iphone Archive

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.

Web site monitoring service Pingdom has released a new iPhone application that allows website owners to monitor their server uptime while on-the-go. The application includes the ability to view the current status of your websites, view site history for the past 30 days and get detailed information on each of the tests Pingdom performs.

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! 

Wireless digital memory card maker Eye-Fi has announced the launch of an iPhone application today. The application will be officially launched during Macworld this week. Eye-Fi notes regarding the iPhone application, "(it) will let users aggregate all of their photos — from both an iPhone and a digital camera — into organized folders on a computer and to one of 25 online photo sharing and social networking Web sites."

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.

Over the weekend CN reader Daniel Hallac and I have been chatting about something he found while browsing CN on his iPhone. Daniel was reading a story in Google Reader and wanted to comment so he clicked from the story to CN. What he found when he reached CN was an "old-style" mobile page (see the screenshots below). The URL in the window was that of Google with a redirection link to CN. After some investigation, it turns out that Google Reader defaults outbound links to use a reformatted option (see arrow in image below).

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.

Kraft Foods has launched a pretty nifty iPhone application today named the iFood Assistant. The application provides 7,000 recipes and each one has a video demonstration, shopping list and the ability to comment/review comments on each recipe. If you turn the phone to the horizontal view, the recipes switch to index card mode and show you one step in the process on each "card".

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.

12Seconds calls themselves the, “Video Twitter” and basically what they offer is a service which allows you to record videos with a maximium length of 12 seconds. The videos can be shared and commented on by your friends. The service has grown in popularity since their launch back in July. In our initial 12seconds review, we looked at the comparison to Seesmic.

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: