iPhone Approll

(Credit: YouMail)

YouMail, a free visual voice mail solution to organize cell phone messages like e-mail for online playback and response, announced on Thursday that customers can start viewing those same voice mail messages from their mobile phones.

By pointing the mobile browser to YouMail's home page, fans of the service can access their account with the usual login and pin to view contact's images, play back messages in any order, and forward or reply to voice messages in a form factor tailored from YouMail's servers to many high-end smartphones.

YouMail certainly isn't the first visual voice mail service to succeed in delivering transcribed messages to smartphones, which it does through a separate e-mail or SMS feature. Unlike some competitors for mobile voice message management, however, like PhoneTag (previously SimulScribe) and CallWave, YouMail's new service will retain the audio and organizational features of its rich online product.

The service will be ready for a wide variety of smartphones, YouMail said in a statement, including models from Research In Motion, Nokia, HTC, Morotola, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, and Palm. YouMail claims that YouMail's smartphone formula "even" works on iPhones, which already run on the full mobile Web with manufacturer Apple's Safari browser.

Good things happen to software publishers that listen to their users.

Fring, an aggressively growing company that builds a chat and cheap calling application for Symbian, iPhone, and Windows Mobile platforms, heeded a swell of feedback from iPod Touch users who had been using the pre-release iPhone version for jailbroken iPhones on the voiceless iPod Touch (review). On Friday, Fring announced a new pre-release version for the iPhone that also fixes a bug found when using the application on the iPod Touch.

Both sides were pleased that the initial experiment had worked, Fring reports, but not quite satisfied with the results.

(Credit: Fring)

It turns out that when applied to the iPod Touch, whose specifications were never considered when designing the iPhone version, Fring IM was a little rocky. Users who had tried it out couldn't see the text they'd punched in until after the message was already sent. The update, available through the application called Installer, should rectify the surprise oversight.

In a video tutorial on the Fring blog, iPod Touch users are reminded that the iPhone cousin is a silent device. Since there is no built-in microphone, Fring's international VoIP service is suspended on iPod Touches, leaving Fring for iPod Touch as a cross-platform IM service. There has been forum chatter about forging a workaround with the Touchmods microphone application, but forum contributors have attempted it with no luck.

As one contributor, blueridgebruce puts it, if Fring were to succeed to give the iPod Touch ... Read more

Shiny and glossy just like the iPhone itself is Fring, a relative newcomer to the VoIP-plus-IM communicator scene. Crowning itself the first true mobile VoIP solution for Apple's dream phone, Fring works with Skype, SIP, MSN Messenger (Windows Live Messenger), ICQ, Google Talk, Twitter, and Yahoo, though some of those services are clearly chat-only. CNET Executive Editor Tom Merritt shows you how to get started with Fring on your jailbroken iPhone in this Quick Tip video. If you like the program, you can still recommend Fring to friends who have to make do with merely Symbian, UIQ, and Windows Mobile phones (review).

Does this logo look familiar?

(Credit: ModMyiFone)

The latest third-party iPhone app to draw blogosphere buzz this morning is most definitely not Apple-approved.

The object of hilarity and defamation is VistaPerfection 2.0, a theme by developer Spec-Works that plops the Windows Vista GUI onto the iPhone. To run it, you'll need a jailbroken iPhone (see video), the SummerBoard app, and a wicked sense of humor.

Spec-Works reports that the application took "a couple days" to create and includes more than 90 icons, wallpaper, and sounds, including the Vista log-in and log-off chime and a revamped taskbar.

Your eyes do not deceive--Spec-Works has made iPhone Vista-friendly.

(Credit: ModMyiFone)

Quite a few tech bloggers have been happily jabbing away at the oxymoronic theme. Technabob, for instance, recommends it for those who are "ready and willing to deface [their] glorious chrome and glass iPhone with Microsoft's bloatware user interface."

The general consensus excuses VistaPerfection as a hack created for its own sake, though Zach Epstein of The Boy Genius Report charitably concedes that it might be useful for "a Vista addict [who has] begrudgingly picked up an iPhone but always loathed its clean UI."

It's true that design currents carry the visual style of Apple products into third-party Windows themes and apps, like ReadAir, ObjectDock, and the Macfox Firefox theme, and not the other way around. But that turning of tables is what makes the theme so deliciously amusing. VistaPerfection 2.0 does not come bundled with an installer, ... Read more

Yesterday social arts community and two time Webware 100 winner Deviant Art released a beautiful mobile version of its site that's been optimized for Apple's iPhone. I've been playing around with it this afternoon and it's a wonderfully simple way to explore the various art mediums that have made the community so popular. To access it, users simply need to navigate to DeviantArt.com on their handsets and they'll automatically be directed to the finger friendly version.

It shares a lot in common with Facebook's iPhone app, a design so successful that it's been featured in Apple's advertising for the device. However, unlike Facebook, DeviantArt's efforts rely more on a simple menu structure that lets you dig through its 1600 plus categories of art to explore only the bits that interest you. While simple and fairly fast to navigate (even over EDGE), once you get about four levels deep it gets a little cumbersome. Luckily, you're able to get to drill down to a specific category in about three menus. The real beauty is that you can hop back and forth between what's popular and what's new in any category you're in, and clicking on any item will open it up without taking you to a new page.

In addition to images and text items, DeviantArt has made available the entirety of its video collection. The videos can be played in full screen, and if you're logged in to your DeviantArt account you can bookmark them for later use. The same goes for any other content you come across. You're also able to visit user profiles like you would on the site, and browse through entire user galleries with just a few finger touches.

