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      Tap Dat App – AT&T myWireless Mobile

      June 20, 2009 /

      at&t mywireless appAT&T’s free myWireless Mobile app has been out for quite a while now so if you live in the US and don’t have it already, you should. This app is a simple way to view just about everything related your wireless account as well as add features to your plan and monitor your usage. It’s quite convenient and in my opinion, should have been available since the iPhone was first released.

      So, from the home page, you can click Bill & Pay, Usage, or Features. Under Bill & Pay, you can view your last payment, payment date, current balance and due date, as well as bring up PDF copy of your current bill. Pretty handy to have that all in one place. AT&T also gives you the option to make a payment from this screen as well. It was nice of AT&T to give us the ability to pay the bill from this app because we all want to make sure AT&T gets their money on time.

      The Usage section is just what you’d expect. You are able to view Anytime, Night/Weekend, Mobile to Mobile, and Rollover Minutes used from the main screen. A nice addition for those of us on family plans is that you can also see all this information per individual. This would be convenient for parents as well as nosey husbands or wives. Also available in Usage is your data used which includes messaging as well as internet.

      Finally, the Features section is a way to upgrade your plan. AT&T wanted to make sure anyone, anywhere with and iPhone and this app can always add more features to their plan. Not paying enough for your iPhone plan yet? Well go ahead and add Roadside Assistance or maybe VoiceDial for Postpaid. In all seriousness though, if you are traveling abroad it is easy to use this app to add Expanded Internation Roaming or 20 MB Data Global Add-On without having to call customer service.

      So there you have it, AT&T myWireless Mobile app for the iPhone. It’s free and convenient so I recommend downloading it.

      Apple, Apps, iPhone

      iPhone 3GS Teardown

      June 20, 2009 /

      Rapid Repair iPhone 3GS teardown.As we learned at the Palm Pre launch, it takes almost no time for fanatical repair geeks/technoporn freaks to strip a gadget down to its bare bones for exhibition. The guys (and probably gals) at Rapid Repair have done just that with the 3GS, showing off her pretty insides to the rest of the world (that felt creepy to write – is this how you felt, Anthony Hopkins?).

      Of particular interest are the processor stats and a closer look at the camera. For the processor, the 3GS is running on an underclocked 833MHz CPU. Yes, underclocked. My guess is they’ve done that for heat’s sake, and likely also because there may not yet be a need for that sort of power. Granted, some people will want to pull as much as they can get from the phone, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see a few performance hacks in the near future.

      Rapid Repair also reports the camera as capable of 720p recording. Could this be a possible feature in a future OS? Though the new video recording is nice, a quality upgrade would take the phone to a new level as a media device.

      Like many new devices, it will probably be a bit before we see the full potential of the 3GS hardware. Rapid Repair calls the CPU running the new iPhone truly cutting-edge, giving unprecedented processing power. I can’t wait to see what that means.

      Apple, iPhone, Mobile

      Where Is Palm’s App Dev Kit?

      June 19, 2009 /

      Palm Pre WebOS SDK.I like the Palm Pre. I really do. I’m starting to wonder, though, if Palm does.

      For all the excitement surrounding their best phone release in years, Palm seems to be doing their damnedest to let the Pre slip into obscurity. Perhaps the best feature of the new Pre is its operating system, named webOS because it comes built on web technologies that supposedly make developing on the platform a breeze. The platform also supports multi-tasking, a feature missing from the Pre’s ‘roid-induced cousin, the iPhone Unfortunately, Palm has yet to release the webOS SDK, which would give developers a chance to put some great apps in the hands of Palm fans and iPhone malcontents. In fact, the SDK isn’t coming until the end of summer.

      “We’ve been working very hard on the SDK and are eager to open access on a wider scale, but the software and the developer services to support it just aren’t ready yet,” says Palm. I have to ask, then, did they pick the right time to launch the phone? It’s all well and good to try to gain ground before the new iPhone drops, but why launch when a solid app development platform could greatly improve the phone’s appeal? There are plenty of unsatisfied Apple/AT&T customers. Why not pick them up in the wake of the 3GS?

