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Despite the ability to install almost any kind of application (yes, any!), something which makes the iPhone a powerful portable computer, it’s pretty clear that Apple’s most famous gadget is mainly a communication device, both for telephony and internet.

The main goal is to provide users with a good substitute to their laptop while on the go and I can say the iPhone does this job very well. In this perspective, there are some applications that are not mainstream yet but can offer iPhone owners some very useful services at their fingertips. Here are three (actually five) must-have applications which make your iPhone experience even better.

1) Calliflower

Iotum’s Calliflower is currently one of the most comprehensive and powerful services to manage conference calls straight from the Web. They started with a Facebook app which has now evolved and has been brought out of FB to become a stand alone communication platform for online collaboration.

One of the latest killer-features they added is the ability to manage everything from your iPhone with a clean and effective user interface.

The iPhone application will be free until Jan 1, 2009, then it will cost $9.99 (that it’s like free, to me). They also just launched a premium service which adds new collaboration tools to the standard free service. Check out Calliflower website for more details.

2) Palringo

I already reviewed this service over two months ago and it seems they are growing more and more and adding new cool features.

Palringo is a rich Text & Voice Instant Messaging service which lets you get in touch with your contacts over multiple IM services, share pictures, join chat groups and share voice messages with your friends.

In particular, one of the latest features they introduced is the ability to get the position of your friends in your buddy list, making it easier to create new opportunities to meet / interact.

3) Let’s VoIP!

While Palringo is a great IM (and more), it lacks the ability to make phone calls. Ok, you have a phone, you can make phone calls of course. The point is that there are a few popular VoIP applications which can be easily found at the App Store, all worth noting, and the choice it’s up to you, depending on what are you looking for.

Truphone

Truphone is one of the first mobile VoIP apps, ever, released in 2004. This, alone, should be enough to make you understand that the keyword here is: realiability.

Pros:

• very robust, the first one available for the iPhone since its launch by Apple
• usability (open the app and dial)

Cons:

• no VoIP over 3G, WiFi only (but it’s more an Apple problem… take a look here for a viable solution)

Nimbuzz

Nimbuzz for the iPhone has just been announced and it’s really promising. Unlike Truphone, it offers the ability to get all your IM contacts in a single interface, making it easy to get in touch with them without having to install another application to be used for instant messaging. Definitely one of the most complete and the number of social networks supported is impressive.

Pros:

• all major IM and social networks are available

Cons:

• no VoIP over 3G, WiFi only (but it’s more an Apple problem… take a look here for a viable solution)

Fring

Similar to Nimbuzz, the features made available by this service are very similar to those found in the previous one. The choice is up to you.

Pros:

• all major IM and social networks are available
• twitter integration and SIP calls

Cons:

• no VoIP over 3G, WiFi only (but it’s more an Apple problem… take a look here for a viable solution)

What do you like better? Leave your comments here and tell me what your favorite communication applications are.

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Technorati Tags: App Store, Apple, calliflower, facebook, fring, Instant messaging, iphone, luca filigheddu, nimbuzz, palringo, truphone, Wi-Fi

Image via CrunchBase

If you spend much time on Facebook and don’t want to switch tabs of your browser too many times, Fmail brings Gmail straight to your facebook account.

It works really well and all your folders and contacts are properly imported. Unfortunately you loose all the ajax features you are used to.

If you want to try it out, just search for Fmail on Facebook. You are also prompted to match your Gmail contacts with your Facebook friends, something I find very useful.

Check it out and leave your comments here. Do you like this approach or you prefer to use the original GMail?

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Technorati Tags: facebook, Fmail, gmail, luca filigheddu

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In the last months I’ve been contacted by many people I’ve known/met in the past, from former calssmates or just casual friends known while I was a teenager, to people I was in touch with in the past and whose I lost all contact details and barely remember their names. All of them wanted to add me as friend on Facebook.

At the same time, I found myself doing the same. When I was a teenager I attended some “vacation-like” english language courses in the UK so that I spent more than one month with other guys and with some of them I remember I had a great time (I’m referring to about 15 to 20 years ago).

There are a few questions which lead to this behaviour and those are all about curiosity: what are those people up to now? Are they married? Do they have sons? Where do they work?  How do they look like now?

In my opinion, Facebook is becoming more and more… a, yes, “facebook”, where people finally find an effective way to stay in touch and to rediscover old friends and acquaitances. Who is not happy to think of old times?

Once there was the mail (the real one, with ink and paper), now there is Facebook. Did the questions above ever arise for you?

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Technorati Tags: facebook, luca filigheddu, media 2.0

In the last couple of weeks I received a lot of friend’s requests on Facebook from people I’d never have thought could have joined Facebook. Schoolmates as well as old friends, many of them finally discovered Facebook and joined it. Moreover, the driver who led them to join was to stay in touch with people, new and old friends, colleagues, classmates, relatives.

This is a clear sign that something huge is happening and that there is no doubt Facebook is more and more going mainstream.  That said, I started looking at this phenomena from a different standpoint: is Facebook capable of behaving like an operating system? If you look, for example, at the new Facebook iPhone application, everything you need from an operating system is there: messaging, IM, applications, microblogging, presence, live feed, photos, videos…

In my opinion Facebook could potentially be used for 99% of your time as a central dashboard from which you perform any activity on your computer and your mobile phone, but there are five important features that are currently missing.

