Mobhappy reports that the .mobi TLD was purchased by the the registrar that owns the .info TLD. I’ll just call it shelved.

I’d call it one of the signposts to the end of the mobile teething era.

I’ve expressed my opinions on a separate .mobi domain before, and I’m glad I can finally end the conversation.

As the web continues to evolve as an application platform, varying usage contexts (mobile and otherwise) have been integrated into its frameworks and interaction design principles. Combined with the evolution of client-side interface elements (pinch to zoom, DOM-aware taps to zoom, reflowing where needed) that help bridge the gap, we’re at a pretty decent spot now. All without having to think about what URL to go to.

Oh and the mobile site promotion argument? Well that went out with device app stores and other discovery mechanisms.

So let’s celebrate the true survivors of the mobile teething era: all of the tools, frameworks and companies that have sprung up to ease creation of products, apps, and content that seamlessly span the desktop and mobile contexts. It’s all about ubiquitous access to what you want, and we’re getting there.

With the highly anticipated (at least by me) switchover of Grandcentral to Google’s infrastructure, they cleared up one dealbreaker that stopped me from using it regularly: Call Presentation. This feature announces each incoming call after you pick up, and gave you some options before you can actually start talking. Not cool.

Now that I can turn Call Presentation off, I’ve taken the first step integrating it into my life. Though I’m not ready to start giving out my Google Voice number to everyone, it can still solve a pretty annoying problem without anyone using its number directly.

When I’m home, my iPhone stays connected to my PC in my office on the second floor. I don’t carry it around the house with me. When I’m in this situation, I want calls to my iPhone to be forwarded to my home phone, and/or in some cases, my Gizmo SIP number running on my Nokia tablet.

Let’s start with the forwarding part. The iPhone itself can only turn forwarding on or off completely. I don’t want to have to manage this setting manually, and from my research, there really aren’t any reliable apps that will do forwarding automatically based on location. Luckily, there are manual codes for AT&T that can do some selective forwarding. Sorry international readers, you’ll have to look them up for your own carrier. I found them on some forum site (linked above), but I’m reprinting them here. Note that [dest] is the number you want to forward to (eg +12025551234) and [sec] is the number of seconds to let the phone ring before forwarding (in the no answer case). [sec] can range from 5-30 in 5 second increments.

Forward All:
Activate: *21*[dest]*11#
Cancel & Retain: #21*11#
Re-establish: *21*11#
Cancel & Forget: ##21*11#
Status: *#21*11#

If Busy:
Activate: *67*[dest]*11#
Cancel & Retain: #67*11#
Re-establish: *67*11#
Cancel & Forget: ##67*11#
Status: *#67*11#

if no answer:
Activate: *61*[dest]*11*[sec]#
Cancel & Retain: #61*11#
Re-establish: *61*11#
Cancel & Forget: ##61*11#
Status: *#61*11#

If Unreachable:
Activate: *62*[dest]*11#
Cancel & Retain: #62*11#
Re-establish: *62*11#
Cancel & Forget: ##62*11#
Status: *#62*11#

While testing, I found that the activate code works as expected (15 seconds seems about right for me), and the Cancel & Retain codes brought it right back to using the iPhone visual voicemail.

If you want to ignore the whole Google Voice thing, you can just use this to forward calls selectively to any number. You can stop reading now and go play.

However for me, I spend some time away from home for work, and forwarding consistently to the home phone doesn’t work in those cases. Sometimes I want to stop forwarding and have calls go to my mobile, or forward to Gizmo on my laptop. This is where I use Google Voice to easily switch it up.

Google Voice allows a quick switch between any phones you have configured with it. Through their web interface, I can set it to my iPhone or Gizmo while I’m away. So I don’t have to remember any forwarding codes. Plus I get web-based voicemail and email transcription through Google Voice.

So there you have it. A very handy way to use Google Voice without giving anyone the number. Plus a great way to stop having to chase down your iPhone (or any other phone on AT&T!) when it rings.

Testing to see if I publish a post via the Wordpress iPhone app, if the Twitter Updater Wordpress plugin will send a tweet about it.

Update: No – boo. Looks like it has to be from the web UI.

After using it as my desktop/laptop/mobile bookmark syncing service of choice, I’ve officially ditched Del.icio.us..

For a while, it was the only game in town. With its decent Firefox plugin, I could bookmark and sync between machines easily. In addition, I could create mobile landing pages that would have only the bookmarks I wanted for my devices. Finally, the Bookmarks application for iPhone gave me a nice native UI for all my bookmarks. Easy as pie.

