The Great Geek Manual News

Months after teasing us at CES with an announcement of Skype’s native VoIP client for the iPhone, the free Skype for iPhone will finally be available to download from the iTunes App Store sometime on Tuesday. We got a chance to sit down with the application’s principal engineer before the announcement was made at CTIA 2009, to see Skype for iPhone do its thing. While most of the features aren’t too surprising–Skype does want to maintain some consistency across its mobile applications, after all–there are a few capabilities that are notably missing, and a few iPhone-only perks that are refreshing to see.

In terms of navigation, Skype’s VoIP app for iPhone looks more like your traditional iPhone app than it does Skype 4.0 for Windows. For many who already prefer Apple’s sleek interface archetype, that’s a triumph, but those who enjoy Skype’s branding may feel disappointed.

Skype’s screens are well organized and use the iPhone’s ability to add filters, for instance, to sort your contacts alphabetically, or by who’s online. There’s chatting as well, though Skype’s flagship feature is its VoIP calling that’s free to other Skype users and an inexpensive per-minute fee to landlines. Calls on Skype for iPhone work only if you’re in range of a Wi-Fi network, so your call quality will in part be at the mercy and strength of wireless networks nearby–calls will not work over the cell phone network on the iPhone (but chatting will.) Assuming your connection is solid, you can dial a number or quickly call a contacts stored in your address book. iPod Touch users will need earphones with an embedded mic to talk. During a call, you can mute the line, go on hold, or put the call on speakerphone. In the My Info window, you can follow a link to buy more SkypeOut credit online.

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Source: CNet Reviews

Covering Apple’s corporate activities is similar to watching the Vatican cardinals select a new pope. You’re reasonably certainly something is happening, but it’s hard to know exactly what or when.

One of the consequences of Apple’s notorious secrecy is that the slightest change to its Web site can spark rampant speculation about future developments. A good example is the latest microscopically examined (and microscopically sized) event: With little fanfare, Apple put an electronic discontinued sticker on Web sales of its Bluetooth headset for the iPhone.

The news that the $99 accessory (which originally debuted for $129) has been taken off the shelf has raised speculation that Apple is planning to do one of two things: Get out of the Bluetooth market altogether or introduce a new stereo version of the Bluetooth headset with the upcoming iPhone OS 3.0.

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Source: News Factor

Apple has unveiled what it calls a “major update” to the operating system that drives the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Some of the 100 new features included in the update replicate those already offered by other smart phones.

The new functions include cut, copy and paste, long demanded by iPhone users, picture messaging and an in-phone search feature, but not Flash video.

“The upgrade is a big big deal and will help persuade consumers to stay with Apple,” said Gartner analyst Van Baker.

“While things like copy and paste and multi-media messaging (MMS) are things they have needed to do for a while, other features will in essence stop consumers buying other smartphones and raise the amount of money people spend on the iPhone, ” he said.

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Source: The BBC

Six in 10 people around the world now have cellphone subscriptions, signalling that mobile phones are the communications technology of choice, particularly in poor countries, according to a UN report published Monday.

By the end of last year there were an estimated 4.1 billion subscriptions globally, compared with about 1 billion in 2002, the International Telecommunication Union said.

Fixed line subscriptions increased at a much slower pace to 1.27 billion from about 1 billion over the same period.

“There has been a clear shift to mobile cellular telephony,” the agency said, noting that developing countries now account for about two-thirds of cellphones in use. In 2002, less than half of mobile subscriptions globally were in the developing world, it said.

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Source: The Globe and Mail

A new phone based on Google’s operating system Android has been unveiled by Vodafone at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The touchscreen HTC Magic will feature a 3.2 Megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, and GPS, but no slide-out keyboard.

The first “Google phone”, called the G1, was launched in September by HTC and is exclusive to T-mobile.

The Magic will feature new Android firmware, known as “Cupcake”, with changes based on G1 user suggestions. It will go on sale to Vodafone customers in the UK, Germany, Spain and France, and non-exclusively in Italy.

Android phone users will be able to access the Android Market, a storefront for applications that already boasts 800 offerings.

