• Tim Stevens & Darren Murphy for Engadget … Tim & Darren start their pre-keynote-roundup at 07:30 AM PST via UStream videostream and continue with the keynote coverage
  (Liveblog technology: UStream (not via iOS) & ? iOS-friendly engadget cms ?
• Ars Technica … live blog will start with the keynote
  (Liveblog technology: ScribbleLive, disabled for iOS).
• Greg Kumparak for TechCrunch … live blog will start at 08:45 AM PST – 17:45 CET
  (ScribbleLive, not iOS optimized).
• TheNextWeb … live blog will start at 09:30 AM PST – 18:30 CET
  (ScribbleLive, iOS friendly).
• Jason Snell & Dan Moren for Macworld… live blog will start with the keynote
  (Liveblog technology: CoverItLive, iOS-friendly)
• Technologizer … live blog will start with the keynote
  (CoverItLive, iOS-friendly).
• MacLife … live blog will start with the keynote
  (CoverItLive, iOS-friendly).
• Adrian Kingsley-Hughes for ZDNet … live blog will start with the keynote
  (CoverItLive, iOS-friendly).
• Arron Hirst for RazorianFly … live blog will start at 09:30 AM PST – 18:30 CET
  (CoverItLive, iOS-friendly).
• Gizmodo … live blog will start at 09:00 AM PST – 18:00 CET
  (Liveblog technology: unknown, iOS-friendly).

As soon as the keynote is available as a Quicktime stream, you’ll get an update here

Every Mac ships with a standard Apple utility which helps you out It’s called “Image Capture” (or on German Mac OS X systems “Digitale Bilder”). This utility shows all images on the iPhone. You can select all or only a selection of these pictures and you’re able to delete them right away! Here is how to:

1. Connect your iPhone via USB with your Mac.
2. If iTunes or iPhoto starts, wait for the sync, and press the iPhone-disconnect button within the itunes window. Make sure, that you quit iTunes and iPhoto.
3. Open “Image Capture” from the applications folder.
4. Select your iPhone in the left column and a list of the iPhone photos will be displayed on the right.
5. Select the photos, you want to delete – or select all pictures by pressing command-A.
6. Now press on the red delete button just beneath the list. If you’re sure, that you want to delete the pictures you can confirm the deletion. WARNING: You cannot recover the deleted photos – so be sure, that you imported them to iPhoto before!

Creating folders for apps

• If you’re in rearrange mode – by tapping and holding on an app on the home screen until the app icons start to shake – creating folders is easy and intuitive: You only need to drag an app icon over an other app icon and the iOS instantly creates a folder and automatically names it.
• The folder opens up and shows the included apps.
• You can change the automatic generated folder name by clicking into the rounded white name field.

Rename an existing folder for apps

• Changing existing titles of folders for apps is only working in the app rearrange mode.
• So, you have to tap and hold one of the app icons on the home screen until the icons start to shake.
• Then you tap on the folder you want to rename. The folder opens up so you can see the apps and the title in edit mode.
• You only have to click on the title. Now the keyboard appears and you can rename the folder.
• Just press the home button once you are finished to exit the rearrange mode.

Hope this saves some time.

1. Multitasking – specific functionalities, like audio or VoIP, can run in the background, now. Also fast switching between apps by preserving the exact status within the app can now be enabled. To achieve all this in a battery- and cpu-preserving way, app developers need to integrate these new features explicitly by using those new APIs. Apple provides the developers with seven multitasking services via the iPhone OS 4.0 SDK:
   - Background audio … example app: Pandora
   - Voice over IP … example app: skype
   - Background location … example apps: tomtom, Loopt
   - Push notification
   - Local notifications
   - Task completion … example app: Flickr
   - Fast app switching … example app: TapTap
2. Folders – Now, apps can be organized within folders. Using folders, you can install a maximum of 2.160 apps instead of 180 on your iPhone
3. Mail – Improved Mail-app with unified inbox, multi Exchange accounts, fast inbox switching, threaded messages and open attachment with apps.
4. iBooks – the iPad iBook-Reader and the iBookstore are transformed for the iPhone.
5. Enterprise – the operating system addresses the needs of major companies for handling large installations of iPhones as their corporate communication devices:
   - Even better data protection
   - Mobile Device Management
   - Wireless app distribution
   - Multiple Exchange Accounts
   - Exchange Server 2010
   - SSL VPN support
6. Game Center – Now, game developers can use the social gaming network built into the native iPhone SDK:
   - Invite Friends
   - Automatic Matchmaking
   - Leaderborads
   - Achievements
7. iAd – Mobile Advertisement – Apple implements a mobile advertisement service deep into the iPhone OS itself. The revenue share is an industry “standard” of 60% for the developer and 40% of the advertisement revenues for Apple.

Again, Apple achieved to integrate a bundle of innovations into the next iPhone generation … very good news for the growing number of iPhone-developers. Other players in the mobile industry, like Google’s AdMob, have to expect heavy seas ahead. This leads me to one of these wonderful Bob Dylan songs: “The times they are a changing …”

Happy Valentine’s day 2010!

