• Test your website in Safari on iPad using the iPhone Simulator (Hardware -> Device -> iPad). iPad is available in the iPhone Simulator in iPhone OS 3.2 SDK.

• Test your website on iPad, and update user agent detection code if necessary. iPad user agent string is:
  

  Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU OS 3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.4 Mobile/7B334b Safari/531.21.10

• Simulating Safari on iPad HTTP requests in Safari on the desktop.  First, enable the checkbox next to “Show Develop menu in menu bar” in Safari’s Advanced Preference pane. Next, select Develop -> User Agent -> Other from the Safari menu. You will be prompted to enter a user agent string. Copy the Safari on iPad user agent string above, then paste in it into the dialog box that appears. Note: You can try this trick with websites like Gmail and YouTube to view how they display a different version of their website for iPad Safari.

• Using a constant for viewport width.
  

  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width" />

• Prepare for a touch interface. Don’t use a:hover pseudo class or mouseover events.
• Orientation media queries to automatically select the proper stylesheet based on whether the user is in landscape or portrait.
  

  <link rel=”stylesheet” media=”all and (orientation:portrait)” href=”portrait.css”>
  <link rel=”stylesheet” media=”all and (orientation:landscape)” href=”landscape.css”>

News about Pastebud:

• Copy and Paste Comes to iPhone – Wired News
  
• iPhone Copy and Paste Now Working Between Safari and Mail – Gizmodo

We have decided to drop the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) for released iPhone software.

We put the NDA in place because the iPhone OS includes many Apple inventions and innovations that we would like to protect, so that others don’t steal our work. It has happened before. While we have filed for hundreds of patents on iPhone technology, the NDA added yet another level of protection. We put it in place as one more way to help protect the iPhone from being ripped off by others.

However, the NDA has created too much of a burden on developers, authors and others interested in helping further the iPhone’s success, so we are dropping it for released software. Developers will receive a new agreement without an NDA covering released software within a week or so. Please note that unreleased software and features will remain under NDA until they are released.

What does this mean to you?  This means that developers can now share to the world any technical articles or tutorials related to developing iPhone apps or web apps.  Now, I can finally proceed with publishing my iCopyUPaste technical article.

The main advantages of client based mobile Web applications are that they provide very good possibilities for graphic design of user interfaces and keep content available even offline. Furthermore, they often show faster reaction times and are sometimes easier to link to other telephone functions such as directories, camera, etc. The main disadvantage of every client-based solution is that they initially need to be downloaded by the user and installed on the mobile – a practice that will need to be repeated for every new release. Many users are prevented from taking this step due to technical problems, security issues and a lack of clarity concerning costs involved. Furthermore clients are always dependent on the mobile phone operating system and must often undergo costly adjustments for each individual terminal.

Mobile sites, on the other hand, do not require any installation. They are immediately available over the browser and the sites’ content and software are continuously updated unobtrusively to the mobile user. Mobile sites also provide a greater scope of outreach than clients do, as nowadays practically all mobile phones have a browser. Adjusting mobile sites and rich media content to various mobile terminals can be made 100 percent automatic. This means a massive reduction in development and testing expenses. User interface design is also no longer an obstacle. Modern mobile phone browsers enable use of AJAX and Flash, thus creating a user experience similar to that of PC Web. If a company is looking for a larger audience reach with as little hassle as possible, the mobile site is the clear winner.

I totally agree. The one thing that I advocate is to have some kind of markup language that allows the browser to have access to native device functions such as the PIM, camera, etc.

The premise is simple.  I want a way for anyone using an iPhone to open a bookmarklet on any Safari web page that activates a hidden dialog menu.  They can select any text from the web page and copy the text to a “Copy and Paste” web service up in the “cloud”.  The user can paste the text on another page’s form input field or somewhere else on the same page.  I can already think of several hurdles such as cross-domain JavaScript, server-related security issues, and iPhone limitations on JavaScript events.  I plan on sharing every morsel of information that I find on my journey and I invite anyone to help.  I will start putting up the code in some form of source control (more on that later).  By the time I’m done, perhaps Apple will already have implemented a nice solution to this problem.

