We had a first look at Touch Weather from MobilityFlow yesterday, and today we have a longer, even tastier video, clearly calculated to build anticipation for the beautiful software.
As of yet nothing has been released yet, but we ill be sure to let you know the minute the software shows up in our greedy fingers.
Gregory T. Huang wrote:
Portland, OR-based AboutUs announced this week it has acquired Jyte.com, a social website where people can make claims, vet ideas, and comment on others’. Financial terms were not given. Jyte uses RPX, the flagship technology of Portland startup JanRain that lets people use a single portable identity and login across different websites. AboutUs, which is backed by Seattle-based Voyager Capital, says it plans to implement RPX on its own site as well. Last month, JanRain announced its $3.25 million Series A round led by DFJ Frontier.
Some-one at T-Mobile US appears to have flipped a switch early, as the official Windows Mobile 6.5 ROM update for the HTC Touch Pro 2 and the T-Mobile Dash 3G are now available for download.
Owners simply need to follow the link below and enter their EMEI number to access the download, that was originally intended to be released on January 20th.
Download the ROM update here.
Via Tmonews.com
Contrary to the rumours started by unknown website Brighter Side of News an anonymous tipster, “familiar with the matter” has revealed that Microsoft intends to show of Windows Mobile in February after all.
The tipster did not identify Mobile World Congress, but this is the most likely venue for such an unveiling.
Debbie Anderson, a spokeswoman for Redmond, Washington- based Microsoft, declined to comment on the timing of an announcement. “We’re always working on future versions and have nothing new to announce,” she said.
Read more at Bloomberg here.
Como su nombre lo indica DivXConverter es un conversor de archivos multimedia y con su interfaz gráfica viene a hacernos este trabajo mucho mas fácil a los usuarios de GNU/Linux.
Como pueden apreciar en las capturas son bastantes las opciones que nos permite customizar a la hora de pasar un video al formato que queramos y hasta nos permite pegar subtitulos a los videos, nada mal he!
Lista completa de caracteristicas:
Interfaz limpia y sencilla
Convierte cualquier formato reproducible por mplayer a avi
Soporte de DivX 4/5 , H.264 y Xvid
Soporte de MP3, AC3 y ACC
Posibilidad de pegar subtitulos a los videos
Conversión múltiple
Imágenes e información completa de la conversión en curso
9 tipos de calidad predefinida a la hora de convertir
Muchos mas tipos de videos soportados a los antes mencionados
Soporte para Multi-Core.. (procesadores de dos o mas nucleos)
Instaladores
divxconverter-2.0.1-1.noarch.rpm 926KB
divxconverter_2.0.1-1_all.deb 922KB
divxconverter_2.0.1-1_all.tar.gz 924KB
Guía en ingles
divx-doc.pdf 985KB
Mas datos en code.google DivXConverter
Este simple programa nos permite con unos clicks utilizar el fondo de pantalla de nuestro ubuntu como xsplash tambien!
Una de las pocas cosas que faltaba a karmic para poder personalizarlo completamente y fácilmente era esto..
Para instalarlo tenemos el siguiente archivo .deb
xsplash-background-settings_1.6-1_all.deb
Via – gnome-look.org
The new Netfront browser that was recently released in a beta, is far from what it promised. The new browser that was supposedly “faster, smoother, better finger friendliness” just plan sucks. The software is a beta and I should be a little more lenient with it, but so far after I have used it, I have come to a hast conclusion that its slow, crashes, not even finger friendly. If you were thinking about getting this new browser, this is just a warning, the browser at this point is not worth the program memory or my phones memory, maybe when it leaves beta it will be better, but my hopes are not too high for it at this point.
After teasing us with a press release a few days agon, Access has finally made their Netfront 4.0 browser available for download. The small 2.4 MB.
The software, which can be downloaded here, is said to feature a much faster Javascript engine and improved UI.
Give a download and let us know your impressions below.
