Engadget is reporting that the latest iPhone OS can be expected later on this month

We just got the announcement, iPhone OS 3.0 is coming. Set your clocks, mark your calendars. It’s going down March 17th. Apparently, we’ll get a sneak peak at the new OS, as well as a look at a brand new version of the SDK. Exciting stuff indeed, and we’ll be there live at 10am PST (1pm EST) with the liveblog. Apple’s calling this an “advance preview of what we’re building,” so we’re not expecting anything ready to go as of the 17th, but hopefully this will allow developers to start building toward future functionality (hey, how about some push notifications?), and presumably users won’t have too many months to wait after that for the real deal. [via]

Wonder how long it will take for it to be jailbroken and unlocked. Either way, I hope they address some of the nagging issues the current software has. I know there are some apps that have tried to fill the gap, but I honestly think they should be part of the core OS. Personally, here’s what I would like to see:

• Ability to insert a contact into an SMS. Ie. “You might want to speak to Joe, his number is…” Most phones let you insert numbers from your contacts into an SMS
• Ability to send a contact via SMS. Ie. “Hey, let me send you Joe’s number quick” Again, most phones let you send someone a vCard containing the contact details. Would like to see this
• Copy/paste. This one has been a complaint of many for a long time. You can not highlight, copy and then paste text. Can be quite annoying and would potentially solve point 1 at the same time.

What do you guys want to see?

After my previous post about jailbreaking an iPhone, I would like to point out the difference between jailbreaking and unlocking to those who are unsure about the whole procedure.

Jailbreaking

The iPhone and iPod touch hack that allow users to gain access to the entire Unix filesystem. In Unix terms, this refers to changing the root of the directory tree to /. [via]

Jailbreaking allows you to install custom apps onto your iPhone as well as get some extra functionality out of it. It’s a quick process made easy by using QuickPwn. It’s not a risk free procedure, but it’s pretty straight forward and quite easy to get done.

Unlocking

Unlocking lets you place calls with any GSM carrier by inserting different Subscriber Identity Modules (SIMs) into the phone. Normally these SIMs from unapproved carriers won’t work. [via]

This is similar to how when buying a phone on prepaid, you are only able to use it on the network offering the deal. This is to ensure the network will receive revenue in the form of airtime and be able to offset the cost of the handset against this. As with jailbreaking, there are some GUI tools to help you through the process as well as a risk you might damage your phone.

An interesting fact I learnt today from a friend who recently got an iPhone

South African iPhones are default unlocked and so no firmware will ever lock it

He also tested this with the latest firmware and got confirmation from a developer of a jailbreaking app. This means that all we have to do is jailbreak the phone and we will have the full potential available to us.

After I broke my last phone, I decided to man up and got myself an iPhone as a replacement. I’ve installed a couple of apps from the official appstore and have pretty much installed everything that has caught my attention.

I came across a post on Gizmodo with a guide on how to jailbreak your iPhone. It was quite an easy process, after I got myself familiar with the sequence of buttons to press during the breaking process, and I can now enjoy a few more apps that are not available in the appstore.

You should jailbreak your iPhone or iPod if you want to install really cool and useful applications that are not in the iTunes App Store. Many of these apps are a complete must for any iPhone user but are not allowed by Apple in their iTunes App Store.

This is what you can do with a phone that has been jailbroken:

• Use your iPhone as a 3G modem with your laptop.
• Record video using Cycorder.
• Unlock your iPhone installing a simple program, so you can use a pre-paid card when you go out on vacation instead of paying outrageous roaming charges.
• Follow speech turn-by-turn directions in a GPS program.
• Copy and paste (yes, copy and paste).
• Play Nintendo Entertainment System games and other emulated classic cames (like Monkey Island!)

Something obvious that has always been a bridge for developers to cross is “Why do it for free, when I can make money?”. This has lead to “lite” versions of most apps in the appstore being available for free. The lite version is of course exactly what the name says, a watered down, featureless lite version of the full app which you should pay for. This is a good model for the “try before you buy” method of doing things, and I have gone from lite to full versions on a couple of apps.

The jailbreaking process is managed through an app called “QuickPwn“. It’s a GUI step based tool that makes this a pretty simple process. As I said before, if you are going to be doing this, be sure to read one step ahead when being told which buttons to press as I messed this up first time around :/

A big pull in jailbreaking your iPhone is getting access to other repositories of applications outside of the control of Apple. This has lead to the development of a couple of must have apps as detailed above. Until now, these apps have been free but with the latest verion of Cydia, developers not submitting their apps to the official appstore can now opt to attach a price tag to their work.

