iPhone Atlas

As if being the top free iPhone app of 2008 wasn't enough for Pandora (iTunes link), six days into 2009, it has launched version 2.0 of its app. New features in this release include a progress bar for songs (finally!), 30 second previews for bookmarked songs, the ability to create a new station from a song or artist, artist information, cover-flow view for song history, and some sharing features.

While this update isn't anything revolutionary, it certainly adds features that round out out cool features in the app, like embedded iTunes purchasing. With Tuesday's announcement of iTunes downloads, now being possible over 3G coming from Macworld, this could prove to be a very useful feature.

Creating new stations from artists or songs will add a lot to the capability and usefulness of this app as well. The new cover-flow view for song history behaves almost exactly like Apple's. The album covers flip over to reveal information on the artist and why that song was played. One annoyance here is that you cannot bookmark or purchase songs from this view. I suspect that this is an easily correctable issue.

The 2.0 update for Pandora improves upon an already killer and must-have application for the iPhone. It's available right now, so go and grab it from the iTunes Store.

Add new songs to your iPhone over 3G.

(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CBS Interactive)

Though the addition of DRM-free music is grabbing the most iTunes headlines, there was more music news at the Macworld 2009 keynote on Tuesday.

Apple Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing Phil Schiller also announced that beginning Tuesday iPhone users will be able sample and wirelessly download iTunes tracks over AT&T's 3G network or EDGE. Previously, iTunes song downloads, unlike apps, were available only over a Wi-Fi connection.

The process works relatively well, though we encountered a couple of hiccups. It appears that you must use Wi-Fi or a wired connection to your computer to download songs over 10MB. When we tried downloading a longer song, we received a warning message advising as such. We're checking with Apple to verify that it's not a problem on our end. Also, during our first download, our connection was interrupted once. We were able to reconnect and continue the download

We tried downloading a 6.4MB song over 3G. It took about one minute and 15 seconds, which is about the same as a Wi-Fi download. We then downloaded a 7.2MB over EDGE. As expected, it was painfully slow--after all, EDGE basically is dial-up speed. It took about 20 minutes to get our song, which is too long to bother in our opinion.

Although this years Macworld Expo keynote address didn't include any major iPhone-related announcements, a few important feature enhancements were introduced:

• iTunes over 3G Pushing ever-increasing data over the AT&T network, Apple is now offering the ability to push iTunes music files over 3G connections. Previously, the iTunes mobile app could only download songs over WiFi. First-generation iPhone owners are still out of the loop. This functionality requires no software update and works right now.
• Keynote remote control A new application, available through the App Store, allows users to control Keynote presentations from the iPhone. Priced at $.99, the app lets you advance slides via a Cover Flow-like interface.
• iPhoto integration Picturs taken on your iPhone and uploaded to iPhoto '09 include geotagging information. This lets you automatically organize photos by place and recognize landmarks in major cities. Slideshows from iPhoto also now work on the iPhone.

AT&T has been very vocal about its efforts to rapidly build up its 3G voice and data network. The reality really hit home with the advent of the iPhone, 3G which many feel overwhelmed AT&T's 3G network. The sheer number of iPhones on AT&T's network due to the popularity of Apple's handset was never before seen in the current mobile phone market. Complaints poured in, eventually leading to class-action lawsuits against both AT&T and Apple over performance complaints. This has led to AT&T's aggressive 3G infrastructure upgrades, which purportedly come at the expense of EDGE.

According to a report on Open for Business(OFB), AT&T is upgrading it's 3G voice and data network while intentionally reducing signal strength on its existing EDGE, which is used by many different cell phones including both iterations of the iPhone. This is happening because, in some markets, AT&T is switching some of its cellular towers from the 850 Mhz band used by EDGE to the 1,900 Mhz band. The result is that 3G users see improved signal reception while the EDGE users are seeing reduced signal reception. Users wishing to resolve the situation and remain as an AT&T customer have to upgrade to a 3G phone.

If an existing customer contacts AT&T technical support seeking a resolution to the problem, according to the report, AT&T will offer that customer a $200 one-time credit to upgrade their handset.

An excerpt from the report:

"AT&T's executive director of analyst relations, Mark Siegel, 'categorically' denied to OFB that AT&T was advising customers to dump 2G equipment such as the iPhone for 3G versions. In a follow-up message, Siegel added that the company was not requiring anyone to switch to 3G equipment. Although that is technically true, customers in affected areas are all but required to upgrade due to the dramatic signal strength drop over the last few months."

Add electronics retailer Best Buy to the list of places you can get a used iPhone cheap.

Best Buy is now selling refurbished Apple iPhone 3G models at a $50 discount to brand-new, unused models, according to the Reuters news agency. The lower prices of $149 for the 8GB iPhone (normally $199) and $249 for the 16GB iPhone (normally $299)--with a two-year service contract with AT&T contract--apply to devices that were returned to the store within 30 days of their initial purchase.

The move comes a little more than a week after megaretailer Wal-Mart Stores began selling iPhones at $197 for the 8GB model and $297 for the 16GB model.

Refurbished iPhones are also available from AT&T, the sole wireless carrier for the devices. Apple itself has also sold refurbished iPhones in the past, but a check of its Web site shows no such offers at the moment.

Best Buy representatives were not immediately available for comment.

Update 11:05 a.m. PT: Best Buy put out its press release a little later in the morning. In addition to the pricing stated above, the company said that current iPhone users can upgrade to a "refreshed" iPhone 3G. It also said the refurbished devices are available now at 350 Best Buy stores and by the end of January will be available at all U.S. Best Buy stores that offer AT&T.

Developers continue to push the envelope on iPhone application development, skirting the bounds of Apple's development guidelines and discovering means for implementing undocumented, pioneering functionality. The latest breakthrough comes from Innerfence software, and is best described by its author: "Go somewhere; do something; come back."

