October 06, 2008
Obama Turns To iPhone For Votes
Republican presidential candidate John McCain might have his war record behind him but rival presidential nominee, Barack Obama, has something just as weighty, the iPhone.
Obama, the Democratic front-runner for the White House, is turning the stylish iPhone into a political recruiting tool by creating an application with a 'Call Friends' feature to rally your contacts into ensuring they are registered to vote and will be voting for Obama.
It will also remind you about who still needs extra prompting so you can continue hounding them. It's called Obama '08: The Official Application for iPhone/iPod touch and was built by fervent volunteers in just 3 weeks.
Posted by ipodworld at 10:17 AM
Fring becomes first official free VoIP app for iPhone, iPod touch
Fringland Ltd. has launched its new iPhone and iPod touch application fring, the first app with support for free Voice over IP (VoIP) telephony to become available on the App Store. The application offers support for both voice and text communications and a number of different services, including fring, Skype, MSN, Google Talk, AIM, Yahoo!, Twitter, and ICQ.
Due to restrictions placed on VoIP apps by Apple, voice calls are available only when connected via Wi-Fi, while text-based messaging is available over both Wi-Fi and cellular data connections. Fring is available now as a free download from the App Store for iPhone or iPod touch.
Posted by ipodworld at 10:08 AM
October 03, 2008
iPhone Beats Kindle in E-Reader Popularity Contest
Apple has gone and done it: its popular iPhone has surpassed the Amazon Kindle in popularity - as a book reader.
Since the launch of the iPhone App Store in July, a book-reader application called Stanza has accumulated 395,000 downloads, and the app continues to be installed on 5,000 iPhones a day, according to a Forbes story. By way of comparison, Citigroup estimates Amazon will sell about 380,000 Kindle e-book readers in 2008.
Who would've ever thought that people would prefer reading on a versatile, sleekly designed handset with a colorful touch screen that they carry around everywhere, as opposed to a hideous, bulky device sporting plastic keys and a dull gray-on-gray e-ink display?
Posted by ipodworld at 09:45 AM
Local engineer’s Apple iPod repairs prove fruitful
A young Northside engineer has started a new company which could save iPod users hundreds of euro on repairs or replacements for their damaged gadgets. Brian Byrne (23), from Malahide, will repair any type of iPod for a fraction of the cost of sending it to Apple’s repairs department.
Previously, owners of the stylish Apple iPod players would be forced to replace the device after any accidental damage or damage which was not covered during the warranty period. Apple’s official repair service has come in for criticism from some iPod owners as the cost of fixing a damaged unit could almost amount to as much as buying a new model.
Brian, a DIT Engineering student, had the idea for his company when his younger sister cracked the screen of her iPod accidentally, and Apple couldn’t repair the device cost effectively. Brian took matters into his own hands, popped open the iPod and managed to fix it. Thus started his career in repairing the devices and saving his friends and family a fortune in replacements.
Posted by ipodworld at 09:43 AM
Wolfson warns of fall in profits as Apple looks elsewhere for chips
Wolfson Microelectronics, the Edinburgh-based manufacturer of semiconductors, warned yesterday that declining sales of mobile phones, digital cameras and satellite navigation systems would slice up to 20% off its end-of-year revenues.
Shares in the company, whose chips are used in devices such as Samsung mobile phones and TomTom satnav devices as well as in Apple's iPod range, dropped nearly 25% yesterday after it said it had seen a "material reduction" in orders over the past few days.
Wolfson, which had started to cut jobs in the summer after not being chosen by Apple to supply parts for the latest generation of iPod touch and iPod nano portable devices, said it was suffering from lower demand from all its customers.
Posted by ipodworld at 09:41 AM
October 02, 2008
Adobe developing Flash for iPhone
It's hardly a major surprise, but Adobe has confirmed that it is working on a version of flash for Apple's iPhone.
Steve Jobs stunned Adobe when he publicly stated that Flash wasn't good enough to be included on the iPhone, but the company has not given up hope of putting the rich-media internet plugin onto the handset.
