Appletell

Fueled by the recent snowballing of Mac sales and interest in the iPhone’s mobile WiFi platform, this year’s Apple World Wide Developer’s Conference (WWDC) has sold out for the first time in history.  The exact number of spaces that were available was not put out by Apple, but soon after making the “sold out” announcement, they released the following statement. 

“Response to this year’s WWDC has been off the charts and we are delighted with the show of enthusiasm and support from the developer community for the new iPhone SDK. The conference is now sold out.”

There are many speculations as to what will happen at WWDC ‘08, ranging from 3G iPhones to Tablet Macs (the latter taken with quite a sizable grain of salt).  Based on past WWDC history, chances are slim that any new computer designs will be introduced, as those larger announcement are usually saved for MacWorld (small design updates for the Mac line up are more of a possibility).

Luckily for those who didn’t snag a seat at the conference, videos of the session will be on iTunes shortly after for purchase.

Read [Mac Megatsite]

iPhone application developer Intelliborn has just released a new killer application for the iPhone called the IntelliScreen. This new application compiles weather, e-mail, SMS message, RSS feeds, news, sports and wheather widgets and displays them to your iPhone’s “Slide to Unlock Screen.”

The application allows for the display of four widgets at the same time and you can easily switch reading from one widget to another in a jiffy. 

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Apple’s minor flaw in not equipping the iPhone with a video recorder is DreamCatcher’s gain, if ever its iPhone Video Recorder gets some headway with iPhone users. DreamCatcher is touting its application as having the ability to record audio and video in compressed mpeg4 format. That will practically save you some good amount of storage in your iPhone without sacrificing too much on video and audio quality.

The iPhone Video Recorder allows users to play back recorder video on their iPhone, download it to their computers or upload the videos to YouTube.

So as not to deplete the CPUs overhead and makes the user’s iPhone runs slow, this iPhone application does the video encoding at the end of the recording session. Users can pause the process anytime and then go back to at their most convenient time. DreamCatcher is also offering configuration of settings including audio input amplifier and video size mode settings. Image quality, brightness and the videos audio bit rate options can be configured to suit the users’ fancies as well.

The application is available for $19.95, and DreamCatcher assures that they will update the application to run on the 3G iPhone once it becomes available.

Product [iPhone Video Recorder]

Recently, Apple has been stepping up in the business environment and has really begun hammering it home that they are ready to more aggressively enter this field.  With the new iPhone software to contain ActiveSync support for Microsoft Exchange and possibly more business geared features such as a camera for video conferencing, this move is no joke.  Furthermore, it was recently reported that according to a rumor from TUAW, .Mac will soon include “Full over-the-air syncing including calendars, contacts, and email (similar to Exchange).” What do both of these have in common?  They are very attractive offers for anyone involved in a high business position at a big or small company.  Apple has made their impression in the everyday consumer market and is now moving onto bigger goals.  A smart move, I may add.

By making their products better for a business environment, Apple is opening them up to a large amount of potentially new customers.  Many businesses have stuck with Windows as their main OS for years, and Apple has realized that.  By realizing that, they are now beginning to compete with it.  Most of their new products and updates have more features that are meant for business type people which can only lead to good.  Good on you Apple for taking a risk and putting your cards into this deck.  Keep on innovating, we all look forward to you having more of a presence in larger corporation settings!

When the SDK for the iPhone is launched at WWDC, it is going to be exhilarating.  Apple has given developers plenty of time to create useful and outstanding apps, and I expect there will be plenty of them.  For example, at the keynote, developers had already made Spore and an instant messaging client in only a couple weeks.  Also, third party developers that have been using Installer.app have also made extremely awesome and helpful apps in a short amount of time.  What does this all mean?  Excitement.  When this whole deal is officially released, there are going to be hundreds of apps released with it.  The functionality of the iPhone is going to skyrocket and it is going to be even more desired.  But the real question is what apps do you really want to see.

First and foremost for me, and probably many others, is some sort of iChat. This would be great to keep in contact with friends on the go and, not to mention, save me a ton of money on text messaging overage fees.  Another application I would love to see would be for voice recording.  Whenever I am on the go, I always end up thinking of something I want to remember.  It could be so easy just to record it in the phone rather than writing a whole note.  This could also be very useful for business people who need to record a quick interview on their phone for later.  Lastly, and more general, I would love to see some awesome games.  There are a lot of times where I’m bored in the car or on a plane and iPhone games would be perfect to pass the time with.  What do you want to see and/or waste your time with?  Games, productivity, educational?  Let us know in the comments!

Apple has now opened up its iPhone and iPod Touch developer program to areas outside of the United States.  Why does this matter?  Now, developers outside of the States can create official, Apple accepted apps that can be published in the App Store that is to come out with the new iPhone software in June.  All of this news comes from a TUAW reader who says he has been accepted into the program but lives in the UK.

