This sleek and innovative smartphone has the enhanced intelligence to make everyday life easier. With Samsung GALAXY S III, you can view the content like never before on the device’s 4.8 inch HD Super AMOLED display. An 8MP camera and a 1.9MP front camera offer users a variety of intelligent camera features and face recognition related options that ensure all moments are captured easily and instantly. Samsung GALAXY S III is powered by Android™ 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich, with greatly enhanced usability and practicality to make life easier. Packed with intuitive technology, the GALAXY S III delivers a uniquely personalized mobile experience that refuses to be compromised.

“With the GALAXY S III, Samsung has maximized the consumer benefits by integrating superior hardware with enhanced smartphone usability,” said JK Shin, President and Head of IT & Mobile Communications Division at Samsung. “Designed to be both effortlessly smart and intuitively simple, the GALAXY S III has been created with our human needs and capabilities in mind. What makes me most proud is that it enables one of the most seamless, natural and human-centric mobile experiences, opening up a new horizon that allows you to live a life extraordinary.”
Introducing Natural Interaction

The GALAXY S III enhances the interaction experience between the device and user. Smart enough to detect your face, voice and motions, the GALAXY S III adapts to the individual user to provide a more convenient and natural experience. With the innovative ‘Smart stay’ feature, the GALAXY S III recognizes how you are using your phone – reading an e-book or browsing the web for instance – by having the front camera identify your eyes; the phone maintains a bright display for continued viewing pleasure.

The GALAXY S III features ‘S Voice,’ the advanced natural language user interface, to listen and respond to your words. In addition to allowing information search and basic device-user communication, S Voice presents powerful functions in regards to device control and commands. When your phone alarm goes off but you need a little extra rest, just tell the GALAXY S III “snooze.” You can also use S Voice to play your favorite songs, turn the volume up or down, send text messages and emails, organize your schedules, or automatically launch the camera and capture a photo.

In addition to recognizing your face and voice, the GALAXY S III understands your motions to offer maximized usability. If you are messaging someone but decide to call them instead, simply lift your phone to your ear and ‘Direct call’ will dial their number. With ‘Smart alert,’ the GALAXY S III will also save you from trouble by catching any missed messages or calls; your phone will vibrate to notify missed statuses when picked up after being idle.
Easy and Instant Sharing

The Samsung GALAXY S III is more than a personal device that can be enjoyed by one user – it wants you to share and experience smartphone benefits with family and friends, regardless of where you are. With the new ‘S Beam,’ the GALAXY S III expands upon Android™ Beam™, allowing a 1GB movie file to be shared within three minutes and a 10MB music file within two seconds by simply touching another GALAXY S III phone, even without a Wi-Fi or cellular signal. The ‘Buddy photo share’ function also allows photos to be easily and simultaneously shared with all your friends pictured in an image directly from the camera or the photo gallery.

With ‘AllShare Cast’, users can wirelessly connect their GALAXY S III to their television to immediately transfer smartphone content onto a larger display. ‘AllShare Play’ can be also used to instantly share any forms of files between GALAXY S III and your tablet, PC, and televisions regardless of the distance between the devices. Under AllShare Play is also the ‘Group Cast’ feature that allows you to share your screen among multiple friends on the same Wi-Fi network; you can make comments and draw changes at the same time with your co-workers, witnessing real-time sharing on your individual device.
Human-centric Design with Uncompromised Performance

The GALAXY S III not only presents features with enhanced usability, but also provides an ergonomic and comfortable experience through its human-centric design. Its comfortable grip, gentle curves, and organic form deliver a rich human-centric feel and design. Inspired by nature, its design concept is the flow and movement of nature. The elements of wind, water and light are all evoked in the physical construct of the GALAXY S III. In its essence, the minimal organic design identity is reflected in the smooth and non-linear lines of the device. Available in Pebble Blue and Marble White at launch, Samsung will introduce a variety of additional color options.

With a 4.8” HD Super AMOLED display, the GALAXY S III offers a large and vivid viewing experience. Samsung Mobile’s heritage Super AMOLED display even enhances to HD and 16:9 wider viewing angles. To ensure faster content sharing and connectivity, the GALAXY S III offers Wi-Fi Channel Bonding which doubles the Wi-Fi bandwidth.

The GALAXY S III also sports a range of additional features that boost performance and the overall user experience in entirely new ways. It introduces ‘Pop up play,’ a feature that allows you to play a video anywhere on your screen while simultaneously running other tasks, eliminating the need to close and restart videos when checking new emails or surfing the Web. Its 8MP camera features a zero-lag shutter speed that lets you capture moving objects easily without delay – the image you see is the picture you take. With the ‘Burst shot’ function that instantly captures twenty continuous shots, and the ‘Best photo’ feature that selects the best of eight photographs for you, the GALAXY S III ensures users a more enhanced and memorable camera experience. HD video can be recorded even with the 1.9MP front-facing camera, which you can use to capture a video of yourself. Improved backside illumination further helps to eliminate blur in photos that result from shaking, even under low lights.

