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Rhodes, for all your mobile app development needs

I’m really surprised and excited at the same time to see this mobile based open micro-framework for mobile phone development named Rhodes. Rhomobile has launched this open framework that claims to allow developers to write an app once and port it easily run on iPhone, Blackberry, Symbian, Windows mobile and even Android.

The platform allows users to write code in Ruby and is available here for download. I did’nt get much time to explore this but you can simply read the tutorial or can watch following video to get yourself oriented with this very promising tool. I’ll share my findings as soon as I find some time to work on it.

Last but not least. There’s a Rhodes app development contest going on on their site that can win you $10,000. I wish you luck. Happy coding !

This site will guess the song for you!!

Hum the song and you get it!

How often did it happen to you? I remember the tune, a few words out of a song but I don’t remember the song, who sung it, where can I find it? Come on, I’m even ready to buy a CD or download it from iTunes. Can somebody help me with that? You look odd humming at your coworkers for help and it gets worse when others cant recognize the song after your

Here comes the savior. I just came across this amazing service named midomi that allows you to hum the portion of a song and will possibly come up with the results. No doubt, the results are better than my expectations. Before I started typing this post, what I simply did was:

  1. I went to midomi.com
  2. Clicked on the button that says “Click and sing or hum”
  3. I hummed the song “Duur” by “Strings” for only 15 seconds or so
  4. What I see as result is as follows …

OMG!!! This is absolutely amazing. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

How does it work? Lets take a closer look. The voice you record for searching is broken into samples comprising higher and lower notes within that few seconds clip. This recording is searched against the samples stored in the database for similar patterns. As a result, some probable results are listed for review. You can simply play the clip and see if it is the one you were looking for.

It is more of a community effort as far as I can see, as most of the search results are not the real song but clips either played or sung by site users. In addition to the clip, you can upload more information about the song. This will make more sense when your uploaded clip shows up in the search result.

No doubt its an innovative service and has a lot of potential. And if you have an iPhone, you can carry it around with you. Midomi iPhone app is available for free.

Once you have found the song, you can play the clip, play all the clips that match, and if they do, you can even buy the song. When I clicked the “Buy” link, it gave me two options, i.e buy from amazon or download from iTunes.

Only one complaint. Why its not out on other phones? Why only iPhone? 🙂

Google Adsense for Mobile, I dont see it in my account

Google has launched adsense for Mobiles now. I was very keen and wanted to know the details. I quickly logged into my adsense account but to my surprise, I could’nt find any mobile options there. Adds for feeds, search, content and domains are the only for options.

Login page shows mobile adsense clearly :


Adsense blog also talks about the launch and states that the service is for the mobile optimized websites. Now you will soon start seeing Google ads on the mobile optimized sites powered by Adsense.

I was more interested in ads that can be displayed within mobile applications, like the ones offered by admob, but Adsense has not reached there yet.

In the end I would like to ask you guys to tell me about the availability of adsense mobile in your account. Honestly, my account still doesn’t have it.

Links: Google Adsense
Admob: www.admob.com

Youtube mobile, some serious improvements!


Just a few days ago I wrote about vtap. Here comes youtube to snatch limelight from it. I’m happy to see the new version of Youtube mobile application.

First of all, the reason of my happiness is the support for my Nokia N82. My handset was not recognized by Youtube earlier. I think it was too new for it :p . My N82 had no straight way of installing Youtube app. What I did earlier was, to download an app for N95 to my PC and installing it onto my N82.

Remember, I talked about some port blocking in my vtap post? Well, youtube had the same problem in the earlier version. Youtube could search and browse on my cellular network using GPRS/EDGE but when played a video, it used to fail. Same was the case with m.youtube.com. It used to launch the Real-Player which never played the video. Reason? The default media streaming on a mobile requires incoming data connections on a few ports. Many mobile networks block such ports (I dont know why, at least my network did).

I even tried running earlier version of youtube on wifi, and it failed due to the same incoming connection problem. But after a few tweaks to the router, I could get it running on wifi. All above sounds too complicated? Well, for most of us, it is.

New version of youtube application has fixed all these issues. Now I can play videos on my same old network without any problem. If you can surf the web, read the blogs or news and check your email on mobile, you can also enjoy mobile youtube. Search is simple, fast and results are displayed in a great scrolling manner that is readable enough. Recent searches are also stored and if typed in again, similar links drop down in a list, a real convenience!

Video qauality is good, its not as good as you see on the PC but the compression is reasonably lossless. Comparing to vtap, things are much better.

The application is very simple to use and has a great feature set. Simply press 7 and you’ll get the related videos searched for the selected one. Pressing 3 takes you to the home screen with the standard search box, top rated, most viewed and most recent link. All these links, search or related video result in a video list horizontally scrollable that caters to the small screen issue in a great manner.

