Let’s talk about some of the features and how it could or could not “kill” the iPhone.
The Droid has crowned itself a killer because of its technical features that supersede technical problems the iPhone has such as higher resolution images (taking pics even in low light), a real keyboard (hello!) and the ability to run multiple apps simultaneously.  But is that enough for people that have spent hundreds of dollars on existing (and Droid incompatible) apps to ditch Apple?  Absolutely not, BUT it is grounds for non iPhone users to jump on the anti-iPhone sentiment that is growing in volume.

Droid is more likely positioned to be a BlackBerry killer or a Palm Pre killer than it is an iPhone killer because those purchasing Apple products have an almost religious affinity for anything Apple and wouldn’t consider looking anywhere outside of the sexy looking, techno-music-playing, expensive, hipster Apple stores because of a particular *emotion* invoked as if they’ve made friends with a product and the staff behind that product.

The Motorola Droid has one massive advantage that does resonate in the technology industry- open development.  That means that instead of the roadblocks and closed doors application developers have to go through to become anointed into the Mac App store, and instead of having to deal with the red tape of the Palm company clusterflip, developers are welcomed and encouraged to use the Droid platform openly.  Typically, when the tech sector (led by very vocal app developers) rallies behind a product, the public inevitably follows.

The iPhone has long been hailed as the shiny object du jour, but as developers hop off the bandwagon, there is a chance that an informed public will follow suite, while those that don’t read blogs or care about news but like that their phone is sexy and has an Apple on it will likely stay put.  The Droid isn’t going to kill anything, but it will take away enough market share to be a significant threat.

Verizon has made some interesting moves.  First, on November 6, a second version of the Droid will be dropping.  On top of that, it appears that Droid is not just the name of a device, but the name of an entire line to ‘i-Phone killing’ phones.

The use of the name ‘Droids’ – which are robots seen in Star Wars and several other sci-fi movies is a registered trademark of Lucasfilm Ltd..  Off the bat, that gives the whole thing an uber-geeky feel.

And perhaps the biggest negative of them all is the fact that the inaugural Droid is manufactured by Motorola, not exactly the biggest crowd favorite when it comes to phone functionality satisfaction.  Couple that with the fact that Verizon has kept a bigger padlock on their devices than most wireless carriers, and you can understand why this blogger – and many others – are skeptical.

I guess we’ll have our answer in a few days…

Actually, I won’t have my answer in a few a days because I’m stuck with the LG Dare for another year!  Bummer.

Because cell phones have become equipped to do so much more than simply call or text, we’re exploring some of the various ways cell phone users can maximize the potential of their phones.  An often overlooked category is safety because vigilance tends to happen *after* an event, so take a moment and look into these 10 apps and find new ways to use your phone…

EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS
The Life360 Google Android app was born from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and is an emergency preparedness tool for families that “in less than five minutes, families can have access to a tool that does everything from family GPS tracking, to document warehousing, disaster planning, and emergency messaging.”

Rave Alert calls themselves the “next generation alerting system” for mass emergencies and is employed in places like colleges or apartment communities to alert a large group at one time via text messaging, email, PA system, Facebook and even via Twitter.  It is being adopted most quickly by colleges and high schools in this post-Virginia Tech era.

DRIVING
Cell phone app MotoRiety monitors driver distractions from text messages to phone calls and reports all phone activity, even tweeting about driver behavior while driving.  Aggressive acceleration, miles and idle time is logged and provided in periodic email reports making this tool perfect for parents of teen drivers.

Playsafe is an iPhone app that makes scrolling for music safer and less distracting.  The app turns the iPhone into a large button so users don’t have to scroll through small icons while driving and tapping the screen will play or pause music while swiping to the left or right will change the track.

SAFETY ALERTS
Safety Button is a simple iPhone app that allows users to start the program, push the big red button and it begins tracing the user’s step and reporting to a server.  If the red button is pressed again (in case of distress), the server will send your emergency contact person a panic message containing your position.