Mobile payment is also accessible with the device through advanced Near Field Communication (NFC) technology. The gaming experience is enhanced through ‘Game Hub,’ providing access to numerous social games, while Video Hub brings users high quality TV and movies. Furthermore, Samsung Music Hub will offer a personal music streaming service. Game Hub, Video Hub and Music Hub will be introduced in select countries initially and soon rolled out to global markets.

The Samsung GALAXY S III will be available from the end of May in Europe before rolling out to other markets globally.

Note to Editors:
Samsung GALAXY S III Product Specifications

Network
2.5G (GSM/ GPRS/ EDGE): 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz
3G (HSPA＋ 21Mbps): 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100 MHz
4G (Dependent on market)
Display
4.8 inch HD Super AMOLED (1280×720) display
OS
Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich)
Camera
Main(Rear): 8 Mega pixel Auto Focus camera with Flash & Zero Shutter Lag, BSI
Sub (Front): 1.9 Mega pixel camera, HD recording @30fps with Zero Shutter Lag, BSI
Video
Codec: MPEG4, H.264, H.263, DivX, DivX3.11, VC-1, VP8, WMV7/8, Sorenson Spark
Recording & Playback: Full HD (1080p)
Audio
Codec: MP3, AMR-NB/WB, AAC/AAC＋/eAAC＋, WMA, OGG, FLAC, AC-3, apt-X
Additional
Features
S Beam, Buddy photo share, Share shot
AllShare Play, AllShare Cast
Smart stay, Social tag, Group tag, Face zoom, Face slide show
Direct call, Smart alert, Tap to top, Camera quick access
Pop up play
S Voice
Burst shot & Best photo, Recording snapshot, HDR
Google™ Mobile Services
Google Search, Google Maps, Gmail, Google Latitude
Google Play Store, Google Play Books, Google Play Movies
Google Plus, YouTube, Google Talk,
Google Places, Google Navigation, Google Downloads
Connectivity
WiFi a/b/g/n, WiFi HT40
GPS/GLONASS
NFC
Bluetooth® 4.0(LE)
Sensor
Accelerometer, RGB light, Digital compass, Proximity, Gyro, Barometer
Memory
16/ 32GB User memory (64GB available soon) ＋ microSD slot (up to 64GB)
Dimension
136.6 x 70.6 x 8.6 mm, 133g
Battery
2,100 mAh

Specifications above may differ on the LTE version.
All functionality, features, specifications and other product information provided in this document including, but not limited to, the benefits, design, pricing, components, performance, availability, and capabilities of the product are subject to change without notice or obligation.

＊ Android, Google, Android Beam, Google Search, Google Maps, Gmail, Google Latitude, Google Play Store, Google Play Books, Google Play Movies, Google Plus, YouTube, Google Talk, Google Places, Google Navigation, Google Downloads are trademarks of Google Inc.

Do you like what you see? Are you impressed? Better than HTC’s One X? Check out the first realistic panning out of availability globally here! Also, be sure to enter our international giveaway of the Samsung Galaxy S3 here too!

Satellite internet is an advanced technique for getting connected to internet using satellite technology. This new technology provided you with high speed internet service and functions about ten times quicker as compared to your regular dial up connection. Satellite internet has a bandwidth which can manage about five thousand channels for getting information and records.

Let us examine the advantages which a satellite internet has over all other online connections. This technique offers you mobility that you can not get through your cable internet connection. Often, you can not access the web in many distant areas and you are at a loss to do anything about it. In such times the satellite connection is very useful. You can get connectivity regardless of your location as this connection offers you global web access. So you can access the web even when you are traveling from place to place if you possess a satellite connection.

Some of the satellite connections have inbuilt Bluetooth technology which enables you for using this as satellite phone too. They usually have a battery that allows you for getting connected to your laptop without exhausting its battery as it works for both these devices. Other benefit is that no cables are used and there are no disturbances for your internet connectivity.

The Acer Liquid Metal deals a 3.6 inch capacitive touchscreen which displays up to 16M colours and has WVGA resolution. Like its slightly lower end brother, the Liquid E, it doesn’t have a very fast processing Unit. Only of 800MHz as compared to the Liquid E’s 768Mhz. Yet speed is surprisingly not a major issue due to the management efficiency of the Android 2.2 Froyo Operating System.

Other features that it boasts of include a 5 megapixel camera with auto focus, LED flash, along with face and smile detection. Video recording is also provided at an impressive 720p HD resolution. The multimedia is only enhanced by the Dolby Mobile and XviD base.

Connectivity is seen in the form of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1, impressively fast 3G, and standard GSM. Flash 10.1 support is also present thanks to the Android 2.2 Froyo OS, providing greater multimedia presence even during online browsing via the set.

It has a pretty good build and should be quite successful in the market due to its comparatively better performance as compared to other phones who are still struggling with Android 2.1 Éclair or lower, such as The Samsung Galaxy 3 or its own brother the Acer Stream. Overall, it is a good buy with just a slightly expensive price tag, but in comparison to some other sets in the market, it is quite reasonable for what it offers.

