Google rolled out an improved iPhone interface for Google Reader this week, and here's something neat you can do with it: Add it to your Firefox sidebar. While you can open practically any web site in a Firefox sidebar, some web pages are better suited to the sidebar than others. And the iPhone version of Google Reader fits the bill because unlike the full version of Reader, it's designed for small, narrow screens. And fortunately, you don't need an iPhone to access the new interface.
So here's how to add Google Reader to your sidebar:
Create a new bookmark in your bookmark manager, or by right-clicking on your bookmark toolbar.
Make sure to check the box that says "Load this bookmark in the sidebar."
And that's it. Click on your bookmark and you should see the iPhone version of Google Reader. Bear in mind that while it's easier to navigate the new iPhone interface than the old one, Google Reader does still look best in full screen.
Here are a few other pages that work well in the Firefox sidebar:
Yahoo! Fire Eagle got a lot of attention when it launched back in March, and for good reason: a cross-platform system for building location data into an application? The buzz died down, though, because there weren't any cool applications using Fire Eagle. That's changing now, though, as the first wave of Fire Eagle stuff rolls out. Metosphere for the iPhone is one of the best of this bunch.
Metosphere has several uses. Like any app that takes advantage of Fire Eagle, it can update your location using your GPS or a WiFi hotspot. It also shows you nearby events on Eventful and Upcoming, and nearby Wikipedia pages. There's a map that shows you all of this, plus meetups, emergency alerts, and the best part: messages and geocaches you can create directly from Metosphere. There's no signup required, just use your existing Yahoo! ID.
Geocaching is going to be a big deal very soon, and Metosphere is a great way to play with it on a platform you already know how to use. Show it to your friends and leave each other messages at your favorite hangouts, or start a city-wide scavenger hunt. We'll keep covering new Fire Eagle tools as they advance -- that monthly renewal email is a good reminder to see what developers have been working on.
Monday Google unveiled yet another beta site. Google Reader is now formatted for the iPhone. iPhone users tired of pinching and stretching and tapping text only links in the normal version of Reader or dealing with the plain Classic mobile version of Reader can head over to http://www.google.com/reader/i/ to check out the new beta site.
With the iPhone-enabled web-app, Google joins Ask.com in the web-based RSS reader marketplace. Ask.com's Bloglines has had an iPhone version available to users since July 19, 2007. iBloglines was created with less than a 1000 lines of code on a lark by an internal developer who bought an iPhone and wanted better access to the site.
The whole point of Twitter is that it's fast and mobile: if you see something interesting, you can post about it right away and see the responses right away. That's why it's been so frustrating that no Twitter client for iPhone and iPod Touch has distinguished itself with a good-looking user interface and all the features the advanced Twitterer demands. Well, problem solved: meet Hahlo 3.0.
We've been playing with the beta version of Hahlo 3 for a few weeks now, and it has everything iPhone Twitter apps have been missing. The navigation is quicker and more intuitive than in previous versions, user profiles look better, you can view your direct message outbox, and following and DMing people from Hahlo now works flawlessly. This stuff should be the bare minimum for a good Twitter client, but there's more.
Hahlo now has built-in support for Summize Twitter Search, and displays search results within the Hahlo interface. This is invaluable if you're as popular as we at Download Squad are (you're following us, right?), because you'll inevitably miss a few messages and find it handy to catch up by searching your username. Before Hahlo 3.0, lots of messages went unread, from friends who buried our @names in the middle of a tweet -- now we're not skipping a beat.
Gigabyte has released a new touch-friendly interface for Windows Mobile phones. While the Smart Touch UI is designed to run on Gigabyte's GSmart line of phones, an unofficial version of the software has been leaked and you can download it and install it on pretty much any Windows Mobile 5.0/6 device.
It's hard not to compare the Smart Touch interface to the Apple iPhone interface. Applications can be luanched by pressing large square-ish buttons, and you navigate the interface by dragging your finger across the screen. But Smart Touch does have a few innovative features up its sleeve.
When you first load the UI, you'll see just 4 icons on the bottom of the screen. But you can find more by moving your finger along the bottom of the screen to find 16 in all, including one square that you press to add new items to your menu. You can also customize your menu by dragging and dropping icons across the screen. You can easily flip back and forth between the Smart Touch interface and the default Windows Mobile UI by hitting the Today icon. To switch back, just hit the Smart Touch icon on your today screen.
