apps

eBay gets its own native iPhone app (update)

On Monday, eBay announced and demonstrated its new Auctions app at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. Users can log in to their accounts to buy and sell items wherever they are. The app integrates with Webkit, allowing people to write out full descriptions just like they would in Safari, which has been formatted to match the finger-friendly screen. Users can also browse and sort through auction photos the same way they're used to doing with native albums.

While eBay has recently been taking steps to improve its Web 2.0 initiatives with social widgets and a really slick looking Adobe Air app, … Read more

SlingPlayer wants to come to the 3G iPhone

Sling Media has plans to connect your Slingbox to Apple's 3G iPhone. But don't get too excited; there's no release date set yet.

Sling showed us a brief demonstration of what the company's mobile application, SlingPlayer, looks like on a jailbroken first-generation iPhone. It's merely a proof of concept, the company says, to demonstrate how superduperexcited it is to get started on an actual product.

This is, of course, all assuming that Steve Jobs announces the 3G iPhone Monday at the opening of Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, which is all but assured at this … Read more

Third-party iPhone applications to arrive Monday

The era of officially sanctioned iPhone applications should kick off on Monday.

That's the same day Apple CEO Steve Jobs is expected to take the stage at the Moscone Center to unveil the next-generation iPhone at the company's annual Worldwide Developers' Conference. A source at a software company that has been working on a native iPhone application tells us the company is getting ready to launch that application on Monday, which could also imply that Apple's App Store will be up and running that day.

The App Store is going to be the only way to get … Read more

Google modernizes Web software tool

Google plans to release later this week a near-final version of the Google Web Toolkit 1.5, software designed to ease the onerous parts of writing sophisticated Web-based software.

GWT 1.5 includes support for Java 5, a version of the Sun Microsystems programming language released in 2006, and produces software that runs about 1.2 to 2 times faster for complex Web applications, said Bruce Johnson, Google's engineering manager for GWT.

The new software fuels Google's ambition to make the Web a much richer software environment--an ambition on display Wednesday and Thursday at the Google I/… Read more

Google to preach Web 2.0 gospel to developers

Just because Google so obviously loves the idea of cloud computing, don't think the company doesn't care about what happens at the other end of the network connection, too.

As former President Bill Clinton used to say, there's a third way: Google wants to improve technology on both the server in the cloud and on the client running a Web browser. The search giant will detail its approach to at least 2,800 developers paying to attend the first Google I/O conference this week in San Francisco.

There's been a long-running tension among computing companies … Read more

The Real Deal 111: Geolocation

Rafe and Tom talk about the new apps and services that use geolocation. They help you find people and help people find you. But is that a good thing? Listen now: Download today's podcast Where 2.0 ConferenceWeb apps that know where you areDodgeball, Brightkite, Fire Eagle, Trippit, DopplrWhy? Know where friends/associates areso they can find youCar - Dash NavigatorTraffic reportrouting around jamsInteresting new startups http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9942507-2.htmlVery few companies do this right http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9940433-2.htmlPhilosophical discussionWhat if I don't want to be found-------------------------Next episode - Virtualization

The iPhone finally gets proper Web widgets

Despite the iPhone app store being weeks away from launch, developer Intelliborn has just released a stellar application for users with jailbroken iPhones. Switchers from Windows Mobile phones who missed the "today" screen that lists a gathering of small bits of information on one screen essentially get the same thing with this app, which will compile weather, e-mail, SMS messages, and even RSS feeds on your phone's screen every time you hit a button to wake your phone up.

You can successfully have about four of the small, single use widgets on the screen at once, and … Read more

DeviantArt gets an iPhone app as stunning as its art

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.

Google vs. Microsoft may not be zero sum, but...

...Today I saw something that should petrify Microsoft. I was visiting a large financial services company and couldn't help but notice Google Apps running throughout the floor as we strolled past. It turns out that the company is actively rolling out Google Apps because it figures the vast majority of its users have almost no need for full Microsoft Office functionality.

This was long the premise behind why enterprises would switch to OpenOffice, but I suspect that OpenOffice wasn't disruptive enough. It's not purely a question of license cost: It's also a question of training and … Read more

Opening up Google's AppEngine with Morph Labs

Google's AppEngine looks great. It's a way to build web applications and run them on Google's "cloud" infrastructure.

The downside? Your applications effectively become Google's applications because there's no easy way to move them elsewhere. You have to run them using Google's authentication engine, framework, file system, APIs, etc. Free as in Google's.

Enter Morph Labs.

[Morph] claims to have done all the back-end cutwork to make it easy for developers to get their software up and running as a service on Amazon's Web Services (AWS), freeing them from Google's Microsoft-like vendor lock-in....… Read more