Let’s move forward to October 2009. I see that Palm is making exactly the same mistake that Yahoo has. Palm held an event earlier this week in San Francisco to discuss the state of the hardware, the platform, etc. There were also several major announcements at the event including the ability for users to install applications without using a store and some open source changes. You can read more about the announcements on GigaOM and SFGate.

Palm also provided a free Palm Pre mobile device to everyone that was in the audience. The Pre came with a free month of service so look for a flood of Pre devices on eBay in about 40 days.

The issue for Palm is about winning over developers and getting startups to want to develop on their platform. Just like Yahoo, Palm could work to “own” the developer communities around the world…instead they decide to try to woo the developer’s who would do anything to touch Steve Jobs. The “Apple Magnet” is very tight in the valley but isn’t as strong as you move further away from 94103. My take is that Palm should have announced these features (and all future releases) in different cities. Palm executives could easily attend the local Meet the local mobile developers and startups – get them excited about the Palm Pre and WebOS platform.

For example, let’s say that Palm wanted to hold the event in NYC as the midpoint between Washington and Boston. Why not take over a few Bolt buses, bring the mobile developers from nearly anywhere to NYC, and create an awesome event. It wouldn’t cost much but would certainly get the developers talking. If the Palm WebOS platform fails (and I sure hope it doesn’t), you can bet that one of my main reasons for failure will be their ability to attract developers across the markets that the Palm WebOS serves.

I am working on the mobile strategy for my startup and it’s been interesting to look at how each of the different mobile platforms embrace developers and startups around the world. More on that to come…

Want to feel old? Read this line from Jonathan Kromrey, general manager for Apple Games for Namco Networks, “With tricks and traps, special items and battles against giant ghost-bosses, this isn’t your parents’ PAC-MAN.” Luckily the “old” version of Pac-Man is also available.

Without looking, can you name the orange ghost?

Pacman is great, but where is that hottie Ms. Pac-man? Useless bit of info: I won a Ms. Pac-man tourney in Atlantic City when I was a wee little kid.

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?

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.

I have found an FTP app that looks promising (FTP on the Go). Unfortunately, however, after contacting the developer of the app, I have discovered that iPhone development kit does not allow apps to interact with each other. Therefore, there’s not really any realistic way for the FTP app to allow you to upload e-mail attachments.

Adding E-mail Attachments

On a similar note, there is no real way to attach items to e-mail messages. Again, you can attach a single photo to an e-mail message by going to your Camera Roll, holding your finger on the image and selecting to e-mail it to someone. Unfortunately, you don’t currently have that option with any other type of document or file.

Cut, Copy, Paste

I mentioned this in my review of the iPhone, but this is a major complaint. I am extremely frustrated by the fact that there is no way to copy text from one thing (for instance, a Word document or an e-mail message) and paste it into another app (for instance, Safari). I have a sinking feeling that, even when Apple does institute cut, copy and paste within its native apps, it will not work across apps. In other words, you will most likely be able to cut or copy text from an e-mail message and paste it somewhere else in the e-mail app, but you won’t be able to copy text from an e-mail message and paste it into Safari. I would definitely assume that, even if Apple does somehow institute cross-browser copy/paste, it will be extremely difficult for other app developers to figure out how to access the clipboard, so I won’t be able to copy from a Word document in an app like QuickOffice and paste it into an e-mail message or Safari.

Another issue I have with the fact that there is no copy/paste is the fact that there is no way to e-mail multiple URLs to someone. You can e-mail a single URL by clicking the plus (+) icon at the bottom of Safari and choosing “Mail Link to This Page,” but there is no way to back out and choose another URL to add to the message.

Easy Organization of Icons

While the concept behind moving the icons on the “home” screens is innovative and unique, it is also extremely frustrating when you want to move large batches of icons. First of all, there should be a way to insert a blank page in between two other pages. Secondly, there really needs to be a way to use iTunes somehow to drag and drop multiple icons into various locations, then sync those new locations onto your iPhone.

Ideally, there would also be a way to sort your apps according to specific categories.

