The Apple Event on September 5th with Steve Jobs was really stunning. The complete iPod product line is renewed and Apple created even a new type of iPod: the iPod touch. On the first look this is just a further development of the iPod-portfolio for watching movies in widescreen on the move. But it is far more – it’s a revolution!
Until now, iPods have been music playing devices … only some 3rd-party accessories enabled the iPod to record audio and you also can play some games on them. But the new iPod touch goes far beyond: WiFi/WLAN and the built in Safari webbrowser transform the music- and video-player into a mobile internet surfing terminal. On the one hand, Apple stimulates developers to create especially optimized webpages and content for the iPhone and the iPod touch. On the other hand Read the rest of this entry »

The new Flash Player beta version is ready to download on the Adobe Lab web pages: Flash Player 9 Update 3 Beta 2. Most important: The support of the video codec H.264 and the audio codec AAC. Both belong to the best codecs in quality and efficiency on the market. And both belong to the MPEG-4 standard. Jon Dahl on Rail Spikes provides more background information on codecs and their advantages. The Adobe developer Tinic Uro gives more details on the codec implementation.
Attention should be paid to the Adobe announcement especially against the background, that there is still no confirmation on a Flash Player for the Apple iPhone. Youtube, which encoded their videos only in a Flash-video format, now started to encode new videos also with H.264 to serve the attractive target group of iPhone (and Apple-TV) users.
Maybe the pleasant step of Adobe is also a first sign that the wish of a Flash Player for the iPhone is eventually coming true. This would be great news - especially for innovative GUI- and interaction concepts.

We can be anxious what the future will serve us

In autumn 2007, the new e-ticketing - or more precise mobile ticketing - solution called "Touch&Travel" will be tested in a first pilot. The system, created by the German railway company Die Bahn and Vodafone is taking mobile ticketing in Germany to a next level. Mobile ticketing projects in the past always tried to reproduce the old fashioned process: Read the rest of this entry »

Many developers started to experiment with iPhone specific interfaces for their applications (like 37 signals TaDa List) or even new applications for the mobile phone (like the dashboard-like widget-launcher gridget from CulturedCode).
Apple completed their developer resources for the iPhone. They now provide also sample code in the Apple Developer Connection besides the iPhone web development guidelines discussed before. "Puzzler" is a fun-app that shows how to create a web application with JavaScript and different mouse-handlers for user-input.
Joe Hewitt created “iUI”, an iPhone web application development bundle. Don’t worry - it sound complicated, but it isn’t . It just helps developers to create iPhone applications with the iPhone look and feel with JavaScript and CSS.
I cannot wait to get the iPhone in Europe!

Until June 27th the startup duduku.de is auctioning itself at eBay - including domains, trademark, web 2.0 application, design and company.
Until now, dukudu.de is running the beta of their twitter-like friend information service. You can inform your different circles of friends via a Web- and SMS-based interface: What you are actually doing … or what is going on right now.
The project team did not manage to get the needed capital for a nationwide rollout and the team also separates for private reasons. It’s a great pity!
Some interesting facts for developers: dukudu.de was realized in PHP, based on the CakePHP-framework, and MySQL. They use inbound-SMS numbers from mobilant.de in Germany … at least in beta mode.

Sources: basicthinking.de, Auction: ebay.de

Update:
The German internet company allesklar.com AG bought dukudu for 36,309.24 Euro (without VAT). Not bad.