George Chen DOT COM

Many are going to focus on the “Native” iPhone SDK and blog about that, but for the Web heads (and Mobile Web geeks) make sure you check out the new Dashcode 2.0 Beta too (part of the iPhone SDK)…

What is Dashcode? Dashcode is a lightweight work-flow manager/ UI builder for the Apple’s Dashboard widget. Apple’s Dashboard widgets are basically HTML, CSS, and Javascripts that runs within the Dashboard environment.

The original Dashcode is designed for Widgets development only, but now, if you develop “iPhone specific Web Apps”, you can use Dashcode to code, manage and then preview your Web Apps too.
I need to spend more time with the new Dashcode and will report back what I find.

This is getting interesting.

Update:

Just watched Apple’s propaganda video titled, “iPhone SDK for Web Developers” with a lot of upcoming features (that is not yet in the current SDK beta). Some of the super sexy features are:

• Native SVG Lite Tiny support
• CSS3
• Gesture support, i.e. onGesturestart=”doThis()”

Now since Safari browser is also the WebKit, does that mean Nokia future browser has access to the same feature sets in the future?

NativeCn 3.10a is out, and it’s compatible with iPhone 1.1.4. Look for it at the usual iphone.org.hk repository via the Installer App. The old version of NativeCn 3.10 is not compatible with iPhone 1.1.4.
I actually don’t recommend 1.1.4 if you are already running 1.1.3 with jailbreak and unlock with no issues. I’ve ran into a a few Installer App problems and lost of sound after the 1.1.4 update (but fixed via software full reset). 1.1.4 hackery is not entirely foolproof at this point.

The hot topic of discussion among the “mobile blogesphere” today is no doubt Michael Mace’s piece “Mobile applications, RIP”.

The follow on reading include Miker’s post, and Carlos’s piece as well. Finally, Dean Bubley’s piece is here.

To be honest, the only “Native App” I can think of that has to be native is mobile virus scanning software i.e. F-Secure :P…

Of course, we’re not entirely there yet. WebKit is nice, but what about Location Based Services – one would ask? Isn’t that something only native apps can handle? That is true for the current generation of the mobile browsers, but what if the future versions of the Mobile browsers are location aware? That seems like a logically next step to me.

I’ve found a very interesting mobile site today. It’s called FoodLily. It has a strong iPhone specific mobile Web component to it + your traditional Web 2.0 mesh up such as Google Maps and Tag cloud (on the full site).

Oh, did I mention it’s for finding restaurants in Hong Kong? It lacks the long review of Yelp, but in return, you get the twitter like micro-blogging reviews. It’s certainly fun to browse through the site on the iPhone.

It’s very surprising to see such an interesting Web 2.0 and iPhone savvy service coming out from Hong Kong. Keep up the good work folks!

Speaking of the future, Davos’ “The Future of Mobile Technology” session is on YouTube now. Best part, of course, is Omar ask the first question 38 minutes in. Good stuff.

Check out Carlo’s coverage of Nokia’s Point and Find concept piece (Nokia World last year) + Mac Funamizu’s similar prototype. The connection of “real world” and the internet will be here sooner than we think….

As I mentioned in Carlo’s post. If we add Microsoft’s Photosynth to this, the whole user experience could be very interesting….

Who would have predicted the current iPhone software 1.1.3 is the “most hackable” iPhone to date?

Since the “bootloader 4.6 issue” been solved, its pretty easy to upgrade any 1.0.2, 1.1.1, 1.1.2 Phones to 1.1.3 then jailbreak; unlock.

During the whole process, I ran into a couple of interesting problems but all can be solved with a little interweb research:

– Low speaker volume problem (phone, iPod, YouTube etc,) can be solved by: hold down the power button and the top volume button to restart. After the restart, iPhone’s default volume should be restored.

– vt100 terminal weirdness (probably because the introduction of “mobile user” instead of everything running under root) can be solved by using Terminal v207.

– If you are native Chinese speaker, check out NativeCn 3.01 as well. Best Cantonese input method ever on any computing platform. 😛

3GSM is ON at Barcelona now (I know the name is now Mobile World Congress, but old habits die hard…).

The big news so far is the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1. You can find pretty good pics here at Hong Kong Phone Daily, which both Gizmodo and Engadget fail to come up with any good stuff (Sunday evening PST).

Sure it’s a nice phone, and many anti-iPhone fanboyz already claiming this as the end of the iPhone, but those people forget XPERIA X1 is still powered by Windows Mobile 6…. I have nothing against Windows Mobile 6 and I am actually a fan of Windows Mobile’s Today screen…, but skinning something on top of WM6 is not the right approach to solve the Windows Mobile (over all) UI problem.

“Eat your own dog food”. I am such a “mobile geek” so I try to look up local movies show-time and purchase my ticket via the Mobile Web.

I point my browser to mobile.fandango.com. You’ll see your standard XHTML mobile site. The “check out” flow went just fine, but I have problem completing the final step of purchase.

The error page I saw was “Order Failed”. “Your order could not be completed. Please check your
billing information and re-submit.”

Note: I abandoned the process and went back to my computer and finished the purchase on the regular Web. So is it me or just the mobile site’s broken?