1) Address Book - I mean the ability to add people in your “Friend’s List” regardless of whether they are subscribed to Facebook or not.

2) Mail Client - Currently Facebook’s messaging service is rather poor and is not ready to become a fully functional mail client. What if Hotmail would be integrated into Facebook? After Live Search, another move to better integrate Facebook with Microsoft’s services.

3) Documents - If I were Facebook, I would buy a service for online documents management as Google did a couple of years ago with Writely which was the basis for Google Docs. This application, together with the powerful mail client mentioned above, would be a killer feature for me.

4) Web Browser - It would be great if I could open any web page from within Facebook itself, leveraging its powerful sharing capabilities. A wordpress/typepad/… blog editor? A Wordpress.com Facebook application is available already, but a similar app for personal wordpress installations is still missing.

5) Calendar/PIM - 30Boxes is already offering it and it seems users like it (about 24.000 monthly active users) even if it’s still a little percentage of the whole FB population.

What do you think? What should Facebook add to become a real operating system? Can we expect to see a new mobile phone “F1” sometime soon? I look forward to your comments.

Technorati Tags: facebook, Google, Google Docs, iphone, luca filigheddu, operating system, Web 2.0

Image via CrunchBase

Facebook released today a new feature (rumored some months ago) which lets users search the web through their Facebook global search box by integrating Microsoft Live Search.

This is a major feature which will leverage Microsoft Live Search engine and bring it to their enormous user base. Moreover, as AllFacebook.com highlights, the implications in terms of revenues for Facebook are going to be very important, becoming the most important bridge between users and Microsoft search engine with the additional ability to show ads which are relevant to the user’s profile.

I guess Facebook is deploying this new feature across its user base slowly, as usual, since on my account I’m still unable to get access to this feature (UPDATE: after some refreshes, I can see it now). In any case, I bet this will become the major news in the following hours.

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Today I’m spending some time at the Plug&Play Expo in Sunnyvale and I have to say I’m impressed. There are almost 40 startups presenting and showcasing their services and products and some of them definitely rock. I mean, many services I’m coming across really solve a problem and add value to your internet experience as well as your “normal” life.

One of them is Cooliris. In a nutshell, they offer a plugin/extension for the most popular web browsers which let you get access to web content from any website and in particular for those containing rich multimedia content in a very effective and way.

They basically provide you a 3D view of the content that you can browse and manage very easily. You can also share it by email simply by a drag an drop.

In the example below, I just made as search “san francisco” on SmugMug. CoolIris immediately provided me with the results of the search in a unique 3D interface through which I can browse photos, share them or jump to the original web address.

You can also switch to a filmstrip view similar to that provide by Adobe LightRoom.

Major serach engines are available, Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Photobucket, Amazon, Flickr, Smugmug. Down here the same search (”san francisco”) with YouTube. As a result, I get all the videos related to that keyword.

If your website is “cooliris enabled” your visitors will be able to see your content in a very attractive and easy-to-use way. A Wordpress plugin is available too, you can can choose what content you want to show to your blog readers by setting up a stunning slideshow available from your blog.

There is much, much more and I highly recommend to try it out. Really a great service which makes browsing a complete new experience. Kudos to Cooliris for this wonderful and very useful application.

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Technorati Tags: browsing, cooliris, facebook, Flickr, Google, luca filigheddu, Photobucket, Search, smugmug, yahoo, YouTube

I don’t usually get excited so quickly for a new service I try, expecially if, at first sight, it seems a “me too“. Well, I have to say that Feedly is the exception and it’s pretty unique. After having used it for about one hour, I’m already addicted to it and can’t wait to share it with my readers.

Feedly is a Firefox extension which provides you with a whole new experience to the way you consume news from Google Reader. Google Reader is great but Feedly offers so many improvements that you’ll never miss it in terms of user interface.

First of all we have to say that Feedly relies completely on Google Reader and it is synchronized with it. That said, any action you perform on Feedly is automatically translated into the correspondent in Google Reader.

Secondly, sharing news on Twitter or Friendfeed has never been easier. You can also “like” an article or post to Friendfeed/Twitter directly from within Feedly.

The other great fact about Feedly is the way it brings the news to you. There are many different views available and many filters so that you can make sure only the most relevant news are highlighted and shown to you and when you have many hundred RSS subscriptions, this feature becomes particularly useful.

Another great option is the list of the top readers of certain blogs your read. For example, when I click on any specific Google Reader tag, i can see a box on the right with the top readers of the news which are tagged that way.

Feedly also provides you with a great way to perform a “springcleaning” of your feeds, highlighting the feeds where there is less activity or that you read less….

… but it also recommends new sources you could be interested in according to what currently read.

There is much more with Feedly (like The Wall, the annotation tool, APIs… ) and I highly recommend to check it out. For eager consumers of news and people addicted to social media, Feedly is a must have.

My guess? I wouldn’t be surprised to see Feedly as part of Google very soon, too.

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Technorati Tags: facebook, feedly, friendfeed, GoogleReader, luca filigheddu, RSS, twitter