Well it is officially open. Just to test it out I decided to pick up the first paid Cydia App: Cyntact. The first thing you will notice after installing the new Cydia is Cyntact up there in changes. You’ll also notice that the title and description is in the color blue instead of black like normal applications
. This blue color indicated that it is a Cydia Store Application. That is the only difference you will see in the new Cydia as nothing else menu-wise has changed. [modmyi]

The other alternative to Cydia is Installer. You can browse the same content with both, but installing some apps only works on Cydia (xGPS). First thing you might want to do after getting Installer up and running, is adding a couple more sources to the repository list.

Installer 4.0 Sources

- RiP Dev – http://i.ripdev.com/
- Big Boss – http://apptapp.thebigboss.org/repofiles/installer4/
- iSpazio – http://repo.neolinus.org/ispazio/
- Ste Packaging – http://repo.smxy.org/installer4/
- ModMyiFone – http://i.modmyifone.com/
- iPhone-Notes – http://i.iphone-storage.de/ [installerapps]

You now have the ability to customise your iPhone to levels the appstore could not offer.

If you guys have found some cool apps in either the official appstore or through Cydia/Installer, be sure to let us know so we can try them out for ourselves.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Cydia Opens iPhone App Store for the Jailbroken Community [Jailbreak!] (i.gizmodo.com)
• Rogue iPhone applications stores coming online (kisaso.com)
• Jailbreakers Junction: Cydia Store and others to sell apps outside of the App Store (mobilecrunch.com)

Fennec is Mozilla’s take on the mobile browser market and the pre-alpha is available now. Not for everyone though, only if you have a VGA Windows Mobile phone and even then it’s not 100% gauranteed – and that’s fine by me. Pre-Alpha means that if you try and use it, don’t bitch if it doesn’t work 100%. Nothing irritates me more than a person that slams a product that is not final for being unstable or incomplete. That’s why it’s not stable, it’s being worked on.

Anyway, this is great news. Opera has been the only ready alternative if you are serious about browsing on your mobile and are not using an iPhone and I’m glad to see that progress is being made to get Firefox out there to hopefully dominate in the same way it has changed the desktop browser market.

The focus of development so far has been on building a new user interface that reflects Firefox’s design principles, and adds touch screen support and other features that are appropriate for mobile phones and other handheld devices. We plan to do further alpha releases which focus on performance, including projects like TraceMonkey, speculative parsing, and many Fennec and Gecko optimizations. But in the meantime, we feel it is important to make this early release available to continue to grow the community and gather feedback as early as possible in the development process. [Fennec]

Mozilla also have another interesting project in their labs called Joey

Project Joey is an experiment in allowing you to send the Web content you need most to your mobile phone. With Joey, you can quickly mark content that is important to you on your desktop, and have that content available while using your phone. It allows Firefox to send text clippings, pictures, videos, RSS content, and Live Bookmarks to your phone through the Joey Server. The Joey Server transcodes and keeps all of the content up-to-date

Sounds interesting

Related articles by Zemanta

• Mobile Browser Fennec Moves to HTC Touch Pro, Hints at Greatness (mashable.com)
• Firefox Mobile Available for HTC Touch Pro, Windows Mobile Phones (lifehacker.com)
• Firefox Mobile pre-Alpha released (jkontherun.com)

Africa

• Emtel (Mauritius) number@emtelworld.net
• Vodacom (South Africa) number@voda.co.za
• MTN (South Africa) number@sms.co.za

Other

• Globalstar (satellite) number@msg.globalstarusa.com
• Iridium (satellite) number@msg.iridium.com

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• How To Send Email Text Messages To Any Cell Phone (for Free) from your computer
• How To Send Text Messages Online, For Free [Texting]

You require an already jailbroken phone, and then a lot of luck by the sounds of it as a good percentage of people (including Gizmodo) have failed to get it to work.

It worked: 23 34.33%
It doesn’t work: 44 65.67%
Voters: 67.

See the Dev-Team Blog for downloads and more information – and hopefully new versions – and please bare in mind its still beta software.

• 3G iPhone update
• Vista – uptake inevitable
• Twitter rising
• Javascript curvy corners
• Worthy mentions

3G iPhone update

We have reported previously on speculation regarding the launch date of the 3G iPhone, now more information is starting to filter through. One hot topic drawing much attention is the price the new model will go on the market for. $199. While this price is contract dependant, it is still a hefty saving of $200. Apple are also expecting huge sales, with reports coming in that they have ordered 25million units to be manufactured by the same company, Foxconn, that put the first gen iPhone on shelves. 3 million of which will be ready for sale by the end of May.

the author of the story also says that the new phones will be available in “8-gigabit-memory and… 16-gigabit-memory” versions (for $399 and $499, respectively), so take that as you like. In addition to these discounts, the source says the new iPhone will be 2.5mm thinner than the previous iteration, although we understand that right after telling Fortune this information, the “person” burst into a cloud of rainbow-colored sparkles and went flying off into the night sky.