But the whole damn thing is just way too socially-focused and tag-heavy for me. I keep very little bookmarks. My personal notes and pages to remember go in Evernote (which has its own problems, but I’m hoping for the best). So I don’t need to tag every damn thing. Their concept of collections (or whatever they called it) just added complexity and didn’t have a good analog in the browser plugin.

So here I am at Foxmarks (or XMarks, or whatever they’re calling it now). Better browser syncing with more browser support, password syncing, and an iPhone-optimized web UI that works as well if not better than the Del.icio.us bookmarks app.

Social linking. Yeah I’m a little biased since it’s my company, but AddThis is where it’s at if you want to share links. Nonetheless, I don’t share links often, and I certainly don’t need it in my basic bookmark syncing utility.

I hate running a dedicated Twitter client, and since I don’t display my status bar in Firefox, (I want screen real estate, not status!) there aren’t really any good quick look plugins that work for me either.

GeekTool solves this by combining a lot of ambient-style updates into a single low-memory footprint that nestles nicely into my desktop background.

Many people on Twitter have been asking me to post how I did my GeekTool Twitter update – so here we go.

Keep in mind, this is a quick hack using cURL, SED and AWK, and I’m assuming you know some basic commandline skills. So your mileage may vary. But it has proven pretty reliable for me.

The basic flow is the following

1. - Use a script to pull the latest Twitter update and extract the entries
2. - Stick the parsed entries in a text file as a buffer. If the network is unavailable on a given update, GeekTool displays the text file and not the latest result, so your pretty ambient Twitter display doesn’t go black all of a sudden
3. - Tell GeekTool to continuously display the buffer text file

First, grab this script save it to disk (somewhere under your home dir like ~/bin would be good).

Edit the script with your favorite text exitor. You’ll notice the <username> and <password> in there. Substitute the credentials for the account you want to monitor. Also notice that the script uses two temporary files in your home directory. You can change those if you want.

Now open Terminal and make the file executable (chmod a+x <filename>)

Finally, open the GeekTool preference pane and create a new group for your Twitter updates. Format it how you want, and enter the command as depicted in the image below.

Note that the path there (~rlabarca/bin/twitter.sh) is where I have my twitter.sh script. Change that to where you saved the script.

You should now be seeing twitter updates. If you’re having trouble, try running the script on the commandline to see any errors generated. Also take a peek in the temp files to see the output.

Update: Fixed the parsing issue. Also there was an extra space in the script I posted, breaking sed. That’s fixed. Thanks Ross!

Happy Twittering!

Clearspring and AddThis are nominated in a few categories in the Mashable Open Web Awards!

We’ve made a few widgets to spread around and get people voting one for each category.

Please use the widgets to vote and share them around! You can vote once per day per category – just enter your email address and hit “Vote Now”. Make sure to confirm your vote by clicking on the verification email that’s sent.

Everyone at Clearspring/AddThis thank you for the support!

Update: Voting is closed, thanks everyone for the support!

I made a Clearspring widget from the NY Times’ Election Results popup. Check it out:

You can share it around by clicking Get & Share.

Recently I jailbroke my iPhone and installed several apps that have changed my iPhone 3G from an excellent phone to the perfect phone for my needs. I wanted to recount exactly how this happened.

First, a little background. I frequently travel from Long Island to Washington DC to spend time at the Clearspring McLean office. On this trip, I have an AC outlet pretty much most of the way. On the LIRR, I am usually able to grab the one or two random seats with a power port near them, and the Amtrak from Penn to Union Station has power at each seat. To supplement this, in case I end up with no power for a while, I have a Black & Decker portable charging brick that will bring the phone from dead to pretty close to full.

So, as you probably guessed, I use this phone without mercy on battery life for the entire trip.

PDANet

PDANet is an app that showed up ever so briefly in the official App Store but was quickly removed. (Update: It was actually NetShare that was on the App Store briefly. PDANet has been rejected so far).

No wonder – it is the easiest way to connect any device that can create an ad-hoc network. Hands down. Basically, create a peer-to-peer network on your mac or PC, have the iPhone connect to it, and run PDANet.

The good news is that you can now easily grab it from Cydia after you jailbreak your iPhone.