The wonderful part of this idea is that it doesn’t necessarily have to be confined to iPhones.  Creating it as a web service and opening up an API allows any platform that can consume web services to have access to a “cloud-based” Copy and Paste.  Therefore, I can envision native iPhone apps to simply create the following options: “Copy to iCopyuPaste” and “Paste from iCopyuPaste“.  They can hook those events to consume the “iCopyuPaste” web service.  Of course, the down side is that it won’t work if you aren’t immediately connected to the 3G or Edge or Wi-Fi network, but that’s the trade off for copy and paste.  Another use case scenario could be for someone who needs to copy some text from one computer’s browser over to another computer’s browser.  If they needed that text to be pasted into a native app via the system’s clipboard, someone could conceivable use Adobe AIR to create a widget that consumes the “iCopyuPaste” web service and store that text onto the system clipboard, ready to be pasted on any application on the desktop. Thoughts?

What does iPhone 2.0 offer that warrants an upgrade?  GPS, 3G, and slightly larger storage.  That simply is NOT enough to warrant the extra $30 / month I’d have to shell out to get the new iPhone 2.0.  I currently pay $55 incl. taxes and fees for my iPhone 1.0 plan, and I thought that was pretty hefty to begin with.  This new plan simply is highway robbery!  Apple and AT&T, no thanks, but I’m sticking with iPhone 1.0.

• Google Gmail – I can access my mail from home, work, Wi-Fi hotspot, my iPhone.
• Google Calendar – Anything that relates to time/date/place/to-dos, it goes in my Google Calendar.  I can access this from practically anywhere.
• Google Reader – This is my online RSS Newsreader. With Google Gears offline support, I can catchup with all the latest news feeds even when I am on a plane.
• Del.icio.us Bookmarks – I find that I have not bookmarked a page in IE or Firefox in ages! Instead, all my bookmarks are on this handy service.
• MP3tunes – All my iTunes music safely stored and synced online with MP3tunes.com.  I can stream my music from the Internet.  This service doesn’t store and sync my iTunes videos and movies, so I use other means to backup and sync these files.
• .Mac – I use the iDisk service to keep any storage of files and folders that I need to access from anywhere.  The one other feature that I do like is the Photo sharing capabilities.
• SlingBox – Ok, its not really an online service, but its how I watch TV now.  Place-shifting means I can watch TV shows streamed online from any single Slingbox location.  Place one SlingBox hardware in your parent’s home in Canada and you can catch international TV right on your computer.  Quality is not the greatest, as it depends a lot on the upload speeds of the SlingBox locations you are getting the streams from.
• Google Docs – This service can almost replace your traditional Microsoft Office apps. Unfortunately, it is not as speedy as having a desktop app.  Speed and offline portability are the biggest factors in me not completely switching over to using online-based office apps.
• Google Alerts – This is how I read the latest news. I give search terms that I find most interesting, and everyday they will send me the top links to news stories and blog entries that match my keywords.
• Kayak – I give it my top flight destinations and the maximum price I am willing to pay, and I get a daily report of any matching deals.
• Twitter – This service is basically a mashup of fan site / blog / and alerting service. You can alert all your followers via SMS text, IM, and email with “what you are doing now”. I am still a little weary of letting everyone know what I am doing now, but I can see how it can be used to alert a large number of people at once, with whatever information you wish to share. This is most useful for people with a mobile lifestyle, who may not get a chance to post their thoughts to a blog.

Why has Firefox surged to  the top?  Two things. Add-ons/extensions, and tabbed browsing.  I cannot even imagine browsing the web without these innovations.  Those two simple ideas have made my online experience a sheer joy.  My top ten add-ons include:  del.icio.us, Foxmarks, Adblock, Google Browser Sync, Google Gears, Google Notebook, Operator, Greasemonkey, Firebug, and User Agent Switcher.

The upcoming FIrefox 3 also promises new innovations to make browsing even more simpler and useful. The aptly named “Awesome Bar” is indeed awesome.  You just start typing in anything that you’ve accessed in your browser URL, and it comes up with possible suggestions.  Unlike type-ahead, the suggestions you get can come from any position in the URL (not just the first n characters). Also, the performance and security enhancements are much needed as pre-Firefox-3 browsers had started to become slow.  I remembered the primary reason that I had switched from IE to Firefox back in the day was because Firefox 1.0 was so much faster than IE 6.0.  Performance is as much part of the user experience as UI. You can have the prettiest user interface, but if the user has to wait longer to get their information, they will perceive the product as crap.

Mozilla’s next phase is to rule the mobile browser space. The space is already crowded with the likes of Webkit, Opera, Pocket IE, etc. How awesome will it be to be able to keep those Add-Ons while surfing the mobile web on any smartphone platform. That’s Firefox’s bread and butter.  That’s what will make them successful in the mobile web 2.0.

