think differently big

Nokia Building an Android Phone

The rumors that Google might be building its own Android phone have been ☞ revived once again. I don’t think that would be a really big surprise. At the end of the day, just imagine for a second that the Android market will not take off even if there are ☞ quite a few devices available and ☞ new devices are announced every day. Google launching his own phone would probably be the last chance as that will most probably guarantee a lot of buzz and would attract a lot of users.

But let’s pause for a moment and think what would happen if one of the current market leaders would try to build an Android phone. Can you imagine Nokia launching an Android phone called Nandroid97, or RIM launching an Android phone called AndroBerry or even Apple launching an iNdroid?

Before jumping up and screaming that’s totally stupid (which I agree that’s probably 1000% correct) lets just imagine that due to the losses registered for the first time in the last decade and due to their platform ☞ not seeming to catch up with the competitors’, Nokia would decide to finally ditch ☞ Symbian and build a phone on the ☞ Android platform.

Nokia probably still has a lot of Java developers from their J2ME era. While not similar, these guys could start developing on Android almost right away and leave the company focusing mainly on innovating on the devices. Plus Nokia will not have to invest even more time and money into their own market place (Ovi Store) and could innovate their “cloud” offering (and why not push it as the common Android cloud).

So, what are the odds of seeing an Android phone made by Nokia (Nandroid97)?

Smartphone Share Market

I don’t think there’s anything it should be added:

Apple is growing astonishingly fast. RIM is huge in the U.S. Nokia is huge in Europe. Microsoft is embarrassing itself.

— John Gruber (Daring Fireball) on Smart-Phone Market Update

iPhone Scanner

I know this will sound a bit weird, but I still do a lot of pen and paper. Well, I am not writing any books or novels, but rather jotting down different thoughts, ideas, possible solutions. And even if I don’t have talent I do a lot of “The back of the napkin” kind of drawings.

The thing I’ve always missed is an easy way to move from paper to digital. In the beginnings I was using my camera to capture paper shots. Then I have tried using my multi-functional printer. Unfortunately all these felt like a hassle.

But last month things have started to look better. I’ve bought myself a LiveScribe pen and since then I’m extremely happy with it. Unfortunately there are times when I don’t have it with me or I am missing the special LiveScribe paper, so I just use my Pilot pens (G-2 Pro and Shaker-X). So, I had to continue my search for the perfect way or tools to move from paper to digital.

Today, I’d like to introduce you to a couple of solutions that I have found lately.

JotNot Scanner vs finarX Capture

These two iPhone apps will transform your iPhone into a portable scanner. Basically, both of them allow you to shoot anything from a document, receipt, business card to a whiteboard and have it on your iPhone.

In case you are wondering how is this different from just taking a picture, then it looks like both these applications are offering support for free rectangular cropping and also performing some advanced processing on the pictures to remove the noise.

So, let’s take a quick look at their features. I have emphasized only those features unique to one or the other of the apps.

JotNot Scanner

• email scans as PDFs, PNGs, or JPEGs
• free rectangular-like cropping
• automatic paper sizing (letter, legal, a4)
• integration with Photo library
• WiFi server to allow access PDFs from your computer
• Evernote integration

Note: while using the Evernote integration, in case you are using the free Evernote account you may quickly get over your monthly quota.

finarX Capture

• email scans as PDFs or single images in full resolutions
• free rectangular-like cropping
• save all images in film roll
• convert images to greyscale or black&white
• create multi-page PDFs
• WiFi server to allow access from your computer

So the question is which one should you get? Unfortunately, I have no idea as I haven’t had the opportunity to test any of them. I just went through the tedious job to compile all the above information by searching through application descriptions, reviews, forum comments, etc. So, if you’d like me to test them and provide more details please send me a free code at iphoneapps at mypopescu dot com.

In case you don’t own an iPhone, then not everything is lost. There seems to be two online services offering similar functionality: ☞ scanR (requires a monthly fee) and ☞ Qipit (which apparently is free).

TheTumbler Tumblr iPhone App Goes on Promotion

Alternative Tumblr iPhone client: TheTumbler goes on promotion for $.99 (from initial $1.99). I assume this comes in reaction to the announcement of the official Tumblr 1.1 for iPhone and my advise would be to wait for the official Tumblr release as I really have high hopes of it (even if none of them was confirmed)

Tumblr, Posterous and the iPhone Community

I am just wondering if Posterous has a larger ☞ iPhone community than ☞ Tumblr. Judging by the number of posts, I’d say that it looks so.

Another aspect would be the iPhone support for Tumblr vs Posterous. I heard that Posterous is into email big time and that Tumblr has submitted a new iPhone app version, which I hope to bring a lot of new features.

But at the end of the day it is about people. So, what do you think?