Display and Camera

A sophisticated smartphone with a 4.3 inch full touch display and Dolby Mobile, SRS surround Sound Audio, this HTC Desire is like a cinema in your pocket. Plus, you can connect it to a larger screen if you want a clearer picture of your HD captured videos and quality photos and shots. The 8 megapixel rear camera has 2 flash LEDs and is able to capture 720p resolution allowing for greater video capturing moments.

Connectivity

WiFi enabled using the 802.11n radio, an enhanced Bluetooth Connectivity which allows file sharing within about 10 meters, plus a micro-USB port for file transfers- connectivity is never an issue with HTC Desire HD as it gives the user multiple alternatives to choose from. Equipped with an internal storage amounting to 4 GB, plus an expandable micro SD slot, users can make full use of this phone’s multimedia feats making it a great deal of investment.

Platform and Speed

Running on Android 2.2 and Snapdragon Processor at 1 GHz- using HTC Desire HD would most likely be comparable with navigating through a speedy computer, making it more desirable and anticipated.

These details are just snippets from the latest rumours and official announcements made by HTC and there is still more unveiled information about this new smartphone crusher. As weeks would pass, more and more surprises will come along the way so better be mindful and vigilant as HTC Desire HD will keep on bugging our senses with more features to cherish and yearn for. You can find this and the new HTC Desire Z at best-mobile-contracts.co.uk.

Ah, back to a full sized Logitech keyboard and mouse. Much better.

Popularized by iPhones, there are apps for just about everything, including tools to help social media marketers on the go. In fact, there are over 100,000 iPhone applications to choose from. Many of those apps are extensions of social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Others serve as productivity tools for more efficient social web participation or for content creation.

As a content marketer that is also a big fan of social networking and sharing, here are a few of my favorites:

Echofon – Twitter usage on iPhones must be out of this world and while there are many great apps for Twitter including Seesmic, Hootsuite, Tweetie and Tweetdeck, I like EchoFon the best. It’s amazingly easy to switch between multiple accounts, its fast and there’s an auto-complete feature when typing in Twitter handles that saves a lot of time.  It works with lists very nicely but does not offer scheduled tweeting, which I don’t personally use much anyway.

Facebook – I probably use Facebook more on the iPhone than through the web site. Personal social networking or networking as an individual on Facebook is pretty easy to do with the app. What I’ve pictured below is where I also get a lot of productivity, which is being able to manage our blog’s fan page. We’ve gone from about 80 to over 1,400 fans in about 3 months and the convenience of adding to discussions via the iPhone has a lot to do with that growth.

Foursquare – You know those social media shiny objects that you’ve come to avoid but then they gain so much momentum and buzz that you have to try it out and then you end up liking them? That’s my Foursquare experience. It was the same with Twitter. Using Foursquare for marketing as an individual isn’t as obvious as what one might do with Foursquare location based advertising.

However, it can be pretty handy at conferences and events for announcing/leaking certain kinds of information. As a retailer or other business with a brick and mortar presence, can you imagine how useful it would be to know who your most active consumers are that are also active on the social web?

LinkedIn – While I’m not always by a computer (can you believe it?) I almost always have my phone with me and that makes accepting LinkedIn invitations (or not as you can see below) easy to do. Status updates are easy to do and can be seen by as large a social network as you care to develop. Thus the LinkedIn iPhone app makes it easy to feed that network. Quality trumps quantity here by far.

UStream Live Broadcaster – Capturing live video and audio plus the ability to poll viewers and promote on Twitter seems like a fantasy app for a social media marketer. Especially when you’re at an event and you want to capture something and get it out immediately. It’s amazing how easy the UStream iPhone app (U Broadcaster) makes this process.

Flickr – Capturing and sharing images is an essential part of digital asset marketing and social media marketing. The Flickr App makes it pretty easy to upload and manage images taken with your iPhone.

Google Buzz – Privacy issues aside, there’s plenty of buzz about Google Buzz and the only way I’ll use it is on my iPhone.  Let’s face it, with Google’s dominance and momentum, you can’t afford not to stay on top of their obvious efforts to become a social media powerhouse. It’s not exactly a standalone app though. However, Google makes it easy to add a bookmark to Buzz on your iPhone from Gmail so you can use it directly.

Update via Mashable: Apparently there’s a new app called Buzzie for Google Buzz on the iPhone.

AudioBoo – This is a handy tool for capturing and promoting on-the-move podcasts. It’s really a no-brainer except when you’re like me the first time I interviewed Vanessa Fox for a podcast and held the iPhone right side up, which for podcasting with an iPhone, is upside down since the microphone is on the bottom. Doh!

AnalyticsApp.com – What good is marketing online if you’re not MEASURING? For those with Google Analytics implemented on their sites and blogs (who doesn’t?) this app gives you insight into all the details of web visitor data you’ve come to love with GA.

Are these the bestest, newest and most awesome iPhone apps for Social Media Marketers? For this marketer, the apps I’ve listed above take care of 90% of my mobile social media needs. In fact, 4 or 5 would probably do the trick.  I do wish there were more social media monitoring iPhone apps though. Especially those that offer Social CRM functionality with your contact list. I’m also keen on finding task management apps that work well with Outlook.