Another great feature is the ability of changing the connection. In most applications, switching from wifi to EDGE/3G and back is not possible. Youtube has a menu option to select a different network if your currently selected network is not available anymore. No need to restart the app.

I believe a few features are missing at the price of the simplicity? Following are the features I was expecting in this release

  • A login option that allows me to view my private videos, rate them, add to favorite etc.
  • My customized searches (recommended by youtube) and videos that interest me mots, I love that on the web version
  • Capability of uploading my mobile videos
  • Sharing capability

vtap is a winner in the case of sharing. Youtube app is not letting me sms the url even. No email, no web and no text sharing of videos from the application. Its a big turn-off.

I was able to test it on a few series 60 nokias and it works like a charm. Moreover, it is not supported on my blackberry curve 8310. Do let me know what handset you are using and if the application is supported on your set or not. Simply go to http://m.google.com/youtube/download from your mobile browser. If you see a download link on the homepage, your handset is supported.
If you don’t see that link, your handset may still be supported but you will have to find it out the hard way. Please do share your experiences.

Start enjoying the mobile youtube today.

Download Link: http://m.google.com/youtube/download

vtap: Video for your mobile – Fast and easy

Finally, I think we have a great video solution for mobile phones without any major glitches. I know many mobiles can play Youtube right away in their native browsers, but this is a wee bit more than only youtube. The site is a mashup of several video content sites and streams videos directly to your phone.

vtap’s focus is on easy mobile usage and fast access to the media. For easy searching, they’re using an amazing idea of typing a first few letters of the words to search for a video. For example, to search for Javed Mianddad’s six that he hit on the last ball of the match in sharjah, I simply tapped in “jav six” and walla!!! here’s your video 🙂

To keep the streaming quick, you can go into the settings and can select either high, medium or low end video streaming option. If you have a really slow connection and you can live with audio only, you can select that option too. Though I dont find high quality videos to be that high quality but its a great feature to have.

Phones with the integrated real-player can simply use the browser to search and browse the videos and can click to play the video in the built-in player. If you don’t have a built in player, vtap provides application download too. All the phones I tried, vtap worked like a charm.

The only issue is the incoming data ports. If you are using a network that doesn’t allow incoming connections for streaming and the ports are blocked by your network, you are out of luck. You can search and browser but you cannot stream the video content. This is a similar issue to that of Youtube app on some devices.

This is great to see videos optimized for a low bandwidth streaming and a very smooth playback on edge as well ass wifi, but once I’m on wifi, I expect a much better video quality. When watched on a PC, same video may play a great quality, but vtap rips the quality down on phone, regardless of type of connection you are using and type of quality settings on your software. Even HIGH quality video settings result in a lower quality video. I hope someone at vtap may read this and try to work on bandwidth/quality optimization even further.

Sharing is another great aspect of vtap. Either you use your mobile’s browser or the vtap application, you can simply share the application with friends via SMS or Email. You also have another host of option for a video like adding it to favorites, video talkbacks, related video search and smart video tagging etc.

Exact features may vary depending on your phone. According to their website vtap works with iPhone and iPod touch, a number of Windows Mobile based phones and even a bigger number of other phones. I tried it on an N82, N95-8GB, Blackberry 8310, E51. Note, all these phones that I mentinoed are not listed on their website but the solution works just great. So it may work on your phone as well.

You want to try it? I’m sure you’ll get hooked and wont stop using it for hours.

From your PC visit http://www.vtap.com
From your Mobile visit http://m.vtap.com

Facebook Translations

Facebook has come up with another brave idea of translating the whole Facebook into local languages of the users. The list contains more than 60 languages from the world. The idea is to let the people translate the site themselves in their native languages.

The process is to add the “Translations” application. An invitation to this application popped up onto my home page when I logged in Facebook this morning.

Once you have added the application, you select your language and you are all set to start translation. You simply click “Go translate” and you can see phrases coming up on English. You click translate and type the appropriate translated phrases.

As Facebook is all about social interaction and community effort, all these translations will be verified and voted by the other users and eventually your Facebook localized version will be ready to be used.

Yahoo Briefcase closing down, another victim of economy?

Yahoo briefcase is closing down. This is one of several emails I have recently received about the services closing down. Well, I can expect it from the start ups that are not doing good business but a company like Yahoo, its really unexpected.

I have been a frequent briefcase user for so many years and I loved that service. Its tight integration into Yahoo Photos was also something I loved, but this service got the first blow when Yahoo Photos closed down. That was okay, because Yahoo had acquired Flickr and Flickr was now becoming Yahoo Photos. So technically it was an upgrade. But this time its a close down. I don’t see an alternate service being offered by Yahoo.

