Image via CrunchBase

I read today about an interesting iPhone application which basically changes the natural behavior of the iPhone and lets VoIP applications use the 3G network instead of the default Wifi.

This application, Voipover3G, works with the alternative installer Cydia, specifically designed for jailbroken iPhones 3G.

After installing this app, VoIP apps which used to use the Wifi connection, like Fring and Truphone, will be forced to use the 3G data channel. Not having an iPhone 3G I couldn’t test it out, anyway I find it useful in certain contexts even if limited to jailbroken iphones only.

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Technorati Tags: 3G, Apple, Cydia, fring, Installer, iphone, jailbreak, luca filigheddu, truphone, VoIP

Image by Quang Minh (YILKA) via Flickr

Since the death of my faithful Nokia N95, I was wondering whether an iPhone 3G could be both a replacement and a good companion when it comes to use it for business.

When I say for business, I mean full access to email everywhere and a deep usage of voice calls. At the same time, the BlackBerry Bold is a smartphone I saw the first time in the US thanks to Jim Courtney who showed it to me during one of the famous wine dinners organized by pal Andy Abramson.

My experience with the iPhone is limited to the 2G version I gave to my wife a couple of months ago, bought in Cupertino. That model is not bad, battery duration is enough and overall experience is not bad. On the contrary, feedbacks I got from iPhone 3G users are not that great, aside from Dan York who seems much satisfied about that (his company, Voxeo, replaced Blackberries with iPhones).

The question is: what’s a better choice for business usage? Honestly, I never had a Blackberry myself but the feedbacks I’m getting everywhere is that those are solid and fully functional devices which make your business day really effective, regardless the location you are staying in. The new Bold seems to be a major upgrade of previous models and with a high definition display, 3G and Wifi included it offers you a wide range of possibilities when it comes to manage your business life on the go.

The new Storm, at a higher price, offers you an iPhone-like experience too, with a touch screen in place of the standard qwerty keyboard. Jim Courtney pointed out that a BlackBerry App Store will be available in March ‘09, making the gap between RIM smartphones and the iPhone even smaller.

What do you think? For business, BlackBerry Bold/Storm or iPhone3G? 

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Technorati Tags: App Store, BlackBerry App Store, BlackBerry Bold, iphone, luca filigheddu, Nokia N95, Smartphone, Storm

The main downside of using more than one browser is, for example, that you can accidentally click on links on one of them which leads to the opening of the default browser, not the one you are currently using. In MacOSX, the default browser can be specified under the general preferences within Safari and from then on, that browser will be the default choice for the system to open links.

The following video well explains how Choosy works. It’s basically a software (it adds a new preference pane on MacOSX) which acts as the default browser, but you can make it perform as you like, for instance showing a menu where you can choose the browser you want to open at a certain time.

Introduction to Choosy from George Brocklehurst on Vimeo.

I highly recommend to give Choosy a try. After you insert your email, they send you a download link (it’s been a matter of minutes for me). Really a useful idea.

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Image via CrunchBase

Yesterday I posted the following Tweet:

I immediately received a response and gave a look at the Apple “Old Stuff” online store.

Ok, you can find some interesting deals and discounted old Macbooks and Macbook Pros (together with iPods and so on) but a question arises: is it worth it?

I mean, you pay $400 less for a previous generation Macbook Pro, for example, but you what you are getting is much less than the new generation.

You get a worse and heavier case, no multitouch, worse display, worse graphics and many other improvements introduced with the new Macbook Pro are not available in the previous version.

So what? I would buy it if I could save not less than $800. Sell it in the range $1000 - $1200 and it works. Otherwise, I would definitely go for the new version.

What do you think? Is the price for “clearance items” fair? Leave your comments.

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Technorati Tags: Apple, Deals, luca filigheddu, macbook, MacbookPro, Multi-touch, New macbook pro

Aside from the great innovations introduced with these new products, far ahead from the competition, it’s pretty clear that Apple computers are still targeted to a niche, not for everyone.