Android application SafetyNet is activated when the phone is shaken and can function in panic mode or medical mode even if the app isn’t running which will immediately alert everyone in your “SafetyNet” sending them your position and a distress call.  SafetyNet is ideal for people with medical issues or lone joggers.

FIRST AID
iPhone offers two applications for your iPhone- First Aid for Infants and First Aid for Children, both containing easy to read instructions on topics from protection to blocked airways to CPR and other emergencies.  This app is ideal for parent, babysitters, teachers and more.

MEDICINAL USES
AT&T developed app, MedNet allows heart patients to send data from their heart monitors to Bluetooth enabled phones (on AT&T) and then on to their cardiologist making heart care more interactive.  Heart monitor data interactivity is a great preventative measure.

Although not available on the market yet, we wanted to share a glimpse of the future with you.  U.C. Berkeley is developing and testing a program called Cellscope which is a microscope connected to a cell phone for diagnostics (think doctors in remote areas like a desert, mountaintop or even space).  It can be used “for bright field microscopy, which uses simple white light–such as from a bulb or sunlight–to illuminate samples. The latest development adds to the repertoire fluorescent microscopy, in which a special dye emits a specific fluorescent wavelength to tag a target–such as a parasite, bacteria or cell–in the sample.”  It’s powerful enough to detect malaria, tuberculosis or even sickle cells.  Wow.

Are you currently using any mobile apps that promote safety?  Which of these work with your phone and will you be downloading any of the above?  Let us know in comments!

Compare Everywhere

With the Holiday Season just a few months away, this app could be a valuable tool for your shopping chores. This app helps you to be a smart shopper. It allows you to scan barcode and quickly check whether you are really getting a good sale price. It also provides you with product reviews, shopping lists, wish lists and other shopping related information.

Shazam

Of course we all know that a good music gives you a peace of mind. And with that it boosts your productivity as well. Hence we’ve included Shazam as a productivity app. Shazam is one of the most popular music app for the iPhone and its bringing the same features to the Android devies. With this app you can identify music tracks, store and buy them as well. You can also learn more information about song artists and lets you connect to your MySpace page.

VoiceRecorder

At some point in time we might find ourselves need a voice recorder to record an important information. Thankfully, this app does the job quite well. It lets you do voice recording using your Android device and lets you save it to your phone’s SD card. This app also lets you send a voice recording via an attachment in Gmail.

Astrid

One of the most important mobile productivity app is of course a Task List app. Astrid gives you a powerful application that helps you be more organized with that tasks that you need to accomplish. It facilitates tagging of tasks, helps you create reminders, add tasks to your phone’s calendar, sync with Remember-the-Milk app and more.

NoteEverything

One of the most used app in my iPhone is a a notepad. In fact, I’ve tried almost every note-taking application available on the iPhone app. Thankfully for my Android device, there’s only a few of these apps to choose from. And I’ve chosen NoteEverything. This app lets you create different kinds of notes such as text, image through paint app, voice, checklist and even photo notes. It also lets you organized your notes into various folders. And for easy access to this app, you can create shortcuts of the notes category that would sit on your Android phone’s home screen.

fbabble

How can we not include a Facebook app for the Android phone? Despite the fact that Facebook can be counterproductive, still we should not discount the fact that social networking chores are part of our daily productive activities. Fbabble is a pretty neat Facebook app for the Android phone that lets you chat with your Facebook friends, upload photos, and post status updates on your Facebook profile. An added bonus feature lets you post Tweets to your Twitter account.

Twitroid

If there’s a Facebook app on the Android phone, there should also be a Twitter app. And Twitroid is that app. This full-featured Twitter client app lets you post photos using your Android phone. Other features include location support, auto-completion, and an integrated Twitter notificaiton functionality.

Tag To Do List

Another cool ToDo/Task management app for the Android platform is this app called Tag To Do List. This app lets you manage your tasks easily and even allows you to draw graphical notes relating to the tasks, check out stats and other useful features including keyboard shortcuts.