Just as an online news site is a lot more than a newspaper online, a mobile news application is a lot more than news stories on a small screen. The better iPhone news apps integrate multimedia, social features, personalization, and push notifications.

Not all apps get even the basics right. But a few are pushing the boundaries of what mobile news can be, with innovative new features such as info-graphic displays of hot stories, or integrated playlists for multimedia.

Here is my roundup of 14 iPhone news offerings. I’ve included many of the major publishers, some lesser known applications, and a few duds for comparison.

NYTimes
The New York Times Company
Free

The Times doesn’t do anything new with this application, but they do everything fairly well.

The app is designed around a vertical list stories, with a headline, lede, and photo thumbnail for each. Stories are organized into standard news sections, plus the alway interesting “Most Popular.”   Banner ads sometimes appear at the bottom, plus occasional interstitial ads when appear when you select a story.

The focus of the news is of course American. There’s no personalization of news content based either on interest or location, which may well prove to be a standard feature for mobile news applications. Fortunately, the app includes a search function, though it only seems to go a few days back.

Downloaded articles are available when the device is offline, which is a useful feature. Favorites stories can be saved, or shared via email, text message, Twitter, and Facebook.

The UI has a few quirks. The “downloading news” progress bar is expected, but the sometimes equally long “processing news” phase makes me wonder what the app is doing. The photos in a story very sensibly download after the text, but the scroll position jumps when the photo appears,which is hugely annoying.

There’s little innovation or differentiation here, but the experience is smooth.

Daily Zeitgeist
Sharpest Cookie
$1.99

The Daily Zeitgeist tries something completely different, and it works well.

The app draws news from a number of different sources, such as Google News, Digg, Reddit, and Yahoo Buzz. Headlines from each source are displayed in text panels on an uncluttered screen. The size of each panel indicates the story popularity and the background color indicates the freshness, with stories gradually fading as they age. Tapping on a panel brings up an info window with a thumbnail photo and the first few lines of the story. Doubling tapping on the info window loads the story from the original source in the integrated browser.

From within the browser view, stories can be loaded into Safari, emailed, or posted to Facebook.

That’s it. The entire experience is clean, simple, and fast. It’s possible to get an immediate, at-a-glance sense of what is news from the clever infographic-like interface, and I really enjoy the addition of user-curated news sources such as Digg and Reddit.

The implementation is not without its flaws. Less popular stories are displayed very small, necessitating zooming with two fingers, or by double tapping. It’s annoying to need two hands to zoom, and sometimes the zoom limit isn’t high enough to allow reading of the smallest headlines. Because the stories recede into one corner, I find myself imagining a one handed, one-dimensional zoom gesture.

I’d also like to see better customization of sources, such as the ability to display specific sections of Google News, or read the news in different languages. Nonetheless, The Daily Zeitgeist may well evolve into my favorite news application. It’s definitely something different and innovative.

NPR News
NPR
Free

The NPR news app, from the American public radio station of the same name,  has a lot of audio as one might hope. In fact it’s the only news app in this roundup to include an integrated playlist manager.

Stories appear in the usual vertical list, with those that include audio clearly marked. Within each story page there are buttons for “add to playlist” and “listen now.” Wisely, NPR includes comprehensive text summaries even for its audio stories.

The app includes a “programs” screen where listeners can queue up popular NPR programs such as All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and Planet Money. The “stations” screen allows users to find programming produced by NPR affiliates all across the US.

Radio is different from print, and NPR has done a good job at imagining how mobile radio consumption should work. The integrated play list is a welcome innovation, and the programming selection features are thorough and well thought out .

A few obvious audio features are missing, such as the ability to seek to an arbitrary time in the program, and integration with the iPhone’s volume buttons. It should also be possible to play programs in the background while using other apps, though this is a limitation of the iPhone OS. Helpfully, the NPR app includes a “Go To iTunes” button for programming that is also available as a standard podcast.

NPR includes some non-audio stories from the Associated Press in its article list. Banner ads sometimes appear at the bottom of the screen. Stories can be shared via email, Twitter, and Facebook. There is no search feature.

The app is not quite perfect, but it’s useful and unique. NPR is definitely on the right track.

AP Mobile
The Associated Press
Free

AP’s global network produces a huge amount of news, and their content forms the core of more newspapers and television reports than most people realize. Their app is therefore a welcome addition to any serious news junkie’s iPhone, but seems to miss one of the AP’s key strengths: comprehensiveness. The content is really a very narrow selection of AP’s stories, and there’s no search feature.

The interface is list-based, with a “Front Page” category that shows a couple hot stories from each of a customizable list of sections, including “Headlines”, “Most Recent”, and “Most shared”. There is a Photos button for some sections which leads to an attractive grid of clickable thumbnails, and a video button which leads to a list of video reports that play in the iPhone YouTube app.

The AP app is one of only two in this roundup that does push notification. When enabled, AP sends big headlines to your phone even when it’s off, which arrive much like text messages. I appreciated this for some stories, but found other headlines a waste of my time (another Tiger Woods story? Really?) The ability to customize push content is badly needed.

