Daily Marauder

WIRELESS

Techcrunch put together a roundtable about the upcoming mobile platform wars between the iPhone, Google’s Android, and older platforms like Nokia’s. One thing Erick Schonfeld discovered as he was organizing the event was that it was really hard to find anyone developing Android apps other than the 50 people who won the Android Developer’s Challenge. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/02/mobile-web-wars-videos-does-anybody-care-about-android 8/2)

Foxconn, the Taiwanese electronics giant that produces the iPhone 3G for Apple, has ramped up production to 800,000 units per week, says a source close to Apple with direct knowledge of the numbers. This is “above current full capacity” and there may be some concerns with quality control. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/04/foxconn-building-800000-iphones-a-week 8/4)

You can now grab Nullriver’s NetShare app, which lets you browse the web from your computer using your iPhone’s data connection , from this direct link. You’ll probably want to grab it quickly, as Apple may well pull it down again.  Apple posted the application to its App Store, but quickly pulled it down after only around 20 minutes. The application lets users of both the original (EDGE) and 3G iPhones browse the internet on the go wherever their cellular network has coverage. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/01/tethering-app-returns-to-apples-app-store 8/1)

Another day, another capricious decision by Apple to pull a fairly innocuous application. This time it’s BoxOffice, a diabolical system for finding and displaying local movie times. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/04/apple-pulls-another-innocuous-iphone-app 8/4)

Tapulous, the company behind Tap Tap Revenge, has announced that the popular iPhone app will hit 1 million installs some time this weekend. The app is the second we’ve heard from to hit the milestone (Facebook reached it last week), and is another testament to the extremely rapid growth some applications have seen on Apple’s newly launched App Store. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/31/tap-tap-revenge-approaches-1-million-users-music-industry-takes-notice 7/31)

Back in the Marauder’s Top 5 App List, Tap Tap Revenge came in at number 5 in the list.  I just wish I was a betting woman.  I think the fact that Facebook’s application has done so well is only a testament to how popular the site is.  The SDK application is so awful that I have kept the web app live on my home screen because I just can’t part with it.  Sad Facebook.  Very sad.

Apple will introduce a version of its iPhone based on its iPod nano music players in time for the holiday season, according to a U.K. publication, which did not mention whether that launch would also include the U.S. market. Mobile carrier O2 would sell the “nano” on a pay-as-you-go basis for up to $300, the report said. The Daily Mail (London) (8/3)

Throw out that WAP browser on your cell phone. We are quickly approaching a point where a full browser experience is available on our mobile devices. And it is not just the iPhone. A startup called Skyfire is in some respect even further along than Apple in bringing the entire Web to your phone. Its mobile browser lets you slide Web pages around and zoom in like with the mobile version of Safari. But it also supports Flash and Ajax sites. (It does this by offloading most of the heavy lifting to its servers rather than the mobile client). That means you can watch Youtube videos and go to Google Maps right in the mobile browser instead of having to download separate apps. In contrast, the iPhone’s Safari browser still does not support Flash and so to watch a a video you have to launch the separate Youtube app. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/01/skyfire-brings-full-browser-experience-to-nokia-s60-phones-200-private-beta-invites 8/1)

The LiMo Foundation, the Linux-based effort by a consortium of handset makers, has added 11 members from the U.S., Europe and Asia, the group announced today. LiMo, whose chief rival is Google, with its emerging Android platform, now boasts 52 members and 21 compatible handsets, compared with 34 members for Google, with no phones on sale yet. Forbes (8/4)