Reminder about your invitation from Hiran Milinda

2011-06-13T01:18:00.001-07:00

This is a reminder that on June 1, Hiran Milinda sent you an invitation to become part of his or her professional network at LinkedIn.

Follow this link to accept Hiran Milinda's invitation.

https://www.linkedin.com/e/-3fxqos-gov5ik42-1z/doi/3067321106/bhGRjwDr/gir_644869271_1/EML-inv_17_rem/

Signing up is free and takes less than a minute.

On June 1, Hiran Milinda wrote:

> To: [hiranmilinda.iphone@blogger.com]
> From: Hiran Milinda [hiranmilinda@gmail.com]
> Subject: Invitation to connect on LinkedIn

> I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.
>
> - Hiran

The only way to get access to Hiran Milinda's professional network on LinkedIn is through the following link:

https://www.linkedin.com/e/-3fxqos-gov5ik42-1z/doi/3067321106/bhGRjwDr/gir_644869271_1/EML-inv_17_rem/

You can remove yourself from Hiran Milinda's network at any time.

--------------

Reminder about your invitation from Hiran Milinda

2011-06-06T05:23:00.001-07:00

This is a reminder that on June 1, Hiran Milinda sent you an invitation to become part of his or her professional network at LinkedIn.

Follow this link to accept Hiran Milinda's invitation.

https://www.linkedin.com/e/-3fxqos-gole6d19-2d/doi/3067321106/bhGRjwDr/gir_644869271_0/EML-inv_17_rem/

Signing up is free and takes less than a minute.

The only way to get access to Hiran Milinda's professional network on LinkedIn is through the following link:

https://www.linkedin.com/e/-3fxqos-gole6d19-2d/doi/3067321106/bhGRjwDr/gir_644869271_0/EML-inv_17_rem/

You can remove yourself from Hiran Milinda's network at any time.

--------------

Invitation to connect on LinkedIn

2011-05-31T21:09:00.001-07:00

I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.

- Hiran

Hiran Milinda
Project Manager / Technical Manager - Online Marketing at Proporta Ltd
Brighton, United Kingdom

Confirm that you know Hiran

Top 10 iPhone applications

2009-04-12T00:47:00.000-07:00

Flixster

An app that makes use of the iPhone's satellite locator to work out where you are and locate cinemas in the area showing your chosen film. Or you can select a nearby theatre and see what's on and when, or browse a list of current titles and forthcoming releases – along with ratings and reviews. Free

Urbanspoon

An innovative way to solve the age-old problem of where to eat. Once Urbanspoon has got your location from the phone, just shake it and a slot-machine-style roller picks out a local restaurant that serves your chosen cuisine. If you don't like the sound of it, shake it again. Results are better in cities. Free

Skype

Skype on a computer allows users to talk, free, to other users anywhere in the world. Callers can also have cut-price conversations with people on landlines or mobiles. The new Skype iPhone app brings all of that to the phone. Free

iFooty

Get the latest football results, minute-by-minute match reports and news from your club (as long as they're in the top four English leagues or the Scottish Premier). Sadly, the maker has had to remove fixture lists because of copyright problems, but otherwise it includes everything a fan needs. There's a similar app, Cricinfo Mobicast, for cricket fans. Free

MMS Photo Messaging

Unbelievable as it may sound, the iPhone can't do picture messaging on its own, so the MMS app is vital for anyone who wants to send pictures over MMS (the phone can email pictures fairly easily, though). It's free to install, but users have to buy credits to send their pictures. Apple will add picture messaging support in the next version of the iPhone, due this summer. Free

Byline

Keep track of your favourite websites using this automatic "feed reader". It links up to the free Google Reader service (www.google.com/reader) to keep track of updates from any website of your choice. Open the app and hit the Sync button, and it will pick up new articles since the last time you looked. It even saves the text of the pages, so you can read articles when there's no reception. £2.99

Shazam

This music-finding service has been available on all British mobile phones for years – dial 2580 and hold the phone up to speakers playing music and it will send you a text message (at a cost of 50p) with the artist and title. But the iPhone app is free to download and free to use. Free

Ocarina

Not all apps are useful or have a particular point. The Ocarina app, for instance, makes the phone act like a cheap musical instrument. Hold it up to your mouth, like a real ocarina, and blow into the microphone and the phone will produce a gentle tone. 59p

Crayon Physics Deluxe

This groundbreaking game makes great use of the iPhone's touch-screen – the aim is to move a ball from one side of the screen to the star logo at the other side. But you need to do it by drawing shapes on the screen – with a finger – that act as though they are real objects that fall, bounce and move. £2.99

Shakespeare

The complete works of Shakespeare on your phone. True, the iPhone's screen isn't well suited to reading a whole play, but this app is handy as a reference tool or if you need to settle an erudite pub argument. It contains all the plays, poems and sonnets. Free

iPhone Perhaps Not a Failure in Japan, After All?