Most iPhone applications offer a one-way street when it comes to accessing other applications' functionality. Click on a URL in Mail, for instance, and you are transported to Safari. In order to get back to Safari though, you need to click the home button then tap the Safari icon again. In other words, once transported to a new app, you are (in a sense) marooned there.

Innerface gets around this limitation by exploiting Apple's URL-based method for applications to communicate with each other. Via URL schemes in applications' respective Info.plist files, said apps can communicate and pass control between one another.

Developers from Innerface have posted source code for the scheme, but they note a few security ramifications:

"By registering to handle a URL scheme, an iPhone app becomes a de facto web app, subject to many of the nasty attacks that work on the web. Apps implementing this scheme must be careful to validate any parameters they get from the URL lest they be vulnerable to old friends like SQL injection."

Feedback? iphoneatlas@cnet.com.

The popular U.S. online classifieds site where you can find just about anything imaginable for sale is now available on the iPhone via the Craigsphone app (iTunes link) from Next Mobile Web.

The currently free app makes the popular online classified service available on your iPhone or iPod Touch. The app allows you to browse and post listings on Craigslist sites across the globe. You can also upload photos and share your location information with the app. However, the best feature of the app is that it allows you to direct dial numbers posted in the classified ads. If you see an item that you are interested in learning more about and there is a phone number in the ad simply click it and the app launches the Phone app dialing the number for you. The app also keeps a history of ads you've viewed in case you need to take a look at an ad again.

Another major feature of the app which isn't perfect yet is it's "Nearby" feature that lets you browse ads closest to you. Unfortunately this feature only works if you are in the San Francisco Bay Area or Manhattan. The vendor's website indicated that this is only temporary so one can expect this feature to be expanded, but no timeline for this was given.

The app was initially released this past Friday and has already seen some substantial updates. We noted in our tests that the app performs some tasks better with a Wi-Fi connection especially when we changed our location and the app went to gather up the required city and state information for the US. The app would consistently time out trying to get the same information over a 3G connection. Hopefully a future update will resolve this issue.

Updated at 10:00 AM Pacific.

Six months after announcing its intention to bring SlingPlayer to the iPhone 3G, Sling Media has another announcement to make--just not the one you're wishing for.

SlingPlayer Mobile for iPhone isn't ready yet, Sling said on Tuesday, but it is on its way.

Like SlingPlayer Mobile for Windows Mobile, Palm, Symbian, UIQ, and BlackBerry (beta) platforms, this iPhone version will let you access one or more Slingboxes from your mobile device, and watch your TV stations on-the-go. It will also be compatible with the iPod Touch.

You'll also be able to manage your DVR from the iPhone, and can synchronously add and remove favorite channels directly from the phone's interface--a first for the SlingPlayer Mobile line.

In our demo, the client streamed live, high-quality video of stations like MTV and TBS on both Wi-Fi and the iPhone's 3G network. Swiping the screen horizontally advances you through favorite stations, and flicking up and down rotates through all your home channels.

Sling Media says it will submit the file to the iTunes AppStore by the end of the first fiscal quarter. While Sling Media shared no firm price tag, it could mirror the $29.99 lifetime fee of SlingPlayer Mobile on other platforms.

Before getting too excited, just remember that Apple has been known to kill promising apps, ostensibly for the crime of a large data transfers. SlingPlayer Mobile for iPhone could suffer the same fate. Assuming it doesn't, the client still faces competition from Orb, whose full version, OrbLive, delivers live TV and media stored on your PC for $10.

Spreadsheet editing is made finger friendly with Quickoffice's Excel editing tool.

(Credit: Quickoffice)

Despite the addition of Microsoft Exchange and the App Store with version 2.0 of the iPhone's firmware, the device is still a long way from competing with Windows Mobile handsets when it comes to the native editing of several popular file formats. Mobile-productivity software company Quickoffice is trying to change that with a new iPhone application that lets users edit their Microsoft Office Excel spreadsheets.

Called MobileFiles Pro, this $9.99 application can pull in Excel workbooks from any of your computers (over Wi-Fi) or on the Web through MobileMe's iDisk sharing. It supports editing over multiple pages in a workbook, row and column resizing and insertion, and manages to do it all with a good deal of simplicity.

To edit a cell, you simply tap it with your thumb and type in a new value. There are also options to format what's inside it, run formulas, and add new pages.

The option to edit files joins the functionality to view other file types, including movies, music, images, Microsoft Word documents, PDFs, and iWork documents (akin to Quickoffice's QuickAccess sister product). QuickOffice says it will continue to push out editing for other file formats, such as Microsoft Word, in future releases.

MobileFiles Pro joins a handful of other iPhone applications that let you view and edit Excel spreadsheets, including Spreadsheet, Spreadsheet LX, iSpreadsheet, and the upcoming Mariner Calc app which is due in a few weeks.

A few days ago, the unofficial iPhone Dev Team released an unlock for the iPhone 3G dubbed "yellowsn0w." The team subsequently released a 0.9.5 beta of the unlock app, which fixes several bugs in the initial iteration. However, many users are still experiencing issues, as noted in this initial report.

Solutions for problems related to or caused by the update are beginning to materialize. A poster named "IphoneEntusiast" has published a step-by-step process for using yellowsn0w, from jailbreak through unlock. His process involves verifying that the Carrier field displays (null)(null) after QuickPwn is used, resetting network settings after installation of yellowsn0w and more. See the thread here.

Meanwhile, the Dev Team notes "there is a known issue with SIM cards that have STK (SIM Toolkit) application menus. These menus are usually items such as 'top up' 'get credit' 'lotto numbers' etc. These menu items confuse the application sometimes."

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