This type of location network awareness could be applied to many other applications. For instance, upon connecting to your Wi-Fi router at home, it could signal an action of some kind. For instance, if your smartphone sensed that your PC or Mac was online in your home network, it could synchronize your smartphone’s contacts, calendars, and music automatically over Wi-Fi. On the smartphone, there should be the ability to discover open hotspots, store those hotspots to location profiles, and take actions based on those location and network profiles.

The iPhone Safari browser, Nokia, and Android all use the same web browser engine called Webkit.  Webkit is a revelation in itself. The full web browsing experience on the desktop now available on the mobile device. Mozilla’s Fennec is based on the same Mozilla Firefox engine and also allows for the full browsing experience.  Windows Mobile has Internet Explorer and its also starting to move in this direction. See a trend?  Yep. The days of WAP browsing are slowing being numbered. Its not going away anytime soon, but it eventually will.

Of course, as a developer, you will also be faced with a choice of developing a mobile native application vs mobile web application. That decision is not an easy one to make. There are so many platforms to choose from. iPhone, Windows Mobile, Palm, BlackBerry, Java ME, Flash Lite, Symbian, and the list goes on. This tells me that in order to get the most market penetration for your application, targeting the mobile web is the logical choice. However, there are exceptions. Gaming apps, off-line storage, and integration with phone hardware feature set are all compelling reasons to target your application to a platform as opposed to the mobile web.  What Apple should have done to make this decision easier was to integrate phone APIs into the Safari Webkit engine. Create a subset of XHTML tags or JavaScript objects that allow the mobile web app to tap into the PIM, camera, or other mobile device native function.

• Copy and paste (Come on, how hard can this be?)
• Text to speech for Safari web pages (This is useful for when you are driving and want the text of the web page to be read outloud to you)
• Enable Bluetooth GPS receivers (If the Windows Mobile SmartPhone has support for this, then why can’t the iPhone?)
• Voice prompted turn-by-turn navigation in Maps (Right now, you get directions in the Maps application, but unless you have a passenger with you that can operate the iPhone and tell you where to turn next, you are bound to get into an accident doing this solo)
• Corporate Wi-Fi access (allow user/pwd instead of preshared key for authentication)
• Video capture for camera. (Like the copy and paste idea, I have no idea why this is so difficult to implement)
• Native iPod games that you can buy from iTunes on an iPhone (Not just as a Safari webapp)
• Enable offline storage for Maps and Safari webapps

Third Party Applications on the iPhone

Let me just say it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers’ hands in February. We are excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users. With our revolutionary multi-touch interface, powerful hardware and advanced software architecture, we believe we have created the best mobile platform ever for developers.

It will take until February to release an SDK because we’re trying to do two diametrically opposed things at once—provide an advanced and open platform to developers while at the same time protect iPhone users from viruses, malware, privacy attacks, etc. This is no easy task. Some claim that viruses and malware are not a problem on mobile phones—this is simply not true. There have been serious viruses on other mobile phones already, including some that silently spread from phone to phone over the cell network. As our phones become more powerful, these malicious programs will become more dangerous. And since the iPhone is the most advanced phone ever, it will be a highly visible target.

Some companies are already taking action. Nokia, for example, is not allowing any applications to be loaded onto some of their newest phones unless they have a digital signature that can be traced back to a known developer. While this makes such a phone less than “totally open,” we believe it is a step in the right direction. We are working on an advanced system which will offer developers broad access to natively program the iPhone’s amazing software platform while at the same time protecting users from malicious programs.

We think a few months of patience now will be rewarded by many years of great third party applications running on safe and reliable iPhones.

Steve

P.S.: The SDK will also allow developers to create applications for iPod touch. [Oct 17, 2007]

Pros

• Mobile Safari web browser using Wi-Fi or EDGE. You can surf the web just as on a desktop, or you can go to iPhone specific sites that really customize the web browsing experience.
• Everything you can find in an iPod, plus a mobile phone.
• The thin form factor and profile is elegant and makes it feel like you’re holding something luxurious.
• Photos taken from camera are surprisingly good. Viewing photos on an iPhone is a joy.
• Syncing all your songs, podcasts, photos, contacts, and calendar with iTunes is a breeze and brain-dead easy.
• Wi-Fi Music Store. This is really a long time coming. Basically, if you happen to be at a coffee shop (i.e. StarBucks), and you like a song thats playing there, you can connect to the Wi-Fi Music Store and purchase it on the spot. To me, thats the future of how people will discover new music instead of traditionally on the radio.
• An active iPhone hacker community.