2009-03-01T03:14:00.000-08:00

Image: Nobuyuki Hayashi

The perception of iPhone as a “failure” in Japan is largely the result of what people read in newspapers, according to Nobuyki Hayashi, the Japanese journalist who was cited as a source in the Wired article we posted on late last night, and who put up a lengthy post of his own Friday to clarify the situation.

“The majority of Japanese … haven’t even touched one,” Hayashi wrote, adding, “So as soon as I give lecture, show it to them and let them play with it, they change their mind and become a fan of iPhone.”

Much of the chatter about the issue in the iPhone blogosphere Friday stemmed from Wired writer Brian X. Chen’s headline, which stated unequivocally that Japanese “hate” the iPhone, but as Hayashi points out in his post, Chen relied on quotes from a conversation Hayashi had with writer Lisa Katayama back in late 2007 to make his case.

Obviously, much has changed in the iPhone ecosystem, a well as in the US and Japanese economies since then.

The reality is likely more that the iPhone has been a relative disappointment in Japan. Many believe the device could do much better in Japan if Apple gave SoftBank more control in how they market / advertise the device, and if Apple would enable feature sets dear to the Japanese consumer, such as a built-in TV tuner and the ability to use it as a mobile payment system.

For a detailed look at Hayashi’s position on the iPhone in Japan, see his blog post.

iPhone Apps are the Real Money-Maker, Analyst Says

2009-02-28T16:11:00.000-08:00

According to a new study, some smartphone owners spent as much on applications for their cell phones last year as they did on the devices themselves.

Call it the Apple App Store effect, says the ABI Research study on mobile storefronts. Despite having one of the smallest catalogs of all the development platforms -- now around 15,000 app titles compared to 85,000 each for Palm and RIM -- Apple's iPhone App Store has generated significant sales across the board.

"Apple did a lot for the market [last year] with its massive marketing effort telling the public how great mobile content is," said senior analyst Jeff Orr in a news release. "That created a 'halo' effect for the rest of the industry: other device manufacturers and content developers working on non-Apple platforms all saw a bump in sales and downloads because there's more awareness of the smartphone category."

As a result, this year more mobile application storefronts will be launched from Nokia, Palm, RIM and Samsung, said Orr.

The study, conducted in November, asked 235 U.S. smartphone users who installed applications on their devices in 2008 how much they had spent in the last 12 months. ABI found that almost 17 percent doled out between US$100 and $499 for mobile apps. The majority spent between zero cents and $100.

Considering how cheap most mobile apps are, starting for as little as a buck at Apple's App Store, that translates into a lot of downloads. There has also been a lot of excitement about mobile apps thanks to Apple heavily marketing its App Store for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Of course, notes Orr, the downside is that Apple has created the expectation that all mobile apps should be as cheap as the ones it offers. On Dec. 31, 96 percent of the 12,000-plus titles in the App Store cost less than $10. That's cheap compared to the rest of the industry, which charges between $7 and $25 a pop.

But smartphone users shouldn't expect to see Handango or other favorite mobile storefront slash prices just to compete with Apple, Orr told The Standard. "The average selling price of content will return to the industry average over time, and the open market where developers set the price will prevail," he said. "At the end of the day, Apple's 99-cent iTunes model does not build a market for apps."

Not everything in the App Store is truly a bargain, though. While some simple utilities go for less than $1, there are a number of professional apps that go for far more, like a stage lighting app called iRa Pro which costs $900.

ABI projects mobile app sales to rise from "hundreds of millions of dollars" this year to over a billion dollars in 2010.

Pretty Easy To Get Your iPod To Record

2009-02-28T16:02:00.000-08:00

Kevin Hunt | The Electronic Jungle

March 1, 2009

Some iPods are smarter than they look. Several — the second-generation Touch, the fourth-generation Nano and the 120-gigabyte iPod Classic — are audio-recording ready.

That's a nice way of saying Apple built their little pocket rockets without a microphone but allows industrious owners to record with an add-on mike after downloading some recording software. It's not exactly the simplicity Apple is known for, but it works.