Kudos also for localization, though it’s incomplete because it is based on zip code — useless to the majority of the world, which is strange for one of the most global news organizations.

Stories can be saved to a favorites list, or shared via email, text message, Twitter, Facebook , or Evernote. Banner ads sometimes appear at the top of lists and stories.

The AP application feels a little clunky, with a somewhat cluttered UI and several incomplete features. That I can live with. What I’d really like to see is a much broader selection of AP’s huge output, combined with strong filtering and search features.

Thompson-Reuters News Pro
Thompson-Reuters
Free

News Pro knows what it’s about: business and financial readers. The app includes comprehensive market information, and a scrolling ticker at the top of every screen.

News is presented in a list of selections from the full wire feed, at the bottom of which are category choices. There is nothing like a “most popular” or “trending” category, but business news is broken down finely into sections such as “Corporate,” “Market Report,” and “New Issues.” The coverage is nicely international, and the app gives the user a choice the US, the UK, Canada, and India on first invocation.

News Pro includes attractive photo and video sections, but where the app really shines is its market information. All of the standard indices are updated in near real time, as are exchange rates. The stocks section allows quick checks on any ticker symbol, and a user-defined watchlist. Any index or stock can be graphed within a fairly sophisticated interface.

Text size is adjustable and stories can be shared by email only. There is no favoriting feature.

This application is not the greatest for general news, but then it’s clearly not designed for the general reader. Thompson-Reuters knows their market, and understands that stories are just part of what a mobile application can deliver.

TIME Mobile

Time Inc.
Free

Where TIME Mobile shines is the interface. Of all the apps tested, it has simplest, slickest, cleanest interface. Or maybe the black background just makes it seem glossier.

The app is very much oriented around photography. Instead of a vertical list, the user is presented with a smoothly scrolling row of large thumbnails, much like iTunes’ “cover flow” interface.

Rather than the traditional news sections, Time’s categories are “News”, “Lists”, “Quotes,” “Popular,” and “Media”. In the era of 24 hour news, Time’s weekly format is ill suited to breaking stories, and they have wisely elected to focus on a different sort of content.

The app also supports favorites, sharing via email and twitter, text size adjustment,

TIME Mobile is pretty, and well suited to those looking for more of a magazine reading experience.

The Guardian
Guardian News and Media Limited
$3.99

The UK’s famous newspaper has done well with its iPhone application. The app is based around the usual vertical story list, yes, but it is well implemented and supplemented with multimedia features such as photo galleries and integrated podcasts. The usual sections are available, but “Latest” and “Trending” are the home screen options.

The search function stands out. It finds topics, sections, and contributors, not stories, but the archive seems to go back a full year, unique among iPhone news apps. A topic search for “plane” brings up “Hudson river plane crash”, “Plane crashes (world)”, and “Lockerbie plane bombing (uk)”. Each of these categories expands into a long list of previous stories.

Stories can be favorited, or shared via email and Facebook. Text size is adjustable.

The Guardian’s app is cleanly implemented, the multimedia features are welcome, and the archive search function is innovative and useful. Well worth the low cost.

CNN Mobile
CNN
$1.99

The CNN app is slick and complete. Really complete. The app includes custom search, GPS location-based content, gobs of video, and the ability to upload photos to CNN’s iReport citizen journalism website.

The headlines pages is divided into categories, and features a story list below a large photo. Stories within a section can be browsed by sliding horizontally between pages, which has a lovely magazine-like feel. Every story has a large photo, and many of the stories have associated video, streamed as usual through the YouTube player.

The video page features even more multimedia, also broken into one list per category, including the venerable “Most Popular.”

The MyCNN page allows content customization. The app can choose local stories based on your GPS location or zip code, which means it only works inside the US. It also supports topic searches by keyword, which are saved into custom news sections.

The “iReport” page features selections from CNN’s iReport citizen journalism content, plus the ability to submit your own text and photographic reports. Most intriguing of all, the “Assignments” page provides detailed suggestions on submission topics, such as “Winter weather near you” and “Tsunami: Five years later.”

The app rotates into landscape mode when the phone is turned. Banner ads appear in story lists. Stories can be saved or shared via text message, email, Twitter, and Facebook.

The CNN app is a monster in terms of functionality, yet the whole feels uncluttered and functional. The content is good, the customization is good, and the iReport features are on the cutting edge of web-enabled journalism.

The Independent
Missing Ink Studios Ltd.
Free

The Independent’s main screen is a graphical topic page showing unread stories in each category, with all content from the UK newspaper of the same name. Thankfully, you don’t have to wait for all stories to update before you can read those already downloaded. The total number of unread stories appears as a tag on the app’s icon in the iPhone’s home screen.

Within each category is a list view. Most story items have thumbnail photos. Banner ads appear at the top of both the story list and individual articles.

The font size is adjustable and items can be favorited, but shared only by email.

This is a bare-bones app that feels more like a sharp RSS reader than a news organization product. This simplicity is not entirely a bad thing, but the app misses many mobile possibilities.