You can even exit the application and use the phone while it keeps the connection going. It has been absolutely rock solid – keeping the Mac-iPhone link no matter how flaky the 3G reception is. My old solution of a bluetooth connection to a Nokia N75 was nothing like this. More trouble than it was worth.

A word of warning, once you run PDANet, even if you shut off the routing function, it still keeps a zombie process alive that doesn’t use any cycles but sucks a little RAM. Run top in terminal to see it and kill it. I haven’t found it affecting performance at all if I leave it alone. (Update: They have a new release that doesn’t leave this process hanging around. Beautiful.)

Backgrounder

Backgrounder is the golden boy release of last week. Essentially it hooks into your home button and provides three levels of exit to an app.

If you push the home button, the app exits, as usual. If you hold it for a bit, you get a notice saying that if you let go now, the app will be run in the background. If you hold it for much longer, you get a force quit, like normal.

If you’re not afraid of the terminal, you can edit its prefs file to add apps that you want to run in the background all the time. With its latest release, app developers can even add hooks in their apps to run in the background through a menu option.

So what can you do with this? Well the big news is any streaming media apps (Pandora, FlyCast, LastFM…) can be placed in the background and continue to stream while you check mail, browse the web, etc. I don’t think I need to tell you how huge this is. I’ve tried it with Pandora and FlyCast, and both worked reliably. However, if you use too much memory, it seems that the OS swoops in and terminates your background app to make room. But if you keep it civil, you’ll have an excellent experience.

BeeJive IM

Speaking about excellent experiences, BeeJive IM (also released this week) is the best IM application I’ve ever used for a mobile device, hands down.

First of all, it supports Jabber – a necessity for me to talk to my Clearspring colleagues. You’d be surprised how many mobile IM apps I’ve used that have been decent but have excluded this transport.

Second, it holds a rock-solid connection. Sure the data connection may drop out once in a while, but it proxies your connection through BeeJive’s servers. When it can’t get the message through to the app (even if the app is closed) it chucks it off through email. Add Push messaging to this combo and you’ve got yourself a pretty guaranteed delivery system. It will log you off automatically if you don’t log back into the app after a configurable amount of time.

No IM connection has been this solid on a mobile device for me. The only ones that have come close are the AT&T IM apps on Windows Mobile devices. But this reliability came at a price – SMS delivery. I’m sorry, I’m not using up my SMS plan with IMs.

Now let’s take BeeJive and add Backgrounder into the mix. If you background BeeJive, you get an updated new message count on the icon, as well as sound and buzz alert to new IMs. And again, if you get disconnected, you’re safe in the knowledge you’ll get it through email.

Mobile Scrobbler

So now I’m on my iPhone, my Mac is connected, my IM is running in the background, and I’m playing some tunes local on the phone.

Scrobble for iPhone (also available through Cydia) is a simple daemon that reports your listening habits to LastFM over WiFi, 3G or EDGE. Totally works, hangs out in the background, doesn’t use much resources. Done and done.

Terminal Assist to VPN

VPN worked on iPhone out the box connecting to Clearspring’s Cisco VPN, however the local DNS never registered. Easy fix with a simple /etc/hosts entry. But this could only be done if I jailbroke and installed the terminal.

As I said – iPhone becomes exponentially more amazing if you jailbreak it, install the right apps, and take the time to find solutions to your usage problems. It just so happens that there has been a recent rash of both official and jailbroken apps that have made many more things possible with the device, and has made it an even more effective tool in my life.

Oh yeah, and I wrote and published this post on my mac, connected through PDANet on the train to DC. Just perfect.

We’ve been working with Transpera on a collaboration and we’re starting to execute on the plan now.

Their platform is awesome to bring video mobile in the easiest way possible. Clearspring enhances the service by integrating it with widgets and enabling web to mobile, mobile to mobile and mobile to web syndication.

Great company, great product, and great people and we’re happy to be working with them.

From Fierce Wireless:

Transpera, providers of the first comprehensive solution to monetize Web video on mobile phones, today announced a significant partnership with Clearspring Technologies, the leading widget network, to further integrate its mobile video service offerings by way of online widgets. The deal includes implementation of Clearspring’s online widget technology, featuring the “Send-to-Mobile” capability powered by Transpera, where a user can send a video to a mobile phone from a widget.

Widgets are movable, sharable mini-applications used by consumers to craft custom online experiences. Audiences can create widgets of their favorite video content, for example, and post it to their web page, start page, blog or social networking profiles on Facebook or MySpace, for easy access and interaction with the content of their choice on a daily basis.