Translator

Using Google Translate, this app lets you translates words, phrases, sentences and even whole paragraphs of text from one language to another. It also detects your Android’s default language setting and lets you flip between language source and translation phrase. It supports most of the Google Translate languages.

Mobile Banking

If you’ve already embraced the concept of mobile banking through your phone, this app is for you. Mobile Banking lets you check your bank accounts available balances, pay bills and transfer funds. It also helps you find the nearest ATM and banks using the Android’s GPS feature.

Remember to subscribe to our feed to receive more interesting mobile app reviews.

Next, we have Facebook’s Zuckerberg announcing that Facebook has reached  milestone in terms of membership – 200 million active users.  And to celebrate their achievement, Facebook decided to do some good deeds as well as to document this milestone by way of the fan page Facebook for Good. You can do your part by purchasing some of the featured gifts in the Facebook shop.  Part of the proceeds from the sale of those items will go to some charitable institutions. It’s Facebook’s little own way of paying it forward.

A few days after releasing the Yahoo News App for the iPhone, Yahoo released its native Messenger iPhone app. It’s a full-featured YM iPhone app which I would really like to have on my iPhone. But unfortunately, the app is not available to all iPhone users yet. But if you are located in the US, you might want to check it out.

Gmail also joined the noise this week with two new features from the Gmail Labs – Inserting images and Sender time zone. Like I said in my previous post, I like the Sender time zone feature as it makes Gmail an instant time zone converter.

And finally the biggest news to hit the IT scene this week – Twitter is exponentially growing. Facebook may have reached its 200 millionth users, but look who is hot on the trail? Twitter of course. Twitter’s site traffic has reached the 10 millionth mark in March and continuous to grow everyday.  And with two of the major internet players rumored to be looking at possibly acquiring Twitter, we could only say that Twitter is now the hottest commodity today.

That’s it for this week. Who knows what will happen next week? Stay tune for more coverage here at RotorBlog.

Instant message: Send text messages back and forth with your friends, including emoticons and web links.

Photo sharing: Take a photo on your iPhone and send that, or grab one from your photo gallery to share.

Stealth settings: Sign in as invisible, or change your status to invisible once you’re in the app.

Custom status message: Enter a custom status message for your friends to see. You can even include a web link with it.

Recent conversations archive: Under Messages, tap a contact and you’ll see your most recent conversation. You can type in a message from there to start chatting again.

Special idle state: If you have to leave the app for whatever reason, like a call comes in or you click a link in an IM that takes you to Safari, the Yahoo! Messenger for iPhone app will keep you signed in but change your status to idle. That way you can continue to receive messages and provided you return to the app within ten minutes, pick up where you left off.

Additional settings: Tap the Settings icon to change the sort order of your contact list, or to show or hide offline contacts in your list.

In short, the Yahoo iPhone app has all the great features of the web interface and so you won’t really find a problem is using it. The app is not really hard to use, but if you want to see how it works first, you might want to watch this demo video prepared by the YM People.

Yahoo! Messenger for the iPhone demo video from Yahoo! Messenger on Vimeo.

Specifically the Skype iPhone app lets you do the following:

• Make free Skype-to-Skype calls from any Wi-Fi zone to other Skype users

• Call landline or mobile phones at low rates from any WiFi zone.
• Send/receive instant messages to/from individuals or groups via 3G, Wi-Fi, GPRS or EDGE (whichever is available)
• Receive calls to a personal online number on Skype
• See when Skype contacts are online/available to IM or talk

The Skype iPhone app also displays your Skype Contacts’ photos when you view your Contacts list. It also allows you to update your own Skype profile picture using your iPhone’s camera to take new photos of yourself, or use an existing photo from your iPhone’s photo album.

I’ve just installed the application on my iPhone and tried calling a friend’s Skype number. Unfortunately I couldn’t hear him speak since he doesn’t have a mic installed on his PC. But he said that he can hear me pretty clearly.

