Articles by Chad Garrett

Weekly App Review: Meebo

meebo_logo.jpgWith Instant Messaging (IM) a ways off for the iPhone, what are your alternatives? Have no fear! Your IM saviour is here… Meebo! What is Meebo? Meebo is a free web-based IM client that connects to several clients including: Meebo, AIM, MSN, Yahoo!, GTalk, ICQ and Jabber. How does this client favor with all of the services? Read on to find out more…

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Phone Different Week in Review 2008-03-28

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Every week I will be bringing you what I think are the week’s biggest stories and articles. Here we go!

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Web App Review: iCopy

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When I first heard of iCopy through fellow Phone Different writer Rene Ritchie, I thought, “Wow, what a great idea, I hope it works”. When I installed the software, I was immediately skeptical due to the complexity of the steps involved. So, without saying too much more, let’s dive right in!

To use iCopy is simple; install the JavaScript-based bookmarklet and you are good to go. To begin you simple tap the Copy/Paste bookmark in Safari on the iPhone. After doing this you are presented with three choice: Copy, Paste and Cancel.

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3G iPhone around the Corner, OLED, 10 Million of ‘em Ordered?

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Ken Dulaney, a Gartner analyst has divulged to the iPod Observer that Apple may have already placed an order for 10 million 3G iPhones. Mr. Dulaney is aware of this based on the rumors he his following in Asia.

Mr. Delany also goes on to speculate that the 3G iPhone will also use organic LED’s allowing the device to be thinner and have a lower consumption. This comes just days off of Kevin Rose’s declaration that the 3G iPhone will have a built-in forward facing camera, possibly for video chatting via an iChat like client.

Will we see a new iPhone in a “few months”? My bet is the announcement will have to be at the WWDC this June.

Review: Belkin Clear Acrylic Case for iPhone

There are several choices for an iPhone case at the Phone Different Store. One that caught my eye was the Belkin Clear Acrylic Case ($14.95) due to its unique “kickstand”. I was very excited to see this type of case become available for the iPhone. It is perfect for setting on a tray table or on any table for that matter. But the real question is how does it hold up as a case?

Read on for the full review after the break…

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More bandwidth for AT&T, what does this mean for Apple?

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Information Week has posted an article discussing how the spectrum action is going. You remember, the wireless 700MHz spectrum action that is freed up from analog TV? Anyway, Verizon has won the largest segment of the bandwidth spending $9.6 billion to do so. Guess who’s number 2? You guessed it kids, AT&T. AT&T spent $6.6 billion for their share. What does this mean? Well for starters the FCC says that the bandwidth being auctioned off must be kept open and usable on any network; no more of this lock-down on a carrier mumbo-jumbo. Then there is Google coming with Android later this year…

So what impact does this have on the iPhone? Will Apple sell an iPhone on a segment of the open bandwidth? Could the 3G iPhone run only on AT&T’s 3G network and the EDGE iPhones run on the “open” spectrum?

Dot Mac Services to iPhone? Wait-a-Thon!

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Do you use Apple’s .Mac Services? I do. I like the synchronization between my Macs; it really makes life easy. With the iPhone, I really get a lot of benefit. I can add a website, Calendar appointments, Address Book entry, etc on my iPhone and it gets synced across multiple machines.

So why can’t I access my iDisk on my iPhone? I realize actually creating documents might be a stretch, but at least an adherence to Apple’s own Human Interface Guidelines for iDisk on the iPhone via Safari should not be too hard. But why stop there. Why not an optimized view of my web-based .Mac Mail? Or Address Book?

I think it would be an awesome value for .Mac subscribers to get an optimized array of Apple’s services to the iPhone. They could start with their own Web App Gallery. What do you think? Would a tighter integration of Apple’s services with the iPhone make it that much more desirable?

Phone Different Week in Review, March 21, 2008

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Every week I will be bringing you what I think are the week’s biggest stories and articles. Here we go!

Adobe Flash for iPhone

Would Adobe just make it for our beloved already? We started off the week with Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen hopes Apple’s newly released SDK will help Adobe deliver that middle ground, with or without Jobs’ blessing. The world was ecstatic, could this really be?

… Well, not so fast, a few days later there was a, um, clarification.

Can’t we all just get along, join hands, sing Kumbaya and make Flash happen?

More of our best stuff after the break!

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Web App Review: Pimp My News!

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I have to admit, when I first heard about Pimp My News for iPhone, I was… less than enthusiastic. I mean, “Pimp” My News? Perhaps I am a little old school, but I thought with a name like this, the website is all bling and no substance. Boy was I wrong…

Pimp My News (PMN) has a standard website with an optimized iPhone interface. As you can imagine by the title, the website is an aggregator for multiple site feeds and more. Let’s start off with the aggregator.

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Portable Gaming’s Future?- Wait-a-Thon!

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With the recent announcement of the iPhone SDK, we became witness to the iPhone’s possible future in gaming. If you are a portable gamer, you probably already own a Nintendo DS or a Sony PSP. Perhaps in the future, you will just use your iPhone? The iPhone is flying off of the shelf these days and with the App Store around the corner, there is no excuse for users not to get a little gaming action. Electronic Arts is a huge developer and publisher for video games. What if they port games to the iPhone? A little Need for Speed Underground anyone? Imagine holding your iPhone like a steering while and using the accelerometer as you rotate the phone left and right to steer, then lean the iPhone forward to accelerate and tilt it back to brake and change your views by touching the screen… oh, the possibilities.

What do you foresee as possible future uses for the iPhone as a gaming platform? We could start with Nintendo’s Wii for inspiration…