Erin Kutz wrote:
Santa was good to the Massachusetts high-tech economy in December. Very good. Roughly $224 million poured into the state’s startups in 36 equity deals, representing 20 percent more money and more than 50 percent more deals than Bay State startup companies saw in November.
And November venture funding-22 deals worth $186 million-was nothing to scoff at. It’s now the fourth-highest dollars and deals totals since Xconomy started tracking monthly venture figures in June, with data supplied by our New York-based partner ChubbyBrain, an information services company with tools for investors, startups, and hopeful entrepreneurs.
The money Massachusetts startups raked in during December-the second-highest dollar total and highest number of deals tracked by Xconomy so far-suggests that the growth regained in November after a brief fall slump is continuing. Venture funding in October had shrunk to $169 million across 19 deals, compared to September’s $228 million in 25 deals, currently the best month in dollar terms to date.
Venture deals were a bit more egalitarian in December than they were in the previous month. The top five November deals were worth $21 million or more, the highest one ringing in at $31.3 million. The sixth-biggest round, however, dropped sharply to $6.7 million. December deals didn’t display the same staggering gaps in dollar values, though. The biggest disparity was the $4 million difference between No. 1 Afferent Pharmaceuticals and runner up Pixtronix. The deals that followed all trailed each other’s heels much more closely.
The top deals in December were also more diverse in the sectors they represent when compared to the month before. Five out of the top six November deals were in healthcare (a software company captured the month’s No. 1 slot). In December, by contrast, the top six included companies from healthcare, software, electronics, Internet, and mobile and telecommunications.
The aforementioned Afferent, a Boston-based company working on developing treatments to chronic pain, topped our December list with $23 million in Series A funding. Mobile display maker Pixtronix, based out of Andover, MA, came in second with …Next Page »
Gregory T. Huang wrote:
In the fascinating maelstrom that is Google in China, one thing is clear: this affects all of us. It’s not about whether Google’s decision to draw a line in the sand is based on ideals versus profits. It’s not about whether the Chinese government will open up its Internet policies and play ball with the rest of the world. It’s about the future of every company on the Web—including Microsoft, Amazon, RealNetworks, and all the smaller companies out there.
In case you haven’t been following every twist and turn, earlier this week Google said it might pull out of China following its investigation of a cyber attack that it says originated in China, targeting at least 20 large companies (including Google). One apparent goal of the attacks was to access the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Google said it is “no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.”
Google’s statement is very carefully worded. It doesn’t explicitly accuse Chinese officials of any wrongdoing. But the reactions of a lot of people, from the media to tech-business leaders to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, have helped portray the situation as a cut and dried “Google (and freedom of information) vs. China (and censorship)” issue.
I want to tackle one piece of this sprawling puzzle. And that is the huge, ongoing cultural challenge that Google, Microsoft, and other western companies face in setting up business operations in China. No, this is not a new issue. But one part of the Google announcement was particularly telling: “We want to make clear that this move was driven by our executives in the United States, without the knowledge or involvement of our employees in China who have worked incredibly hard to make Google.cn the success it is today.”
Google has now been up and running in China for four years. That is not a lot of time to build deep relationships. And it certainly doesn’t help that Google’s biggest competitor in China, Baidu, is backed by the Chinese government.
Heading up Google’s China effort until recently was Kai-Fu Lee, the controversial ex-Microsoft vice president who founded Microsoft Research Asia in Beijing in 1998. Lee, a Chinese high-tech celebrity and education leader, was head of Google China from 2006 until last September, when he left the company to create an incubator in Beijing for Chinese high-tech startups.
In my view, it may not be a coincidence that the current situation has come about so soon after Lee’s departure. Frankly, I’m surprised this all didn’t come to a head much sooner for Google. But perhaps it was through Lee’s efforts that it didn’t—or maybe, conversely, it’s part of why Lee left Google. (I’ve pinged him for comment, but haven’t heard back on this topic.)