Despite the reduction of the entry price for the Macbook line, $999 Is still a lot of money if compared to the entry level models from other brands (priced in the range $400-$600).

Moreover, the new stunning 24” Cinema Display is priced twice a direct competitor, like models from HP, Dell or Acer, undoubtely great monitors as well.

So what? Is Apple still not for everyone? Well, from a certain standpoint (price) I would say it’s not for everyone. On the other hand, Apple is a marketing leader and innovator. People are willing to spend that amount of money for Apple products because Apple is a king in telling you why their products are better than the competition. For example, today Jobs has been (as usual) a marketing guru by explaining why Apple’s notebooks are better and why consumers should choose them in place of other available alternatives.

In conclusion, despite it is evident to everyone that Apple is definitely MORE expensive than the competition, the truth is that their products are better, they are presented as MUCH better than any other product coming from the competition and consumers FEEL they are really better.

The result? They are worth their price. Period.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Apple Cinema Display, dell, luca filigheddu, macbook, MacBook Air, Macbook Pro, Steve Jobs

Been labeled as 5800, it means that it’s a mass market phone and the price has been defined accordingly, that is $390 (in Europe should be around euros 290), unlocked. For a complete set of features, take a look at the official Nokia 5800 website, full of animations, videos and complete specifications.

It’s pretty clear that everyone is looking at it as the iPhone’s rival, even if I expect that all the next high-end Nokia phones will be touchscreen and much more feature-rich. This means that this comparison is, to me, a bit like apples and pears and it doesn’t make much sense, but in any case it ’s something people are looking for.

Who is gonna be the winner? Here are my opinions, broken down in 10 categories.

1) Display

Nokia 1 - Apple 1

The new Nokia phone is provided with a 3.2″, 16:9 - 640×360 nHD display with up to 16M colors. An accelerometer is included, so that the screen automatically rotates depending on the orientation of the phone.

The iPhone’s screen is a little bit bigger (3.5″) but the resolution is less, being 480×320. Not having tried the 5800 yet, I cannot tell you more, but I would say I would prefer a better resolution over a not much bigger screen.

2) Size

Nokia 1 - Apple 0

The iPhone is bigger, on average (a little bit longer 115mm vs 111mm,  thinner 12.3mm vs 15.5mm and larger), that means the Nokia is about 25g lighter. Not a big deal, both of them are portable and designed to fit well in your hands. Having a smaller width, the Nokia should be easier to operate with one hand only.

3) Memory

Nokia 1 - Apple 0

While the iPhone comes in two versions, 8GB and 16GB internal memory, the Nokia is offered with 8GB only through a micro SD card. The latter is definitely a more flexible solution since it’s very easy and relatively cheap upgrading to 16GB, something iPhone’s owners cannot do.

4) Network

Nokia 0 - Apple 0

Both phones are provided with a complete range of available voice and data networks, both GSM and 3G, and both phones come in two different versions for 3G (850/1900MHz and 900/2100 Mhz).

5) Input methods

Nokia 1 - Apple 1

Your finger for the iphone, finger, stylus or plectrum for the Nokia. Even if I prefer my finger for both, many will definitely like having more available options. Here  it’s only a metter of personal tastes. Unlike the iPhone, Nokia provides you with a traditional stylus - handwriting, much common to Windows mobile and Palm users.

6) Battery life

Nokia 1 - Apple 0

Daily usage with each of these phones is a different thing, of course, but according to the technical specifications, the Nokia 5800 is overall better either for voice, data and standby (about 15 to 30% more). In addition, Nokia claims up to 35h of music time against 24h of the Apple iPhone.

7) Camera

Nokia 1 - Apple 0

The Nokia is provided with a 3.2Mpix camera with Carl Zeiss Optics and dual flash. On the contrary, the iPhone mounts a very basic 2Mpix camera, no flash, no carl zeiss, far behind the Nokia’s one despite it is certainly not the top as the one mounted in the N95.

