SevenClick! Mobile Technology Evangelists

Some days ago we knew about the new Yahoo Go 3.0, rebuilt as a widget platform.

Now, we have noticed another information about this platform. As Reuters reports, Yahoo mobile Chief Marco Boerries has confirmed that Yahoo will make versions of its mobile services to run on phone platforms including Google’s Android (when it is up and running) and the iPhone (hinting it will make such an announcement at MacWorld).

This approach meets with Yahoo’s mobile strategy that claims to put its services on as many handsets as possible. In words of Marco Boerries, “Yahoo is ready to demonstrate its commitment to mix and match services of its own with those of rivals in a new, more open strategy…By offering Internet services that work on existing phones rather seeking to compete with mobile phone software of its own, Yahoo can reach hundreds of millions of phone users”.

Via MocoNews

Yesterday, we talked about four new Samsung launches.

Today this firm show us one more handset, Samsung SGH-F490, that ships spectacular features:

• EDGE/HSDPA connectivity
• 5 megapixels camera phone
• Video recorder 320×240 to 15 fps and music/video player with VGA resolution to 30fps
• 130 MB internal memory
• MicroSD card reader
• 3,2″ 16:9 finger touch screen
• Croix GUI (like Samsung Armani)

It also allows the conventional earphones use, through a 3.5mm jack, or earphones via Bluetooth.

The price for this outstanding cell phone will be 530€ and it will be for sale in February.

For sure, it’s a rival for Nokia N95 and iPhone in the field of multimedia smartphones.

Via Xataka Movil

[brightcove 1335896121]

Via EngadgetMobile we’ve reached ‘the Boy Genius Report’ blog, where we’ve found this 5 minutes long video of the next release of Windows Mobile.

There we can see some of the new features of the long-awaited Windows Mobile 6.1 and a comprehensive list of this new features and improved ones.

The look and feel of the GUI is better than 6.0 and IE also has some improvements. Anyway, it still is pretty far from iPhone’s Safari or Opera Mobile.

Via EngadgetMobile
Link BoyGenius

Yesterday, we talked about a company that aims to ‘iPhonize’ Windows Mobile PDAs. Today is none other than Google who tunes its web interface to better fit iPhone screens.

Surprisingly, Google has released this new interface just without any kind of announcement.

The applications that have been merged are the browser - of course -, Gmail, gCalendar, gReader, Notebook, Picasa, Docs. Indeed, almost all of the most important Google web apps available.

You can use your favorite web apps in a usable manner. Anyway, it’s a pity that this interface is only available for iPhone and not for any kind of PDA. I guess this is due to constraints on the most widespread browsers in PDAs.

I have tried it and I really like it. In fact, I think an interface like iPhone’s one fits really well with Google’s web apps, that hava simple design and put focus into functionality. Well, … at least, those who you use for reading information rather than writing.

Via TechCrunch

When we started developing our firsts JME projects, we had to deal with “the UI issue”. This is none other than when to make use of native JME UI or to develop a custom UI from basic drawing primitives.

Both options have its pros and cons, and if you are about to make such a decision, maybe this post, where Simon Judge recently made good considerations about this issue, could help you.

The fact is that we wanted to provide our users with a richer UI experience than native JME does today. Then, we have two options: developing our own UI framework, or… leveraging an existing one. And we decided to use J2ME Polish.

J2ME Polish is an open source project developed by Enough Software, a company based in Bremen, Germany and founded by the end of 2004. J2ME Polish is distributed under the GNU General Public License as well as commercial licenses. This way, when the source code of your mobile applications should not be published under the GNU GPL license - that is the usual case for many ISVs -, you can use one of the commercial licenses.

But J2ME is not only a GUI framework. It is an application framework where the set of functionality includes, besides GUI-related stuff, other things such as serialization, persistence, logging, localization, a game engine,…

We will cover some of this stuff in successive more in-depth posts.

Link J2MEPolish

iPhone and TouchFLO interactive interface systems are not new at all.

In 2003, MyOrigo, a Finnish company, presented a new mobile phone prototype with an innovative user interface called “Touch&Feel”. “MyDevice”, as they named this mobile phone, used “Intent”, a multimedia software platform developed by Tao Group.

MyDevice main characteristics were:

• Tri-band phone with GPRS
• Screen with 176×320 pixels
• QWERTY keyboard
• VGA camera
• MP3 player
• Personal Information Management Applications

But the really innovations of the MyOrigo phone were,

Movement Control
The user, moving his hand, could incline, scroll and resize the screen.

MyBook user interface
The interface allowed the user to use the device in the same way as a book, turning the screens as pages touching screen corners.

Mirroring
Inclining to the left or right MyDevice, the screen scrolled in the same way.

Johan Granhol, MyOrigo Sales & Marketing Vice president, announced the presentation day that several European carriers were interested in his technology (Telefonica Moviles in Spain was one of them), and he would be pleased to make a big announcement next months. But finally, and after 4 years, nobody knows anything more about this precocious device…

Otherwise, MyDevice has the honor to be the really iPhone and TouchFLO grandfather.

YouTube URL
FLV Video Link

[youtube HrzeiUvDZog nolink]

If you are a techie, one of the funniest things you can do in Internet is watch vision videos. In that way, one of our best SevenClick followers has sent us a great Intel Ultra Mobile vision video. Titled “Ultra Mobile: It lets me be me”, the video shows us how mobile technology is going to complete and make easiest (not change) our way of life.

Pay attention because you will discover some devices and technologies very similar to another ones that today are available.

• Nike+
• iPhone and multi-touch screens
• Media Center
• …

Enjoy it! Thanks Santiago N.

Very, very interesting article published by MIT Technology Review about new trends in mobile phone screens that will eventually allow to improve battery usage, doubling its life. Read it, you won’t regret!!!

Link MIT Technology Review

Opera has announced that its browser has been selected for Sony’s new BRAVIA Internet Video Link, a module that attaches to the back of new Bravia televisions. The goal of Sony is to incorporate access to Internet video content to the TV sets. Currently, the Internet Video Link is scheduled to be released only in United States.

Opera claims in the press release that Opera 9 SDK for Devices has allowed Sony itself to quickly integrate the browser into its module, what brings insight into the fact that they have not collabarated on develoment, but they have acted as a vendor.

This is a new sample of what Opera is doing about embedding its browser in any kind of device, that is becoming the leading strategy of the nordic vendor. We will see for sure many more devices including GUIs powered by Opera browser. Not only for surfing the web, but the interface to control the device itself.

Via error500
Link Opera’s CEO interview

[youtube 7t0Zhys5tWE]

This video shows the performance of a new iPhone-like keyboard for Windows Mobile, called PocketCM keyboard. It is not the first to appear, but it seems to work better than other implementations. It includes feedback on pressed keys and dictionary with autocorrection.

Will Microsoft include such a keyboard in the next release of Windows Mobile? We hope so. In the meantime, you can get this PocketCM keyboard here.

Via pocketnow.com