The email says that you have whole month of March to download all your files. The service is closing down for both free and paid members. Paid premium members will be refunded with their rest of the membership fee.

Now my questions are:

Why is Yahoo Briefcase closing down?
I dont know.

Will I lose all my files?
Yes, if you dont download your files before end of March.

Can somebody suggest me an alternate service now?

Waiting for your suggestions…

Mobile Google Maps + Latitude review

After using the new Google maps 3.0.0.12 with latitude capability for more than 36 hours now, I find myself in a position to write a few things about it.

Google maps has always been amazing with all its navigation abilities, maps, directions, zoom level, satellite view and ability to detect your location with or without GPS. By downloading Latitude, I expected a different software but after the installation was done, I realized that latitude is nothing but a service add-on into the existing Google maps software. If you login to your google account using google maps, you can start using it as a goe-social tool to share your location, view your friend’s location and even getting directions on how to reach your friend.

The idea is great and by design it looks great in the beginning. You login using your Google account and then you can invite friends right from your gmail contacts or by entering the email address. No doubt accessing my google contacts is good, but I would love to invite people from my phone’s contact list. This feature is not supported right now. In addition, I dont find a way to invite people through sms, mms or bluetooth. Only way to invite is either from gmail contacts or by typing in the email address.

I was trying to invite my friend who I learned is also trying out latitude right now. I went to invite the friend, selected “All contacts” to see all my contacts in gmail and then it was a nightmare to reach his name that started with W. The list is alphabetically sorted and I couldn’t find a way to filter the list to make my life easier. After a couple of minutes of scrolling i realized, its better I type in his address instead of looking it up in the contacts list. I was lucky to remember his email address at that time.

One thing i should appreciate is the separate group of users shown in the list of contacts being invited, who were already using latitude. This really was informative.

After successfully inviting the contact, I waited for a few minutes and my curiosity made me call that guy. I asked him if he received the invite as yet, and the answer was in negative. After 10 minutes, yes 10 whole minutes, he received that invite on the application and accepted me. Finally we were connected. Later we realized that the invite reached the email inbox of the person and he had to open his email to accept it. As most of us are not using push emails as yet, it will be better that the invite reaches the latitude screen on Google maps before it reaches the email.

Then we put the application to test. We allowed full location access to each other and went out on a drive. I was expecting a moving icon of my friend on a road but it was a total disappointment. The friend’s location was getting updated after at least 10 minutes. I know updating location on realtime will be a lot of data usage, but what if I have unlimited plan and want to update it in realtime? I know, this location update can be as frequent as a few seconds but latitude is not upto the standard in this case.

While driving with google maps running, the blue dot used to show an arrow showing the direction of movement in earlier versions. That arrow is still there, but when I have latitude turned on, it shows a small tab with my photo on it. This looks neat when jumping friend to friend looking at their display pics but when navigating, this display pic comes in the way of direction arrow and if I’m traveling north-ish, arrow is hidden behind my picture.

Data usage is optimized at the price of very late location updates, but even that has a problem. Several networks that I know of charge you per 100 kilo-byte or per mega-byte of data. In some cases they charge you for a chunk of data whenever you connect gprs, even if you use it or not. Call it a trick by networks, but if i use 100 kB or 10 kB, its gonna cost me 100 kB. In this context, Google maps disconnects and keeps connecting again and again whenever the connection is needed. This costs volume based users a lot more. By the way, Google maps connection used to be always connected in the earlier versions.

I must also say here that the application is lot more buggy, the finish and smoothness of working is gone, there are jitters and glitches while navigating through the menus and friends on map. I did not expect such quality from a company like Google.

Last but not least, google denies installation on many popular handsets as well. For example, it refused to install in a Nokia 95-8 GB, saying the hand set is not supported. Well, older versions were supported, what happened now?

If somebody from Google is reading this, can you ask somebody to put these features in Google maps in the next version?

  • Provide better device management wap site that detects phones correctly and does’nt deny installation on phones that are actually supported.
  • Add google talk integration as well, I’m sure that is in works but I expected it part of this latitude roll out.
  • Do some more working on the user interface design to remove screen-navigation glitches and hickups.
  • Add an option of more frequent location updates for friends
  • Make “Add friends” from phonebook possible, all my email addresses are there.
  • Allow SMS invite possible
  • Allow bluetooth and mms invite possible too
  • Add filtering option when going through a list of addresses while adding friends.
  • Make invitation acceptance a more quick possibility by simply showing invites on maps more quickly. (I’m sure it’ll work automatically when we make friend refresh more frequent).
  • I love the blue direction arrow on my location dot, please bring it in front of all other overlays 🙂
  • Either keep it always on data connection, or simply make the option available in settings.

I welcome more comments from other users.