Quick, raise your hand if you sent an MMS from your iPhone this past week. Okay, how about this past month? If you’re not raising your hand, your either A) not following the rules of this game or B) just like the millions of Americans that just don’t send out MMS (picture messages) regularly from their iPhones. I fall into the latter category. Today’s release of FunMail might change all that.
FunMail for iPhone automatically analyzes your text message and serves up relevant images that you can embed into your message. The idea behind FunMail is to bring MMS out of the dark ages and allow people to use images for rich communication. Rather than send your friend a text message asking them if they want to eat, FunMail would have you send them the same text with overlaid on an image of a burger. You can even send that messages to Twitter and Facebook.
The trick to making picture-chats convenient is FunMail’s “Media Brain,” which pulls out the semantic meaning behind your text and gives the user a set of pictures that might fit the situation. If you’re talking about going to lunch, FunMail returns images of food. Talk about a birthday, and you get birthday-related images.
The app is free in the iPhone AppStore, so it won’t hurt to give it a shot. I personally can’t see myself using FunMail for everyday communication, but it’s definitely worth trying out at least once.
There are now more mobile apps available in the AppStore than any one person could ever hope to try out in a single lifetime. Add in the myriad Java apps out there, and the sheer volume of mobile apps becomes overwhelming. How is anyone supposed to wade through the much and find truly unique and innovative apps? Apple (NSDQ: AAPL)’s iPhone app “Top lists” clearly aren’t cutting it. Another possible solution is mplayit’s mobile app discovery engine.
At the Under The Radar conference today in Mountain View, CA., mplayit was showing off their Facebook-based mobile app discovery platform. The idea behind mplayit is to harness the power of crowd sourcing and Facebook’s massive social network to give users a quick way to find new mobile apps. A live “Apptivity Feed” integrates with Facebook to show you, in real-time, what apps other Facebook users have been checking out. The “Featured Apps” section monitors apps that are trending hot with Facebook users, while the “Shared” and “Popular” sections display apps that have been shared the most or downloaded the most, respectively.
Once you’ve stumbled upon an interesting app, mplayit serves up app descriptions, reviews, screenshots, and even videos of the app in action – if it’s a Java app, you can even demo it through mplayit’s emulator. You can even download the app, add it to your “collection,” and share the app through email and Facebook right from mplayit’s platform.
At this point, only iPhone and Java apps are supported, but Android and BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) will be supported by year’s end. Windows Mobile and webOS will be coming in 2010. Check out the demo video below, and then hit up mplayit.com to see for yourself!
Instant message aficionados have been eagerly waiting on Cerulean Studios to bring their profile-synchronizing Trillian client to the iPhone. It’s been years, in fact, since we first heard of the Trillian iPhone app. Today, that wait ends. Trillian for iPhone has officially hit the AppStore with a $4.99 price tag!
The thing about instant messaging apps is that there are a veritable truckload of options available on the AppStore. Some really good apps are offered for free. If you’re not a hardcore IM user, you’re probably going to be just fine sticking with one of those apps. But, if you use instant messaging services like your life depends on them, Trillian for iPhone will probably be a worthy investment.
Trillian supports multiple IM services and allows you to switch between conversations with a tabbed interface. But, it doesn’t stop there. Trillian for iPhone synchronizes your IM accounts with their the Trillian Astra servers, so when you change your status or update your buddy list on the iPhone app, those changes will automatically be pushed to your Windows Trillian client and the web-based Trillian client. There’s also an option to have any instant messages pushed to your iPhone. And, since all chats are stored on Cerulean Studios’ servers, you’ll never have to worry about losing a chat transcript again.
Trillian for iPhone isn’t going to be for everyone, especially with its premium price-point. But, for power-users, Trillian is going to be hard to beat.
Konami has currently marked down the prices of all of their titles on the App Store until November, 30th 2009. ALL Konami titles are listed at $.99, and if you’ve been curious about any of their titles, now is the time to open up your virtual wallets and get to downloading. The titles that Konami currently have up on the App Store are:
It should be noted that all of these prices are only effective for only the US App Store, so for those of you not able to access the US App Store, I submit this commercial of Crazy Eddie to hopefully cheer you up on not being able to take advantage of this current price drop.
No one likes poring over spreadsheets, especially on the iPhone’s relatively small display. It would be nice if there were some way to break down spreadsheet information into visual representations that actually make sense. Thankfully, there’s an iPhone app for that. Roambi Visualizer turns your iPhone into a handy spreadsheet cheat-sheet that converts your information into simple-yet-informative charts and graphs that look as good as they are helpful.
To use Roambi Visualizer, you’ll first have to sign up for a Roambi account on the company’s website. Then, simply upload your data-packed spreadsheet through the web-based interface and choose the type of chart/graph you’d like to use to display your data – from sales reports to employee profiles to demographic data, Roambi will probably have a graph to fit your needs. Then, when you’re satisfied with Roambi’s analysis of the data, you can push the eye-catching charts and graphs to your iPhone.
Roambi Visualizer is an incredibly useful app if you deal with spreadsheets often. If you deal with obscure or ridiculously complex data, don’t expect Roambi to turn all that noise into pretty graphs, but most people probably won’t run into that problem. Best of all, the app is free on the iPhone AppStore.