Cons

• No GPS. The Google Maps application is great, but without GPS you need a copilot with you when you are driving in order for it to work. Plus, it doesn’t cache any of the maps. So if you are in an area without any network connectivity, you are pretty much hosed.
• No wireless sync. This is something that Zune2 got right.
• Can’t record video.
• No real 3rd party apps (no access to local storage and other advanced hardware features). UPDATE: See later post about Steve Jobs change of heart.
• No disk mode. Basically, you can’t use it as a flash drive as you used to be able to do with the iPod video.
• Have to pay an extra $0.99 for a ringtone version of a song that you purchased at the iTunes store already. Ringtone maker won’t work with MP3s or AAC files that you ripped from CDs.
• No external battery. Must recharge.
• Headphone jack is not compatible with other head phone makers. Duh!
• Locked only to AT&T service provider for 2 years. There is a simple work-around to choose the Go-Phone Prepaid plans that have no contract obligations. Just make sure to call 611 to cancel automatic monthly refills, and you’ll have a really expensive Go-Phone in your hands.
• Apple and AT&T are becoming NOT so consumer-friendly. Just lookup the all the bad rap they are getting with their intentional “bricking” of iPhones and the really bad AT&T customer service.

Ok. There are more cons than pros, but that’s the price you pay for being an Apple fanboy. For an alternative smartphone go check out the Nokia N95 8GB version. At the moment, its not available in North America and the price tag is $200 more than an iPhone.

• Zec Online Journal: Steve Jobs doesn’t understand mobility
• Steve Jobs Answers Walt’s iPhone Questions
• The iPhone’s Camera: Great Under Ample Light
• Finally Confirmed: What the iPhone Doesn’t Have

I have one comment about the iPhone’s announced rate plans. It works out the same as the current Cingular/AT&T voice plans plus the $19.99 unlimited data plan. There were rumblings that Apple and Cingular/AT&T would make it more expensive, but I think it was a wise decision not to charge more.

It is after all a very good thing that Apple has decided to provide URL-based access to the iPhone’s telephony, email, and other services, but that point really got lost on the crowd I think, who were expecting an SDK to access these things. We’ve known all along that web apps would be one possibility for third-party iPhone development, and Steve’s “there’s no SDK, just use Safari and standard Web 2.0 technologies like Ajax to develop iPhone apps” message didn’t highlight the power of what they are actually allowing here. (As one colleague commented, “just try getting your web app to make an actual phone call on a J2ME-based phone.”) Personally, I think that there are a lot of interesting possibilities for third-party development with this kind of access to the iPhone’s main features, and I’m not surprised that Apple isn’t letting us get at the OS or place buttons on the home screen, but his message clearly didn’t go over well with the developer audience here in San Francisco. Read More.

Obviously, having access to basic phone functions isn’t entirely new as many current mobile web browsers give this basic functionality (if your web pages are coded correctly). The real meat is if web developers are given access to local persistent storage on the phone, access to iTunes, and access to mail and calendar. Another important thing that we would need is access to the multi-touch user interface events (i.e. in addition to the standard onClick and onFocus events, perhaps we would use onPinchIn or onPinchOut events to trigger actions on the web application. I have yet to see any real specifications on this 3rd party web app API, but it does hold some promise (contrary to what many see as a disappointment).

Oh, and one last thing. I also want to be able to run Java ME on the iPhone. I already have two Java ME apps that I use constantly. Gmail and Opera Mini. It would be sweet if the iPhone could leverage the Java ME space. However, I do recall that Steve Jobs once quoted as saying that Java is too heavy weight and isn’t likely to be in its future plans. Therefore, I’d assume that Java ME on the iPhone will most likely never happen.

Time to stop using the button element because it doesn’t render on many of the mobile web browsers.

This is why mobile phones in N. America still suck compared to those in Japan. Let’s see how the Apple iPhone starts to promote changes needed to catch up.

If only there was a way to save common canned responses to some datastore on your mobile phone, and simply paste them into form fields that you need to enter. I have a Windows Mobile smartphone device, and that is a feature that I most wished for. Sure… the platform supports copy and paste, but only for phones that have pen-based input. Surely, there must be a copy-paste mechanism for those smartphones that only have the joystick/keypad-based input. I have tried several mobile web browsers for my Cingular 2125 Windows Mobile smartphone device, and they all fail on providing this key feature. I tried Opera Mini (J2ME), Pocket IE, and the Opera Browser beta for Windows Smartphones, and it is an incredible chore to input text. A simple copy to datastore and paste mechanism would help alleviate this annoyance.

