One of the big announcements to come out of WWDC 08′ was the introduction of Apple’s new MobileMe Internet service. MobileMe features push email, push contacts and push calendars from your “cloud” to native apps on your iPhone, iPod touch, Mac or PC. MobileMe will be available shortly and will replace Apple’s .mac service.

The MobileMe service will deliver a desktop-like experience on the web. Changes made on your MobileMe cloud will automatically update native applications on all of computers and or devices. “Think of MobileMe as ‘Exchange for the rest of us,’” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Now users who are not part of an enterprise that runs Exchange can get the same push email, push calendars and push contacts that the big guys get.”

The MobileMe web applications are 100% ad free and includes 20GB of online storage. The service will be available on July 11th priced at $99 for individuals and $149 for a family pack (includes one master account with 20GB of storage and four 5GB family member accounts.

Apple has posted a video tour describing the new features of MobileMe.

Good news everyone… Steve Jobs introduced the new iPhone(TM) 3G, combining all the revolutionary features of iPhone with 3G networking that is twice as fast* as the first generation iPhone, built-in GPS for expanded location based mobile services, and iPhone 2.0 software which includes support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync and runs the hundreds of third party applications already built with the recently released iPhone SDK. In the US the new iPhone 3G is priced at a stunning $199 for the 8GB model, and just $299 for the 16GB model.** iPhone 3G will be available in more than 70 countries later this year, beginning with customer availability in 22 countries — Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK and the US — on July 11.

Everythingicafe.com published nice post What You Need to Know About iPhone 3G
and here you can check the full specification of iPhone 3G and how it compares to the original iPhone

With the iPhone 2.0 Software Update, your iPhone will do even more. Extend its capabilities with innovative applications you download directly from the new App Store. Get push email, calendar, and contacts from your Microsoft Exchange server at work. And use great new features in Mail, Contacts, and other applications. Free in the next update.

iPhone firmware 2.0 was detailed in WWDC with some rumored features finally seeing the day of light. Features include:

• iWork and Office document viewing
• Save images from E-Mail directly to photo library
• Contact Search
• E-Mail/SMS Bulk Delete & Move
• Scientific Calculator when switched to Landscape Mode in Calculator
• Support for a TON of languages including Chinese, Japanese

On top of those features, Jobs detailed enterprise support for mass distribution of apps (up to 100 authorized iPhones) and also unveiled a new push notification system for apps that would use it (such as IM clients).

Firmware 2.0 will be available for iPhone users come ‘Early July’ for free and for iPod Touch users at a reduced fee (compared to the last update) of $9.95.

Pathfinder, a software development and user experience design firm, announced the initial release of rails_iui, an open source Rails Plug-In for the iPhone.

The plug-in makes it easier to build iPhone enabled web applications. Rail plugin adds the ability to iUI framework which contains a number of CSS styles and JavaScript event handlers, to make iPhone Web apps look and feel somewhat like native iPhone applications.

“While developing my latest mobile web application with iUI, I realized I was building up a library, so I converted everything to a Rails plug-in,” stated Rappin, creator of the plugin. “Open source is all about sharing what you have learned and making contributions to support the community.””

Currently the plug-in focuses on automating common tasks and streamlining development. Future enhancements include improvements in documentation, testing and leveraging the Rails framework to enhance interactions, especially related to history and back behavior.

To get more information and download the plugin go to here or here.