17 iPhone Apps I’d Like to Test

Here is a list of 17 iPhone apps that I’d really like to test and review (is this number showing that I’m an iPhone geek?):

• iBlueSky: I am an iThoughts user and iBlueSky seems to be the only other on par mindmapping iPhone app
• MobileRSS and Byline: I have already written about my frustrations with Google Reader, so any iPhone RSS app that would give me those missing features would be more than welcome.
• Tweetie 2: I have heard so many good things about it, that even if I’m already using 6 different iPhone Twitter apps, I’d definitely like to give it a spin
• Things: while I prefer very basic task managers, this is another iPhone app that I’ve heard a lot about
• JotNot Scanner and finarX Capture: these are some very geeky iPhone apps that are basically transforming the iPhone into a portable scanner.
• Notebooks and Awesome Notes: these are among the top advertised note taking apps for the iPhone. I am currently using a combination of 3 other note taking apps others: WriteRoom which has support for text expanders that make writing a lot easier and may be sometimes available on promotions, Fliq Notes and Evernote. But even if they didn’t come first on my feature set evaluation, I’d still like to give them a try.
• The remote desktop access apps (I cannot imagine if any of these are really usable):
  • Mocha VNC
  • VNC Pocket Office
  • Jaadu VNC
  • iSSH - SSH/VNC Console
  • Remote Desktop
  • RDM+ Remote Desktop
• last, but not least, ScrumWall: a task management application that might be as simple as I’d like it to be (you can see a scrum wall at work here)

So if you can send me an app code for any of the above iPhone apps, I’d be happy to take it for a ride and report back. You can contact me at iphoneapps [at] mypopescu.com

Better GMail for iPhone

The mobile GMail version is probably the best mobile application for Google products. At the other end of the spectrum is the Google Reader, missing so many features that are almost making it unusable.

Anyways, the mobile GMail is not perfect either. Leaving aside the fact that it is not possible to attach pictures, which would be a nice to have feature, the most annoying thing about it is the small and almost unusable message input box. While you will probably be able to write a first email, answering to an email will be really difficult, as that input box is just extremely small and it completely lacks scrollbars.

Being a heavy GMail user, I’ve been looking for a possible alternative that would basically offer all the GMail goodies (threading, labels, etc.), but also have a better input form for writing emails.

For the last couple of days I’ve been the extremely happy user of such an application: GMateMail, which while using the original interface is addressing exactly these pain points. Plus it offers access to multiple accounts including Google Apps accounts.

Unfortunately, it looks like for the last 24 hours GMateMail is broken as it requires you to login for each action. Considering that this will probably require the release of a new version of GMateMail and that would need to go through the lengthy and painful Apple approval process, I’ve already started to look for alternatives.

And it looks like there might be such an alternative: iGMail. Anyways, except the official description (which as always is talking about how great the app is, but forgets to mention a feature set), I’m not able to find any additional information. So, here are my questions for anyone that gave it a try:

• Does iGmail support multiple accounts?
• Does iGmail support Google Apps accounts?
• Is there any support for scrolling the text area while writing/responding to emails?
• Can someone explain what are those arrows on the app screenshots?
• Why is there no feedback or contact information of the app developer?

If anyone can provide additional details about this app, I’d be both thankful and happy to update the post.

Reading PDFs on the iPhone

A guide for reading PDFs on the iPhone. Unfortunately it doesn’t look simple at all. In case you are into PDFs I’d recommend to take a look at specialized iPhone PDF Readers review and be sure to also check one of my favorites: PDF Good Reader as these will definitely make things really simple.

Here are some simple steps to getting your PDF files on your iPhone, in a very readable format. You will need:

• An iPhone
• A PDF
• Adobe Acrobat Pro (or the free trial)
• Optional: A text editor with good ‘find and replace’ (I used Dreamweaver)
• Somewhere to host your file (upload it somewhere)
• Instapaper (preferably the Pro version, as it saves your position!)

— read more on webbunny

Don’t be shy and let us know if you are using a specific approach or you have picked one of the reviewed PDF reader apps.

Tumblr iPhone 1.1 is off for review!

I’ve been quite unhappy so far with the Tumblr app. I mean for read access it was quite good, but definitely not something that helped me push out new posts. So, I really hope this messages is not just pure PR.

Calling this release just a 1.1 was hard because there’s so many ne–

Well, you’ll see.

— via david via Jeff Rock

Now let me do an exercise. I’d tell you what I’d like to see in the upcoming version and then once it will become available we will cross check the list.

1. Custom iPhone bookmarklet that triggers the app. Basically instead of the normal web bookmarklet, this one would instead fire up the Tumblr app and get the fields filled in.

2. Multiple drafts. Supporting multiple offline drafts would allow someone to create and work on multiple posts.

3. Sync: if you have multiple offline drafts then you’ll want to push some of them live once you get connected.

4. Editable access: the first version allowed posting new entries but there was no way you could edit existing ones within the app. The new version would provide both types of operations

5. Queueing posts: this feature was completely missing from the iPhone Tumblr app.

6. Multiple photo posts: this feature was launched by Tumblr after the iPhone app was out, so hopefully it will be supported by the new version.

7. Text entry image support: this feature was launched just a couple of days ago and while I’ve always missed it, I haven’t tested it yet (basically I replaced the normal process with a Tumblr specific one: create a private post with the photo and then reference it from the new entry). I’d love to have this feature in the new Tumblr iPhone app, but I think the chances are low.

I guess that would be all on my side. So, let the bets begin!

Read more other articles from the iPhone apps reviews series.