That number that is sure to grow with more Android handsets on the market.

The Congress was expected to see the launch of a number of Android-based phones from several manufacturers, but the Magic is as yet the only confirmed release.

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Source: The BBC

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has petitioned the Library of Congress to officially protect phone owners who bypass software restrictions on their phones—aka “jailbreaking.” Apple has just filed an objection, arguing that doing so would infringe on their copyright. If Apple gets its way, “[it] would have the right to claim statutory damages of up to $2,500 “per act of circumvention.” People who jailbreak phones, might even be subject to criminal penalties of as long as five years, if they circumvented copyright for a financial gain.”

The big question, of course, is who really owns your damned phone? Apple says that bypassing their software restrictions messes with the “chain of trust” they’ve set up and screws up their “ecosystem.” The EFF counters that if you apply Apple’s argument to another industry, it falls apart: “One need only transpose Apple’s arguments to the world of automobiles to recognize their absurdity. Sure, GM might tell us that, for our own safety, all servicing should be done by an authorized GM dealer using only genuine GM parts. Toyota might say that swapping your engine could reduce the reliability of your car. And Mazda could say that those who throw a supercharger on their Miatas frequently exceed the legal speed limit.”

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Source: Consumerist

Microsoft Corp is planning to offer new programs and services for mobile phones, including an “online bazaar” for software, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.

The online bazaar would be for phones running Microsoft’s Windows Mobile operating system, the Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter.

Microsoft will also soon offer its latest version of Windows Mobile, which the report said would have a “more sophisticated interface.”

On Friday, the company started a limited release of its “My Phone” service, which syncs information like contacts and calendar appointments on a cell phone to a password protected website.

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Source: Reuters

Google has unleashed its incubating digitized book monopoly onto the iPhone (and iPhone-wannabes running its very own Android OS).

Yesterday, the online ad broker announced a mobile version of Google Book Search, boasting that the new service offers over 1.5 million digitized books to Americans still interested in reading things longer than a Tweet. All are optimized for the small screen - or, at least, iPhone and Android small screens.

Oompa Loompas inside the Google Chocolate Factory have used some sort of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to extract text from the company’s full-sized book scans, so that they can be reformatted for mobile browsers. But as the company acknowledges with a post to the Official Google Book Search blog, this doesn’t always work.

“The extraction of text from page images is a difficult engineering task,” the Oompa Loompas explain. “Smudges on the physical books’ pages, fancy fonts, old fonts, torn pages, etc. can all lead to errors in the extracted text.”

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Source: The Register

The future appears bleak for the global mobile phone industry, not because of the current financial crisis, but due to a glut in the market.

After enjoying years of exponential expansion, the industry has reached a near plateau level since four billion of six billion people around the world already own a handset, even in places where demand for phones and services are weak.

Craig Moffett, a telecom industry analyst at Sanford Bernstein, told the International Herald Tribune subscriber growth in North America is close to a saturation point. He stressed what is happening is not due to recession in which growth rates are expected to resume after the crisis.

A proof of this is the Tuesday earnings report of Motorola which registered a $3.6 billion fourth quarter loss. For October to December 2008, Motorola sold only 19.2 million mobile phones, 53 percent less compared to a year ago.

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Source: All Headline News

Many parents would love to be able to give their teenagers a cellphone that couldn’t be used while driving. Now some inventors say they have come up with ways to make that possible, but they appear to be relying on wishful thinking.

One product to hit the market, a $10 (U.S.)-a-month software by Dallas-based WQN Inc., can disable a cellphone while its owner is driving. It uses GPS technology that can tell how fast a person is travelling. But it can’t determine whether the person is driving - and therefore it can needlessly lock a phone. WQN, which sells cellphone and Internet security software under the name WebSafety, says it signed up about 50 customers for its first month of service.

Aegis Mobility, a Canadian software company, plans to release a similar global positioning system-based product this fall, known as DriveAssist. Aegis is in talks with large U.S. wireless phone carriers, which would have to support the software and charge families a fee of about $10 to $20 a month, said David Teater, the company’s vice-president.