Al Jazeera English Live
Livestation
$2.99

The Al Jazeera English Live app streams the AJE broadcast feed to your iPhone. It is produced by LiveStation, whose desktop player can be used to watch Al Jazeera and other stations on your computer.

Video quality is quite good over wifi, but much lower resolution over a 3G connection, as might be expected. In my tests around Hong Kong the video often stuttered or froze and was not really watchable without wifi.

And that’s it. This app is a viewer for the Al Jazeera English television channel, no more or less. It’s exciting to be able to watch it from my phone, and as 3G networks improve we can expect the experience to be more reliable. Al Jazeera is to be commended for leading the charge to mobile video broadcast. But the internet is not television, and I’d like to see the ability to select programming, as the CNN and NPR apps do so well.

Jakarta Globe
Equinox Inc
Free

Disclosure: I have been  a contributor to The Jakarta Globe.

The young Jakarta daily comes to the iPhone in minimal form. The interface is the standard news list, divided into categories such as City, National, Business, Sports, and Life and Times.

Stories can be favorited but not shared  – a problem for users and publisher alike. Banner ads appear at the bottom of story pages.

In the era of aggregation and global reach, local news is under-served. This creates an opportunity for focused reporting. The Jakarta Globe application is a good example of a local news application, but it lacks compelling city-and country-specific features. For example, why can’t I look up Jakarta movie listings?

Ultimately, users will install this application only because there are few other mobile sources for English-language news about Indonesia and its capital city.

Fluent News Reader
Fluent Mobile
Free, plus subscription for some features

Fluent News Reader aggregates stories from a user-defined list of sources, by default including the RSS feeds of the Washington Post, the New York times, the BBC, NPR, USA Today, Al Jazeera, Reuters, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, the Economist, Fox News, and several dozen others. Duplicate stories are removed, much like Google News.

The app comes with a standard set of sections such as “Business”, “World,” and “Sport”, but Fluent differentiates itself through the ability to make custom sections. Sections are defined by keyword searches, which are extremely useful in their own right. The balance of results can be adjusted by promoting or demoting individual news sources.

But only up to a point. Fluent wants you to subscribe at $1.99 for one month or $2.99 for three months for “premium” features including the ability to create an unlimited number of sections, promote more than one source, and remove the banner ads in article lists.

Stories can be saved, or shared via email, Twitter, and Facebook.

Fluent news is perhaps the only truly comprehensive news aggregation app for the iPhone. Its search and custom sections features are very useful, as is the ability to adjust the importance of sources. But when the most expensive iPhone news app is selling for $4, dishing out $1 every month just to keep features unlocked seems a bit rich.

BBC News Mobile
Joseph Nardone
$0.99

This application, which does not seem to be supported or authorized by the BBC, is one of a several in the BBC fan creation category. The interface is simple, with a list of stories in each of three sections: “World News,” “World Sport,” and “World Business.” Choosing a story simply brings up the appropriate bbc.co.uk page in the integrated browser. The “Share Story” button sends an email.

That’s it.

What we can learn most from the existence of this and similar applications is that the BBC has not satisfied pent up demand for an iPhone app.

The Huffington Post
HuffingtonPost.com
Free

The Huffington Post looks like a mobile newspaper should. The design is clean, with their trademark headline photo up top. The interface is simple, with the usual sections including a “blogs” category. There is a well-stocked video section which makes use of the iPhone YouTube player.

Where the Huffington Post stands out is its social media integration. There is a “comments” button on every page, and new comments can be posted from within the app. The bottom of each article also includes a selection of recent tweets on the article topic, complete with a “reply” link for each tweet that integrates with a user-selectable iPhone twitter client (though not Tweetdeck, which is annoying.) All of these features are unique among the apps in this roundup.

Font size is adjustable and stories can be shared by Email, Facebook, and Twitter.

There is no search function. Otherwise, the app is full-featured, good-looking, multimedia, and actively social. The Huffington Post continues their embrace of the web with their thoughtfully designed iPhone application.

Here is a fairly comprehensive list of great iPhone apps (broken down into categories and then alphabetized). Please note that all of these apps are free (unless marked otherwise). I also asked my Twitter community which apps they use, and it came back with the “usual suspects” (with some discrepancies when it comes to Twitter on the iPhone).

News & Information:

• All Things Digital. The Wall Street Journal’s Digital Network.
• Huffington Post.
• InstaPaper. Save web pages and documents online and read them via InstaPaper.
• The New York Times.
• TED. Inspiring talks and great gymnastics for your brain when the music runs dry.
• Wikipedia.
• Yelp! Great recommendations for social activities (hotels, restaurants, bars and more). Try out the “Monocle” option (awesome augmented reality).

Online Social Networking:

• Facebook. ‘Nuff said.
• Foursqaure.
• FriendFeed.
• LinkedIn.
• Tweetie. ($2.99) Great little Twitter app. TweetDeck for the iPhone is also very impressive. Other recommended Simplytweet, Twitterlater Pro, Hootsuite, and a few others.