Clearspring, who distributes and manages widget capabilities for a vast number of premium content sites, will now integrate its mobile offering with Transpera’s “Send-to-Mobile” feature, allowing users to share their favorite online video content to their phone or their friend’s phone. From the widget, users are prompted to type in the phone number of any video-capable device to which they want the video sent. Transpera’s platform instantly delivers the requested video to the mobile phone, along with additional mobile features that let users share videos mobile-to-mobile via “Send-to-Friend,” search for and save favorites, and more. Both the online widget and mobile video service serve targeted, dynamic mobile advertising.

The sharing of digital content has become a commonplace form of communications, especially among social networking and mobile users. According to comScore’s most recent WidgetMetrics report, Clearspring leads the U.S. with over 57 million unique monthly views. The estimate for monthly unique widget views worldwide now exceeds 600 million. Clearspring powers widget syndication across the web and onto the desktop. By introducing Transpera’s mobile video services and advertising platform, the new partnership greatly extends Clearspring’s mobile capabilities to video publishers and advertisers, as well as drives increased usage from consumers.

“This partnership marks the continual commitment by Clearspring to respond to growing consumer demand for more personalized experiences across the Web, desktop and now, mobile,” said Jay Rappaport, chief operating officer, Clearspring Technologies. “Our relationship with Transpera is a natural fit. Together, we bring even more video-viewing experiences to the user, as well as open up new monetization opportunities for video publishers and advertisers.”

“This is an exciting time for Transpera,” said Frank Barbieri, founder & CEO, Transpera. “Our relationship with Clearspring is a key component toward our goal of building the largest, free ad-supported, mobile video network in North America. Our partnership will be instrumental in bringing the mobile video experience to online audiences.”

Earlier this month, Transpera announced plans to deliver mobile video services, along with targeted, dynamic mobile advertising for several of the nation’s most prestigious entertainment brands including: MTV Networks (MTVN), a unit of Viacom (NYSE: VIA) (NYSE: VIA.B), Discovery Communications, AccuWeather.com®, the Travel Channel and Next New Networks. These companies join an already impressive roster of customers that includes CBS News, Associated Press, Revision3, Break.com, maniaTV, eBaumsWorld and more.

About Transpera

Transpera provides the industry’s first comprehensive platform for monetizing Web videos on mobile phones. The company’s award winning mobile video delivery and advertising platform provides online content owners, network operators and advertisers with a turnkey solution that connects all the necessary pieces involved in successful and profitable mobile video deployments. Powering mobile video channels for such premium online video brands as AccuWeather.com, Associated Press, Break.com, CBS News, Discovery Communications, Ebaum’s World, Fox Reality Channel, maniaTV, MTV Networks, Next New Networks, Revision3, Travel Channel, Zoovision and more, Transpera is quickly building the largest free mobile video network in North America. Transpera is based in Santa Monica, Calif. and is funded by top venture firms Flybridge Capital (formerly IDG Ventures), Intel Capital, and First Round Capital Ventures. For more information, visit www.transpera.com.

About Clearspring

Clearspring is the leading provider of distribution, management and monetization services for widgets and other distributable Web content. Clearspring’s free sharing services enable publishers and developers to distribute and track viral digital content to the most popular destinations, including social networks, start pages, bookmarking sites, blogs, mobile devices and desktop platforms. The company delivers billions of impressions every month working with the world’s most prominent brands, media companies and Web 2.0 businesses. The company also provides new monetization opportunities for publishers and developers using the Clearspring platform by allowing them to seamlessly integrate advertising-based services in their distributable Web content. To learn more, visit www.clearspring.com.

The names of companies mentioned herein are trademarks of their respective owners and should be treated as such. Transpera is a registered trademark of Transpera, Inc.

Even though the camera sucks, it’s still nice to have the iPhone geotag photos you take with it.

There are many apps that upload these photos to Flickr and place them on the Flickr geotagged map. However I tend to sync all my iPhone photos to my PC first, and then use FlickrSync periodically to keep my local library in sync with Flickr.

Unfortunately, there was a critical problem with doing things this way. Flickr wasn’t placing the geotagged photos taken with my iPhone on the map. Basically, it wasn’t reading the EXIF data to populate its own geo fields.

After finding this post in the Flickr forums, I visited this page to turn EXIF geo import on for new photos, and then visited here to go back through my old photos and reprocess the ones with geo data.

Now I’m all set and have a (sparsely) populated map.