August 2007: Monthly Archive

Case-mate has a sweet line of cases available for iPhone. Its Signature series is very elegantly designed and economically priced at just $34.99. Three color options are available, ranging from Phantom black (pictured above), Sienna Red, and Peony Pink.

An optional leather holster is available for $24.99, allowing you to wear your lovely leather clad iPhone on your belt.

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Plusmo, purveyors of fine mobile widgets everywhere, have announced that their 20,000 mobile widgets have been made compatible for the iPhone.

Plusmo also enables users to create personalized widgets out of useful web services, XML/RSS based sources including news feeds as well as professional media, and user generated content such as blogs, photos and videos, and other Web 2.0 content.

Plusmo widgets are mini web applications that offer traffic reports, store locators, games, blogs, specialized searches, live sport updates and much more.

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We’ve reported on Synchronica before. Well, it seems that they’ve started a free trial of the service. Or at least you could, in theory, sign up for it here. If they weren’t updating it right now.

Apple posted their troubleshooting guide for the iPhone. Recharge, Restart, Reset iPhone, Remove, Reset Settings, and Restore. ‘Return iPhone’ is notably absent from the list.

If you need some online phrasebook love for when you travel to Europe or to Latin America, Coolgorilla has got you covered. Western Europe, that is, and I hope you’re not going too far north. They have phrasebooks for common language requests, and have the clips of those common phrases spoken by native speakers. The languages included are French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and German. I don’t know about you, but my hovercraft is full of eels just thinking about it. [via]

File this under “Too good to be true”, but one commenter and two other people emailing me claim that AT&T salespeople unlocked their iPhones after canceling service. Sound credible to you? Me neither. But according to a user named RAJ…

2 OF MY FRIENDS HAD THE CONTRACT WITH AT&T. THEY TOOK IT ON 29 JUNE WHEN I-PHONE WAS LAUNCHED, TODAY ON 1ST AUG JUST AFTER ONE MONTH OF THEIR CONTRACT THEY SIMPLY CANCELED THE CONTRACT BY PAYING EARLY CONTRACT TERMINATION FEES OF 175 ( ALTHOUGH THE FEES WAS ALSO WAIVED OFF FOR THEM FOR SOME REASON). THEN THE AT&T HAD UNLOCKED THEIR I-PHONES BY PUTTING SOME CODES. NOW THEY SAID THAT THEY CAN USE THEIR I-PHONE WITH ANY OTHER CARRIER TOO….

Now, this has to be true because it was typed in All-caps. Anything typed completely in uppercase characters must be taken seriously.

So there you have it. Whether this is true or not I cannot verify, so don’t shoot me – I’m just the messenger.

Folks from iPhone Alley figured out who wrote the iPhone commercial song, and extracted the part that Apple’s been using for the commercials. It looks like the culprits are Orba Squara (iTunes link), and the song is ‘Perfect Timing.’ iPhone Alley is kindly hosting the mp3 for anyone’s use, so if you fancy a download, it’s available. So if you weren’t sick of that music yet, this almost guarantees that you will be soon: YouTube has declared it as mandatory background music for every iPhone clip.

Some of the Finnish folks of F-Secure decided to freeze an iPhone. Why? To see what would happen, and nothing really did. If you want proof, there’s a dull YouTube video.

Waterfield, a well known and trusted name in the case accessory market, has put its sewing talent to the task of clothing the iPhone. And they didn’t disappoint.

The case maker is introducing three new styles sure to appeal to different tastes, whether you want a basic slipcase to carry around, toss in a bag, or wear on your belt. Good stuff.

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David Adams from OSNews.com wrote a lengthy and very interesting seven page review of the iPhone and shares his experiences with the device after one month of use. He seems to have grown quite fond of it (haven’t we all?) and sees Apple capturing a sizable chunk of the cellular market.

The iPhone is a great device, that, despite the shortcomings I’ve cataloged here is a more elegant, usable, and arguably more useful tool than anything else on the market. Over the next year, Apple is likely to make many improvements via software updates, and the subsequent versions are sure to contain new features that make the early adopters quickly eBay their G1 iPhones. Apple has a huge opportunity here to totally dominate the largest and most important segment of the high tech industry, but they will fail to reach their full potential if they don’t pay close attention to their customers’ needs and put their users first.

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