Last year, 30 German iPhone developers joint their forces and reduced their app prices to the max to make you smile on Valentine’s day … this year everything is bigger: Now more than 80 apps are reduced to the max to please our customers.
CompareMe shopping utility is also available for $0.99. So check out AppsForSale.de maybeyou’ll find a real bargain. Only on 14.02.2010!

Like the legendary Steve Jobs Keynotes in the past, it is quite a tradition that some journalists blog live from the event … so Apple fans all over the planet can take part on the press conference. Here are the most important liveblogs:

• Jason Snell, Dan Moren & Jonathan Seff, Macworld.com
• Jason Chen for Gizmodo
• Erica Ogg for cnet news
• Joshua Topolsky for engadget
• John Paczkowski for All Things Digital
• Technologizer staff for Technologizer
• Ars staff for Ars Technica
• John Biggs for TechCrunch / CrunchGear
• Brian X. Chen for Gadget Lab at Wired

As soon as the videorecording of the event is online as a Quicktime videostream … there’ll be an update

Apple did not announce that the company will be engaged in the e-book or tablet-market – but the rumors about an “iSlate” or “iPad” are quite persistent. Therefore Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer tried to steal Apple the show at his keynote at the CES in Las Vegas: He just renamed the tablet-PCs on stage as “slate-PCs” … but it’s not about a name.

Kindle Development Kit (picture: Amazon)

Amazon is probably in a better starting position in the battle for market shares in the emerging market of Active Content: They have a lot of experience with content distribution with the Kindle and they are in direct contact with the publishers … but Apple has the ability to rouse the e-book-market from slumber by innovation. They may transfer the pathetic e-books into a new and emerging market: Active Content.

There are a lot of advantages for Apple to tip the scales:

• big and growing iPhone SDK developer community … Amazon has to build up a comparable dev community around the KDK
• well-engineered and sophisticated iPhone SDK … with a full bandwidth of network-, graphic-, data- and sensor-support
• color instead of grayscale screens and computing and graphic power
• touchscreen with gestures
• amazing design
• … and there are probably some innovations we don’t expect

Amazon’s move to open up the Kindle to 3rd party developers and create a platform for Active Content is absolutely right … but can it compete with Apples offering? On January 27th 2010 we’ll know much, much more.

• Those more than 800 million mobile devices have different screen sizes, different buttons or keyboards and some even have a touch screen. That does not help developers to create stunning GUIs on mobiles where every little pixel needs to be arranged.
• Flash is very performance hungry. That’s why they had to shrink it down to Flash Light – but even flash light is struggling with performance issues on many of the 800 million devices.
• Adobe does not provide a application store infrastructure for its developers … maybe one of the biggest issues of all

But on March 6, 2008 an other threat to Flash and Flash Light appeared: Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone SDK which provided a easy way to create third party applications for the iPhone with high mobile performance and the ability to take advantage of most of the sensors – like touchsceen, accelerometer, microphone, camera. And Apple solved one of the biggest hurdles for mobile application developers: They provided an easy application store solution for the developers to sell their apps or distribute them for free. And also the market for these native iPhone applications is quite attractive: There are more than 50 million iPhones and iPod touch devices out there – all of them having the exact same screen size, all of them having a touch sceen, all of them having an accelerometer. Apple attracted a lot of independent developers as well the big names in game industry with their mobile application ecosystem.
Bringing Flash support to the iPhone Safari web browser was blocked by Apple because of those big performance issues. Apple also did not license Flash Light for the iPhone – quite logic because they built up their own developer base and their own mobile app ecosystem.
The only chance Adobe had was to built up an “injection”-strategy and develop their Flash authoring tool into an Objective-C & Cocoa code generator which allows Flash developers to create native iPhone applications by the press of a button. Then the Flash developers can upload their app to the iTunes AppStore and use it as a selling and distribution channel.
This probably wasn’t an easy job and it will be quite interesting to watch Apple’s reaction on this move. It probably will have a massive effect on the AppStore as this will flood the store with new apps: More creativity and more junk.

Louis Gerbarge spotted the technical issues of the Adobe Flash to native iPhone code generation – and takes a look on the performance and private API issues of the beta version of the CS5 solution. His post makes clear that taking the Flash way won’t offer the Flash developers the features and beauty of the uncountable iPhone SDK 3.x APIs.

Upgrading for iPhone users is quite easy:

• Connect your iPhone to your computer and select the iPhone within iTunes
• Click on the update button within the “summary” tab
• … and the adventure begins

230 MB … let’s see how the final version feels in real life

The AppsForSale.de cooperation of over 30 German iPhone developers was a great success at Valentine’s Day. Now the Easter special is the second round from today April 11 to tomorrow April 12. If you have an iPhone – you may take a look on the list of more than 40 apps … maybe the app of your dreams is reduced to the max

Btw you can find CompareMe there, also … reduced to 0.99$ from 1.99$.

Enjoy browsing through the app list and have fun at the egg hunt