Which brings me to some analysis. Back in 2003, while he was at Microsoft, …Next Page »
Sprint has let it be known in their forums that they and HTC are working on an official Windows Mobile 6.5 upgrade for the Sprint HTC Touch Pro 2.
14-Jan-2010
Windows Mobile 6.5 Planned for HTC Touch Pro2 from Sprint
Sprint and HTC are currently developing a release of Windows Mobile 6.5 for the HTC Touch Pro2 that is expected to be available to customers by end of first quarter, 2010. This upgrade will not only provide updates to the Windows Mobile platform, but also significant enhancements to the Touch Pro2 user interface which will allow additional customization/personalization options and more integration with the applications users access most.
Of course most people who really wanted it are probably running a hacked ROM by now, but if you want to be sure about preserving your warranty official is the only way to go, so this development is certainly long overdue good news.
Does anyone expect anything unusual about the upgrade, like Windows Mobile 6.5.3 for example? Let us know below.
Smaato Inc. have published the Smaato Mobile Advertising Metrics which for the first time revealed the Click Through Rate (CTR) Index by Handset operating system. The metrics are based upon 3 Billion ad requests served in the Smaato Network in December 2009.
The December performance numbers for the different handset types show a significant spread between the operating systems in regards to the CTR. Symbian phones had the highest CTR (161) compared to the averaged Index of 100, followed by Apple iPhone (119, with iPod Touch).
Following closely, Windows Phone Handsets perform above the average indexed at 100 placing the smartphone handset operating system in third place for in the Smaato Index.The Index consists of the average CTR of all devices and this number is set to 100.
This was followed by feature phones, then Android phones at 65, close to half as much as the Windows Mobile rate. Following far behind is Palm and Blackberry, with an index rate of 28 and 26 respectively.
In short, this means the odds of your ad being clicked on Windows Mobile is about the same as iPhones and iPod Touch’s, and 4 times as much as a Pre or Blackberry. While the distribution of an app may be better on the iPhone, the competition is also much more there, meaning it is just as viable to try an ad-supported app on Windows Mobile than the iPhone, and certainly much more when compared to RIM or Palm, where it seems you could never sustain a business based on ads.
Are you ready for ad-supported apps on Windows Mobile? Let us know below.
Thanks Matija for the tip.
I blame HTC for our obsession with the weather, but MobilityFlow’s Touch Weather proves you do not have to buy a HTC Sense device to get gorgeous full screen weather. The software certainly appears to be as stylish and elegant as the HTC version, and features the same sophisticated animations as HTC.
The software has not been released yet, but will likely form part of their Touch Shell software suite.
MobilityFlow’s main business is developing custom software for clients, and if this work is any indication, their clients are likely to be happy indeed.
Read more about MobiltyFlow here.
Gregory T. Huang wrote:
Bellevue, WA-based Intellectual Ventures announced this week it has hired Adriane M. Brown as president and chief operating officer, responsible for day-to-day operations. She succeeds Edward Jung, the Intellectual Ventures co-founder, who is returning to his role as chief technology officer. Brown was most recently senior vice president of energy strategy at Honeywell International, and previously held other leadership roles at Honeywell and Corning. Intellectual Ventures is focused on the business of invention. Led by CEO Nathan Myhrvold, the firm has $5 billion under management and more than 650 employees worldwide.
Apple released a dedicated MobileMe iDisk app not too long ago for those of us who stubbornly continue to pay good money for a subscription, but iDisk, as the app is called, is really just a file manager and nothing more. Today, Apple unveiled another MobileMe-specific iPhone application, this one called Gallery (iTunes link). You can probably guess what it does.
Gallery allows you to browse your MobileMe photo galleries, something you aren’t able to access using iDisk. The app has all the polish and intuitive UI design you’d expect from Apple, and it keeps things simple and to the point. Even if you’re an avid MobileMe Gallery user with many albums, you should have no trouble browsing through albums and finding specific photos.