Video Recording

Nokia 1 - Apple 0

No native iPhone video recording yet, even if the iPhone is capable of playing various video formats. Services lik Qik works on jailbroken iPhones while it is pre installed in any Nokia 5800 phone. In addition you can record videos with the standard Nokia application and make video calls, something not yet possible on the iphone.

9) UI

Nokia 1 - Apple 1

Hard fight here. The iPhone UI is definitely cool and any customer loves it. The Nokia’s one is promising, with the new contact and  multimedia bar (familiar to N-series owners) but not having tried it yet, I cannot say more. What I bet is that Nokia’s interface will be much better in terms of basic features still missing on the iPhone, like the much requested cut & paste or a much better bluetooth integration, with the ability to send all kind of multimedia files trough bluetooth. I would say it’s a draw at this moment.

10) Music

Nokia 1 - Apple 1

To me, another draw here. Nokia is pushing this phone as a music phone tightly integrated with their new online music store. In addition, any XpressMusic phone will come with one year subscription which lets you download unlimited songs (with DRM). The winner? iTunes is certainly a big one to fight but Nokia is the #1 in the mobile phone market, that means a preferred way to push their services to customers and, with that package, easier to make them prefer their store over iTunes.

Being a long time user of Nokia phones and having access to an iPhone (kinda, my wife’s owns it) I’m not surprised by this result. There is much more to say, like audio quality during phone calls (I bet Nokia will be far superior), GPS as well as the internet browsing experience, I bet much better on the iPhone.

Anyway, right now it looks like the Nokia 5800 is a potential winner, more likely to become a mass market phone rather than the iPhone, the latter being much more expensive and not available without a contract in certain markets like the US. In any case, it’s more a metter of how you are going to use it most.

What do you think? How much market share will Nokia get against the iPhone? Please leave your comments doen here.

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Technorati Tags: Apple, Apple iPhone, comparison, iphone, luca filigheddu, Nokia, Nokia 5800, Nokia 5800 XpressMusic

Writing a blog post from a portable mobile device has always been challenging to me. There are many solutions, but one of the main problems I experienced is getting a user experience as close as you can to that you are used to by writing through a blogging tool on your computer.

I blogged from my Nokia N95 a couple of times, mainly to publish to my blog a photo together with a comment. The overall experience has not that great, mainly due to the small screen and to the lack of a keyboard.

Now, with the iPhone, the number of options bloggers have to write and publish a blog post while on the go has really increased. The purpose of this post today is putting together a couple of solutions which make blogging from your iPhone a very easy activity.

Wordpress

This is a must-have for any blogger who run a blog on Wordpress (like me). They just released version 1.1 and it looks like very well designed and providing a user experience very close to the web version (even if with less features). You can also embed photos on your blog post and upload them to your blog, whether you have a self-hosted Wordpress blog or hosted by Wordpress.com.

The following video, provided by Automattic (the company behind Wordpress), offers an overview of the main functionalities.

As soon as I get a 3G iPhone, this is definitely going to be one of the first apps I will install.

BlogPress

Blogpress is a multi-platform blogging software for the iPhone, a great choice if you run multiple blogs on different platforms.

Currently the following blogging services are supported: Blogger, Wordpress, Movable Type, TypePad and MSN Live Space. You can easily upload your photos to Picasa Web Albums or to a self hosted BlogPress Public Album.

An interesting feature is the ability to post the same content at the same time to multiple blogs. In the screenshot below the author is publishing a photo to Blogger as well as to MSN Live Space.

BlogIt by SixApart

Unlike the applications above, BlogIt is a web applications that you can use from your iPhone’s Safari browser. It’s much more than a blogging tool which works for TypePad, MovableType, Vox, Blogger and LiveJournal, but it also lets you update your status on various social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Jaiku, Tumblr, Friendfeed and Pownce.

SixApart also announced a native blogging application for TypePad available for free on the App Store already, but it doesn’t seem to be as much complete and full-featured as BlogIt. Even if web based, I would definitely choose BlogIt over the native one.

