Expert Blogs
CNet is reporting (read, passing along a rumor) that Skype is coming to the iPhone and iPod Touch -- possibly as early as next week. As you likely know, Skype is the most popular application for making free computer-to-computer calls. It also offers very low cost calling plans to regular phones. And it has great instant messaging and file-transfer features.
Walt Mossberg, a technology writer for the Wall Street Journal, recently wrote about his favorite iPhone apps. His picks include some that we've mentioned, such as Amazon's Kindle ebok reader (free) and Google Mobile (free). Others include his favorite Twitter app, Tweetie ($3,) and the official Facebook app (free).
Tethering has been high on the wish list of many iPhone users — that is, using your iPhone to connect your laptop to the Internet when you're not in the range of Wi-Fi. MacRumors is reporting that a developer who is testing iPhone 3.0 accidentally brought up the tethering preference pane and successfully used it.
CNBC has a great article listing some of David Pogue's favorite apps for saving money. They include Save Benjis ($1), an app for comparison shopping, iFare Finder ($3), which lets you find and order low-cost airfares, Amazon Mobile, a free service that lets you take a photo of a product with your phone and then sends back info such as where you can get it for the lowest price, and GasBuddy ($3), which finds the cheapest gas in your vicinity.
Called Hairstyle, this app lets you take or load your own photo and try on 100 different hairstyles, and experiment with 53 different colors. You also get styling information as well as tips on style maintenance. There are also built-in virtual models to use. The app is $2.99. A free version, Hairstyle Lite, lets you try 6 different styles.
Kim Komando, who has perhaps the most popular radio program, newspaper column, and web site for computer and Internet tips, recently wrote a column about her favorite free apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch. She covers apps in a wide range of categories, including note-taking, music, cooking, backgrounds, finance, GPS, and fitness.
AppCraver had a short article late last week noting that Google had just launched a new image search results page for the iPhone and iPod Touch. It lets you view up to 20 images on a results page. The new offering also includes search-by-style filters, which let you limit the results to faces, clip art, line drawings, and photos.
It's a sign of the times: yet another venerable reference work making its way to your palm. In this case, it's Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. It's not cheap, at $59.95, but if you're going to spend the money on this 2,662-page, 12.5-lb reference work, why not opt for a 36MB iPhone app?
Today apple gave developers a preview of iPhone OS 3.0, which will be available this summer and which will work on the iPhone 3G as well as the original iPhone. The new features include the long-awaited copy and paste function, multimedia messaging (MMS) for including photos and voice recordings in text messages, system-wide search via Spotlight, and push e-mail, which means that e-mail automatically downloads to your iPhone as it arrives on the server. CNet has a useful overview these features and more. And MacWorld also has a short article.
I love Boxee. It aggregates streaming movies, TV, and other videos from around the Internet into one simple interface on your desktop computer that you navigate with your remote. It's been my replacement for cable TV. It was initially available only on the Mac, but I believe a Windows version is now available. So today's news is that now, via the free Boxee Remote app, you can use your iPhone as a remote with Boxee rather than the bare-bones remote that comes with the Mac.
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