My problem is, as you may notice from the screenshots, I’m not really an avid user of the Gallery feature of MobileMe. In fact, I had to upload a new album (“Dogs”) for the purpose of this post, having only had my Random one from before, with a grand total of four photos. Even using established platforms like Facebook and Flickr, I tend not to have or share too many pictures.
That said, I like the way the MobileMe Gallery app works on my iPhone, and can see how it would be great in conjunction with iPhoto for both backing up and making it easy to share photos from events like family get-togethers and birthdays, etc. That way, I could store a lot less photos on my iPhone’s camera reel, and basically carry around my entire library in my pocket for showing off to friends and relatives anywhere I have Internet access.
A feature that’s very promising is the ability to configure Safari to open MobileMe Gallery links directly in the app, sort of the way the new Facebook uses “fb://” links to open its own application. I say promising because although it seems terribly convenient, especially if you do a lot of mobile browsing, which I do, I’ve never actually visited another person’s MobileMe gallery in my entire year and a bit of being a subscriber.
It wouldn’t be the first time an iPhone app has resulted in me actually using a service I never thought I would, and it likely won’t be the last, either. Plus it’s free, though you have to have a MobileMe subscription to use it, but it does help justify the cost of that by another couple of degrees. Good news for suckers like me.
The Consumerist deconstructs the appalling ‘optimization’ service that Best Buy has been pushing on consumers in recent weeks. The retailer charges 40 bucks to give you a slower PC and makes bizarre claims that it makes it go 200% faster. ‘We ran the 3DMark 2003 graphics benchmark on each laptop, comparing optimized and non-optimized settings. For two of our samples, the Gateway and Toshiba, performance changes were negligible. On the Asus laptop, however, optimized tests actually scored about 32% worse than the non-optimized setup. We have been unable to isolate the source of this performance change. On none of the three tested laptops did the optimized settings give a performance boost in our test.,” said a representative.
Courtesy of slashdot.com
Lieber Software has revealed their application, Spin the Bottle 2.0, has hit 10,001 downloads in two months on the German Windows Mobile Marketplace. The application, which took less than 12 hours to be coded on its first release, currently sells for $0.99, making it a pretty good return on investment for a night’s work.
The developer notes the feedback from the certification process was accurate and helpful.
He has two complains however about the process, noting that Marketplace does not push out updates, and developers who do not have their headquarters in a marketplace country can not release apps in any marketplace at all.
Certainly here at WMPoweruser.com we can not understand why more developers do not place their legacy applications in Marketplace. We can understand not making a huge investment on new apps, but $100 for 5 apps is a pretty small bet with the potential for a pretty big pay-out, especially now while the Marketplace selection is still small.
Read more at the lieberlieber blog here.
Do any other developers have any Marketplace success stories to share? Let us know below.
HTC has released an official hotfix for the Sprint Touch Diamond and Touch Pro which has recently resulted in SMS messages being marked as coming from the year 2016.
The fixes can be downloaded from HTC using the links below
Sprint Touch Diamond SMS Timestamp Hotfix | 01.13.2010
SMS TIMESTAMPS DISPLAY AN INCORRECT YEAR
Please follow the instructions below to download and install a hotfix that will correct this issue. The hotfix will resolve the issue causing incoming SMS messages to display the incorrect year, and it will correct the incorrect year on SMS messages that were received prior to installing this hotfix.Sprint Touch Pro SMS Timestamp Hotfix | 01.13.2010
Please follow the instructions below to download and install a hotfix that will correct this issue. The hotfix will resolve the issue causing incoming SMS messages to display the incorrect year, and it will correct the incorrect year on SMS messages that were received prior to installing this hotfix.
NOTE: If the device is not running the latest software version 2.01.651.6, please download and install the latest ROM from this page.
Via WMExperts.com
With the new year now a few weeks old, it’s time to stop and remember those resolutions you made at the dawn of 2010. New Year’s Resolutions are perhaps best known for the likelihood that they will fall by the wayside. If you’re serious, however, one of the best tools for making sure you achieve your new year’s resolutions is your iPhone.
