Social networking, 3)Interactive sharing.

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Douglas Adams famously envisaged a fish that you stuck in your ear, which then miraculously allowed you to understand all languages simultaneously, including truly awful Vogon poetry. Cool Gorilla’s new mobile app doesn’t go quite so far, but it is a sign of things to come.

Talking Phrase Books are a downloadable application for mobiles and provide spoken French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese and Greek - and I’m sure a Vogon version is in the planning stage. Once you’ve downloaded, installed and opened the app, you simply click on the phrase you want to say and the phone says it out loud. In my case (Nokia E61) it uses the loudspeaker setting, so you don’t even have to try to repeat it yourself.

A deal with LastMinute.com means that it’s offered as a free download, so visit www.coolgorilla.com from your PC or Mac (for sideloading) or www.mobilephrasebooks.com directly from your mobile.

One day, I’m sure that the phone will be able to provide the full Babel Fish service, so give this a try and let your imagination do the rest.

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Local.com, the Irvine, CA-based local search firm, has got a patent approval for a “method of responding to enhanced directory assistance inquiries using various protocols including voice-enabled and SMS systems. The patent also covers an associated referral advertising model, which is designed to monetize those local searches.” This follows another related patent the company announced last week, for location-based search.

The new patent seems to be in direct conflict with an existing patent, one from Jingle Networks, says ClickZ. This means litigation and consolidation in the industry.
Greg Sterling: There’s the looming Geomas local patent that has both online and mobile implications. There’s also a lesser-known local search patent that Microsoft owns through its acquisition of Vicinity Corp. in 2002.

More details in release.

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I found a very thrilling map application for Nokia devices: smart2go. smart2go is a compact programme for your mobile that allows you to load maps from around the world. Discover interesting places with ease, highlight them and get the route. It is a service combining GPRS+ bearers for content download and GPS for localisation. A hybrid between navigation and a travel guide with local based information.

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3Jam and Pinger both launched multiperson SMS services at DEMO . Probably first popularized by Dodgeball, multiperson SMS is a feature that quite a few people are coming out with all at once lately. The following are some short descriptions of eight companies offering multiperson SMS and a table displaying which services offer particular features.

The List

Jyngle is a web based service that has voice support, just launched and got a review over on CrunchGear today.
3Jam is funded, relatively straight forward and launched here at DEMO.
Pinger lets users quickly respond to messages by voice and received $3 million from Kleiner Perkins in 2005.
Swarmteams does a whole lot of things, though we weren’t able to get it to work well in testing for our original review. You might have better luck, and if so then this Irish service could well be worth using.
Loopt is a location aware service funded by YCombinator and Sequoia.
DodgeBall is old school and was acquired by Google in 2005.
Twitter is for groups of friends who want varying levels of instant, automatic updates on each others’ activities.
Moblabber is a mobile social network that users can receive topical messages from automatically.

There are undoubtedly more companies that offer multi-person SMS, or at least there will be by the time I click publish on this post - but I hope that comparing these seven company’s by feature set will help flesh out a vision of the landscape and where we stand today.

Link

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The social networking site MySpace, hugely successful among teenagers and twenty-somethings, is about to become more ubiquitous with the launch of a cellular service that will let users read and post to the site for free.

The service and two accompanying phones will be launched in a few months by Helio LLC, a joint venture of Internet service provider Earthlink Inc. and South Korean carrier SK Telecom Co.

On MySpace, users keep personal pages with journals, communicate with friends and play games. It's a formula that has attracted more than 54 million users and the attention of media conglomerate News Corp., which bought the site last year for $580 million.

Continue reading "MySpace users to get their own cell phones" »

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DodgeBall - a True Underdog Story is a fast-paced game of skill. Based on the movie of the same name, players need to dodge, duck, dip and dive to avoid the oncoming balls, whilst sending balls hurtling back to their opponents. There are three different play modes (practice, challenge and tournament), and five levels of increasing difficulty.

Commenting, Kevin Roberts, CEO, Superscape Group plc said: "I am delighted that this game has now been selected by Cingular. It joins a number of our other 2D and 3D titles, which are already available for download from the Cingular network, including Ducati 3D Extreme, Adventures of Zaak 2D and Australian Safari (licensed by Global Wireless Entertainment, Inc)."

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