Friday, March 6, 2009
Jailbreaking the iPhone, BN buys Fictionwise and more

A site devoted to providing iPhone software for those who object to the Apple monopoly has announced plans to start charging for applications, presenting the possibility of real competition in app provisioning.

The Cydia website has been providing tools for unlocking, or "jailbreaking" iPhones, as well as non-Apple-approved applications to run on them, but from today users can pay for their software too in a development that threatens Apple's monopoly and long-term business model.

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Text Art - the brainchild of artist Marius Watz – only requires a budding Dali to type a message of up to 40 characters into their phone, before the application translates the text into a "unique piece of MMS art".

Nokia didn't say precisely how this is achieved.

The picture can then be sent to your pals or set as your phone's wallpaper. Alternatively – if you're really vain – it could be uploaded to a printing website, slapped onto a huge canvas and stuck up on your living room wall.

The Text Art application is only available for the E71 and can be downloaded for free online.

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TwitteReader puts the updates of those you're following on the micro-blog service in a familiar skin, turning favorites into stars, tracking read and unread tweets, and letting you quickly reply or link from one location.

You can log in to access your Twitter account at the project site below, which does, of course, require handing over your login credentials to a developer's site—the developer says, however, that TwitteReader "will never store your password." Got your own web space? Download the TwitteReader package and roll your own reader.

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Barnes & Noble has acquired e-book seller Fictionwise.com for $15.7 million, as it makes another attempt at running an e-book store.

The cash deal, announced Thursday, is part of Barnes & Noble's plans to launch its own e-book store later this year, despite its lack of success with a previous attempt years ago.

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Social timelines are going mainstream (see AOL/Bebo), but startups are pushing them to the next level. Today, Lifeblob, the Indian startup working on ways for you to visualize your life on the net, is introducing a refreshed version of its social timeline creation tool. With it, you can easily patch together a visual representation of your life's most memorable moments by timestamping certain events and enriching them with photos, text and videos. The end result can easily be shared on a variety of social services, or embedded into any blog or web page (example below).

It's an invite-only service for now, but we have an unlimited amount of invite codes for you. It's simply techcrunch and you can use it to sign up here.

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  • Written by: Christy"
    • | 11:43 AM | 0 comment(s)! |

    Friday, May 23, 2008
    Better GReader

    I just downloaded and installed the fancy Google Reader add-on via Lifehacker.com and I love it. It only works from within Firefox, but everyone should be using Firefox anyway.

    Greasemonkey scripters have come up with a few Google Reader user scripts that make some welcome GReader tweaks like maximizing the viewing area, skipping Google's default subscribe mechanism, and adding keyboard shortcuts. The add-on is cleverly called Better GReader.

    I highly recommend checking it out, I am enjoying the maximize reading area skin, it's makes things easier for me.

    Find the add-on here >>

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  • Written by: Christy"
    • | 7:58 AM | 0 comment(s)! |