According to Flash Magazine at the Flash on the Beach (FOBA) conference, Paul Betlem – the senior director of engineering confirmed to the audience that his team was indeed working on an iPhone version of the player.
Posted by ipodworld at 09:58 AM
Apple ditches iPhone developer NDA
One of the frustrating things about iPhone for journalists has been the fact that developers have been tongue-tied about discussing the platform itself. It's not their fault – Apple made them all sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), and with the danger of having their games kicked off the App Store, few have dared be too loose-lipped.
Well, so much for all that. Apple has announced on its developer program website that it's dropping the NDA. The company claims it only put it in place to protect its top-secret technology (or, indeed, the technologies it bought in from external vendors).
"However, the NDA has created too much of a burden on developers, authors and others interested in helping further the iPhone's success, so we are dropping it for released software. Developers will receive a new agreement without an NDA covering released software within a week or so. Please note that unreleased software and features will remain under NDA until they are released."
Posted by ipodworld at 09:56 AM
@AOP: CondeNet to target the iPod generation?
Stefano Maruzzi, president of CondeNet International, has highlighted the challenges of attuning an established international company that publishes glossy magazines to the digital world. In addition, it meant that CondeNet had to deliver forms of content on devices and platforms that would not naturally be associated with the glossy magazine publisher, he told delegates at the Association of Online publishers. Tapping into the iPod generation.
"I think here in London every day there are a couple of million hours of media time spent in the early morning and later in the afternoon as people leave the office," Maruzzi told the conference.
"I don't have any direct statistics, but many people come to work with iPods in their ears, they are consuming a lot of content that way.
Posted by ipodworld at 09:52 AM
September 30, 2008
Jay-Z, Kanye 'on Obama's iPod'
Barack Obama has revealed his admiration for the current generation of hip-hop artists. The US presidential candidate told MTV's Sway that his iPod features music by Jay-Z and Kanye West, going on to praise the business acumen of some of the industry's top stars.
When asked if he is a fan of the genre, he remarked: "I enjoy it, but these days I don't have the time to listen to it all the time. What I've appreciated, watching this hip-hop generation, is to see how entrepreneurial they've been. In the past, musicians oftentimes were commodities."
Obama added: "I think they're a lot more sophisticated than in the past, and that is a wonderful thing."
Posted by ipodworld at 04:45 PM
Spore Origins supports new iPod nano accelerometer
The iTunes Store recently notified customers who have purchased Spore Origins for the iPod that it has been updated with a new version that supports the accelerometer feature of the new fourth-generation iPod nano.
Spore Origins for iPod runs on third and fourth-generation iPod nanos, iPod classics and fifth-generation iPods. It was released for the iPod shortly before its debut on the iPhone or the Mac and PC. It’s based on the already-popular game from the maker of Sim City and The Sims in which you create life and evolve it. Spore Origins focuses on the first stage of life, when you raise a microscopic lifeform in a pool of primordial ooze.
The fourth-generation iPod nano is the first nano model to support accelerometer controls similar to the iPhone and iPod touch — it has a long screen, and when it’s held sideways, you can view album art using Cover Flow, shake the device to shuffle your music and view photos in landscape orientation. It also sports a built-in game called Maze that utilizes the accelerometer for controls.
Posted by ipodworld at 04:42 PM
Norway tackles Apple over iPod-iTunes link
Norway's consumer mediator today threatened to take US electronics manufacturer Apple before a government agency for failing to make its online iTunes store compatible with music players other than its iPod.
"A large part of the music in the iTunes store can still not be used by devices other than the iPod," the ombudsman Bjoern Erik Thon said in a statement.
In 2006, Norway was among the first countries in the world to insist that Apple break the exclusive link between its iPod music players and online iTunes store. Apple has added several instructions to its user conditions, explaining to consumers how to burn songs onto compact discs and then convert them to the MP3 format so they can be played on other devices, "but that's not enough", the mediator said.
Posted by ipodworld at 04:37 PM