If you're not doing it already, you can use these iPods — and, of course, the iPhone 3G — for voice memos, classroom notes, making an "American Idol" demo or catching your boss saying, sorry, no raise this year. The Touch, the iPhone's sibling, goes even further than its fellow iPods: Using earphones, an in-line microphone with a push-to-talk feature and Fring, a downloadable application, you can make free mobile calls over a Wi-Fi network.

So how do you get all this while also upgrading, for those frequent sessions immersed in your iTunes music library, from the typically lousy sound of standard-issue earbuds? Koss' i150 earbuds, with both an in-line microphone and push-to-talk feature, were designed for the latest iPhone but were also suited for anyone planning on using the Touch as an occasional phone, too.

The Koss brand goes way back in the headphone business. The Koss SP-3, as the first stereo headphones — designed by company founder John C. Koss in 1958 — has earned a spot in the Smithsonian. Koss' son, Michael, now presides over the Milwaukee company that has moved beyond the traditional "cans" (the bulky headphone style popularized long ago) to this new era of earbuds and portable, digitized music. This is its first earbud model with push-to-talk.

The i150, which retails for $150 but is available for much less online ($85 at buy.com, even lower elsewhere), comes off as high-quality, middle-of-the-road earbuds designed for music mated with a tiny mike/push-to-talk device.

To turn the Touch into a recorder, all I needed was the i150 and Griffin Technology's iTalk recording software, a free download at Apple's App Store. As a recorder ("testing 1-2-3") and push-to-talk device, the combo worked fine. The iPods store the recordings apart from iTunes, easily managed and labeled as you wish in a list. You can make recordings in good, better or best quality. Download another application, iTalk Sync, to your PC or Mac and you'll be able to transfer recordings from an iPhone or Touch to that PC or Mac via Wi-Fi.

With music, the i150 demonstrated a likable, soothing mid-range, modest bass (the snugger the silicone ear cushions fit, the better the lower frequencies) and good extension into the higher frequencies without sounding bright. You won't get this kind of sound reproduction from a cellphone's headset.

The i150's sound, in fact, was almost indistinguishable from a pair of traditional earbuds, the Klipsch Custom 1 (retail: $130; online: about $75). The Custom 1 (klipsch.com) looked more upscale with a flexible ear wire for a secure fit, cloth-covered cabling, and ear-tip cleaning tool in a zippered carrying case. It had slightly better bass than the i150, but these were otherwise similar-sounding earbuds.

But the i150 had a notable advantage: the in-line microphone and push-to-talk feature. Don't throw away your favorite earbuds yet, though. A simple adapter, like Griffin's SmartTalk (griffintechnology.com) turns any set of earbuds into a headset. This tiny, $20 adapter (online: less than $10) is a microphone with a push-button control tethered to a 30-inch cord that connects to any of the iPods listed above or any iPhone, including the original.

Aside from talking a call, the SmartTalk also plays, pauses and stops music or skips tracks. It attaches, with a clip, to a lapel or anywhere close enough (less than a foot) to pick up your voice clearly. The wiring, however, gets ridiculous — 30 inches of SmartTalk attached to your earbuds' cabling? You'll look as if you were just attacked by an assailant armed with a can of Silly String.

I like the SmartTalk for turning one of the iPods into a recording device but cellphone users might prefer a dedicated headset like Koss' i150.

Not everyone needs a voice recorder. But if you haven't yet discovered this feature, it's one of the iPod's hidden gems.

Apple's iPhone Flops in Japan, Now Sold for Free

2009-02-28T11:43:00.000-08:00

Apple's iPhone is a hit everywhere in the world — except for Japan.

It turns out that Apple's video-playing, music-downloading, motion-sensing handset is just too, well, backward for the Japanese market.

In fact, the iPhone is such a flop in the Land of the Rising Sun that it's being given away free with a 2-year contract, Wired News reports.

Adding insult to injury is the fact that carrier charges are a lot cheaper in Japan than they are in the U.S., and Apple hasn't learned to compete.

Few Japanese want to pay $60 per month to use a phone that can't shoot video, receive TV signals or text-message photos.

"The pricing has been completely out of whack with market reality," one expert on the Japanese cell-phone market tells Wired News. "I think they [Apple and its partners overseas] are in the process of adjusting to local conditions."

