os

Talk to everyone with one chat client

Anyone who uses a chat client frequently knows what it's like when one of your friends is on a different service. You can download the client to match what they use, but that means you'll need to have at least two chat clients running at all times. If someone else comes along that uses a third service, that's when it really starts to get confusing.

Instead of filling up your Dock with chat clients, why not just download Adium? This multiservice chat client lets you register for new services and chat with all of your friends from … Read more

Screenshots point to digital compass in new iPhone

Rumors first floated a month ago that there would be a magnetometer built in to the next version of the iPhone. Now there appear to be corroborating screenshots, which Boy Genius Report has obtained.

The images show a debugging menu with the option to "show in compass," that is purportedly going to show up when the upgraded iPhone debuts.

One of the interesting things you can do with a digital compass is introduce augmented reality-type applications, as MacRumors suggests. Mobile augmented reality can use a phone's camera and compass to let a device capture an image of … Read more

Apple releases iPhone OS 3.0 beta 5 to developers

Apple's engineering department is still working hard toward the summer release of iPhone OS 3.0. The difference now is that Apple's engineering team has hit warp 5--well, beta 5 actually--only 8 days after releasing beta 4. Talk about zippy. It is likely that the speed up is attributed to the rapidly approaching WWDC 2009.

Like most Apple updates, we suspect that the new beta 5 includes several stability and performance enhancements that might make the beta more pleasing to use, if you are testing it.

As previously reported, we've heard from some early beta testers complaining (… Read more

Can a Palm Pre multitask better than an iPhone?

Palm's comeback attempt rests squarely on the notion that it has found a better way to manage your complicated digital life.

Ever since its January coming-out party at the Consumer Electronics Show, Palm has generated buzz for the Pre unlike any other phone released since Apple's iPhone arrived in June 2007 (that includes impressive phones such as Research in Motion's BlackBerry Bold and HTC's G1 Android phone.) The two phones will be forever compared--not just because of their consumer-oriented styles and emphasis on gesture-based user interfaces, but because of the very real enmity between the proud … Read more

Apple plots course for middle of mobile

Is the world finally ready for the mobile minitablet?

It's become quite clear over the last several months that Apple is ready to bridge the mobile computing gap, with plans to develop a device that fits somewhere in between the iPhone and the MacBook. A recent Wall Street Journal article proclaimed that during his medical leave, CEO Steve Jobs has been working on that midsized mobile device, bigger than an iPhone but smaller than a MacBook.

And just this week, BusinessWeek reported that Apple is developing a "media pad" that would let users watch videos on a … Read more

Apple releases iPhone OS 3.0 beta 4 to developers

Apple's engineering department is still working hard toward the summer release of iPhone OS 3.0. It has released beta 4 to developers only two weeks after beta 3 was released.

Like most Apple updates, we suspect that the new beta 4 includes several stability and performance enhancements that might make the beta more pleasing to use, if you are testing it.

We've heard from some early beta testers complaining (see article comments from this April 1 post) about the number of issues they were experiencing with the previous releases.

It is too early to tell what kinds … Read more

Glide OS connects across devices, desktops

There are few, if any, horizontal platforms that offer users the capability to e-mail, create, and edit documents and pictures, and collaborate across all three major desktop computing platforms as well as almost every major smartphone platform. Glide 3.0 has just updated, introducing changes aimed at parental control and creating a child-friendly environment.

The new e-mail filter lets parents intercept all messages sent to a child's in-box. Parents can then approve or deny the e-mails so children can only see preapproved messages, filtering out pornographic spam, phishing attempts, and other junk. Parents need to create a secondary e-mail … Read more

iPhone OS 3.0 beta 3 jailbroken

If you blinked again, you might have missed it: several days after Apple released an update to the iPhone OS 3 beta, hackers have already jailbroken the OS 3 beta 3 release.

A new version of QuickPWN for Windows only (direct download link) has been released. This version should work with all versions of the iPhone or the iPod Touch. We have not yet tried the jailbreak, but our sources have not reported any trouble with the hack. (As usual, however, download and use QuickPWN at your own risk.)

Jailbreaking is competitive in the hacking community. The Dev Team, the … Read more

Report: iPhone OS 3.0 may include voice control

Last month, after the new iPod Shuffle came out, I wrote a column about how Apple might be considering a shift to a voice interface for iPods and iPhones.

Well, now Ars Technica is reporting that there's "evidence of new voice control features coming to iPhone OS 3.0," which will be released sometime this summer.

Ars Technica's sources are of the anonymous variety, but they claim that these new voice features are code-named "Jibbler" and will not only provide voice synthesis but voice recognition.

Ars says Jibbler appears be an enhancement to the … Read more