Appletell

Well, folks, its this time of year again. Tomorrow at 1:00 p.m. EST/9:00 a.m. PST, Steve will be donning the blue jeans and black turtle neck and heading for the stage of the Moscone Center. As this year’s World Wide Developer Conference gets ever closer, it’s time for a rumor and speculation round-up.

For the most part, the speculation this year has hovered around four items:

1. 3G iPhone
2. .mac
3. iTablet
4. Mac OS X v10.6

Read on for all the recent news regarding these and other possible happenings at WWDC ‘08.

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A company by the name of iCall is offering the ability to both make and receive free phone calls on your iPhone when in range of a wireless hotspot. What’s interesting about this is that you can also hop on and off of the VoIP service as you enter and leave a hotspot, as shown in the YouTube video (after the break). It also has access to your entire address book on your iPhone, along with a customizable voicemail feature. This application should be available next week when the SDK App Store comes out.

Click through to see the video.

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Sipgate has just launched the beta version of its new application which will bring VoIP service to the iPhone. Using industry standard SIP, iPhone users will be able to place or receive VoIP calls over WiFi using their iPhones. Additionally, Sipgate’s VoIP service lets users maintain both domestic and international numbers in one place. The application is available for download at Sipgate’s site for free.

Sipgate’s VoIP for iPhone service enables users to save their mobile minutes, provided that WiFi is available, bypass roaming charges and place calls at virtually no cost when travelling abroad. All these can be enjoyed by iPhone users, but only if they purchase a SIP service and WiFi connection from third party providers.

As this application is still in beta stage, we would have to advise you to take precautionary measures when installing the software in your iPhone. Sipgate does not provide any warantee or guaranty that your iPhone won’t break down if something goes wrong. So, if you are not a risk taker when it comes to dealing with your iPhone, you might want to wait for the official release of the Sipgate VoIP for iPhone service. If you can’t wait any longer, however, try installing the application at your own risk.

Via [MacNN] Product [Sipgate]

Surely you remember Fring, the free third party VoIP application for your jailbroken iPhone. Well, now there is a new voice in the game: sipgate. Sipgate is free like Fring, but requires a SIP account after you use your 111 free minutes. However, sipgate does provide support for third party VoIP services other than itself. It is still in beta and currently only works over wi-fi, but that should be expected as EDGE data speeds are simply too slow.

There is a nice FAQ section at their site with plenty of questions to be answered. Although the service is still in beta, it sounds like it’s going to be pretty awesome. However, I just have to wonder if they waited too long. With WWDC and the SDK right around the corner, is there going to be easier, Apple supported third party VoIP apps for the iPhone? Or, is Apple going to stop all of these through the SDK to make AT&T happy and leave users nowhere to go but to unofficially jailbreak their phone? I guess will we have to wait until June 9th to find out, but I’m excited either way. And you should be too.

Product [sipgate]

For those of you who couldn’t wait, VoIP is now available on the iPhone.  Coming from an Israeli startup, Fring can be downloaded via Installer.app on any Jailbroken iPhone.  This applications supports a variety of services, such as Skype, MSN Messenger, and AIM, making it perfect to help keep in contact with people.  TechCrunch has a nice video up and points out that due to the high amount of minutes on most phone plans, this app’s real strong point would be for international calls and IM on the go.  As you would expect, the VoIP only works with Wifi due to the amount and speed of data needed.  Right now it is still in beta, but the company points out, “The special pre-release version will enable iPhone users to get an early taste of fring and discover the freedom of being able to take their fring contacts and buddies from their other favorite online communities mobile on their iPhones.”

One part Apple may not like about this is the fact that the app is always on and connected to give the user real time feedback on their contact lists which goes against their no background processes policy.  However, since it comes from Installer.app, there isn’t much Apple can do.  If you have already downloaded this or plan on it, let us know how it is.  We’re interested in what the interface and call quality are like.

Would you use VoIP on you iPhone?

NetBlender recently released an SDK App for the iPhone and iPod touch that allows it to interface with BD Live and Wifi Enabled Blu-Ray Players.  It is called BD Touch.  When combined with a Blu-Ray authoring application, such as NetBlender’s DoStudio, the app allows an iPhone or iPod Touch to seamlessly connect to a Blu-Ray Player via Wifi, enabling the iPhone or iPod touch to act as a remote, among other things.  You can add compressed version of the movie to your collection, control playback from the iPhone or iPod Touch and import certain menu content.  Also provided on the iPhone is movie information from the internet, links to more information, a link to the movie in iTunes, and even the ability to play games and other special features directly on the iPhone. 

Also, the app is not limited to Blu-Ray to iPhone/iPod Touch communication.  You can send movies from your iTunes collection through the iPhone/iPod Touch to the Blu-Ray Player, out onto the big screen.  Some compatible Blu-Ray producers include Phillips, Samsung, and Sony, including the Blu-Ray Drive in the Playstation 3.

The video above is demoing an iPhone running the iPhone 2.0 software (posted on YouTube). From the video, we can see that the rumor of the redesigned icons, and the Microsoft Exchange button added to email settings. I do have to say that I didn’t notice any major changes to the UI, but if you’ve seen any, please feel free to comment.

The iPhone 2.0 software is due this June and will be free for all iPhone users and a small fee for iPod Touch users. This video gives a little demo of what Apple has lined up for us in June. One thing they didn’t cover in the demo is SDK apps. The iPhone SDK will enable any developer to create apps and sell them at whatever price they choose for a fee paid to Apple of $99 and 30% of the apps price (if they decide to sell the applications).

For a while now, Skype for Windows has been far ahead then the version for Mac. Now, Skype has a released a new version with a couple of handy features that some of us may like. The most useful to me is the ability to add your whole address book into your Skype contacts, so you can easily send someone a text message or call them without having to look up their number (assuming you already have it in your address book).

The new version also features a volume slider on each call, so you can control the volume of just your call if necessary. The beta is available for download from Skype.com.

Read [Skype]