iphone Archive

After walking past the Moscone Center where the Apple WWDC is being held, I noticed the sign below outside a coffee shop. It is from Symbian - they are having a “hackathon” in San Francisco this afternoon. They are pushing hard to get iPhone developers to switch to Symbian. It appears if you show up you get a free Nokia phone. In addition, they are offering free food and video games — what more could a developer want?

My very close friend (and CN designer) Mark loves Elvis. He has all the albums, the Atari video games and the videos. Luckily when we speak he doesn’t sing any of Elvis’ songs to me. So it was with great excitement when I received a note about a new iPhone application launching today that is perfect for Mark.

The app is called “Elvis Mobile” and here’s a list of what’s included:

• An “Elvis Sightings” section allows fans to submit their Elvis pictures, taken with their iPhone, directly to www.elvis.com from anywhere in the world and simultaneously update their Facebook pages with the same information.
• An “Image” section will be updated weekly and will feature never-before-seen and rare pictures of the life and times of Elvis Presley.
• A “Video” section will be updated periodically with clips of Elvis and special Elvis events/happenings.
• A “News” section features the latest information on all things Elvis from www.elvis.com.
• A “Livecam” section gives fans a real-time look at Elvis Presley’s Graceland mansion in Memphis, TN.
• A “Podcast” section allows users to listen to The Graceland Beat from Elvis Radio.

I don’t have an iPhone so I can’t enjoy the King as a I travel around the city. It looks like the application is free and even offers a Facebook Connect option so you can share your Elvis Sightings with your Facebook friends. Hmm, I wonder if Elvis is on Twitter?

As I use my iPhone 3G more and more, I notice more and more things that frustrate me about it. Please don’t get me wrong; I am not complaining about the iPhone; I am simply positing ideas as to what I would like to see added. As a Web developer, there are quite a few things I would love to see added to the device. If you know of any iPhone apps available that perform any of these tasks or actions, please let me know.

Let me make this clear, however: I will not be jailbreaking my iPhone. Even if the phone was not owned by the government (which it is), I would still have no interest in jailbreaking it.

Saving E-mail Attachments

Aside from photos (which you can save to your Camera Roll by holding your finger on the picture while viewing the e-mail message), there is no way to save attachments. Ultimately, my ideal situation would be to be able to save a Word, Excel or PDF document attached to an e-mail message, then upload it to my Web server.

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We first reviewed the UpNext web application at the end of 2007. Last week I met with the team and they provided a demo of their new iPhone application which rocks as much as their web application does. In fact, the iPhone app looks even better than the website itself.

Basically UpNext provides an interactive map (currently Manhattan only) that allows you to move around the map as if you were flying through the city. In the iPhone application you can use different finger gestures to see different views of the map. Clicking on a building will show you what’s inside the building - from companies, to shops to eateries.

The application uses the GPS functions on the iPhone to locate you within the map and then you can search for items based on their distance from where you are. You can send your location to Twitter and Facebook if you connect via Facebook connect. The team drew all the subway lines by hand so you can see which subways are close to where you are or where you are searching. My suggestion to the team was to tie in real-time subway alerts so that you can make any necessary changes. This would also make the app more useful on a daily basis.

For many of the locations, UpNext provides ratings, reviews, and descriptions. You can leave comments as well about a location as you travel through the city. You can also add photos to locations.

What would be great is if UpNext pulled in data from SitOrSquat so that you can see where clean toilets are near your location.

The UpNext iPhone app is available for $2.99. Here’s a video the team created about how the application works.

Street parking in NYC is always a pain. In Manhattan, every street has some restriction and there’s also the fun “alternate side of the street parketing”. As a young kid, I remember mom driving around and around our street in Brooklyn trying to find a spot.

PrimoSpot is a NYC startup that hopes to make finding parking a bit more relaxing. PrimoSpot currently covers Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn. The service has mapped out every street and you can check if you can currently park on a specific block. You can view the service on their website or via the iPhone. They have 29,000 on-street locations listed along with 1,455 parking garages and 1,200 bike rack listings.

This is one of the most useful iPhone apps I’ve seen to-date. There are photos of the pricing charts at the parking garages so you can get an idea of cost and pick the lowest price based on location. If I had a car and/or an iPhone, I’d totally download PrimoSpot. I wonder if they could expand to bus/subway locations as well.

The team notes that PrimoSpot will be launching in Boston soon. Check out this video from Random Sarah where she demonstrates the PrimoSpot iPhone app:

PimpMyNews has announced the launch of a new iPhone/iPod Touch application yesterday. The new application can be downloaded from the iTunes App Store at a cost of $3.99.

CEO John Atkinson tells me, "For our users, this is much more than just another iPhone app. The back story is that we’ve spent the last year listening intently to our users, building out our backend news engine and APIs, and working on the requirements for this totally new front end that exploits the multimedia capabilities of the iPhone SDK. It’s much more than a text-to-speech news application now (it’s audio, video, images, text and enhanced social functionality - delivered on demand, based on user preferences)".

The app looks good from the screenshots I’ve checked out. I do wonder though… PimpMyNews is charging for an application that features content from around the Web. Should some part of the $3.99 go to the content creators? It’s not scraping like certain other blogs do, but it is using full content from sites across the Web. Or are you paying $3.99 for the application itself and the content isn’t included in the "transaction"?

Mobile company ProcessAway has announced the launch of a new iPhone application that will allows you to process credit card transactions on the iPhone. The full application costs $19.99 and a free version limits the dollar amount of transactions processed by the application.

I have a few family members who could benefit from this app when they run their sales at local markets on the weekend. Seems like it would be an easy way to process the credit cards. Receipts are emailed to the customer after the transaction is completed.

To use the ProcessAway iPhone application, you will need an Authorize.net account and a credit card merchant account. It looks like ProcessAway offers merchant accounts.

The application hasn’t been approved yet by Apple. I am confused as to why ProcessAway would go out and try to get press when they haven’t even been approved. Everyone coming to the site today receives a message that the application hasn’t been approved yet. There isn’t even a place to signup for approval notification.

Update: Justin from AppBeacon noted that there’s already an app that offers this functionality: Credit Card Terminal.