Vista – uptake inevitable

Let’s not beat around the bush on this subject. Vista has been a disappointment. I personally prefer it to Windows XP, but I am not the majority in this issue. XP is end of life with it being pulled from sale in the near future. Once this happens what choices do consumers have other than linux distros? You can order a new pc with Ubuntu, for example, installed. While Ubuntu is a worthy alternative, you must again remember about a corporate roll out of a new desktop environment. I know that companies have switched to linux over windows solutions, but the majority have been in the server market. We are talking about the average employee having to make the change and with that comes training (read expenses). I find Ubuntu quite easy to navigate and fx uses it on his laptop, but not everyone adjusts well. A computerworld article goes into more detail on this topic, while another reminds us about current uptake problems.

“They are sort of in a ‘caught between a rock and a hard place’ situation,” said Gray. Administrators may not want to move to Vista, but neither of the alternatives — the older XP and the not-even-officially-scheduled Windows 7 — is attractive, he said.

Twitter Rising.

Seen as pointless by some and indisposable by others, the stats don’t lie. Twitter usage is rising. I think the number of mashups using the API to do abstract things with what users are pumping into the system has a direct influence on the stats. Repeat users loyal to the service are also a big  influence in the increase of market share seen by Twitter, which is a healthy sign the site is gaining a strong foothold in the social network arena. fx and I were actually throwing around an idea for a Twitter mashup, so you might see something from us in the future putting a spin on what people are doing.

The chart makes the growth look impressive – and it is. However, to put things into context, the site ranked #439 among Social Networks and Forums last week and #4309 among All Categories of websites. Twitter’s size is notoriously difficult to measure as there are so many access points (mobile phones in particular). However, the website traffic data does give some idea of the rate of growth and also reveals that the service still hasn’t reached mainstream adoption.

Javascript curvy corners.

The rounded look of Web 2.0 designs can be a pain at the best of times. Most of the time you will need a few images combined in a bit of CSS to pull it off.  Being able to apply curvy corners on the fly is a huge step in the right direction, and Curvy Corners offer just that.

curvyCorners will automatically pickup style information from the DIV element. So for example if you give the DIV a 2px black border in a stylesheet then the borders will be automatically added to the rounded corners.

Worthy Mentions

Seeing as we have covered some news on Twitter, why not give you the Linux desktop options to make Tweeting easier – 6 Twitter clients for the Linux desktop and one for the road.

Twitter is a popular social networking utility that’s gaining popularity as a micro-blogging tool. Registered users can post messages — also called Tweets — via the Web interface, but many prefer to use desktop applications that offer additional functionality and move Tweeting out of the browser entirely.

Cool web stuff for April 2008 brought to you by WebKak – April 2008 round up of cool web stuff.

Well before we kick off with yet more cool web apps & stuff next month, it’s time for a round-up of the most popular posts for the month of April

Mighty Mouse Easter Egg

Since it’s Easter for a lot of people, and there are still things to be done, I don’t want to keep you waiting. Today, I just found an older picture of Apple’s Mighty Mouse, and I think it’s something great to see. Yes, it’s a hardware Easter Egg. No, this is not a fake image, is a picture made more than 2 years ago, but I guess this is still true today.

The phone was originally launched in June of 2007 which is nearly a year ago. I understand that we are generally a bit behind with the introduction of new gadgets, but we have been pretty good lately with world wide release dates, only falling 2-3 months behind with most things.

Core Group are the primary distributor of Apple products in South Africa and have been criticized in the past regarding their pricing of the iPod. I would think that a product such as the iPhone would be high on the agenda of products to bring in to the country with a market that would more than likely bite at the idea of owning an “iPhone” – I would.

So now we are getting closer and closer to the 2nd generation of the iPhone. Most people agree that certain features being included in the new version should have always been in from the start, but the lack of features common to most other mobile phones has not stopped the iPhone from being a run away success in the rest of the world.

You can read more about the 3G iPhone over at engadget.

The first is the newly published Free Wi-Fi/Hotspot Finder Google Maps mashup which will show you the closest hotspots based on the location you type in – allowing you to plan ahead. On this same site is a great app called wiPod which allows you to select the areas (in America) that you’re interested in and download those maps to your iPod for easy access.

The second Mashup is Hotspotr, which has a cooler name and a cooler interface but apparantly (according to LifeHacker) the maps are not as good. Naturally, we suggest you try them yourself –

• LifeHacker Original Post
• LifeHacker Hotspotr Post
• wiPod
• Hotspot Finder

The third beta version of the iPhone SDK includes Interface Builder, Xcode IDE, Instruments, iPhone simulator, frameworks and samples, compilers, and Shark analysis tool.

There are 3 different types of SDK packages as such, the Standard ($99), Enterprise ($299) and Free. Depending on what you plan on doing with the software you create will determine which package you will need. You can download the free version or register over at the Apple iPhone Dev site.