What I noticed though when making Skype-to-Skype calls or perhaps even when calling landline or mobile numbers is that it takes a longer time to connect a call. The application routes the call first before connecting. This might make an impression that the application is not actually working.

But other than that, I would have to say that the Skype iPhone app is pretty much a robust and well developed application. And I could see Skype getting a usage boost from iPhone numbers who have been waiting to have this application on their iPhone.

If you want to test the app, feel free to add my Skype account -> aczafra

via

But that’s just a minor issue and won’t really affect your Facebook experience unless you are subscribed to a highly active profile pages. The more important and more talked about issue about Facebook this week is of course the redesigned Facebook home page. It’s up for officially roll out next week. And Facebook has a demo tour of the new features of this home page.

That’s just about it for Facebook, we move now with Twitter. Actually, Twitter’s share of the media limelight came in just yesterday when some Twitter users noticed that the previously announced Twitter search engine started appearing on their Twitter pages. But prior to this, Twitter was also mentioned in the news items about Facebook’s announcement. More particularly, a comparison between the two most popular sites were made by many writers.

Going back in the earlier days of the week, the tech world was rocked by an announcement from Amazon – re the Kindle for iPhone application. Many were shocked and amazed to learn about the application.  It seems unfit that Amazon would have to make its catalog of Kindle books, magazines and newspapers to iPhone users, instead of encouraging them to buy the Kindle 2. But then some say that this would have no impact at all with the Kindle 2.  The Kindle for iPhone application is only available for the US iPhone users, like the Kindle 2.

So, those are the three big tech news that rocked the blogging world this week. Who knows what will happen next week? What’s it going to be folks?

The new MySpace mobile website will be launched this week and you can check it out by pointing your device’s browser to -> m.myspace.com or wap.myspace.com.

Basically the site redesign will be addressing optimized viewing experience for users with mobile phones with screen sizes to as small as 176 pixels in width. It will still sport the usual “MySpace blue” color scheme and will feature the web version MySpace site’s capability to configure email photo uplaod.

The new MySpace Mobile Website will also support 13  languages as well as local languages of 29 countries.

Livecast.com 

Livecast provides a simple, convenient way of capturing and sharing events by saving videos on their web server where users can publish them to online communities, video sharing sites and blogs through one-button functionality. The site eliminates the need for uploading your video to a server, but instead let you webcast it from your mobile phone.

Justin.tv

Justin TV offers a place to broadcast and watch video online. It became famous when its founder, Justin webcast his life 24/7. It gained a cult following among online video fans and soon Justin.tv started offering a service where anyone can share their life through videos. Justin tv streams video fboth from webcams aand mobile devices. The site offers a one-click online video broadcast for as long as you a webcam or a camcorder connected to Internet. You can also share your videos to anyone by using the “share” button on the page where your video are streaming. The site is categorized into eight channels – producers, music, social, gaming, sports, entertainment, pets, and comedy.

Qik.com

Qik.com is a mobile video streaming service that provides a platform for streaming high quality live video across mobile phone platform.  Qik’s video streaming service is fast. Video streams are tagged at every path it takes from the moment a user click on the video streams to the video appearing on the web. Qik.com lets you stay connected with your family and friends and broadcast events and news spontaneously. It also supports MySpace, orkut and other websites including  Justin.tv.

UStream.TV

UStream.TV provides an interactive video streaming platform which lets you broadcast video using your camera and Internet connection. It features quick broadcasting tool which can be through Ustream’s server or through a user’s own website. Your viewers can interact directly with you while you are broadcasting online. As a user you can watch specific broadcasts and explore various channels on Ustream.  Ustream offers broadcasts including political events, talk shows, entertainment events, music showcases, conferences, school and business events and training, sporting events and many others.

Shozu.com

ShoZu lets you share life’s moments, be it on photos or videos on your blog.  It lets you share your content to your friends and family either through email or through various social networks. In addition, ShoZu also lets you add tags and titles to your videos, read friends’ video feeds, update your status while on the move, geo-tag your videos, as well as post to your blog  whereever you are.