This is great news not only for the developers who will now be able to create apps, but also for everyone who owns an iPod Touch or iPhone.  This creates a potential for hundreds of more apps created by the large population of Apple developers outside of the States.  I’ve said it before, the SDK announcement is going to be huge, and I have a feeling the App Store is going to be filled with hundreds of goodies to waste some time trying out and using.  The usefulness of the iPhone will skyrocket with third party apps, and I can’t wait.  Are you excited?

If you remember a while back, I wrote about a third party app that allows for handwriting recognition on the iPhone called HWPen. Now, according to recent reports, build number 5A258f of the iPhone 2.0 beta software supports a handwriting recognition interface that currently allows only Chinese character input.  A translated page of the website of the man who is reporting about this, Kenneth, goes into detail about the interface and contains tons of screenshots.

This app works by suggesting four character possibilities on the right hand side of the screen as the user begins to write the symbol.  AppleInsider also points out that a recent patent filing by Apple suggested a next generation multi-touch surface that would allow for this and many more touch operations.  All this handwriting news brings back the good old days of the Newton.  Let’s hope it gets a little better of a reputation if it does appear on the iPhone.  Would you like to see this on the next iPhone software update?

Twitter is an amazing social network - there’s no doubt about it. Most Twitter users find themselves addicted to the thing, and therefore need ways of catching up with friends’ updates, and even posting their own on-the-go. Thanks to the iPhone’s sophisticated Safari web browser, iPhone-specific web apps using Twitter’s API can be created. In my opinion, Dean Robinson‘s Hahlo is the best iPhone Twitter web app out there.

Hahlo 3, the highly anticipated version of Hahlo, has just been released to the public and is no longer in beta testing. All users who visit Hahlo.com on their iPhone or iPod Touch will be able to notice the new features and design immediately. In addition to the newly designed user interface, Hahlo 3 has full search capabilities through Summize.

Via [TUAW]

By analyzing the metadata in uploaded pictures, Flickr is able to see which cameras their users are taking pictures with.  When it comes to the camera phone market, the iPhone now tops that list.  What does this mean?  Is the iPhone that popular or does its software just make it easier to get the pictures on your computer than most other phones?  If you ask me, it’s the latter.  With the iPhone also being an iPod, people have to sync it a lot more than normal phones, which makes it more common to also take the photos off and put them on your computer and to the web.  Another reason the iPhone may top this list is because of third party apps available through Installer.app that allow users to easily upload pictures to Flickr right from the phone itself.  Finally, people are able to email photos directly to Flickr from the device.

However, although the iPhone does make it easier to upload the photos in the first place, I think it also gives users more of a reason to.  Despite having such few megapixels and failing in low light situations, the iPhone camera takes much better pictures than I’ve ever taken with any other phone.  When held still, it takes pretty crisp photos with nice color.  The only thing that would make the camera better, besides more megapixels of course, would be more features.  A zoom would be nice, especially if Apple added some off those quirky Photo Booth effects.  What do you think?

What are your top feature for camera improvement in the 3G iPhone?

There are tons of rumors about Apple’s upcoming second generation phone.  So many that I sometimes don’t know which ones are legit and which ones are not.  Who do I believe?  Who has the right insiders?  It’s time to stop the rumors and start some pure speculation.  Here is what I hope to see with the next iPhone that may be less obvious than some features (3G):

1) A video camera. Video conferencing on an iPhone would not only be awesome, it would be a great draw for business people.  I’m sure Apple will include this is the next release, and they better.  With how often iPhones need to be synced for music, contacts, podcasts, etc, it would be awesome to be able to take videos off of the device.  These videos would be perfect for sites like Flickr Video and maybe even YouTube. Another adaptation of the video camera many people are looking for is support for online streaming services such as Qik (a service that allows you to stream live video from your cellphone).

2) Camera features. The camera on the iPhone isn’t the greatest I’ve used, but it’s up there.  However, it would definitely move up a few notches with some extra features.  Apple should add a zoom, some more control over lighting features such as white balance, and even some Photo Booth effects.  For me, that would set the camera apart from others and make the next iPhone that much better.

3) Dictionary.app. This one is sort of small, but I would absolutely love to see a Dictionary widget on the home screen.  Sure I could just add dictionary.com to my home screen but a built in Dictionary and reference would be extremely useful.  Also, there could be a lot more flexibility with the user interface than from a website and load times could be improved.

4) Openness. Give it to other carriers Apple!  It kills me to see the phones growth hindered by its carrier.  I know a lot of people have simply switched carriers and other have just jailbroken their phone, but people shouldn’t have to take these steps.  I imagine the sales of the device will skyrocket even more once AT&T’s exclusivity deal is up.  There is still the slight chance that iPhone 2.0 will not fall under the same deal with AT&T as the first version, however, which would be great.

What do you really want to see on the next iPhone?