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.

Got an email from dev.mobi today saying they’re re-branding to mobiForge.

I’ve stated my .mobi opinions in the past and you can imagine I’m pretty happy about this. The dev.mobi tools, standards and docs are such a great resource for the mobile development community, and they shouldn’t be confused with the .mobi or not to .mobi debate.

Let’s just make great, standards-based mobile apps and sites.

Full text of the email is below.

Next Monday, you’ll see an exciting new development to dev.mobi. After two fantastic years in its current form, we have redesigned the site - and we are changing the name.

We’re proud to announce that dev.mobi will become mobiForge.

(Don’t worry, all your bookmarks will still work, the same great content is there - and of course it remains the world’s largest independent mobile development community! If you’re interested in the amazing opportunities and technologies of the mobile web, then this remains the site for you.)

Since we launched, dev.mobi has truly exceeded our greatest expectations - the size of the community, the content we’ve been lucky enough to publish, and the great feedback we’ve had from you.

Confucius said that “only the wisest and the stupidest cannot change”. He might not have been talking about web sites, but we do know how surprising it can be when a web site that you know and love changes overnight, and the name, navigation, and layout you’re used to suddenly disappear.

Hence this advance notice! (And to ask you kindly to tolerate a little planned downtime on Sunday, 14 September )

Most significantly, the navigational structure of the site will change. We have created hundreds of articles, blog posts and forums over the last two years, and they weren’t categorised particularly well. That’ll be fixed.

Secondly, as part of mobiForge, we’re launching a new directory service with listings of resources, site builders, companies, tools and even people that will help you get ahead in the mobile web. We think you’ll love it. (And if you want to make sure you’re on it, drop us a line at
tech@mtld.mobi)

We’re also unleashing a new vertical search feature. You’ll be able to search not only mobiForge, but a wide range of other mobile development resources from across the web: all in one place.

Finally, the site will have a very new look and feel, which I think will speak for itself. Let us know what you think.

As you know, we’re madly passionate about the mobile web. And we’re also passionate about helping the people that make it happen. People like you - the tens of thousands of designers, engineers, and technology professionals
- from all over the world - who are living the mobile development dream.

Many thanks for your support, your feedback and your continued participation in the community. We’d love to know what you think of the new site come Monday morning, and we’ll see you on the forums!

James, Ruadhan, Claire, and all here at the dotMobi team.

Quick thought on OneConnect.

Sure validates the whole “address book is your social network tree” meme we’ve been seeing.

Check out Fidg’t which is focused more heavily on this concept rather than just the aggregation to gain traffic approach Yahoo is taking (as well as Yoono, Friendfeed….).

Running cnn.com and nothing else, Firefox 3 is taking close to 100M of physical memory, and Chrome is using about 17.5M.

OK, I have del.icio.us and downthemall installed as plugins for Firefox, but come on.

Chrome is also much, much more snappy than FFX 3, but I’m sure you all know that by now.

Top it all off with the fact that Chrome barely has any chrome. On Vista, it puts the tab bar in the window titlebar.

Given the memory footprint and the very careful use of screen real estate, for any ultraportable machine, Chrome is going to be my new default browser. Hands down. This means any UMPC and/or netbook I use.

For the record, we’re getting into mobile phone territory with the memory footprint on this thing.

Update: As I add tabs, the memory footprint begins to lose to Firefox. It’s less pronounced at lower tab numbers (2 or 3) but up at 5-8, Firefox starts to win.

A quick note regarding my previous post on digicams with geotagging.

Even though it’s not a dedicated camera, the Nokia N96 seems to do this correctly. Check out about 3 minutes into the review video below.

You get auto geotagging, and you can pop them up on the internal mapping application and push them right to Flickr. This is the way it should be done.

As my collection of digital photos becomes ever larger (I’m at 14 gigs now), I look at their mass as a whole and grumble over the fact that none of them are tagged with anything other than basic EXIF data (for the most part). They’re all in relatively well-described folders, as subfolders of the year, but still - as a record of life passed on, it would really help people to understand then =if they had some semantics tacked on.

But who am I kidding, it’s hard enough keeping my mp3’s ID3 tags populated.

But geotagging is something I don’t have to think about, and gives a good bit of context to any photo without any work on my part. A bunch of mobile devices have this now, and iPhone 3G will have it (still trying to figure out if the iPhone 2.0 software will use the basic cell tower location in the original iPhone to geotag). But where are the true point and shoot digital cameras with GPS?

I know, it’s probably a hard problem. Though GPS chips are all over the place now, they still need time to get a fix. Digital cameras are turned on and off so quickly, they don’t have much of a chance to acquire a signal before they’re off again. So there has to be some idle state where it tries to acquire a new location while the device is “off”. At that point, you have issues of being in your pocket, and using up all your juice before you snap a photo. So yeah, it’s a tough problem.

But can we at least see a first stab at it? I’m perfectly happy getting to a location and asking the camera to get a fix first. It can then persist that data, so all subsequent lock-ons are super quick. The photo doesn’t have to be tagged exactly when it’s taken either. Usually the camera stays out of your pocket well after you take a shot, so the camera can spend some “off” time immediately after a shot to acquire and do some tagging.

There’s a practical solution here, I know it. Just let me be able to buy a Digital Elph with geotagging so at least some of my photos have some more context…

… or I could wait for image recognition software that asks me who people are, and tags everything automatically for me. Come to think of it, that shouldn’t be too hard right now either!

Lubna and David are setting up this month’s Mobile Monday NY. I really need to try to make this, but it’s just been too crazy to get into Manhattan lately.

Speakers TBD

When:
Monday, June 16 2008 at 6:30 PM (until 10:00 PM)

Where:
Sunshine Suites
12 Desbrosses Street
Between Hudson and Greenwich
Below Canal
Take the 1 or A, C, E to Canal Street stop and get off.

RSVP here.

The Windows Mobile skinning craze continues in full force with HTC demoing their new TouchFLO 3D interface.

I say skin, although this interface goes quite deep. You can read messages, view photos and play music and videos without leaving its pretty screen. However, just like the XPERIA and the HTC Touch, you still have ugly old Windows Mobile underneath.

People are clamoring for touch interfaces, and apparently Microsoft is attempting to catch up with Windows Mobile 7. But from all these touch product skins being released to great fanfare, it’s safe to say Microsoft’s well behind the game on this one, which will make it even tougher for Windows Mobile 7 to seem innovative when it’s finally released.