Race Jet Skis and play a unique word game - iPhone apps of the week

2009-02-28T04:44:00.000-08:00

Every week, I try to pick a game and some other useful utility for my iPhone apps post, but this week I can't help but write about two games. What can I say? They keep coming out with great games! The two games are from completely different genres so if you like games at all, I'm guessing at least one of them will find their way onto your iPhone.

This weeks apps include a well designed jet ski racing game and a unique word game that's challenging and makes you laugh while you play.

Choose words quickly to get as many as possible for high scores

(Credit: CNET Networks)

WordFu (99 cents - introductory price) is a fun and challenging word game with a unique Kung Fu twist. You start with nine letter dice and you're allowed to shake your iPhone to get new letters or swipe a die to switch single letters. When you're ready (there's also a time limit on this phase), your round begins and you must use your letters to create as many words as possible until time runs out. To make a word, touch each of the letters, then flick your wrist to enter it. As you spell more words, you'll be given bonus tiles you can touch to get double word scores, freeze the timer, and more.

What makes WordFu both challenging and funny are the Kung Fu "Hi ya!" and slapping sounds as you complete words. Once you feel you've mastered the art of WordFu you can play against your friends over local WiFi or compare your scores with the high score list. Caution: this game is addictive.

Tilt your iPhone to steer and get the best line around the buoys

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Aqua Moto Racing ($2.99) lets you jump on a personal watercraft (pwc) and race around beautifully rendered tracks. Start off on easy courses with soft turns to get a feel for your pwc. Go for the best time by following a tight line and using the boost to earn medals and open up new tracks. Later tracks include jumps and with a flick of your iPhone, you can pull off several different tricks of varying difficulty to earn more boost time.

When I first started playing this game it immediately reminded me of an old favorite on the Nintendo 64 called Wave Race. With several tracks, difficulty levels, and complex tricks to practice, this game will have a lot of replay value. The graphics are excellent in Aqua Moto Racing and a well thought-out gaming experience make this title a must-have for racing fans. If you want to try before you buy, check out Aqua Moto Racing Lite (link launches iTunes) at the iTunes Store.

What's your favorite new iPhone app? Got a game for me to try? Is Aqua Moto racing extemely hard once you get to the slalom courses (it is for me)? Let me know in the comments!

paidContent.org - TV.com Beats Hulu To The Punch With iPhone App, International Access

2009-02-28T04:40:00.000-08:00

Building on the momentum from its relaunch of TV.com last month, CBS Interactive has rolled out a TV.com iPhone app, and opened up some of the site's video clips to international viewers. The developments give TV.com two distinct advantages over rival Hulu?as Hulu currently has no dedicated mobile offering, and its content is accessible in the U.S. only.

It could add more stress to the already strained relationship between the two: last week, the companies traded barbs over Hulu's decision to pull all of its content from TV.com because of a clash over online programming and distribution rights (in-depth details on that soap opera here).

?Get your TV.com on the go: The free app lets users watch clips of everything from CSI, to The L Word, to vintage Star Trek; it also takes advantage of the iPhone's motion-sensor, as users can shake the phone to get a random clip to show up. iPhone owners have always had access to all kinds of video, both from YouTube and third-party apps like Joost (which already offered some CBS content), but the TV.com app greatly increases the volume of full-length, premium content available. If it catches on, the pressure will be on networks like Fox, ABC, and, of course, NBC, to launch their own dedicated mobile-video offerings. And, as the NYT notes, the TV networks won't be the only players under pressure: once iPhone users start streaming long-form video en masse, it will increase the strain on AT&T's data network?which could mean higher data subscription plan costs.

Short-form content outside the U.S. for now: Currently, international viewers can only access snippets of CBS (NYSE: CBS) News programming, and older shows like Beverly Hills 90210 and MacGuyver; Anthony Soohoo, SVP of CBSI's entertainment and lifestyle division, told Contentinople that the company was working on securing the international rights for more long-form content.

iphone reviews

Reminder about your invitation from Hiran Milinda

LinkedIn

Reminder about your invitation from Hiran Milinda

LinkedIn

Invitation to connect on LinkedIn

LinkedIn

Top 10 iPhone applications

iPhone Perhaps Not a Failure in Japan, After All?

iPhone Apps are the Real Money-Maker, Analyst Says

Pretty Easy To Get Your iPod To Record

Apple's iPhone Flops in Japan, Now Sold for Free

Race Jet Skis and play a unique word game - iPhone apps of the week

paidContent.org - TV.com Beats Hulu To The Punch With iPhone App, International Access