Flixwagon

Like ShoZu, Flixwagon lets you broadcast live videos you’re taking using your mobile phone directly online. It lets you store videos and manage them, share these videos with your friends, family and business contacts. Users can search, view and share live broadcasts and store videos on Flixwagon even if they have not uploaded any videos yet. Flixwagon is a social video platform that lets you broadcast your life.

Registered users are entitled to 50 items per entry, 100MB maximum size per file and 250MB total monthly upload.

Just this week the site launched a “Following Friends feature that allows you to follow your friends and friends to follow you.  The socioblogging enhancement is designed to get bloggers posts more exposure.

New user dashboards are around the corner, so if you’re a new/novice blogger, now might be the time to sign up.  Kontain is currently in Alpha.

CNET once called Kontain, the “Ipod of blogging.” We’re not 100% sure what that means, but we do know the site is easy as pie to use.

There are some features like GPS based player search – you can invite them to your mob. But, how I already said, it is the same game that many of you already know and love. And now you have this game on iPhone for free so I think you can multiply several times it’s adiktiveness.

If you like to play some games on your iPhone time to time it is perfect game for you. You can do mafia jobs, fight with other people, buy properties and build business and many more cool stuff that makes this game so interesting.

I must say also some bad words and all of them are about how unstable the app is. It craches very often and connection errors appears time to time. I hope developers will fix these issues quickly so you can fight these other mobs Don Corleone.

FieldRunners ($4.99)

If you are an iPhone owner, there’s no reason why this game should not be on your iPhone’s app screen. If you haven’t installed this game, you’re definitely missing a lot. FieldRunners is a Tower Defense strategy game will definitely keep you glued on your iPhone’s screen, playing countless hours trying to setup your defense. It’s got all the ingredients of a full-featured mobile game – great graphics, great gameplay, great sound, and great replayability factor. No wonder, it has receive the accolades of many people. FieldRunners will cost you $4.99 at the Apps Store. Believe me, it’s all worth the penny you have to spend for it.

Flick Fishing ($1.99)

Next to FieldRunners, Flick Fishing is also one of the best game that the iPhone got for 2008. This cool fishing game offers tons of features including 6 fishing locations with varying sea water conditions, 9 types of baits and tackles which you can use to get the biggest catch, 12 tournaments to complete and tons of fish species. For a full review of Flick Fishing, read it here.

SimCity ($9.99)

When this game came out last year, I had second thoughts of getting it because of its price – $9.99. But I told myself, what the heck, I love the PC game. And was I disappointed? Certainly not. The dollar I spent for it was definitely well worth the fun and enjoyment I got from playing it especially during the Holiday Break. The iPhone’s Sim City is an addictive game. If you’ve enjoyed building cities from the ground up in your PC, there’s no reason why you wouldn’t enjoy doing the same thing on your iPhone. Best part is, you can play it anywhere you go without bringing your PC along.

Orions Legend of Wizard ($4.99)

This game offers a unique gameplay and great replayability as a fantasy cards strategy game. If you’re into magical worlds, fantasy creatures, Dragons, Liches and Demons which are beautifully rendered on cards, this game will definitely please you. The PC version of this game was awarded as Best Strategy Game of 2007, and this iPhone version definitely deserves to be among the iPhone’s best game for 2008.

Labyrinth ($6.99)

This classic labyrinth game surely deserves to be among the iPhone’s best game apps for 2008. It offers more than 800 levels of well crafted and realistic labyrinth maze. Like the old David Bowie movie of the same title, this game is certainly fantastic.

Moto Chaser ($.99)

For one cent less to a dollar, this game, Moto Chaser is one of the best game that your money can buy for the iPhone. Featuring flawless animation, full-3D racing environments and many more features, Moto Chase would definitely give you value for your bucks. It works flawlessly with the iPhone’s accelerometer when steering your motorbike to the finish line.

