iOS 5.1.1 available for you iPhone / iPad

Posted on May 8, 2012 by Frank

Apple has released an update to it’s iOS 5.1 mobile operating system. The update addresses a number of bug and vulnerability fixes, of which the dangerous URL spoofing one in mobile browser Safari a main one is. Apple explains the fix as follows on it’s security support page:

Safari

Available for: iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPod touch (3rd generation) and later, iPad, iPad 2

Impact: A maliciously crafted website may be able to spoof the address in the location bar

Description: A URL spoofing issue existed in Safari. This could be used in a malicious web site to direct the user to a spoofed site that visually appeared to be a legitimate domain. This issue is addressed through improved URL handling. This issue does not affect OS X systems.

Updating has become easy on iOS devices. Take care that you connect your charger to your phone, take care that you are on a WiFi network, and then go to “Software update” under “Settings”. It takes about 5-10 minutes.

Posted in iOS, News | Leave a comment

No future HTC smartphones with QWERTY keyboard

Posted on April 22, 2012 by Frank

HTC’s creative director Claude Zellweger has stated “As a company, the QWERTY keyboard we’re moving away from in general.”. HTC will focus on software based touch-screen solutions for input from the user. So if you are in for a smartphone with physical keyboard you are getting more and more tied to the BlackBerry world.

Posted in Android, News | Leave a comment

Booking.com introduced a new iPhone app

Posted on April 15, 2012 by Frank

Booking.com has released a new iPhone/iPad App called Booking.com Tonight. This new app has its focus on people on travel who want to book a last-minute room when for instance missing a flight/train. The App excels by providing a quick view of all hotels in the neighborhood as well as the last-minute offerings. Booking is equally simple as with the normal Booking.com App.

You can find the Booking.com Tonight App here.

Posted in iOS, Mobile applications, News | Leave a comment

Compensation for Dutch Vodafone customers

Posted on April 15, 2012 by Frank

Customers of Vodafone in the West of the Netherlands have suffered for a number of days from connection issues due to a cell-tower having gone offline due to a fire. Aside of impacting customers in the Rotterdam area, issues spanned over more customers in Holland.
Issues are resolved now. In order to show goodwill Vodafone has decided to have its mobile customers to make phone calls and to send SMS for free from May 2 up to and including May 5th. Vodafone NL customers with a mobile data contract will get a rebate next year.

Posted in Netherlands, News, Vodafone | Leave a comment

Office2 on sale in the App store this weekend

Posted on April 15, 2012 by Frank

Office2, an iPhone App in which one can view/edit/create Microsoft office documents, is on special sale this weekend. Instead of the normal €4.99 the app will set you back only €1.59.
Aside of the ability to work with Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, the app can also use cloud services like Google Docs and Dropbox.

Posted in iOS, Mobile applications, News, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Google Apps Calendar Interop for Microsoft® Exchange

Posted on April 15, 2012 by Frank

The folks at Google introduce Google Apps Calendar Interop for Microsoft® Exchange. With this organizations in which some users using Google Calendar and other users use Calendars in Microsoft® Exchange can use this software to sync the free/busy status of users in both calendar systems. This missing feature is important when trying to schedule a meeting with users in both calendar systems.

More information can be found in this support article.

Posted in News | Leave a comment

Zite also available on Android smartphones

Posted on April 9, 2012 by Frank

Zite, a free personalized magazine, has made its way now to Android smartphones too. Zite started off on iPad only, and was (and still is) immense popular. In the meantime it has become available for iPhones too, and now for Android smartphones.
Zite aggregates news from different sites, blogs, and news outlets and groups it in different interest categories to which one can subscribe. By rating articles read with a thumbs up or thumbs down Zite will learn its users interest and will tune its selection of articles for its individual user. Zite popularity and concept has not stayed unnoticed as CNN has taken it over by CNN back in August 2011.

Posted in Android, News, Zite | Leave a comment

Shazam 5.0 launched; quicker song recognition

Posted on April 9, 2012 by Frank

Shazam is one of my favorite apps; you can use it to recognize songs you hear playing on the radio, on television, or in a bar/club. It “records” a bit of the audio via the microphone of your smartphone/tablet (iPhone, Android, BalckBerry, Nokia, Windows Phone 7, iPad), sends it via internet to it’s servers, and gives you in a short time the title, artist, and other relevant data of the song/track.
Shazam has now introduced an update to its popular software which has speed up song recognition. With this improved algorithm song recognition will happen in a second after having tagged the audio, with which it outperforms competitors like SoundHound and IntoNow.

Links to Shazam for the different platforms.

Posted in Mobile applications, News | Leave a comment

50% of US mobile phones are smartphones

Posted on April 9, 2012 by Frank

Over a years time the mobile phone market in the US has moved from an adoptation rate of 38% in February 2011 to 50% in February 2012. The footprint within this 50% is dominated by Android with 48%, followed by iOS with 32%, and RIM have 12% Share of Market. When looking to recent 3 months of smartphone purchases, Android stays stable on 48%, but iPhones managed to pick away market from RIM (only 5%) and other OSes (only 4%) and has captured 43% SOM.

Source NielsenWire.

Posted in Android, BlackBerry, iOS, News, United States of America | Leave a comment

New key-entry technology on Google’s Gmail: Gmail Tab

Posted on April 1, 2012 by Frank

Every now and then simple new technology comes around where one says: “Darn, I could have invented that”. Google’s lead developer Reed Morse had a great idea when looking down to his great-great-grandfathers brother Samuel Morse’s invention of the famous Morse code back in 1835 which enabled revolutionary telecommunication technology. Now morse-code is used to enable fast text entry on smartphones with touchscreens in Gmail, by use of Morse code’s dots and dashes on 2 simple keys. We all know the international SOS is in Morse code … — … wheras the . represents a short tone and the dash representing the long tone. More information regarding Morse code can be found on THIS WikiPage.
As my entry in electronic technology started with radio receivers and transmitters, I learned morse-code when studying to obtain my HAM license. So I was able test this technology out Gmail Tab on my iPhone. The result is amazing; after about 30 minutes of trying out, I was able to get the same key-entry speed as on my BlackBerry Bold keyboard. And speed only improved, as after an hour of processing e-mail on Gmail’s Tab I was already about 25% faster on the new Morse code entry method as on a BlackBerry keyboard. So after some investment of time (in order to get used to this new entry method) it really starts to give you a good pay back in sense of more quick answering and writing e-mails.

Here is the video that Gmail’s development team has put together:

Gmail Tab is available for Android and iOS phones/tablets. Windows Phone version is expected later.

Source: Official Gmail blog – Introducing Gmail Tab
Try out on: Gmail Tab App page

Posted in Android, iOS, News | 1 Comment