Tumble

If you are a Tumblr user this is the application for you. Tumble is a native iPhone application which lets you easily post photos and text to your Tumblr blog. You can download it from here.

LifeCast

LifeCast is an iPhone blogging application for Blogger and Tumblr. The focus of this application is to help users to create a timeline of their life and post it to their blog. Unfortunately not many blogging platforms are available and some options, like the ability to post photos, are available for Tumblr only.

Here is a list of feature this application provides:

• Create multiple LifeCast timelines : one for work, one for home, another for a special event or maybe a vacation tour.
• Optionally connect each LifeCast with a blog. You can have a different blog set up for each LifeCast.
• Enter text entries with a title and body text
• Take a photo, or choose one from your library, and give it a title
• Fix the location of any text or photo entry. View the locations of past entries using the Maps application.
• Post your entries to your blog* Choose which entries to post and which to keep to yourself.

I find some of them very innovative, even if traditional bloggers will find this app a little bit confusing (at least, this was the first impression I had by watching their screenshots, even if I have’t tried it yet).

VirtueSoft Blogwriter

BlogWriter is a very clean and usable blogging application which supports Wordpress blogs as well as MSN Live Spaces. It’s not a free app, but the $3.99 they ask for doesn’t seem to be that much even if I bet no bloggers who run a Wordpress blog would never choose this over the native WP app for iPhone. The good thing is that a RSS reader is included, so that you can read your favorite news from within this app.

BlogWriter can be bought here.

ShoZu

Shozu is definitely the most complete application in this list. It’s much more than a blogging editor, it actually provides users with a powerful posting and sharing tool to various blogging and social networks as well as photo sharing services like Flickr.

I’ve been using Shozu for a while on my Nokia phones and I have to say it really rocks. I also used it to post photos on my blog some time ago and it worked really well. These premises lead me to think that the iPhone version is even better and surely more usable.

The video below shows you ShoZu in action on the iPhone. Really cool.

Shozu for the iphone can be downloaded from this link.

CellSpin

CellSpin is another application that is much more than a blogging editor only. With CellSpin you can easily post various types of content (text, audio, video or photos) to different sites, blogs as well as social networks or photo sharing services. The number of available sites is impressive. For each of them, all types of content are admitted, except for those specifically designed for photo sharing.

The iPhone and iPod touch are just a very small subset of supported devices, whose list is really impressive. One of the differences with the other softwares is that CellSpin is rather a service than an app only. After you sign up, you also have other options to post your contents, such as SMS, MMS and email. CellSpin was also awarded with the Top Mobile Application 2008. The video below, taken during DEMO 2008, shows CellSpin at work:

Conclusion

Even if many of the applications listed above are designed for specific blogging platforms and only a few of them give users a wide set of options, I have to say that they still don’t provide all the features you are used to find in many desktop applications like MarsEdit or Ecto. In addition, the latest version of the Wordpress web based posting tool provides you with so many great features that, together with some plugins like Zemanta, makes that user experience definitely unbeatable.

All that said, if you are a eager blogger and don’t want to miss the opportunity to post to your blog while you are on the go, these applications are for you (and your iPhone). I look forward to trying the Wordpress app on the iphone, as soon as I get a new one (I have a 1st gen version, but had to give it to my wife because my SIM is for 3G phones only…).

Do you know other apps not listed here? Please leave them in the comment section.

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Technorati Tags: Automattic, Blog, blogpress, blogwriter, cellspin, iphone, lifecast, luca filigheddu, Movable Type, Pownce, shozu, twitter, typepad, wordpress

In a nutshell, Palringo is a multi platform rich IM client which lets you share text messages as well as voice and picture messages with your contacts across a wide range of IM networks and services. Palringo is available for Windows, Mac OSX Leopard, Linux, Windows Mobile, Symbian S60, Windows Mobile, Blackberry and iPhone (via the iTunes App Store).