2079 ($1.99)

This futuristic space shooters offers tons of awesome animation, graphics and sound effects. You wouldn’t think that you’re actually playing a game made specifically for a mobile phone. Suits well with the iPhone’s small screen and yet big enough in features, gameplay and replayability. As a bonus, the game allows you to play your own MP3 from your iPod while blasting away enemy spaceships.

Rolando ($9.99)

Another expensive game and yet worth every penny you’d spend for it. It’s a full-featured platform game for your iPhone and perhaps even the best game in the said genre. Rolando features fully interactive environments, intuitive controls, and four unique worlds with 36 fun-filled and challenging game levels. For $10, you’d get to help the Rolandos from regaining the Rolandolands which was invaded by the enemies.

7 Cities TD ($4.99)

Wait, before you continue reading on this list, you might want to check out the Apps Store for 7 Cities as it is currently on sale for $4.99. While your iPhone is downloading the app, then continue reading. This game is another engaging Tower Defense game set in the Amazon region. You have to defend the seven golden cities by any strategy that you can possibly think of. These game’s got tons of features including 2 game mods, 12 tower skills, and more.

Snail Mail ($1.99)

Who says Snail Mail is dead and long gone due to email? Well, at least in this game the old reliable way of delivering postal mail is still alive and racing. Guide Turbo the Snail in delivering mails as he races through 50 levels or three game modes – postal, challenge, and time trials.

Nanosaur 2($2.99)

This is another one of my favorite games for the iPhone. Fortunately I got it when it was up for sale at $.99 (current price is currently $2.99). This shooting game is not your ordinary shooting game for the simple reason that you take the role of a nanosaur out to gather some eggs in the prehistoric times to save his race in the future. Great storyline right? Wait till you play the game as it features great graphics and animation and great game play and level of difficulty. Read the full review here.

Air Hockey ($.99)

This game’s got several awards up on its sleeves. And it’s not surprising since it perfectly simulates the old air hockey arcade game. Realistic mallets and rockets, play with your friends or alone against a computer and experience an exhilirating game of air hockey on your iPhone.

Hero of Sparta ($10)

The third $10-iPhone game on our list is this epic action game Hero of Sparta where you get to play as King Argos. If you love the movie 300 or Troy, you’d definitely want to have this game on your iPhone. It features iPhone-specific controls, 360 degrees 3D environment, weapons to upgrade and items to upgrade and more. Forget about the $10 you’re about to lose from your wallet, get his game now and you won’t regret it.

Enigmo ($1.99)

Another award-winning game for the iPhone. Enigmo is an innovative 3D puzzle game that is not like your ordinary puzzle game. By tilting your iPhone, you direct various liquids into getting to their destination the fastest possible time possible. The faster you get the liquids flow into their destination, the higher your points become.

Lumen ($1.99)

Another puzzle game like no other puzzle game type of game, Lumen is an easy-to-learn game that offers long hours of gameplay once you’ve mastered the game mechanics. The game task you to light up all the checkpoints in the game by maneuvering a laser beam through various obstacles. The game currently offers around 2K+ of puzzles including those submitted by online gamers.

Texas Hold’Em Up ($4.99)

Looking for a real-deal in casino card game for your iPhone? Then this game is what you’re looking for. Featuring 8 advanced AI opponents, autosave, natural user interface, 10 unique challenges and various game options, this game shoul definitely in your long list of great iPhone games.

Uno ($4.99)

Of course, we don’t have to describe what this game is all about. This is the all-time classic game made available for the iPhone. Relive memories of playing Uno the card game during your younger days. Offers customization, various action cards and multiplayer support through Wi-Fi.

Cro-Mag Rally ($1.99)

Ah, the iPhone’s best kart racing game set ala-the Flintstones. Two words to describe this game – great fun! Read my full review of Cro-Mag Rally here.