Productivity:

• AroundMe. This app helps you find banks, bars, gas stations and more that are in your vicinity.
• Battery Master. The Achilles heel of the iPhone is the battery (simply not enough juice). This app gives you a pretty good idea of how much time you have left.
• Dropbox. Organize and grab files that can be transferred from your hard drive to the cloud and then to your iPhone.
• Evernote. For all of your note-taking needs.
• Google. Get access to your Gmail, Calendar, Google Docs, and more. But, more importantly, you now have Google Reader (all of your RSS feeds) at your fingertips and synced with to your desktop version.
• Quickmark. Uses the camera to grab bar codes and then provides full information on the product.
• Skype. Can’t go wrong with Skype on your iPhone.
• Stanza. Great little e-reader for the iPhone.
• Weather Eye. Courtesy of the people at the Weather Network. If you travel a lot, this app will let you know everything you need to know about the conditions.

What’s missing? What would you add to this list?

Most of the hardware we use to create media now seems old.

That’s a big deal. Keyboard, mouse and even the laptop just looks so tired and old when compared to a touchscreen iPad. Touching a full screen and manipulating everything (including typing on the screen) with your fingers/hand is the present (and future). “I just can’t seem to type on glass… it doesn’t feel right.” People said the same thing when the typewriter came out (it felt very foreign when compared to writing cursive), then the computer keyboard came out and people felt it didn’t give the same feedback as a typewriter. What about mobile devices? For years people complained that they could never type with their thumbs… and then they did.

Touch changes everything.

It’s much more human and yes, you’ll get used to typing on glass… but look even further into the future (the not-so-distant future) when you won’t be typing on glass, but you’ll probably be typing in the air (hello, Minority Report!). Pause to reflect a little on this entire Blog post: most babies will grow up learning to type on something like an iPad (glass or a flat surface)… or on air. Keyboards are going bye bye. The mouse is going bye bye… in fact, everything except your personal touch is going bye bye.

That’s going to change everything (once again)… and that’s one major reason why we all need to pay more attention to the iPad (and all of the hype surrounding it).

Almost.

Or, as Maxwell Smart used to say: “missed it by that much!” 

Here’s a run-through of the best and the worst about the iPad. 

The great: 

• Super thin. It’s going to be hard to find a form more favourable than this for the business traveller going forward.
• Brilliantly crisp. The screen is amazing. The glare is almost  non-existent and everything looks very fresh and new.
• Great for books, movies, TV and pictures. Considering that you can’t always be hooked up to an Internet connection, it’s good to know that any type of media resident on this device plays, reads, looks and sounds great.
• Full of amazing app potential. You can rest assured that  the recent gold rush we’ve seen for iPhone apps will pale in comparison to what is being developed for the iPad. Apps like TripIt, FlightTrack Pro, Kayak, and more make this an indispensible tool for the ultraportable road warrior.
• A completely re-invented way of dealing with email. The ease of flicking through email does make going  through a lot of email fairly painless and much more visually appealing.

You can almost do everything with it – but it’s not a smartphone or a laptop, so you’re going to have to curb your apprehensions and think of it as a device that is somewhere between the two. It will take some getting used to, but after a few minutes, it will be obvious that this type of device will become the business traveller’s standard going forward. Think about sitting next to a client in an office or hotel lobby and how great it will be to demo products, review videos or even go through presentations. This is going to be perfect for on-the-go sales reps, realtors, artists, and for anybody who does small group presentations.

The not-so-great?

• Weight. It’s not as light as you may think. Granted, it’s not as heavy as your standard laptop, but there’s just too much goodness in the iPad for it not to be a little on the heavy side.
• It needs a cover. Or a slip… or something. No one wants to scratch up a screen that beautiful. If someone releases a cover that can also triple as a stand  and can be angled better for typing, that will change many people’s current complaints about what the iPad doesn’t do so well.
• Difficult to type with for those on the go.  The iPad lies flat, and it’s not easy to type while hunched over an airline food tray, or while sitting at the gate. If someone can create the ultimate slip cover from the last point that can double as an angled stand, we’ve got a winner, winner, chicken dinner!
• Lacking a camera and phone. For the road warrior, having the ability to use Skype would be a huge bonus. 
• Not seamless with wi-fi technology. No one wants to be tethered to a connection, so the 3G with wi-fi version is the only way to go. The problem is that wireless and wi-fi technology hasn’t been perfected yet. So, while it’s a negative, this is more of an indictment on our current state of connectivity.
• Lacking Flash. Flash has become a standard technology to view websites, so while Apple battles it out with Flash’s owners (Adobe), some websites will be a challenge. Apple wizard, Steve Jobs, shares his side of the story here: Thoughts On Flash.

Overall, it’s important to remember that this is only the first generation of the iPad, so it hasn’t found its legs… yet. That being said, it is an awesome piece of technology that will have your flight mates leaning over your shoulder for a look. Expect all of the bad listed above to be fixed in upcoming iterations (which won’t take too long).