You can check out a video of Smart Touch in action after the jump.
While Flick Software's iSwish Project certainly isn't the first attempt we've seen to emulate the iPhone interface for Windows Mobile, it's definitely one of the prettiest, most effective looking. At least if we go on the video above. But if you look closely, you'll notice a few things in this video:
While the demonstration shows a user zooming in and out of pictures by "pinching" the screen, our guess is that the device, which doesn't recognize multi-touch is actually just detecting the motion of one finger.
The program launcher interface is pretty, but at least once in the video, we're pretty sure we caught the producers stopping and restarting the video to make it look like an application actually started up more quickly.
The biggest problem with any iPhone clone for Windows Mobile is that beauty is only skin deep. The software appears to include a program launcher and support for SummerBoard themes, and maybe a program or two. But once you launch your application, you'll find that you've still got the same Windows Mobile software running under the hood. Some of it's pretty, some of it's functional, and some is anything but (Pocket Internet Explorer, anybody?)
Flick's iSwish is due out sometime in May, and should work with a variety of Windows Mobile devices, including older gizmos like the Dell Axim X50, which does not (officially) run Windows Mobile 6. So there's hope if you've got an older PDA or phone. [via Engadget]
Want to watch TV on your iPhone? Yesterday we would have said the best way to do this is to purchase TV shows from the iTunes store or transfer recordings (or downloads) from your computer to your iPhone the old fashioned way. But now Chris Carey has released a MythTV FrontEnd for the iPhone.
The application lets you browse recorded shows, check out program information, and stream videos from your Linux PC with MythTV BackEnd installed.
While Sling Media is considering developing a version of its SlingPlayer software for the iPhone that will let Slingbox owners stream content from their home TV or PVR to a handset, Carey's MythTV FrontEnd application is the first tool I'm aware of that actually lets you stream recorded TV to an iPhone.
You can check out a video of MythTV for the iPhone after the jump.
StyleTap is an application that lets you run PalmOS software on Windows Mobile devices. The company has been working on a Symbian version of StyleTap since last year, and is now looking for beta testers. The test will begin on May 12th, and users can sign up by sending an email to StyleTap asking to be part of the beta.
In other news, while the company hasn't exactly committed to releasing a version of StyleTap for the iPhone, it's looking more and more likely that we'll see an official version at some point. In February, the team posted a video demonstrating an experimental version of StyleTap running on an iPhone. This was before Apple released the iPhone SDK, so the team obviously had to Jailbreak an iPhone to get the software running.
Now that the SDK is available, an official version could be in the works, but according to the StyleTap blog, developing the application isn't quite as easy as you might think, thanks to some "legal roadblocks." So StyleTap is asking anyone who'd be willing to pay for software that lets you run Palm apps on an iPhone to let Apple know.
MediaCoder has been one of our favorite video conversion tools for a long time. The free Windows utility can convert pretty much any audio or video file from one format to another. Want to shrink the file size and pixel dimensions of a video so you can upload it to YouTube or fit it on your iPod? MediaCoder will do the trick.
But if you don't have the patience to wade through dozens of menus adjusting all the settings manually, you might want to check out MediaCoder for Devices. The MediaCoder team offers up four different versions. One is optimized for creating PSP-compatible videos, another creates 3gp videos for mobile phones, a third does H.264 files for the iPhone or iPod Touch, while a fourth version can create a variety of MP3/MP4 files.
There's also an audio version of MediaCoder if you just want a good utility for converting WAV files to FLAC or MP3s to OGG files.
When the iPhone Dev Team announced on April 1st that their team was being dismantled, and their intellectual property was being swallowed down the gullet of some fat-cat enemy of the people, Some sites took the bait (albeit with a small dose of skepticism).
Now that the fog that is April Fools Day has lifted, the iPhone Dev Team has revealed that, like Hilary Clinton (and Rocky), they are not going to abandon their mission. In fact, just to show that they are good sports, they gave Engadget a hands-on walkthrough of their new Pwnage tool, which will let you load any firmware you want on your iPhone, including patched firmware not signed by Apple (bring on the Linux!). The video is available here.