GTS World Racing ($4.99)

It’s no Sega Rally or Gran Turismo, but GTS World Racing offers almost the same fun and goodness of those two console racing games for the iPhone. Of course, that goes without saying that the game takes the iPhone’s graphics engine to the limit. Featuring 4 play modes, great music soundtrack, and great accelerometer implementation, this game is worth installing on your iPhone. It’s the next best thing to having GTS on your iPhone.

Galcon ($4.99)

This awesome space invasion game offers multi-player action with cool animations and great graphics. It’s fast-paced and yet offers a great strategy game play.

Crash Bandicoot: Nitro Kart 3D ($5.99)

Although this game has been out as early as July 2008, I couldn’t help but put it on our list of best games for the iPhone. It’s a personal favorite of mine since the Playstation days of Crash. Read my full review here.

Instead of putting books on a virtual shelf, Reading Trails connects books via trails. A better way to explain is by an example from an actual trail for books about “Dune”. So let’s say you haven’t read the book “Dune 40th Anniversary Edition” and plans of buying it. But wait you found out by checking Reading Trails that there are other books about “Dune” which you are not aware of. Thanks the book trails, you’d discover other related books related to it.

Now it gets more fun when another member creates his own book trail and it so happens that he has read one of you books. Hence, your Reading Trail intersect with each other. So that’s add another source of book lists which you might interested to check out. Imagine the possibility if more trails intersect and soon enough you have established a web of book reading lists.

Aside from trails, Reading trails also lets you tag your books and trails. Once you’ve tagged a particular book on your trail or from other people’s trail, it becomes part of your Reading Trails profile. And every Trail you tag become part of your Trails.

Most importantly, Reading Trails also has a widget function which lets you embed your trails on your blogs or websites.

The new Flickr mobile video streaming lets you playback videos you uploaded to the site directly from yor mobile phone. This new feature is based on the Yahoo Video platform which takes advantage of its ability to serve content to a wide variety of phones, regardless of screen sizes and video/audio codecs those phones support.

Video streaming via the Flickr mobile site is currently available for the iPhone and iPod Touch but more handsets will be added soon, Flickr promises.

In addition to video streaming, Flickr mobile has also introduced some new site features including, adding contacts, favorite image and changing privacy settings. This is in addition to the new sleek-looking interface that the site currently sports. You can easily do all these now with your Flickr account whenever and whereever you are.

The new Flickr mobile site has also added the “interestingness” photos link which makes it easier for you to find interesting photos and videos uploaded to the site.

You can try out this new features now by simply pointing your mobile phone’s browser to m.flickr.com. Have fun!

Basically, the Amazon iPhone app lets you search and browse for products offered by Amazon and its retail partners such as Macy’s and Target. It also lets you access Amazon’s rich shopping features including Customer reviews as well as direct purchase with the use of its 1-Click Shopping and Amazon Prime.

If you’re a frequent Amazon customer, this new iPhone app would be definitely useful for you. But wait, like we said there’s one cool feature of the Amazon.com iPhone app which makes it worthy of being tagged as a “cool iPhone app” – and it’s called Amazon Remembers.

Amazon remembers helps you keep track of items you encounter in your daily lives and even matches those items with similar if not almost similar items in the Amazon inventory. All you need to do is snap a photo of those items and the app will automatically upload it into Amazon.com. When uploaded, the app will immediately match the photos with the corresponding Amazon products. You can either opt to buy it immediately or store for retrieval and perhaps for purchase later.

Overall, the Amazon iPhone app offers fast, convenient and secure Amazon experience for iPhone users. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to work in our country’s Apps Store. I wonder if application is available worldwide as Amazon seemed to have forgotten to specify if it does so.

The new MySpace mobile feature would enable you not only to watch video on your own homepages but from your MySpace’s friends’ pages as well. Likewise, you can also watch commercially produced videos from celebrity news and gossip website TMZ, the National Hockey League, National Geographic, Onion and others.

The new service will be provided by MySpace to its members for free, but of course we don’t expect MySpace not to do something without getting anything from it. In the case of this new feature, it will be in the form of mobile ads.

