Top 10 i phone Apps of 2008

The iPhone alone is an amazing device. But it's the phenomenal App Store that's made the iPhone truly revolutionary, by giving thousands of independent developers the ability extend and transform the device with their creativity.

Not even half a year old, the store has surpassed a milestone of 10,000 pieces of software available. Since the beginning, Wired.com has paid close attention to the gems that shine among the dross.
We've plucked out a list of 10 apps





1. Google Earth
When Steve Jobs called the iPhone "Your life in your pocket," he probably didn't expect Google to deliver the world in your pocket. Well, virtually. Displaying satellite imagery around the world in a 3-D globe, Google Earth is one of the most intense, mindblowing apps that truly shows off the powers of the iPhone. If you want to impress your grandmother with a demonstration of just how far technology has come since she was a girl, this ought to do the trick. ">Download Google Earth (Free)

2. Pandora
Whoa whoa whoa — free downloaded music on a portable device? You don't say. Pandora's alternative music distribution made this happen, and the app is cool as hell on the iPhone. Add a station for an artist you like, and the app will play that artist's music as well as similar tunes you might like. What better way to find new music with the wealth of new bands out there?

3. Trism
Trism is such an addictive and appealing game that it blessed its developer Steve Demeter with $250,000 in profit in just two months. And deservedly so, because the game's really well designed and plays something like a Bejeweled with an accelerometer to move around the puzzle pieces.

4. TapTapRevenge
You'd have to be living on a different planet (or a retirement home) if you haven't heard of Guitar Hero, the game that gets players to twitch their fingers compulsively along with the beat of their favorite songs. Developer Tapulous took the same idea to make an extremely addictive rhythm game called Tap Tap Revenge. Tapping blinking lights on a screen to catch tunes isn't exactly the same as rocking out on plastic guitars and drum pads, but it's still highly addictive. And Tap Tap Revenge is so popular it's even offering the option to download new tracks to tap to, similar to Guitar Hero and Rock Band's music stores

5. Ocarina
The hottest music app in the App Store, Ocarina thought beyond the iPhone's touchscreen and found a unique way to use the handset's microphone. Blowing into the mic simulates the experience of tooting into a flute; you play around with four virtual "holes" on the screen to change the note. Ocarina users around the world can even hear what you're playing in a globe mode. It takes a while to get a hang of it, but Ocarina gives away just how creative iPhone apps can get so long as developers have enough imagination

6. Shazam
Everyone's familiar with this scenario: You hear a really catchy, unfamiliar song on the radio and you have no idea what it's called. You hum it to yourself repeatedly and attempt to memorize the lyrics, only to forget it after slamming a few shots at the bar. Shazam will never leave you struggling to recollect these thoughts again: Hold the iPhone up to a speaker playing the unknown tune and the app will identify it — album, artist and song title — just like that.

7. NetShare
This app is so cool you can't have it anymore. Nullriver's NetShare, an application that turns your iPhone into a wireless modem, disappeared from the App Store shortly after its release. Later, we learned ">Apple banned the app because NetShare violated AT&T's terms of service agreement. So only a lucky few (including some Wired.com staff) got the benefits of unlimited iPhone tethering

8. Tweetie
Twitter, a new form of micro-blogging, became more legitimate when it broke the news of the deadly Mumbai attacks. And Tweetie is the best app we've found to follow your Twitter friends. The app neatly separates Twitter feeds into categories, and the interface resembles the bubbly iChat interface that most of us have come to love. It even lets you search Twitter and save those searches for later. A must-have for Twitterholics.

9. SayWhere
You get used to typing on the iPhone after some time, but punching in addresses to look up directions is by far the biggest drag. DialDirections was the first to introduce speech-recognition capabilities to the iPhone with SayWhere, which translates users' speech into queries for Google Maps, Yelp, Traffic or Yellow Pages. It's a nifty app, especially for keeping drivers' eyes on the road rather than the iPhone's virtual keyboard.

10. Stanza
A book reader that grabs free titles from public domains, Stanza has soared in popularity — making the iPhone a worthy competitor to Amazon's Kindle. And if those free books aren't enough, Stanza recently expanded to incorporate a store to purchase commercial titles. The app did a good job pleasing Wired.com's Charlie Sorrel, who modified his Moleskine notebook so he could embed his iPod touch in it.

HTC Touch Diamond2

HTC is following up on its ultra-sexy touchphone, the Touch Diamond, with the new Touch Diamond2, which seems quite worthy of the title of successor. This time around there's much more room for screen, with a huge 3.6-inch 480 x 800 LCD up front, and around back there's a 5 megapixel camera with autofocus. The other main addition is a "touch zoom bar" below the screen -- just like on big brother Touch Pro2 -- which we presume provides expected (and welcome) functionality. There's also the new version of TouchFLO 3D running on Windows Mobile, but under the hood there's the same old 528MHz processor, and the whole kit is actually a tad thicker a 0.54-inches. Still, memory is up to 512MB ROM and 288MB RAM, and if HTC keeps hoisting pixels and sexy on us at this rate we can hardly complain. This phone should hit major markets in Europe and Asia in "early Q2 2009," with more spots to follow later in the year.

HTC Touch Cruise 09

The HTC Touch Cruise, emphasizing GPS features with an application called "Footprint." Available by June,2009. its 3.2-megapixel camera, combining a picture, audio file, notes and GPS coordinates into a smart-looking package. Neat.

It's also adept at turn-by-turn navigation, and when you dock it in its car cradle, gives you navigational capability just like the big boys.

