Ashley and myself have always been on the lookout for the perfect iPhone-to-iPhone messenger app that would let us drop down the number of text messages that we send each month.
I used to be a huge fan of WebGuide, but it seems that the developer joining Microsoft put an end to all updates. The bad news came when I couldn't get WebGuide to work on my Windows 7 64-bit Media Center, and due to the lack of support I started looking for alternatives.
Over the last few years it seems as though the iPhone has really sparked a greater interest in smartphones, and has managed to show consumers what handheld devices are capable of doing. Of course they aren't alone in the market with both Windows Mobile devices and Blackberries all competing to be the one you carry in your pocket.
It was just a few days ago that Google unveiled their idea to come out with a central market for Android developers to share their latest creations, and now Microsoft is hot on their tail. The istartedsomething blog noticed a few job postings that Microsoft made regarding something called Skymarket.
Yesterday was a pretty big day for the Google Android mobile platform. For starters Google announced that the very first handsets shipping with Android will have a Beta version of what they call Android Market.
It was almost one year ago that we first got a glimpse of what Firefox Mobile looked like running on the Nokia N800. Then in January we saw some mockups of what their iPhone-like interface might look like for other devices, and even more recently we saw a video demonstration that knocked our socks off with an intuitive tab navigation system.
Nokia has ponied up and bought a large chunk of Symbian that they didn't already own, which equates to another 52%. For those of you unfamiliar with Symbian it is the software platform that powers the Nokia devices, and one analyst estimates that Nokia paid close to $250 million a year in licensing fees for it.
Earlier this year we posted some mockups of the Firefox Mobile that looked a lot like the Safari browser does on the iPhone.
Verizon Wireless is about to make a pretty big purchase which will give them a pretty big title. According to Reuters, Verizon Wireless is all set to purchase Alltel Corp. (another mobile service provider) for $28.1 billion dollars. Once this purchase is complete, Verizon will take over AT&T's spot as the largest player in the U.S. mobile market in terms of subscribers.
Last week Google hosted a conference that was geared towards developers, and during the keynote they showed off some of the cool things that the Android mobile operating system was capable of doing. In it's current state I would say that Android doesn't appear to be quite as polished as the iPhone, but the functionality is definitely awesome.
Opera Mini was born back in 2005, but it wasn't put into the hands of the public until January 2006. Since that time the browser that fits in your pocket has experienced a tremendous rate of growth. As of March 2008 it has wiggled it's way into the hearts of over 44 million users. Pictured to the right is what their growth rate has looked like since its public launch.
One of the big complaints many people have always had with cell-phone providers over the years is that they like to charge on both ends, meaning they charge you for outgoing and incoming calls. Now we know not all providers do this because some do offer free incoming calls, but a majority of the providers out there, at least the ones we know of, still do this.
Google has always been pretty good about catering to iPhone users, and the Reader team is kicking it up a notch with a new AJAXy interface (pictured to the right). Other good news is that it's not only supposed to work with the iPhone, but any mobile device that has an advanced browser. You can even use it in your desktop browser if you feel so inclined (ex. works in Firefox).
In under a year Apple has been able to fill a void in the mobile browser market that apparently few other devices can live up to. The iPhone is often criticized for having the slow Edge network wireless chipset in it, but regardless there are new reports that it has become the most used mobile browser for Internet access in the United States.
It wasn't that long ago that it was next to impossible to pickup a new laptop for under $1000, but now you can regularly find them for just a few hundred dollars. And there's no arguing that people are becoming more and more connected thanks to the Internet access proved by cellphone networks. When you combine the falling prices of laptops with the increased connectivity what do you get?
Each year, communicating through text messages continues to grow and has now turned into an extremely popular communication medium. Millions upon millions of text messages are sent every single month and carriers only anticipate that the number of messages sent by their subscribers will continue to grow.
We know a lot of our readers are owners of BlackBerry devices, and so many of you will be interested to get your first glimpse of the BlackBerry 9000, the latest device from RIM. Pictured above is the brand spankin' new BlackBerry. I must say that the first thought that popped into my head was that it reminded me, in one way at least, of the iPhone because of the silver rim/border around the phone.
Over at ZDNet, Garrett Rogers is always pretty good about keeping tabs on Google. Recently he stumbled upon a new service that Google doesn't want the public to see quite yet because it was added to the robots.txt file.
Sometimes I can't believe how many bookmarks users have. I've seen people who only bookmark a handful of the sites that they use the most, while others have thousands of bookmarks. I fall somewhere in between with a few hundred bookmarks, but one thing that I've come to realize is how difficult it can be to gain access to all of my bookmarks when I'm on-the-go.
Back in 2007 Opera signed a deal with Yahoo! to make OneSearch the default search engine in Opera Mini. Complaints rolled in from all of the Google fans out there, and Opera has since decided to reunite users with the Google search engine. The change will roll out on March 1st to both new and existing users alike.
