Owners of the iPhone and the iPod Touch can now access Wikipedia at any time. Independent of connectivity or wireless signal, nearly three million articles are being boasted to fit into Encyclopedia the mobile app.

Patrick Collison wrote the application after spending some time with a new iPhone and no connection in Japan. After finishing the iPhone project, he adapted it for use on the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) notebook.

Continue Reading »

A smartphone application from Sakhr Mobile and Dial Directions has been released that translates speech both from Arabic to English and vice-versa. For both Blackberry and iPhone, the app has been designed for military and diplomatic use only - it will not be appearing on RIM App World or the iTunes App Store in the immediate future.

Despite this limited release, military inventions frequently make their way to the consumer level. So the temptation to draw parallels between Speech-to-Speech and such commonplace items as the trench coat or the microwave oven is not just seductive, but time-proven.

Continue Reading »

Yesterday, the city of San Francisco passed the nation’s first mandatory composting law, “the most comprehensive recycling and composting legislation in the country,” according to mayor Gavin Newsom. The measure is part of a longstanding city goal to reach zero waste by 2020.

While the city’s measures are laudable, recycling in San Francisco is still not as easy as it could be. In order to address that need, Newsome recently announced the EcoFinder iPhone app, which helps people find out where to recycle and dispose of many materials. The app is part of the city’s growing Government 2.0 initiative.

“This iPhone app is a great example of San Francisco embracing the emerging philosophy of Government 2.0 — using web and mobile technologies to provide more effective processes for delivering government services,” Newsom wrote in CleanTechnica.

Continue Reading »

During this year’s iPhone launch, the number of Blackberry users switching to Apple doubled from last July’s 3G release. And many more desire to do so.

Thirty-eight percent of smartphone users would switch to iPhones, a study by Crowd Science finds. But only 14 percent of non-Blackberry smartphone users would switch to the Research in Motion product.

“These results reflect the great challenges Blackberry faces in stemming the iPhone stampede,” said John Martin, CEO of Crowd Science.

Continue Reading »

While the hype was more subdued this time around, the latest iPhone still sold in monster numbers in its first weekend of sales. Over a million 3GSs were sold in the three days following Friday’s release.

Lines for the phone were thinner than last year, but dedicated Apple fans still lined up to buy the product as soon as it hit the shelves, and the 3GS finished the weekend by selling just as many units as the 3G did in its first weekend.

The phone also underwent a small makeover, dropping the space before the S in its name, changing from the 3G S at its release to the 3GS today. The spelling change makes it look more like a new model than the update it is.

Continue Reading »

We’re entering another paradigm shift in computing.

In several years – when mobile broadband networks become universal and reliable, and when hardware and data-plan prices drop to competitive levels – phones will have replaced PCs for most of non-specialist computing needs.

More than forty percent of iPhone users already use their phones more than PCs to access the Web, according to a just-released study by comScore for the mobile advertising platform AdMob.

“While this is self-reported data, it points toward a near-term future when growing numbers people use their smartphones as primary and their PCs as secondary ways to access the Internet,” according to the study’s press release.

Continue Reading »

Imagine being able to take notes on your iPhone by waving the phone in the air, imitating the physical act of writing.

The PhonePoint Pen, developed by engineering students at Duke, will allow just that, using smartphone accelerometers like a pen.

“By holding the phone like a pen, you can write short messages or draw simple diagrams in the air,” said Sandip Agrawal, who developed the app with Duke grad student Ionut Constandache

“We’re trying to get past the whole idea of typing on a keyboard or using a stylus to enter information into devices,” said Roy Choudhury, Duke assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and Agrawal’s mentor.

Continue Reading »

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

The Mobile Internet Strategies discussion organized by the German American Business Association (GABA) in SAP laboratories in Palo Alto on June 11 gathered a diverse panel, regrouping backgrounds in the internet, software, mobile networking, and hardware industries.

The questions raised concerning the evolutions and changes of the mobile phone industry due to the increasing use of the internet on the mobile were interesting.

The panelists started by analyzing the recent evolutions of the market and how the main actors reacted to some profound changes provoked by the introduction of new products such as the iPhone and an increased use of the internet on mobile phones. Some elements were given to explain recent successes and failures. For example, Apple’s success is mainly explained by the fact that they created a platform, and that they made an easy-to-use open Software Development Kit.

Continue Reading »

With excitement mounting about the new iPhone 3G S , consumers and developers alike are talking about features, applications and more. But will all the added functionality route developer support away from previous models? At least one game developer thinks the old iPhones will not just turn into bricks on June 19th.

John Carmack is co-creator of the Doom franchise, as well as a twenty-year veteran game developer involved with other big-ticket series titles Wolfenstein 3D and Quake. But after all this time involved with programming for personal computers, he is developing for the iPhone. “I love the iPhone,” Carmack said in an interview on VentureBeat . “It’s a real game platform, not a tiny little toy.”

Continue Reading »

Sales of low cost mobile phones will rise 22 percent by 2014, according to Juniper Research.

Global sales of the sub-$60 units will reach over 700 million by that period. The two largest areas of growth will be in Africa/Middle East and the Indian subcontinent.

“[D]espite – and perhaps because of – the current global economic downturn, operators, handset vendors, and national government agencies alike see great financial, social, and economic benefits arising from any schemes that are adopted to help ‘connect the unconnected,’” according to the report.

Continue Reading »