Life Web Browser 1.5 Introduces iPhone Version and…Pull To Refresh?

Life is an alternative web browser for iPad I reviewed back in June. The app was quite nice, but I ended up uninstalling it due to its numerous bugs. The feature set was interesting, though:

Life Web Browser tries a different approach, and it does so by telling us that we don’t need tabs and pages, we need to swipe.

Aseid Ghaffari and his team found out that users don’t find Safari’s behavior with new links exactly comfortable. Apple’s Safari forces you to go back and forth between a dashboard with thumbnails of pages, and another take on the subject such as iCab’s desktop-like tabs didn’t impress Ghaffari either. If it’s not about copying the desktop and it’s not about changing pages, then it definitely must be about gestures – the developers thought. So there you have it, you horizontally swipe between “windows”.

The latest 1.5 update, approved and released a few days ago, introduces iPhone support (the app is now Universal) and a couple of new options such as “Open sites” and pull to refresh for webpages. What, really? Read more

Brian Chen: “Why Windows Phone 7 Will Make Android Look Chaotic”→

Brian Chen: “Why Windows Phone 7 Will Make Android Look Chaotic”

The OS is going to be the same with the same features on every handset so, as a consumer, your decision-making will boil down to the hardware’s look, weight and size. Compare that to the experience of buying an Android phone, which could be running a different version depending on the handset you buy: Donut, Eclair, Froyo, blueberry pie, neopolitan or whatever Google chooses to call it eventually. You won’t have to ask yourself, “Am I going to get X on this phone or do I have to get another one?” because they’re all running the same OS with a few variations in hardware.

The inevitable question that arises is what Windows Phone 7 means as a competitor to iOS. It’s tough to say.

This morning I drove to the Three store to see what Android devices were available. I’m a curious guy. All of them had different specs, features and UIs. On the other hand, the Windows Phone 7 platform looks solid and consistent - but is it enough to gain decent market share after years of Windows Mobile failures? I don’t know. What’s for sure, though, is that Microsoft is doing many things right now.

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Monitor and Geotag Your iPhone Data Usage with DataMan

If you have an iPhone and a contract with your carrier (of course you guys in the US do), then I guess you’re obsessed with data usage tracking: how many messages can you send per month? What’s the threshold for mobile internet access? How much have you consumed this week? Depending on the country and carrier, the experience can be terrible. Fortunately, I have a pretty good plan with 3 Italia over here (4 GB internet / month, 400 SMS, 800 minutes voice) so I haven’t really worried about keeping track of my usage - I understand, though, that this is a problem for many.

DataMan by XVision is probably the most complete app to monitor and even geotag your daily, monthly and week data usage on your iPhone. Read more

Watch Videos While Surfing on Your iPad

Who said you can’t ‘multitask’ on an iPad (without installing the iOS developer beta)? Geeky Gadgets has a tutorial for a DIY HUD adapter/dock that holds your iPhone on top of your iPad. View media on your iPhone and surf the web on your iPad at the same time. Read more

Yahoo! Messenger 2.0 Available With Video Calling

Announced last week, an update to the official Yahoo Messenger app has just been released in the App Store. The new 2.0 version brings video calling to the iPhone, thus directly competing with Apple’s FaceTime…if you’re a Yahoo! Messenger user. Among other features, multitasking and support for iOS notifications.

Check out the changelog and screenshots below, go download the app here. Read more

The App Hall Of Fame→

The App Hall Of Fame

Discovering the very best apps is an increasingly difficult task. There are so many new applications released that it becomes harder and harder to find the gems in the crowd — especially so once that special new app smell wears off. That’s why we’re here. The App Hall of Fame exists to archive the very best of the best in mobile apps. The apps inducted into the hall of fame are considered to be the very best in the app store, the cream of the crop, as it were.

A fun and interesting project. I’m in the selection committee.

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Retinasizer Forces iPhone Games To Render in Retina Graphics

It sucks when you buy a $4.99 (or even more) game for your iPhone and you find out that the game doesn’t support the Retina Display. How is that even possible, 5 months after the release of the iPhone 4? I don’t know, but we might have a solution here: Retinasizer, a free tweak available in Cydia, can force games to run natively with high-resolution graphics on the Retina Display. Read more