Sorting E-mail Messages

One more annoyance about the iPhone is the fact that there is no way to sort your e-mail messages. They can only be sorted by date. There is no way to sort by sender, subject, etc.

I’m sure there are more things missing from the iPhone that have currently left my mind or that I have not yet noticed. If you own one, or have researched buying one, what are some of your pet peaves about the iPhone? I have seen a lot of people complaining about the fact that you can’t send and receive MMS (photo/video) messages. What else frustrates you about this device?

Curtiss Grymala is the full-time Webmaster for a community college in Virginia. In his spare time, he runs a freelance Web development company called Ten-321 Enterprises, is an active participant in the HTMLCenter Forums and offers small snippets of code and bug reports to the developers and modders of the YaBB Forum system. He has been developing Web sites and applications for nearly 15 years.

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.

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

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"?

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.

The application is free (you must have a paid Pingdom account to use the app) and I like the concept because there are times when I receive emails from CN readers that the site is down and so I can check the status via the Pingdom application.

Hosting company MediaTemple launched an iPhone application which allows a customer to manage their hosting remotely. I hope more webhosts provide remote services in the near future.

Now the question is… where’s the Windows Mobile application for those of us without an iPhone! 

To use the free iPhone application, you must have an Eye-Fi card for your digital camera. There will be more information on the Eye-Fi site later today. The iPhone application will allow users to tag the photos and they can be geotagged as well. There’s also a map function to view all photos on a world map.

I don’t own an Eye-Fi card but I know others who swear by it. They always tell me how easy it is to upload the photos to Flickr and the other photo sharing sites.

Should Google Reader still default to this archaic option? On Daniel’s iPhone is a very slick Web browser. Why shouldn’t he get the full experience. From the feedback I’ve received, most users don’t know that this option even exists to turn off in Google Reader. On my Windows Mobile device I am running Opera Mobile and Skyfire – both browsers that can run full, rich Web experiences. I would also get some old-style mobile IE browsing option if clicking from a Google Reader link on my mobile.

Some of the chatter about the resize option seems to indicate Google made this a default to save on mobile bandwidth usage. Today most users are on unlimited plans on 3G networks and there’s just no reason to remove most of the usability and ability to interact with a Web site anymore. Let’s not forget that these resized Web pages are also completely running under the Google framework which allows Google to track all of the interactions.

From a Web publisher perspective, the resize option removes many of the potential monetization options for the content being requested. In the example below, all of the dynamic ads are removed and only the CN sponsor ads are displayed. The ads that are on the page are so poorly displayed that I doubt any reader would interact with them. What’s really interesting is that so many publishers use Google AdSense on their sites – this "resize" option also hurts the potential for Google to monetize sites as their ads don’t display either.

Clearly Google could check to see if the mobile device has a rich-media Web browser installed and if so, turn off the "resize" option for mobile browsing. It would be a substantially better experience for both readers and for Web publishers.

The iPhone application also has a store locator and a snack finder.

iFood Assistant costs 99 cents — not sure why Kraft would charge for the application. It’s a great way for Kraft to push their brands and keep the brands top of mind. Charging for the application will only reduce the take rate. A poor marketing decision in my opinion.

Today the company is releasing a new iPhone application which brings semi-video to the iPhone. Basically what you do is take three photos of a scene, add up to 12 seconds of audio and then the 12seconds application merges both together and creates a nice movie with photo transitions and sound.

The application is priced at $0.99 and the company believes they have created something innovative since Apple has blocked the ability to record video on the iPhone.

The other big announcement 12seconds is making today is that the site is now open to everyone and has moved from alpha stage to beta stage (whatever that means!).

Here’s a video demo of how the 12seconds semi-video, slideshow application works:

"We wanted to ensure that the INTERNS program was not only entertaining but also relevant to this target demographic, which will drive students to engage with Playboy via their mobile phones," said Lisa Kolodny, Head of Youth Marketing, Playboy Enterprises, Inc.

Playboy seems to be struggling with an online strategy. They have tried jumping into bed with YouTube and let’s not forget the Ning social network, PlayboyU. Playboy does appear to be cross-promoting Interns with PlayboyU which is smart.

One day they will realize the power of the magazine in an online world.