Features

• Qualcomm MSM7225, 528 MHz chipset
• WCDMA/HSPA: 900/2100MHz. HSDPA 7.2 Mbps Connectivity
• 2.8-inch TFT-LCD touch-sensitive screen with QVGA resolution display
• 512 MB flash ROM, 256 MB RAM internal memory
• microSD memory card (SD 2.0 compatible) expansion slots
• Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional OS
• HTC TouchFLO, 4-Way navigation wheel with Enter and HTC Footprints buttons
• 3.2 MP, with fixed focus camera
• GPS/A-GPS
• Wi-Fi 802.11b/g
• Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR
• Up to 400 minutes talktime (GSM)
• Up to two weeks standby (GSM)
• 102 x 53.5 x 14.5mm
• 103 grams

HTC Smart Phone with Dual Keypads

HTC is now introducing the S740, the latest smartphone with piano black finish and faceted back, resembling a diamond. It is thinner than the Touch Pro. This new model runs on Windows Mobile Standard operating system and its screen is not touch sensitive. It has a side-slider with full QWERTY and a 12-key numeric keypad when closed. The QWERTY is different this time, it is in four instead of five rows. The phone is a quad-band GSM and dual-band 900/2100 MHz UMTS/HSDPA 7.2 Mbps phone. Other features include 3.2MP camera without auto focus, aGPS, 2.4-inch QVGA display, microSD slot, 256MB of internal memory and 256MB RAM

Specifications:

• Networks: GSM 850/900/1800/1900, HSDPA 2100/900
• OS: Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard
• Screen: 2.4 inches, TFT, 65K colors,240 x 320 pixels,
• Memory: microSD (TransFlash, 256 MB RAM, 256 MB ROM, Qualcomm MSM7225, 528MHz processor
• Form factor: Side-slider
• Size: 116.3 x 43.4 x 16.3 mm
• Weight: 140 g
• Color: Black

Key Features:

• 3.2 MP, 2048×1536 pixels, video
• GPRS
• HSDPA, 7.2 MBPS
• Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP
• Built-in GPS with A-GPS
• WLAN
• USB v2.0 (miniUSB)
• Pocket Office(Word, Excel, Outlook, PDF viewer)
• Java MIDP 2.0
• Voice memo
• MP3/AAC player
• Video/audio album
• Built-in handsfree

G1 Google Phone HTC

Even before Apple announced the iPhone, rumors had been swirling around the tech blogs about the infamous new mobile handset. While the phone is about to drop for the first time in the next few weeks, there are already rumors from Microsoft, Yahoo, and even Google about handsets of their own. Now I have seen screen shots and have been hearing rumors for months about the Google Phone but up until now there hasn’t been any word from Google concerning this nor any reliable source writing an article about the phone… yes, up until now.

The NY Times recently wrote an article titled Big Money in Little Screens where they state that Google isn’t just considering the cellphone market, but they have “gone so far as to build a prototype phone with its own software inside.” The source, according to the NY Times is a supposed insider who “has seen it.”

Typically I wouldn’t argue with the NY times, but if Google is so far into the market that they are already running and testing a prototype then why wouldn’t they announce it and build up some more hype? Maybe articles like this build more hype over time than an announcement a year or two before they are ready to show something? I guess we will just have to wait and see.

Demo tours HTC G1 Google Phone

Apple Updated Security of Iphone

After the release of Nokia N96,5800 XpressMusic the position of Apple Iphone in the market is very bad.So apple is changing their policies and they are planing to update their models.Among the many improvements to the iPhone with the 2.1 software update posted on Friday are changes meant to enhance security on the device. Apple has provided details about what's changed. All of the changes affect security issues noted for iPhone 2.0 through 2.0.2 software releases. None of the problems affect iPhone software prior to 2.0.

Changes have also been made to improve security with the iPhone's network connectivity. mDNSResponder has been updated to reduce susceptibility to DNS cache poisoning. TCP initial sequence numbers are now randomly generated, to thwart remote attackers from spoofing TCP connections.

The Passcode Lock feature is used to keep users from making accessing the iPhone without entering a multi-digit code. That feature could be thwarted thanks to an exploit involving the handling of emergency calls; that has been corrected.

WebKit on the iPhone has also been updated to address an issue associated with the handling of Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) import statements. Document reference handling has been improved to prevent this problem from occurring.

Apple Inc. updated the software that runs its iPhones on Friday in hopes of decreasing dropped calls, improving battery life and cutting the time it takes to synchronize the device with a computer.

Apple also said the new update "improved accuracy of the 3G signal strength display" — meaning the phone would show more "bars" on the connection meter. However, the quality of the connection was not necessarily affected by the update.

Introducing iPhone 3G. With fast 3G wireless technology, GPS mapping, support for enterprise features like Microsoft Exchange, and the new App Store, iPhone 3G puts even more features at your fingertips.
And like the original iPhone, it combines three products in one — a revolutionary phone, a widescreen iPod, and a breakthrough Internet device with rich HTML email and a desktop-class web browser

Sony Ericsson Idou

Sony Ericsson kicked of the MWC show a bit early today with a press conference for a slick new phone: The enigmatically named Idou.
With an OS based on Symbian, the Idou continues the cameraphone megapixel pissing match with an impressive 12 megapixel camera/Xenon flash combo.

Once you snap those gorgeous cellpone photos, they'll be presented to you on a sizable 3.5-inch 16:9 touchscreen that Sony Ericsson claims is capable of "full media consumption"
Idou is just a codename for now, Sony claims, but the release window is certain: Second half of 2009
The Idou offers a Cyber-shot camera with xenon flash, and a complete touch screen menu across its 16:9 widescreen display. It’s running Symbian Series 60 version 5 OS, which means it’s a fully touch-enabled device and among the first Symbian touchscreen phones along with Nokia’s N97.