Via Gizmodo.com

NEW IPHONE OS 3.0 FEATURES

The new iPhone OS 3.0 adds over 100 new features. Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Yet another update to the iPhone firmware 2.0 and the SDK have leaked out. The new firmware has been dubbed 5a308. This build was released today, along with a fresh build of the SDK. The new SDK is 1221.8MB, so it is a little bigger than the last release, which was the fifth such release. It is not known yet if this is the firmware beta that adds the rumored geo tagging features.

The firmware is fresh off the server, and the details about it are few. What we do know right now is that the new SDK requires developers to register an application ID, suggesting that they are tightening things up in anticipation of the launch, which is rumored to be soon. Application IDs are required for provisioning now, all previous provisioning is now longer valid.

Another interesting thing is you must be running OSX 10.5.3, which was just released this morning. It is odd that Apple would cut off the still large amount of users running Tiger, or 10.4. The new updates release notes were uploaded to Apple’s site earlier, and can be viewed now. Apple also removed six demo applications from the SDK package.

If you’ve ever wanted a good excuse to take your iPhone into class, how about using it to record your lectures? That’s what iPhone Recorder offers, together with the ability to directly record audio to ringtones without any computer necessary or any conversion processes in-between. Dynamic volume adjustment, channel and bitrate control, and a choice of mp3, mp4 and aac file formats round out a decent range of options; you can also directly attach them to an email from the app itself.

Now for the bad news: developer DreamCatcher is asking $29.95 for iPhone Recorder, which seems a bit steep for an audio recorder, even one as fully featured as this one is. It’ll be interesting to see what happens once the Apple App Store opens for business; right now iPhone Recorder requires a Jailbroken handset, but when people start finding their software the official way it’ll be far easier for developers to get freeware apps into the catalogue. Will there be a market for thirty-buck voice recorders by then?

[via ModMyiPhone]

Via Phone Magazine
Poring through the latest iPhone 2.0 firmware that Apple has distributed to developers, The Boy Genius spotted that a new YouTube plugin for MobileSafari.app has been added. At present, video embedded into webpages won’t display in the iPhone’s browser, and only YouTube content is visible in a separate program. It’s unclear right now whether this new plugin will simply embed the separate YouTube app into the webpage, or is a sign of more advanced Flash development on Apple’s part.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has previously criticised Adobe’s Flash offerings, claiming the full desktop version to slow and the specially-formatted mobile version not good enough for the iPhone. In response, Adobe examined the iPhone SDK to see whether they could code a unique version of their embedded Flash viewer for the handset; however, Apple’s third-party software rules scuppered any chance of that, as they do not allow for Safari plugins, only standalone apps.

As it stands, then, the only possibility for an official Adobe Flash solution with the current SDK is if Apple gives them special treatment and permits a version of their software to work with Mobile Safari. This new Firmware 2.0 plugin could be a sign of that, but it’s simply too early to say.

At the special event earlier this month where Apple laid out the future of developing software for the iPhone, the company said that it would be providing the full suite of its existing development tools, such as Xcode, for creating iPhone applications. However, in the first version of the SDK that was rolled out, there was one notable omission from that lineup: Interface Builder, the application that lets developers easily design the UI of their program.

Given the importance of UI on the Mac, Interface Builder is a pretty critical tool in the development process, and some developers had chosen to hold off on their efforts until the SDK was revised. Which, as you might have guessed, was today. A new version of the SDK—build 9A2151 for the alphanumerically curious among you—has been posted, including the anticipated Interface Builder.

That seems to be the only major change in the latest build, according to the SDK’s read me, which continues to list some known issues for what Apple calls the “Beta 2” release; Apple says “this second beta is known to be incompatible with installation folders
other than the default /Developer.” So be a good little feller and install it where it wants to go.

O’Reilly has released a book on developing applications for a jailbroken iPhone. “iPhone Open Application Development”, is written by Jonathan Zdziarski, who’s actually responsible for making NES.app and countless other unauthorized iPhone programs.

While the book doesn’t teach you how to use Apple’s official SDK, you will learn how to access the iPhone’s OS, gain understanding of therefore and creating applications for it, using iPhone’s Objective-C framework, and other things… which in the end will make you understand the workings of the SDK as well as the iPhone itself much better better. After all that’s exactly what this book teaches: developing third party apps without the need of SDK.

During this week’s AjaxWorld conference, ICEsoft Technologies has unveiled their open source ICEfaces Project.

ICEfaces itself is an Ajax framework that enables developers to easily create server centric rich internet applications in pure Java. The system works by extending JSF (java server faces) which is a component model for JavaEE development.

While working in standart JSF programming envirounment, you have the addition of Automatic AJAX which handles back-end AJAX Framework functionality for them transparently. In addition, a feature known as “AJAX Push” automatically takes care of synchronization between the desktop and the mobile device.

But even with its shortcomings, ICEsoft demonstrated some interesting projects like a program that allows users to “push” conference slides from a desktop to an iPhone and an app to order taxi from iPhone while on business trip, and then receive and view status reports.

Thanks: SeanKerner