07.10.07
Digg Beta on the iPhone
A couple of weeks back I wrote about me not being able to properly use Digg on my iPhone. Well my prayers have been answered, as Digg has an iPhone interface they are now beta testing.
07.09.07
iPhone IM - Instant Messaging is Here
Lots of people have been trying to tackle the lack of an instant messaging application since even before the iPhone launched. Since I am not a big texter, but I do like to use IM, this was a big deal to me. Unfortunately, I am old school so almost all of my IM is done via ICQ. Some of the pre-iPhone sites that were doing this, only offered AIM. Other web-based IM applications like Meebo, were simply still too cumbersome to use on the iPhone. Now everything is right with the world. Beejive has introduced their ALPHA Instant Messanging Client. It supports Gtalk, AIM, ICQ, MSN and the rest. The display for chat mimics the text bubbles used in SMS on the iPhone. I got a chance to thoroughly test it for several hours today while in a car, and on Edge it was working wonderfully. It uses cookies to remember your settings, and you can login to all of your accounts at once if you like. It may not be a perfect integrated application, but for an application still in alpha testing, I am impressed. It has made it possible for me to legitimately use IM on the iPhone for the first time without any hassles.
07.01.07
iPhone Games
MacMost has released 3 games on their website to work with the iPhone. If you visit their site on a regular computer you will see everything is oversized. This is a good thing as when you bring it up on the iPhone it is the perfect size. That makes me think I need an iPhone skin for this blog. So any skin designers out there, please let me know.
As for the games you have iPhone Match 3. It took me a minute to know what I was supposed to be trying to do, but it works. I also found there was enough space to get the individual objects for the most part.
The second game is Collapsing Blocks. I did not even try zooming in, but just at a normal viewing I found it impossible to select blocks with any accuracy. I was essentially just mashing the screen waiting for something to happen.
The third game is Suduko. You get a choice of playing on Easy, Medium, or Hard settings. I will be honest I don’t really understand Sudoko, but I did play around with it. It again looks like it will be a problem with the size of the blocks on the screen, but playing it, I was able to accurately pick the squares and choose a number with few mistakes.
All in all I say a good start for the iPhone web application community. I am very pleased to already see stuff coming out. I think this only means more good things to come. You can check out the MacMost games here.
06.25.07
Texas Hold ‘Em Poker for the iPhone
ZDNet and other sources have been reporting that Scenario Poker is making a Texas Hold’Em game for the iPhone. This is great news for my mother who is a massive Poker fan, but who will not be getting an iPhone. I think it will be a nice diversion, but I am waiting for the first MMORPG to come out for the iPhone myself.
06.24.07
MonkeyByte Newspaper Applications for iPhone
MonkeyByte has announced two widget applications they are working on for the iPhone. Both of them involve making available local newspapers, The San Leandro Times, and Castro Valley Forum, in the form of widgets. Of course these could both be read via Safari as websites, so we are not sure what evil genius is at work here.
You can see demos of how these papers will show up on the iPhone:
iPhone iChat
Someone has made an AIM interface webpage, that supposedly will allow you to access and use AIM with your iPhone. All your AIM data will go through this site. They claim they do not keep any of the data, but from a security standpoint I would be extremely careful. You will be exposing your account information to a third party. I do think it is the first step in a lot of potential web apps that will work in Safari on the iPhone. I think the software app development is probably the thing that has me the most excited. I expect we will see a lot of different options in the future.
You can visit the iChat for iPhone site here.