If you’re wondering if this new feature will be made available also on the iPhone, the answer is a resounding no since the video streaming will be done from the MySpace’s pages instead of being downloaded onto the phones. Hence it will not be available on the iPhone which plays only downloaded videos. Although MySpace is not closing its doors on video downloads, but this will have to wait at a later date.

This new feature of MySpace mobile is being implemented in partnership with RipCode company who will be in-charge of making sure that video contents can be streamed on various mobile handsets eventhough they have different platforms.

Read

Through Sprint’s Picture Mail service, you can now directly upload your digital photos and videos if your mobile phone belongs to around 30 Sprint phones which carry the said features. These phones include popular mobile handset including Samsung Instinct, LG Rumor,  Sanyo Katana and MOTORAZR2.

The new feature was made possible with the use of the Verisign Xoomerang platform which enables users to easily capture and publish video and still images to those 30 online services. Although currently, the service is available only for MySpace, Photobucket and YouTube. But both Sprint and VeriSign promises to make the new service available to other sites as well.

Via

Through a video demonstration, the Google Mobile folks explained the new feature which basically allows iPhone users to do their Google search via the iPhone sans manual inputing of search keywords. Instead, users have to speak to their iPhones and utter their keywords. Once a user turns on the feature on, the user doesn’t have to touch any button anymore. Once the search keywords are uttered, the Google Mobile App will display an optimized-for-iPhone search results page.

One great feature of this voice-enabled search through the iPhone is the fact that it utilizes the iPhone’s geo-location tools for identifying where you are and matching the results on a local search to a user’s current location.

Other features of Google Mobile App with voice-search include:

• Search with your voice so you don’t have to type.
• Search with My Location makes finding business, weather, and movie info easy.
• Suggestions appear as you type to save you time.
• Launch Gmail, Google News, and more from one place.

This is a great iPhone application which everyone would want to install on their iPhone. Unfortunately for us non-U.S. citizen, this application will only be available in the U.S.

Here’s a quick demo of the Google voice search for the iPhone.

I know emoticons are so un-Web 2-ish, but hey, there are still people who would wants to use the smiley emoticon instead of typing ” :-) “. And Gmail think so too, hence it just introduced its own set of cutesy emoticons to make your life, well yeah a little bit colorful and fun.

This is of course following the “colorization thrusts” of Google for Gmail which started with the colored label features rolled out not so long ago.

The other new announcement made by Google relating to Gmail has something to do with its mobile version, or what Google calls as the Gmail for Mobile 2.0. This new mobile version of Gmail works with all phones supporting the J2ME platform and Blackberry handsets as well. Mobile Gmail 2.0 offers a faster and more reliable email client which was entirely rearchitected and improved on client-side caching scheme. With the new Gmail for Mobile 2.0, you can now experience improved raw speed, smoother scrolling and no freezing, easily switch between your Gmail and Google Apps email account, save multiple email drafts, have powerful short cut keys which also works well with mobile phones with QWERTY keypad, and offline support improvement wherein you can now compose and read your most recent email even when there is no network signal in the area you are currently located.

To download the new Gmail for mobile 2.0, you may point your phone’s web browser at m.google.com/mail.

Motorola’s Google-Android phone will not come out until probably next year. But as early as now, Motorola seemed hell bent on making this project big and is embarking on something which is starting to boom – mobile social networking.

According to Business Wire, the Android-powered Motorola handset will feature an iPhone-like touch screen, slide-out qwerty keyboard and more importantly support for social networking sites through a slew of social-networking-friendly features and functionality.

BW also reported that its new social smartphone series will enable users to connect easily to social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. It will allow users to message their friends on those social networks directly using the Motorola phone’s contacts directory.

The question now is whether the Motorola Android-handset could propel Motorola’s gradually declining mobile phone sales? Could this social smartphone bring back Motorola into the mobile phone game? Or a more basic question to ask would be, how receptive would mobile phone users to this kind of phone?