Coming in the future will be iPhone optimized versions of DeviantArts forums, news pages, and the the message center, which alerts users to new content submitted by users they've bookmarked. More shots after the break.

All of DeviantArt can now be accessed in your pocket with DeviantArt Mobile, made specifically for the iPhone. (click to enlarge)

(Credit: CNET Networks)

... Read more

As the iPhone continues to march across the globe, Google's special (and slick) interface that was introduced in mid-December has been limited to English speakers. However, yesterday the company rolled it out to 33 countries in 16 languages, including Chinese--despite the fact the handset is not available through any Chinese carriers.

More importantly, Google continues to create special mobile variations of its other pages, which now includes Google News and support for users of Google Apps. Google Apps users can now check their mail using the same interface regular Gmail users have been enjoying, with the added benefit of being signed in to use the other mobile Google services.

The updated news viewer allows users to browse by the front page or by section, and features a built-in search tool. It's still essentially a link repository to other third-party sites, but it's now far easier to parse through on smaller screens than its original format.

What really makes the updated News page shine is that it integrates YouTube videos in the related stories. If there are videos for a selected subject, you can view them as thumbnails, which when clicked will jump you to the handset's built-in YouTube viewer. Short of actually having Flash, this is the closest you'll get to being able to casually watch Web videos while browsing other news networks. You could also use a conversion tool like vTap or Avot mV, but this new system requires one less step.

I still ... Read more

One of Apple's biggest blunders in creating its own directory of iPhone Web apps was to make the site suited for desktop users instead of people on the portable handset.

While the company has since made it easy for people to bookmark Web apps onto their home screens by adding a quick link from inside of Safari Mobile, the "official" directory of Web apps continues to be unapproachable for iPhone users unless they're on a speedy Wi-Fi connection. Widget directory Widgetbox has come up with its own solution and launched a directory of iPhone-friendly widgets that can be installed on the home screen as mini widgetized Web apps.

The directory interface is completely iPhone-friendly, and to go alongside it there's a simple how-to guide to turning bits of Web content into widgets that can be added to the directory just by tagging your work with "iPhone." Users without any sort of Web development experience will be able to make their own iPhone widget apps using Widgetbox's widget-building wizard, which I'm assuming will get iPhone-centric size presets.

The one thing I found underwhelming with most of the example iPhone widgets is that they look just like they do in the directory instead of taking up the entire screen. They also come with Widgetbox branding and links back to the directory--two things which are bound to take crucial seconds to load while on an EDGE connection. However, it's still a lot better than having to load ... Read more

The legendary Museum of Modern Art in midtown Manhattan just got a bit more...modernized.

MoMA announced Monday that it has installed a museum-wide Wi-Fi network so that visitors can access a mobile Web site on handheld devices with HTML browsers, which basically means Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch. They can then load up audio tours and commentary; content is available in eight languages as well as in specialized versions for children, teenagers, and the visually impaired.

It's not clear whether the museum Wi-Fi will also let visitors access the Web as a whole, or just the internal museum site. Requests for clarification were not immediately answered.

Additionally, MoMA has put its library of audio and video programming into podcast format for Apple's iTunes Store's iTunes U education section: current and past audio programs, content from panels and lectures, and video clips from exhibit installations and artist interviews.

Museum visitors who are particularly information-hungry can also now use "interactive kiosks" in the form of a number of Apple's iMac computers stationed around MoMA, featuring detailed museum information, artist biographies, events listings, and e-card services.

Unless you're in Korea, the MySpace experience hasn't evolved much visually. Mobile users have it even worse with a stripped-down version that cuts out a few features in the name of being quick to load and working better on small screens.

However, developer Jake Marsh isn't willing to give up the latest and greatest features in the name of mobility, and has nearly completed a mobile port of MySpace for the iPhone that does a great job of copying the brilliant user interface of Facebook's iPhone app in the name of making MySpace more accessible to iPhone users.

While it lacks points for originality in the looks department, it makes up for it in functionality that's far easier to use than some of the solutions currently available in MySpace's official mobile version, and the one found on Helio's phones. One of its greatest feats is taking music, the centerpiece of MySpace, and letting you run the tracks right on your device, something you can't do because of the lack of Flash. It's also made it easier to subscribe to people's newsfeeds, something introduced this year with the apps platform that's not the central focus of the mobile app like it is for Facebook. Marsh has also implemented a photo viewer just like the one found on Facebook's app, letting you browse photos in album form instead of one at a time.

Update: Marsh got in contact with me ... Read more

For professional screen-recording software, it's hard to top Camtasia Studio, a popular--and pricey--application for capturing, editing, and producing screencasts, especially tutorials and presentations. One of Camtasia Studio's strengths is its well-rounded list of preset production values for multiple media formats, including Web-optimized Flash, DVD, and iPod. On Tuesday, TechSmith released Camtasia Studio 5.1, an update that officially packages your screen recordings as MV4 files for playback on the iPhone and iPod Touch. This is good news for owners of Apple's vanguard media players and great news for corporate Camtasia producers trying to reach them.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

In addition to adding support for the two touch-screen gadgets, Camtasia Studio 5.1 enhances a few other operations. For instance, users will now find a drop-down menu for a third audio track. The tools for adding and editing call outs have also been streamlined, and two new call outs have joined the library. Producers will appreciate that the slick Express Show template has opened up to FLV files, and that Camtasia Theater can now wrap FLV and Express Show files into a snazzy presentation that users can navigate on their own, instead of just SWF files.

Licensed users of Camtasia Studio 5 will receive the updates for free. Everyone else can download the 30-day trial.