Palringo offers an easy way to share something with your contacts. You can shot a photo with your camera phone and send it to your contacts immediately or you can record a short vocal message and share it with your friends, without the need to make a real phone call.

The installation on my N95 has been very easy. I downloaded the .sisx file on my MacBook then I sent it to my N95 through the bluetooth connection. After I insterted my userid and password (you need to sign up on their website first) the client immediately got connected to the Palringo server.

The interface is clean and very well designed. Among the available services, I added GoogleTalk and immediately all my contacts were available on my mobile.

The chat window is very simple and I found out that it’s not that easy to distinguish between your own messages and those from the contact you are chatting with. A different color would have helped here.

When you are interacting with a contact, the “push to talk” feature as well as the “share a picture” option are available. The push to talk works like a walkie-talkie, you keep the button of your phone pressed until you record a new message which is immediately delivered to your contact. For a picture the story is similar. Really straightforward.

The overall experience with this mobile client has been really positive so I decided to try the MacOSX version as well. I didn’t expect to find an impressive client here, since it’s an alpha version and it’s too young to compete with other IM clients like Adium o iChat itself. Despite my initial thoughts and the client crashed after I loaded it the first time, I have to say I was impressed by this Mac version. You realize it is an alpha, but it is enough to start with.

All that said, mine is definitely a thumb up for Palringo. I expect to see more sharing options available in the near future and I bet there is something going on behind the scenes in terms of business agreements with mobile operators as well as handset vendors. In addition, I see plugins for the most popular IM clients for Windows and Mac (when an Adium plugin?) a more viable option than a stand alone client that is going to compete with all the very popular and widely used IM clients available for those platforms.

Next step? I look forward to trying the iPhone version out, where the user experience promises to be even better.

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Technorati Tags: Google Talk, InstantMessaging, iphone, kerry ritz, luca filigheddu, Nokia, palringo, voice im

Telecom Disruptor Pat Phelan posted an interesting message on Twitter, stating he’s going to unlock fifty iPhone 3G during the upcoming TechCrunch 50 conference taking place in San Francisco on September 8-10.

The unlocking procedure will be free of charge for everyone and you can finally start using your iPhone 3G with your favorite mobile operator.

Is Pat going to use this procedure?

If you own an iPhone and are nearby, don’t forget to come by Pat and ask him to unlock your phone and enjoy some giveaways he is preparing for the attendants.

Technorati Tags: Apple, iphone, luca filigheddu, pat phelan, techcrunch 50

In the effort of pushing their mobile platform, Google announced yesterday the launch of Android Market, a place where people can easily download and buy content for their Android-powered device.

Anyone familiar with Apple would compare this new marketplace to the mobile App Store, but I don’t think they have that much in common.

Currently Android Market is no more than a developer thing, through which early developers on the Android platform can easily reach a “decent” user base, even if it is certainly the first step to provide operators and handset manufacturers (which will bet on this new mobile OS) with a comprehensive set of online software services to immediately create a new revenue stream coming from value added contents sold to their users.

Some question arise, as Alec Saunders points out on his blog as well. Developers are currently focused on Apple which is performing amazingly with the recent launch of the iPhone 3G in different markets and with a huge user base of owners of the new Cupertino’s toy willing to fill it with new applications. Moreover, only HTC and LG are, to my knowledge, the only big players developing android-powered handsets and HTC alone is going to deliver a number of handsets which is only a small slice of the market owned by Apple with its iPhone (and HTC will release Android handsets with a huge delay).

The other problem for Google raised by the report is that software developers are said to have their hands full with the mobile phone software that’s actually available for development, such as Windows Mobile, Symbian, BlackBerry, and the iPhone. HTC is worried enough about a lack of attention as to demand a “minimum revenue guarantee” from Google in exchange for launching an Android handest.

What’s next with Android? Is Google talking with too much fanfare about its mobile platform despite developers are looking elsewhere?

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Technorati Tags: Android, android market, App Store, Apple, Google, HTC, iphone, iPhone 3G, LG, luca filigheddu