My hope is that someday the mobile browser space will be advanced enough that it will rival that of the desktop browser space. That way, web developers can simply write their code once, and that it will render properly on all web browsers – desktop and mobile versions.

Web developers in the desktop world have had to deal with cross-browser incompatibilities when writing code. The same can be said for the old class of mobile handsets and their fragmented support for WAP, XHTML, JavaScript, and AJAX. To my knowledge, there are only a few mobile web browsers capable of rendering AJAX.

If your phone runs on the Windows Mobile platform, IE Mobile is the default web browser installed. According to the IE Mobile developer blog, AJAX is supported on IE Mobile. Unfortunately, the JavaScript DOM support is limited. Therefore, most AJAX toolkits out there will NOT render their AJAX widgets correctly on IE Mobile. Come to think of it, I am not sure that any AJAX toolkits even consider testing on IE Mobile or any other mobile web browser for that matter.

The Opera platform is probably the most well-known mobile web browser that is capable of supporting AJAX. The only thing slowing its adoption is the fact that it is not free, and it is a separate download and install. Opera does have a free version called Opera Mini, but it is not known to support AJAX. Opera Mobile is also only targeted for Symbian and Windows Mobile platforms. This leaves out Blackberry users, which is significant base of mobile web users out there. The only other way for Blackberry users and other handsets to adopt AJAX-like functionality is through the use of Java MIDlets (J2ME). However, this requires the handset to include a J2ME runtime, and it is a separate application install. Speaking of J2ME, Mojax is yet another platform that promises to enable AJAX in a large subset of mobile devices.

To recap… Full AJAX supported mobile web browsers are far and few between. The iPhone’s Safari Mobile and S60 Platform is a giant leap forward for mobile AJAX. The other players include Windows Mobile, and Opera Platform. Blackberry and the rest of the field can use J2ME technology to fill the gaps for AJAX-like web content, but it really is not a true mobile web browser experience (as it is a separate application install required). Any bets as to who will lead this pack? Let’s just hope that more and more mobile web browsers will support AJAX, and that everyone works together to ensure that we do not have the same cross-browser incompatibilities that have plagued the desktop web browser world.

Resources:
http://www.fiercedeveloper.com/story/editor-s-corner/2007-01-23
http://my.opera.com/operaplatform/blog/
http://my.opera.com/operaplatform/links/

Firstly, Apple is renowned for its tight control over the iPod. They never opened up the iPod for 3rd party apps, so why should they start opening it up for the iPhone (which essentially is an iPod with phone functions)? Let’s imagine that they let poor quality 3rd party apps to be installed on their iPods. The result is a poor image of Apple when Joe Schmoe decides to show off the app to his friends. Of course, the opposite could hold true where a killer 3rd party app gets shown, and the result is that Apple gets free good publicity. If you were Apple, would you take that chance?

Secondly, remember that they have a relationship with Cingular. Cingular would crap their pants if some 3rd party developer (i.e. Skype) created a VOIP application that allows people to by-pass the Cingular network to make calls. Think of the potential loss of revenue on Cingular’s part and you can understand why Apple would be hesitant to open up the iPhone for 3rd party apps. Of course, this assumes that Apple does indeed care about their partner Cingular and that it is not just a case of the “tail wagging the dog” syndrome. If Apple does call the shots (tail wagging the dog), then this argument goes out the window.

Finally, let’s not lose complete hope for 3rd party support. Apple did show off widgets functionality which in essence is really just Dashboard widgets for the phone. Dashboard widgets are really just a sandboxed web programming environment using JavaScript. Also, you have the Safari mobile browser built-in. There are a ton of web apps out there, and if people are willing to live online exclusively for their 3rd party apps, then this should not be too much of a problem.

The mobile phone market is very fragmented with mobile phone service providers dictating what technology gets implemented in mobile phones. I agree with Daniel that Apple is in a good position to shake things up. The mobile phone service providers will not do anything that will jeopardize their model of charging customers per minute or per MB, and they will certainly not make it easy for customers to switch over to Wi-Fi and the use of VOIP over it. Apple can shake things up by creating a platform and user experience that is seamless between the phone, the Mac/PC, and any other devices that are used to view information and content.

Also, I believe the killer feature on the iPhone would be an embedded version of the Safari web browser. Why? Look at what is driving Web 2.0 on the desktop; AJAX-enabled web browsers, accessible high-speed Internet, and what follows is the flurry of amazing web applications that allow users to replace their desktop applications with online versions. Give web developers the canvas and paint, and they will create their masterpieces for the mobile web 2.0.