The iPad is going to change mobile computing, and it is going to become an integral part of the road warrior’s arsenal. And, remember, if you can’t wait for the next generation iPad, it’s not an iPhone or a laptop… it’s an iPad, so keep your expectations in check.

The above posting is my tech and gadget column for enRoute Magazine called, Ultraportable (which will now run exclusively on the enRoute Blog). I cross-post it here with all of the links and tags for your reading pleasure, but you can check out the original versions online here:

• iPad – The Next Road Warrior Or Just Another Gadget?

Apple head honcho Steve Jobs launched the iPhone 4G this week in San Francisco at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference. This is the fourth generation of the smartphone that changed (and continues to change) the world. And, while no one knows how cool, fast and impressive this next generation smartphone will be, there are some key lessons all businesspeople can take away from the presentation and promises of what this device is and what it can do.

Let’s start with the raw features: Jobs did not invent video conferencing and the fact you can now multi-task (have multiple apps open at once, instead of one at a time) is not that big of a breakthrough (the Palm Pre -which was an industry flop -offered this years ago as does BlackBerry and other smartphones). Having a battery that now lasts up to seven hours also is tablestakes when you look at the average person’s work schedule and how long other mobiles can go without a charge.

In the end, the new iPhone is not about the new features, but it’s about where we are going with both computing and connectivity.

Remember when nobody paid for a cellphone? The culture of “free phones” permeated the mobile carrier business for years and what Apple did with their first generation iPhone is shift the mass mind-set from free to paying close to $600 for a mobile device. That mindshift opened the floodgates and, suddenly, the everyday person was comfortable (no, happy) to shell out their hard-earned dollars for a mobile device that was not only feature-rich, but would offer them a level of social status among their peers. The iPhone became a product of envy for those who didn’t have one and an object of pride for those that did.

Design is everything.

One of the best business books of the past decade is Re-Imagine! Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age by Tom Peters (DK, 2006). Beyond the beauty of the book design and page layout, Peters continually highlights – in words -the importance of brilliant, jaw-dropping design in relation to the brands that have truly created businesses that are built to last. If Apple does one thing magically great, it is their industrial design. Apple products are beautiful. They fit with the times and they give us a glimpse into the future. This new iPhone also is an object of beauty. Every micro-inch of space was optimized and rethought and – by the looks of it – nothing was spared (not the weight, overall size or even how it feels in someone’s hand). Creating a product that people will marvel at is no small feat in a world like ours. It’s not the inside, it’s not the outside and it’s not what goes into it … it’s how those pieces all come together that make it so special to consumers.

It also is not about the phone.

When you pull together all of the features of the iPhone 4G, what becomes abundantly clear is that this is no longer about telecommunications. The phone (or calling) part is now shadowed by everything else. The new iPhone offers us some preliminary glimpses of what our world of connectivity, communications and computers will be. It’s less of a phone and more of a remote control for your life. A fully featured computer that has all of the necessary moving parts for what a mobile device should be. When everything from the quality of pictures and videos become comparable with devices that only serve those individual purposes, we begin to really see how – in the not-too-distant future – we won’t be trudging around laptops, iPads and mobile devices. There will be one device to rule them all -great text, images, audio and video in one hand-held/portable device.

It’s all about the resolution.

Apple calls it Retina Display, and it boasts four times the pixel count of previous generation iPhones. Apparently, the pixels are so dense that the human eye is unable to distinguish individual pixels. Jobs made a comment during the launch that the iPhone displays content so clearly that it is virtually indistinguishable from text on paper (everyone from Amazon and Sony to every book, newspaper and magazine publisher’s ears must have perked up). Funny enough, everybody thought the existing resolution of the iPhone was already pretty impressive. You have to respect a company that iterates and innovates when what was presently in-market seemed more than above average.

Finally, it’s all about the media and apps.

Music, movies, books, television, newspapers, magazines, games and more. Apple is as much of an entertainment company as they are a design and hardware company. They not only provide the hardware and connectivity, but also get a fair chunk of change by charging for the content and applications that run on devices like the iPhone. And, as if that were not enough, their new iAd advertising platform also is going to go gangbusters for the launch of the iPhone 4G. Apple will get money for the apps and they will get money from the ads. And while many are highly critical of the fact Apple is not more of an open environment, that didn’t seem to stop 2 million iPads from flying off the shelves in under 60 days, and by the looks of things, the iPhone 4G will experience a similar effect.

The iPhone 4G is newsworthy beyond the innovation of the hardware, software and connectivity.

Apple turns people from consumers into loyal evangelists and they also are perfectly fine with those who can’t stand them. What great bands aren’t polarizing? The lessons of innovation, pushing technology and providing a product, brand or service that consumers don’t even realize they may need are the real lessons that every business can learn from Apple -time and time again.

Have your say below…

The above posting is my twice-monthly column for the Montreal Gazette and Vancouver Sun newspapers called, New Business – Six Pixels of Separation. I cross-post it here with all the links and tags for your reading pleasure, but you can check out the original versions online here:

• Montreal Gazette – One device to rule them all.
• Vancouver Sun – New iPhone offers a glimpse into the future.