Shopping malls are a staple of the frenzied holiday shopping season. Unfortunately, a lot of malls in the US are winding mazes of retail stores and kiosks that don’t seem to have any logical layout to them. We swear shopping mall designers do that on purpose. But, with an iPhone in hand, your next trip to the mall a bit more convenient. Mall Maps for iPhone puts shopping mall floor plans and store directories within easy reach.
The app uses GPS to determine your location and bring up a list of nearby malls. Or, if you know where you’d like to waste hours searching for that “perfect gift,” you can search for malls by name. The app will offer an alphabetical list of stores in a particular mall, or give you the option to search for a specific store.
Mall Maps isn’t free, but at $2.99, it’s not going to break the bank. For us, the price is worth not having to hunt down a mall directory kiosk amidst the hustle and bustle of this peak shopping season.
If you’re a fan of shooing Nazis and Zombies, then this game might be what you’ve been waiting for. Call of Duty: World at War: Zombies brings the consoles’ ever popular “Night of the Undead” map pack, where you and your teammates work together to defend a point from wave after wave of Nazi Zombies, and brings it to the iPhone.
Call of Duty: World at War: Zombies features 2-player co-op over bluetooth, as well as 4-player co-op over Wi-Fi. Players can also create public or private online matches, so fight alongside strangers or your your best buds to fight off the zombie invasion. Controls are all on-screen and offer auto-targeting of the shooting reticule, but players can also zoom in and shoot from a more accurate perspective.
Activision also notes that Call of Duty: World at War: Zombies will feature new downloadable content in the future which will keep you Nazi Zombie murdering SOBs coming back for more! Jawohl!
In today’s world, it seems a lot of smartphone users tend to rely on their own entertainment to get through air travel. Movies, TV shows, even games can keep us busy for a good chunk of our flight. Nippon Airways recently announced they will be making some changes to their New York City to Tokyo flights, one of which is the addition of allowing passengers to connect their iPhone / iPod to their individual LCD screen to display videos and pictures. Best of all, the iPhone / iPod connectors also charge your device while it’s being used.
You would think this kind of service would only be available to first-class fliers, but thankfully, Nippon Airways is offering the service to all of their passengers. I definitely see the benefit for offering this service since I for one love to watch some TV shows or movies that I’ve got ready for travel, but having the video right in front of you instead of your lap can make the experience that much better. All I ask is that no one bugs me for a spare earbud to watch an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm along with me. I likes to hear my Larry David with both ears, thank you very much.
Now… if I could only find a reason to fly to Japan…
There’s no denying the almost magical draw of the iPhone and the world of good it’s done for Apple (NSDQ: AAPL)’s bottom line. A new report from Gartner today backs up that notion with data that has the Apple iPhone accounting for 17.1% of global smartphone sales in Q3 2009. That figure puts Apple in the No. 3 spot, behind Nokia (NYSE: NOK) and Research In Motion (BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM)), as far as global smartphone market share.
Apple shipped some 7 million iPhones in the third quarter of 2009. The continued success of smartphones like the iPhone is fueled by a disproportionate growth in the mobile phone market that has the smartphone segment growing 12.8% year-on-year while the overall mobile phone segment languished with just 0.1% year-over-year growth.
It’s clear that smartphones are here to stay and will soon become the “norm” in the mobile space. Can Apple sustain its third-place position in the face of hot new smartphones running the Android operating system? It’s going to be a tough battle, and we can’t wait to watch it all unfold.
Jailbroken iPhones beware, if you have SSH installed, you’re going to want to change your default root password quick. Like lickity-split quick. Following the jailbroken iPhone hack that held Dutch iPhones for ransom, another hacker is targeting Australian iPhones that have been jailbroken and are still running the default SSH password. Hacker “ikex” has created what seems to be the first iPhone worm that roots (no pun intended) out jailbroken iPhones and replaces the wallpaper to an image of Rick Astley. The “ikee” worm then looks for other vulnerable iPhones on its network and tries to keep on “rickrolling” on.
If you’re not jailbroken with SSH installed, or your outside of Australia, you’re probably in the clear for now. But, if SSH is something you’ve dabbled with in the past, it might behoove you to change your password as soon as possible.
There are now more mobile apps available in the AppStore than any one person could ever hope to try out in a single lifetime. Add in the myriad Java apps out there, and the sheer volume of mobile apps becomes overwhelming. How is anyone supposed to wade through the much and find truly unique and innovative apps? Apple (
Instant message aficionados have been 
No one likes poring over spreadsheets, especially on the iPhone’s relatively small display. It would be nice if there were some way to break down spreadsheet information into visual representations that actually make sense. Thankfully, there’s an iPhone app for that. Roambi Visualizer turns your iPhone into a handy spreadsheet cheat-sheet that converts your information into simple-yet-informative charts and graphs that look as good as they are helpful.
Shopping malls are a staple of the frenzied holiday shopping season. Unfortunately, a lot of malls in the US are winding mazes of retail stores and kiosks that don’t seem to have any logical layout to them. We swear shopping mall designers do that on purpose. But, with an iPhone in hand, your next trip to the mall a bit more convenient. 
Jailbroken iPhones beware, if you have SSH installed, you’re going to want to change your default root password quick. Like lickity-split quick. Following the jailbroken iPhone hack 
