The first video is a rather ambitious look at the year 2012 but I think it will be more like 2020 before we see anything like this

iPhone 2012

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n83XjFSSvM

Next is an interesting take on why it wont be a good idea to answer your holophone.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBZO43h75Cw

Finally to prove that there’s an app for just about everything, there is an hologram creator application for the iPhone. The images don’t leap out the screen but it’s still an interesting application.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V2NXI6pjlY

Take a look at this

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHpgd8OsGtA

Keeping in touch on the iPhone is so easy. I have switched my email accounts over to Google Mail which now also hosts my contacts and calendar. Synchronisation is easy and any changes in either location get reflected instantly. I’m not that keen on Google Mail as a client, I don’t like the way that it groups conversations together but it’s a small price to pay for the connectivity. Interesting email arrives on my iPhone 20 seconds before it appears in the Google web client.

I’m not much of a twitter person but I have installed SimplyTweet as my twitter client. The push notifications works really well and gives an alert whenever you get a mention or a direct message. SimplyTweet supports multiple accounts but it appears you only get an alert for the active account which is a bit of a shame. SimplyTweet costs £2.99 but they have a free version which you can try out.

SimplyTweet

www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdFaskPfQlI

There isn’t much choice when it comes to push RSS solutions, I found RSS Viewer from ZDNET Development that works pretty well. It has some negative reviews in the AppStore but I find it does the trick and for the bargain price of £1.19 it does everything I need. With RSS Viewer just type in the URL you want to subscribe to and it will find any RSS feeds, hit the subscribe button and when the feed is updated you get an alert to say the page has been updated. It’s a great way for keeping up to date with blogs. There a still a number of improvements that the developers are looking to make, for example creating categories of your feed and offline viewing so the app can only get better. In the meantime £1.19 is nothing so well worth a punt.

RSS Viewer

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ydD5l1Xx1Y

If you have a WordPress blog then the WordPress iPhone application is essential. It supports multiple blogs which is really useful if you have more than one account. You can create new blogs posts or pages as well as manage comments all directly from the phone. It’s pretty useful if you want to blog something on the go or filter out those annoying spam comments that creep in from time to time.

I have tried applications in the past that offer remote record for Sky, but Sky made it too difficult with a complex setup you had to go though with the Sky remote. Fortunately they have sorted out those problems. The Sky+ app is free and looks just like the Sky+ TV guide you get on the box. They say to allow 30 minutes for the record request to arrive on the Sky box but I have found if I set record from my iPhone by the time I check it with the remote the instruction has been received. One criticism however is the performance for the Sky guide is pretty slow. Every time you page down it does a fetch to get the data so casual browsing around the guide soon gets annoying. So you may want to supplement the guide with one of the free guides that have a better response time. The guide from Acrossair is pretty good.

Sky+

www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJkS62JpIX0

There is no shortage of tube maps in the AppStore. Some are free and if you just want a basic map then you have lots of choices. I opted for an application called Tube Deluxe which not only has a map and route planner for your journey, but Tube Deluxe also shows the status of the tube lines and includes a live departure board for all the underground stations so you can see how long you’ll have to wait once you get there, or whether or not you need to start runnings for that train. At £0.59 it’s another bargain.

I blogged about applications before that scan barcodes and how they can save you money while shopping. Red Laser is such an application for the iPhone. Whenever you are out shopping just point the camera at the products barcode and it will check the web to give you online prices. The range it covers is pretty good, I was out shopping and scanned a bag of GoCat dry cat food which I thought would be obscure, however it found a few online stores and gave me some alternative prices which was a real surprise. The range of online sources could do with expanding to cover more stores but scan before you buy is the motto.

Red Laser

www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYG-gxHeDBs

The Satio is a Symbian device based on S60 5th Edition, it does everything you’d expect and has a 12.1 megapixel camera as well. The downside, non standard headphone jack. pifff.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_SVStAOJeg

www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-hnizxHaR4

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xVbDk-5jWI

Personally I’m not due an upgrade for a while and marketing is not like the days of old where we had the latest toys for a month before getting bored and getting something new, (sadly) so the chances of me getting my hands on one are slim to nil.

I still expect to see her every time I go home. She was always a particularly vocal cat that would meow at everything but for the last month or she had been completely mute. It turns out  as well as a tumour in throat, her kidneys and liver had failed and she had gone deaf. She was 16 years and 10 months so had a good innings as they say.

I started to go through my old books and put a few up for sale on Amazon. I was surprised to see that I sold one in about 10 minutes after listing for £1.00. Amazon added £2.75 shipping taking the total to £3.75. Less their deductions of £1.52 that left me with £2.23 for my book. But postage cost me £2.15, leaving me with a net profit of £0.08. It’s lucky I found the envelope or this book selling lark could get really expensive. Any top tips where to invest my 8p greatly apprecaited.

Aside from all that, look out for LGs new touch screen watch phone that will be hitting the Orange stores later this month.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGKEUT4AdiY

Got a burning idea for what UI you would like to see on Symbian devices in the future?
The best way to get your idea out there is to share it.

Symbian have setup the UI brainstorm website to collect and share your ideas. Visit the site to see the existing submissions, you can also email the UI guys to share your ideas. You never know, the next phone you buy could be running a UI you designed.

http://symbianuibrainstorm.wordpress.com/

It’s a pretty fun video, just like the sort of thing that you’d expect from Samsung.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mwAvnCj1lA

I’m wondering how they got all those people to stare, I’m assuming they were all in on it.

The Jet website (flash version) is equally impressive. http://jet.samsungmobile.com/

In the meantime Nokia have announced a few other devices based on S60 5th Edition. (Symbian)
The E72 (click here for a review) which is an updated of the highly successful E71 and the 5530 XpressMusic (click here for a review) which is a 5800 clone.

Nokia E72

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAbgKV92E_U

Nokia 5530 XpressMusic

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hLXeLYLu0A

In case you have forgotten

www.youtube.com/watch?v=iX8iVo5vc8o

Well, there were all sorts of suggestions how they did the trick, but here is the answer.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTG58zlBlE8

Editoros Online (Brazil) hit upon the idea of using QR Codes to engage with the younger generation (that makes me feel officially old), by putting QR Code around a city in Brazil and inviting people to take pictures. They would then receive a message of either Love or Hate depending on the code. The messages they received were harvested from live twitter accounts.

They then produced a book based on the codes. The book contains 200 pages, 100 messages of love and 100 messages of hate and can only be read with a mobile phone. As there is no shortage of love/hate messages on twitter the book updates itself every week so it’s always changing.

Watch the video below, the book sold out completely and they are already looking at this as being the future of books. Imagine a school book that is always up to date with the latest content.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=PG4thXVM2qk