While we’re on the topic of mobile web, Skype announced today that they will no longer offer free SkypeOut calls to US/Canada. They will charge a flat fee yearly fee of $14.95 before January 31-2007, and $29.95 after that. Still pretty reasonable, if you ask me. Combine that with Soonr, and you can have a mobile phone that uses SkypeOut to make long distance calls. More news from Skype is that they just released a Windows Mobile smartphone version of their Skype Mobile. I should have a review on this shortly.

What I know is that there hasn’t been much innovation in the field of pervasive computing or the idea that mobile devices can be used to access your computer applications, anytime, anywhere. There are many software applications that target only specific devices, such as Palm, Windows Mobile, Symbian, etc. Interoperability and device/platform independence has been difficult to attain. Software developers who wanted to write mobile applications had to target specific platforms. However, the web browser is the single application that ties all these devices together.

The notion that the “network is the computer” is starting to become more of a reality. We just didn’t see it happening that much till now. The World Wide Web is having a resurgence due in part to “Web 2.0“, “AJAX“, and all these “community-based“, “social-driven” web applications. This is partly because high-speed Internet access has become more ubiquitous and accessible to the masses. Web browsers on non-mobile platforms are commonplace and have recently had some incredible technological capabilities that allow web applications that mimic traditional desktop applications.

In the world of mobile computing, we have had a different experience. Surfing the web on mobile devices was very limited to whether mobile phone vendors would provide the necessary infrastructure and capabilities for these phones. In many ways, this is still the case. Web usage on mobile devices has had a slow rate of adoption due in part to data plans being too expensive, web browser features and support still in its infancy, fragmented web page markup language support (WML, xhtml, etc), and lack of any killer apps. However, in less than a few short years, I believe that will change.

A few years ago, the wireless data infrastructure was still slower than 56kbps. At least today, we can’t complain that the wireless data infrastructure is slowing things down, because many of the next-gen networks are capable of some very impressive speeds. I am also starting to see some very good things happen that may usher in the new mobile web 2.0 era that we are about to embark.

This past year, Opera made an announcement that it would start making their mobile web browser more AJAX-friendly and included many Web 2.0 technologies such as RSS feeds, and JavaScript widget support. Opera makes their “paid-version” mobile browser software available on pretty much all the major phone vendors out there, and they even make their “free” Opera Mini browser available as a Java ME midlet application. This means they have their footprint in pretty much all the mobile devices out there. On the Windows Mobile platform, they already ship default with Internet Explorer mobile browser which is already capable of rendering web pages without needing websites to create WAP-friendly versions. The difference between Opera Mobile and Internet Explorer for smartphones, is that Opera is incorporating exciting new features that are key to Web 2.0, while Internet Explorer is stagnant and built for Web 1.0.

What we really need now is to have the web developer community start making those killer apps. Google has taken the lead by making many of their web applications mobile-friendly. Gmail and Google Maps have recently been ported to the Java ME specification. Also, an innovative new company called Soonr leverages the power of Opera’s capability for mobile AJAX to create an interesting class of applications used for VOIP communications. Of course, other things need to also happen. These so-called smartphones need to be everywhere. Unlimited data plans from mobile carriers need to be much cheaper. There’s nothing worse than getting a huge bill from your provider because you thought the 10 MB data plan was enough.

The other good thing I am seeing is that Apple is readying their rumored iPhone. This smartphone will supposedly have a mobile OS based on their desktop Mac OS X operating system. I can’t help but think that this will help explode the smartphone market, in the same way that the iPod has exploded the personal MP3 player market. Imagine a Safari Mobile browser that can render AJAX-enabled web sites. This could be the catalyst needed to usher in the new era of the Mobile Web 2.0.

Since I am in the market for a new cell phone, I’ve been doing my research and reading into
what new phones are coming into the market this year. The Nokia 7610 has really caught my eye.

• Here are a summary of the features:
• 1 megapixel camera for quality printing
• Up to 10 minutes video recording
• Bluetooth wireless technology and USB connectivity
• 8 MB internal dynamic memory
• 64 MB Reduced Size (MMC slot)
• Advanced XHTML browser
• Symbian OS 7.0s
• Downloadable Java™ MIDP 2.0 applications
• RealOne Player (MP3, AAC, 3GPP, RealMedia)
• Tri-band coverage on up to five continents