With the vast array of applications available for the iPhone it might be hard to pick the right ones if you want to get in better shape, save money or get a date this year, so we’re going to pick out some of the best for you . First up we’re going to start with applications that will help you get in better shape.
The most popular new year’s resolution of all time, likely due to the expanding waistline that over one month of feast and drink bestows upon us, getting in better shape can be a frustrating challenge. Thankfully there are plenty of good iPhone applications available to help you keep this resolution. Just be warned, none of these apps will actually burn calories for you, they’ll just help you get the feedback and build the routines you’ll need to make that happen.
Note: All links point to the iTunes store.
Lose It!
Price: Free
Rating: 3.5 stars
This free applications has sat near the top of Apple’s Healthcare & Fitness category for a long time. Attractive and easy to use, Lose It! is basically a calorie counter. Tell it a bit about yourself, how much weight you want to lose and it will give you a daily calorie allowance. You can then track what you eat and how you exercise, all with simple charts to see how you’re doing. The newest version also includes the ability to sync your information with a website and even tweet your progress.
iFitness
Price: $1.99
Rating: 4.5 stars
If you want to start building some muscle mass, then iFitness is a great companion app. The application allows you how to track a large number of different weight-lifting exercises. It includes photos, videos and written instructions for how to properly do each exercise and lets you set up custom workouts.
Weightbot
Price: $1.99
Rating: 4 stars
If you want to eschew the bother of tracking every calorie and just want to keep an eye on your weight, then Weightbot is for you. The interface is gorgeous and it’s extremely easy to use. You can chart your progress over time and immediately get your BMI when you enter your weight.
Nike+
Price: Free (for 3GS owners) + $29 for sensor
Rating: N/A
Apple and Nike’s partnership to track your jogging finally arrived on the iPhone with the 3GS. If you have a 3GS, all you’ll need to do is jump into the settings to activate the Nike+ app, and then go out and buy the $29 sensor for your shoe. The app let’s you synchronize your progress to Nike’s website, choose a playlist while jogging, including the famous power song to get your over that hump, and gives you feedback when you’ve reached a milestone. Unfortunately if you have an older iPhone, you’re out of luck.
RunKeeper
Price: $9.99 (free version also available)
Rating: 5 stars
If you don’t have an iPhone 3GS, or just don’t want to use the Nike+ system, RunKeeper Pro is a great alternative, although we should note it doesn’t work on the iPhone 2G. Using your iPhone’s GPS to track your runs, RunKeeper let’s you track your progress, view your routes and control your music directly from the app. Information can also be backed up and viewed on the RunKeeper website. If the $9.99 price for the Pro version of RunKeeper is a bit too rich for your blood, there’s also a free ad-supported version with the same basic functionality.
iCan
Price: 99 cents
Rating: 3.5 stars
Not specifically related to getting in better shape, but a good app for any resolution, iCan is basically a goal tracker with an inspirational bent. Simply enter in any goal and you’ll immediately get an inspirational quote. If at any point you find yourself lagging, simply press a button for more inspirational text. An attractive and simple way to keep track of your resolutions so you don’t forget them and remember what you’ve achieved.
Wow if you thought iPhone/iPod Touch Apps couldn’t get any more ridiculous this latest one takes the cake. iSurgeon is a beauty app that just doesn’t let you see how you will look with a new hair color – no no. This one lets you see how you will look post plastic surgery! Created by surgeon Dr. Michael Salzhauer – iSurgeon features two modes: Game Mode and Advanced Surgery Mode. Game mode lets you play doctor on patients and you are provided with hints to give your patients the desired results. Advanced mode is probably the one everyone will want to use as you can take images of yourself and alter them to show how you would look with a smaller nose, no double chin, etc… iSurgeon will retail $0.99 for the lite version and $1.99 for the pro version. It’s like having your own version of Nip/Tuck at home without the pain.
