what's new with the Iphone

I've added some new programs to my Iphone:

Iphonevideorecorder
The unpaid version of this program only allows 30 second recordings. I found a crack online for it. Now my Iphone is complete, it is finally like a 'normal' phone with a video camera. It encodes in mp4 format. You record a video and then after you are done with it, its in an uncoded format. It takes about a minute to encode a minute of video so there is no real time encoding to mp4.

Fring
Fring offers VOIP for the Iphone. I came across their application as I was surfing the net. I was wondering if Iphone has such a large sofware community developer out there, someone must have developed a VOIP software for it... and someone just did. Fring offers Skype calls over the Iphone. What this means is, if you have free wifi connection, you can use the fring account on your Iphone to make a call. I haven't tried calling anyone with the Fring yet (no one to call!). Another added bonus of the Fring account is that you get to also add all your chat contacts from MSN, Yahoo, etc.

Meebo
Meebo is actually just a bookmark to a website which allows you to chat online with your MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Gtalk, etc friends. Doesn't work in my office wifi, they blocked all the chat websites. If I really want to chat with someone, I have to walk to One Utama to use their free wifi.

Docs
This is a utility tool. With this program, you can open up the directories in your Iphone. So basically, the Iphone turns into a large storage device (kind of like a thumb drive). To access it, you need to connect to it through SSH. I upload my PDF photoshop tutorial files into it so when I'm in the office editing photos, I can refer to my Iphone.

The Iphone can't open PDF files larger than 6MB so I have to break down the files into every ten pages. Kind of tedious but at least I can read the files.

There are other programs I have on the Iphone like MxTube, Convert (it's a measurement converter), gemlogic, OrbLive, etc. All this are pretty common programs.

I don't really like this OrbLive program as I'm afraid of privacy issues. How it works is you install it on the Desktop PC at home and leave it connected to the internet. It will stream media to your Iphone through the internet. It works better if you have a TV Card tuner so it will allow you to watch TV on the Iphone. I don't have a TV Card Tuner so I can only stream photos, videos and music. I'm afraid someone might get into my Orb account and they'll get my private media files.

I also bought 24, Season 6 on DVD. It comes in 3 disk. All the episodes are highly compressed but that's okay as I was going to convert it to the Iphone format. The conversion program I used, Handshake had a problem recognizing the chapters in the disk. It could only convert the first four chapters and missed out on the other four on each disk. At least now I can watch some TV programs on the Iphone.

It's a bit tedious to watch TV shows longer than 30 minutes on the Iphone, my hand gets tired from holding it and the volume is too low in a noisy room. The only time its fun to watch is when I'm in bed hiding under the covers in the dark. I hide under the covers as the acoustic sounds better. I feel like a little kid again.

Most of the time now I just watch the podcast news video I download. I have CBS Evening news with Katie Couric, ABC podcasts and CNN podcasts. I don't really like listening to audio podcast, I prefer video podcast... much more fun. It's also very distracting. I tried watching it at a traffic light once while driving, I almost missed the green light. I don't think I'll do it again.