Update: The Pwnage tool is now officially available from the iPhone Dev Team; though, for now, the tool is Mac only.
Been busy spending the past week telling the press about your extramarital affairs, history of drug use, and misuse of campaign funds? Here are a few stories you might have been too busy to read. Adobe Photoshop Express Beta launches
After months of hype, the big day finally arrived. Adobe launched a free, online version of Photoshop, the industry standard in image editing. You won't find all the bells and whistles that come with the desktop version of Photoshop. After all, Adobe does still want to sell you software. But Photoshop Express will definitely give existing online image editors like Picnik and FotoFlexer a run for their money. 8 steps to a more professional Blogspot blog
Look, we know that most folks think it's blasphemy to use the words "professional" and "blogspot" in the same sentence. But hear us out. Google's blogging service offers free web hosting, unlimited bandwidth, and a surprisingly tweakable template. We've gathered 8 or so of our favorite tips for making your Blogspot site look as good as good as any WordPress blog.
The iPhone SDK has been out for couple of weeks now and I've been using it to develop an application for my work as a technology demonstrator. My experience thus far has been largely positive. I wasn't surprised by how well-made the SDK is, even at this beta stage. The amount of work involved in releasing any SDK, let alone one that is so tightly scrutinized, cannot be underestimated.
Consider that I am learning three new things simultaneously: programming in Objective-C, learning how to use Xcode, and what is available in the iPhone SDK, I am going to describe the whole experience instead of just confined to the SDK.
If you liked the iPod/Nike+ gadget to help you with your runs, you may be excited to know that was merely the beginning of what seems to be a much larger pie Apple has been working on (pun absolutely intended).
AppleInsider appears to have gotten its hands on some patent filings made for what looks like a comprehensive "fitness companion." At this point, it looks like a bunch of iTunes-esque prompts for a "fitness inteview" to help you get a fitness program for your goals, and flow chart type displays of how these programs might look as you are using them.
Considering that it is still in the patent stages, we have no idea if Apple is really going to follow through. But at least we can be hopeful. Whether this will work on current iPod Touch/iPhone technology or on next generation models isn't clear, especially with rumors of new iPods coming on the market later this year.
Or maybe we can just memorize our workouts and write down our progress on paper. Old school, but it works.
While we're guessing Microsoft would love to make Windows Mobil customers out of each and every iPhone user, that doesn't mean the company doesn't see a business opportunity in Apple's cellphone. After all, Microsoft has been selling Office software to Mac users for years, so now that Apple has provided an SDK for the iPhone, why not port Office Mobile and other Microsoft applications to the iPhone?
Fortune Magazine reports that a team of Microsoft developers has been poring over the iPhone SDK. While the company still has to determine whether it would make business sense to develop for the iPhone, doing so shouldn't be hard. After all, Apple is licensing Microsoft's ActiveSync and Exchange Server technology to provide push email capabilities.
What Microsoft applications would you like to see for the iPhone? We're going to assume Office Mobile is a given, but what about Windows Live Messenger? What we're really hoping for is Virtual PC 2007, but we're not going to hold our breath.
BBC, DRM, and the iPhone: it doesn't sound very steamy. But things are definitely heating up in regards to the BBC and DRM.
The release of BBC's new iPlayer brought with it the typical suffocating DRM restrictions, with the typical amount of outrage in the blogosphere.
However, when the BBC released the new beta iPlayer software that allowed users to view BBC streams on their iPhone, the streams made for the iPhone didn't didn't include any DRM.
Certain intrepid programmers and users were quick to jump on the fact that the iPhone streams were unencrypted. One user was able to use a PC to watch the unencrypted streams by using the Firefox plugin Fast Agent Switcher to convince the iPlayer that it was an iPhone. Developer Paul Battley released a Ruby script to download the iPhone formatted files to your PC.
In response, the BBC iPlayer took countermeasures to block the streams from non-iPhone devices. Just yesterday, in fact.
Been busy spending the past week telling the press about your extramarital affairs, history of drug use, and misuse of campaign funds? Here are a few stories you might have been too busy to read.