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Source: The Globe and Mail

The portable music revolution has only been with us for a few years, but we may already be on the cusp of the another paradigm shift: With smartphones becoming commoditized — and with so many excellent music apps being designed for them — it’s becoming viable to leave your MP3 player at home and tune into the cloud.

This change will not be driven by cellphones that act like MP3 players, dishing out music that must be organized by the user. It won’t even be about software that streams you your own music to your phone — that’s too hard. Instead, the next great thing in music technology will be smartphone applications that replicate the experience of listening to interactive, customized radio stations at a computer.

AOL Radio, imeem, Flycast, Last.fm, Omnifone, Pandora, SeeqPod, Shoutcast, Slacker and others already deliver interactive radio to the cellphone that’s so good, it’s finally a feasible replacement for the occasionally tedious task of keeping your portable music collection fresh.

Some phones, like the iPhone, let you watch YouTube videos for most music, which is as close to a free, on-demand portable listening experience as you’re going to get for free. Offering an on-demand playback service to give users the level of control they’re used to with their MP3 players is complicated; SeeqPod has a great solution too, but it’s still wrangling with Warner Music Group in the courts.

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Source: Wired’s Blog

Nearly 18 percent of households in the United States have no traditional telephone and rely on wireless services only, which is up several percentage points from a year earlier, the government said on Wednesday.

In the first half of 2008, 17.5 percent of households were wireless only, up from 13.6 percent a full year earlier, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The statistics have a margin of error of plus or minus 0.9 percentage point, according to the agency, which collected the data as part of project to determine if national health polls were being skewed by the trend.

Service providers such as Verizon Communications, AT&T Inc, Qwest Communications International and others have seen a steep increase in customers cutting the cord on their home phones.

Qwest said recently that the trend was exacerbated by the weak economy as some customers were disconnecting home phones to save money.

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Source: Reuters via Yahoo! Tech

Although rumors persist of their use in restaurants and movie theaters, the use of cell phone jamming equipment remains illegal in the US. Right now, the only permissible use is by federal law enforcement officials, but that may change if state prison officials in South Carolina and a manufacturer of jamming equipment have their way. Both would like to see state law enforcement get permission to use the jammers, which may push the technology a bit closer to the mainstream.

Jammers are relatively simple, as they simply rely on flooding the frequencies that cell phones use with electromagnetic noise, blocking any effective transmission within a limited radius. Right now, the FCC is responsible for enforcing the ban on devices that block signals from cell phones, an authority that dates back to the Communications Act of 1934. The FCC notes that “the Act prohibits any person from willfully or maliciously interfering with the radio communications of any station licensed or authorized under the Act or operated by the US government.” First time offenders may face either fines of up to $11,000 or a year in prison for each violation.

You can imagine how many offenses jamming something like a crowded movie theater might involve. Nevertheless, it’s widely reported that the FCC has yet to actually hold someone accountable for doing so, and it’s also widely reported that distributors have shipped the equipment to do so here from overseas; see, for example, this story in Slate.

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Source: Ars Technica

The new voice-activated Google Mobile app for the iPhone is finally here. Whatever the reason for the delay, it was worth the wait. As we wrote last week, the search app knows when you bring the phone to your face to speak into it. It beeps, you talk, and it executes a Google search on what you said. (If you’re using a headset, you have to press a button. You can type in your queries, too, if you want.)

It is freakishly accurate. It’s not perfect, but it’s extremely good. Good enough to be used frequently, I’d say, although this review is based on only 15 minutes of experimentation.

I searched for names of people I knew, businesses nearby, airline information, and other miscellaneous data. The service bungled one nearby restaurant, but got everything else right. It uses the phone’s location data to narrow down results. Try searching for “sushi” and you’ll get your closest sushi restaurants at the top of your search results.

The Google Mobile app gives you its answers in text, which makes for a very quick experience. If your result returns phone numbers, you can dial the phone by clicking on one. But if you’re driving in your car and need a quick connection, use Goog411 instead, which is a full voice-in, voice-out experience.

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Source: CNet