      As of today, the Pre’s App Catalog sits at just 30 apps. At that level, they have no chance. Even if there were a couple hundred the Pre might have just enough appeal to lure in some the folks who spurned Apple’s advances. Show them multi-tasking with apps they love and you could start to build a base of very satisfied customers, and that’s exactly the way to gain market share.

      For now, a lot of Pre users are content to homebrew their apps, porting games like Doom and piecing together tethering on the fly. But that magic can only last so long before serious developers get bored, or get so entrenched in the iPhone or Blackberry development that they all but forget about the Pre. That’s something Palm can’t afford. We’ll see how hungry developers are by the end of summer, assuming they stick around.

      Mobile, News

      Sony Could Be In Serious Trouble

      June 19, 2009 /

      Bobby Kotick ready to axe Sony.When you’ve taken a company from $10 million yearly revenues to nearly $200 million quarterly revenues, you can pretty much say what you want. If your new company also happens to be worth some $16 billion, you can also say those things to whomever you like, even if it happens to be Sony.

      That’s exactly what’s happening between Bobby Kotick, Activision Blizzard’s President and CEO (that would be the $16 billion company), and Sony. Kotick has apparently been frustrated with the fees Sony charges for what he thinks may be a dying platform.

      “I’m getting concerned about Sony; the PlayStation 3 is losing a bit of momentum and they don’t make it easy for me to support the platform. It’s expensive to develop for the console, and the Wii and the Xbox are just selling better. Games generate a better return on invested capital on the Xbox than on the PlayStation,” Kotick says. “When we look at 2010 and 2011, we might want to consider if we support [PS3 and PSP].”

      For those of you keeping track at home, that’s next year. As in, six months from now. And if Activision sees fit to pull the plug, who’s next? Other developers have voiced issue with Sony licensing fees and the difficulties of developing on their hardware. Would EA see fit to cut ties?

      As compelling a case as Kotick might put together, he seems a bit blind when it comes to ideas for saving Sony. In this same interview, Mr. Kotick suggests Sony consider things like the upcoming skateboard controller for a new Tony Hawk title. Are peripherals really what’s slowing the company? I could be wrong here, but how does adding a peripheral, which will probably be available on the other two consoles, help PS3 sales? How does that cut back the fees Kotick so loathes? And what of development? PS3 will still cost more per title for the same game, so where’s the benefit?

      In running Sony into the ground is my guess. Kotick’s suggestion leads one direction – further marginalization of the PS3. If they keep releasing the same games and the same peripherals as everyone else, they’ll keep getting beat, for all the reasons Kotick cites early on. Then he doesn’t have to make the tough decision because every developer would leave with him.

      For now you can rest assured Activision is still making plenty of money off Sony, but I’d bet other developers share some of Kotick’s thoughts, if not his fervor for making them public. Will Sony respond, or is Kotick just a blowhard? Sound off in the comments.

      Gaming, News

      iPhone 3GS Sees A Quiet(er) Debut

      June 19, 2009 /

      iPhone 3GS showing the new compass.This is the month of phone hype, beyond a doubt. We’ve seen the Pre release, Nokia’s super-expensive N97 spot with LL Cool J, iPhone OS 3.0, and now the iPhone 3GS. Of the phone launches, the biggest is certainly the update iPhone, though it may have come more quietly than the world expected.

      Lines outside Apple’s flagship store       in NY reached several hundred, but amidst some rain, they were all shuffled under Apple’s roof making this the smallest iPhone launch yet. Still, AT&T reports hundreds of thousands of preorders for launch day, which dwarfs Palm’s Pre 50,000 first weekend statistic.

      It wasn’t just scale that kept the launch quiet, though. In part, it was a lack of hangups that have plagued Apple’s past launches. Apple announced both iPhone OS 3.0 and the iPhone 3GS at WWDC this year, but the set the launch days two days apart. The staggered launch was presumably to reduce server load so that new owners weren’t trying to activate their 3GS while 20 million others were waiting for OS 3.0 downloads. It was a smart move, and it kept problems with the 3.0 release and problems with the 3GS launch (so far, at least) to a minimum.

      Now the focus shifts to AT&T and how their network will handle more users hoping to see the wireless carrier make good on promises of MMS and tethering. Will MMS from iPhone users bring the sole US carrier to its knees later this summer?

      Apple, iPhone, Mobile

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