Bringing another piece of the mobile future to today, Social Line Connect is a simple iPhone game with a cross-platform backbone.

The free app, which looks similar to Connect Four, was added to the App Store over the weekend.

The real point of the no-frills game is playing it with friends -- even if they don't own an iPhone. To that end, it's a also proof-of-concept title for SocialDeck, a new middleware startup that's created a server architecture for people to play games across several platforms.

Based on the premise that "social interaction is much more important than the actual game play," SocialDeck's games can be played between people using an iPhone and on the web via Facebook, with a Blackberry version said to be on the way as well.

More at GigaOM.

 

fring for iPhone has arrived! I'm a huge fan of fring, which I like to call the Swiss Army knife of VoIP/IM communications since fring works with AOL/AIM, MSN Messenger, Google Talk, Skype, Twitter, Yahoo! Messenger, and SIP registrars/IP-PBXs. I've used fring on my Windows Mobile 6.1 phone to connect to an Asterisk-based IP-PBX using SIP which enabled me to remotely make and receive calls. fring is a currently a free pre-release app free on iTunes.

VoIP using fring is of course restricted to WiFi connections - it won't work over 3G, but still cool nonetheless. Further, according to the apps description in iTunes you can IM over 3G, GPRS, EDGE, or WiFi, so you can use fring as your centralized IM application on your iPhone.

Features:
• VoIP (Voice) Calls over WiFi
• Instant Messaging
• Integrated dynamic contact list 
with real-time contact availability
• SIP integration
• Multiple Connection types

Download fring for iPhone here.

Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign launched an iPhone application today that turns the gadget into a political recruiting tool.

The most notable feature "organizes and prioritizes your contacts by key battleground states, making it easy to reach out and make an impact quickly," according to the software.

For example, if you have contacts in Colorado, Michigan, and New Mexico, they would be ranked at the top; at the bottom would be someone with a cell phone in Texas.

The application anonymously reports back the number of calls made this way: "Your privacy is important: no personal data or contacts will be uploaded or stored. Only the total number of calls you make is uploaded anonymously." 

More at Cnet.

Strong-smelling MacBook Pros have been discussed on Apple forums, but an anonymous French molecular biologist/researcher went to Greenpeace to check out why his smelled. Greenpeace got Analytica involved, and then Inéris, France's national institute covering the industrial environment.

Apparently benzene is a component of the smell, and this could be risky -- over time, sensitive people could develop leukemia.

Unconfirmed stories suggest the problem Mac Pros have been built in China, not at Apple's European factory.

Note, we're not talking about an ordinary "new equipment" aroma. The original poster at MacRumours said his new 3.0 Mac Pro Octo:
"Stinks to high heaven. It's a plastic-burning type smell, seems almost toxic, the smell coming out the back fan. I have to shut it down and leave the room every few hours to air it out, it's that bad. I've heard about the "new mac smell" and had a tiny taste of it with a new macbook last summer, but this is different -- it's intense, nauseating, and makes you feel funny. Friends and neighbors have agreed: this can't be good."

Get more of the bad news here.

Unlocked iPhone 3Gs are now on sale in Hong Kong direct from the company web site, according to a published report.

Until now, Hong Kong iPhones could only be bought from Hutchison Telecommunications on a two-year contract, the cheapest package being a staggering $188 a month.

Now Apple's local website is offering the 8 gigabyte version of its unlocked phone for $695 and the 16 gigabyte one for $798, letting buyers choose their own GSM service provider. 

The shape of things to come?

Get more here.

Regional mobile carrier Alltel has launched NuTsie, a service that allows users of almost a dozen of the company's handsets to stream certain titles from their PC's iTunes collection to their cell phones.

This makes the operator the first U.S. carrier to offer such a service, which will cost $4.99 a month, or $19.99 a year.

To stream the protected and unprotected songs in a user's iTunes library, NuTsie does not actually place-shift songs from a user's PC. Instead, the service matches the songs in a user's library to the licensed songs stored in NuTsie servers, then streams only the songs in its server.

As a result, not every song in a user's PC library might get streamed to an Alltel phone or BlackBerry. Partly to compensate for that limitation, NuTsie gives users the option to stream songs not in their iTunes library.

New songs would be chosen by NuTsie based on the user's existing library, whose playlists must be uploaded to NuTsie and will appear inside the phone's NuTsie application. New music is also available for playback from friends' playlists and from NuTsie programmers.

Even more at TWICE.  

I'm not going to go on another rant blasting blog aggregators or websites that steal other people's content (aka sploggers). However, I came across one website that took my content, re-worded one sentence and tried to claim it as its own. The change is so laughable I busted out laughing!

First, my blog entry titled Court Bans VoIP App on iPhone was one of the first if not the first U.S.-based news outlet to talk about how a German court banned the sipgate VoIP application on the iPhone. In the article, I wrote:

Apparently, the court felt that sipgate would "lure" iPhone users into "jailbreaking" their iPhones. WTF? Banning software because it might entice customers to do something bad? Glad I live in the good ole' freedom-loving USA where we punish people for committing crimes not for "intentions" of committing crimes, jailbreaking iPhones, violating terms of service contracts, etc.

Now compare that with the scammer over at Unwiredview.com which posted the story as though it were their own:

Apparently, the court felt that Sipgate would lure iPhone users into jailbreaking their iPhones. WTF? Banning software because it might entice customers to do something bad? Glad I live in the good ole' freedom-loving India where we punish people for committing crimes not for "intentions" of committing crimes.

It's virtually identical -- even copying my WTF outrage. However, simply change good ole' freedom-loving 'USA' to 'India' and presto-bango, you've got yourself a brand-spanking 'new' news article! I couldn't help but laugh at this.

Obviously, there are tons of automated blog and news site aggregators out there and I've learned to just ignore them. But in this case, someone actually took the time to HAND EDIT it and take out 'USA' and change it to 'India'. Either they're anti-USA or just very pro-India. Regardless, a pretty stupid edit job, but definitely made my day seeing such a half-ass edit job.

On a related note, a major news outlet, CBC News (Canadian Broadcasting Channel News) mentioned my story writing, "Sipgate's Thilo Salmon told the VoIP and Gadgets blog the company was not allowed to argue its case before the Hamburg court prior to the injunction being issued" but alas they didn't actually link to my story.

Very annoying. It's not that I need the Page Rank from the inbound link, it's just common courtesy to cite & link the source of the article.

Now this makes a lot of sense in this day and age of energy efficient and seeking out alternative energy sources -- using solar power to charge your cell phone.

After taking a look at the specs for Solar Cases that can power the Apple iPhone, a few pop out right off of the page, including a charge time of less than three hours and a weight of less than a quarter of a pound (100 g).

And while it looks simple to use, it actually is.

Here's how it works, using the built-in rechargeable battery in the  Solar Case:
1. Insert iPhone into Solar case
2. Turn Power ON, iPhone will be fully charged within < 3 hours

Now, by solar power:
1. Insert iPhone into the Solar case
2. Turn the Power ON
3. PlaceSolar Case under sunlight.

To recharge the Solar Case's built-in battery using AC/DC power:
1. Connect AC/DC Charger to the Solar Case
2. Four power indicators indicate percentage of power charged

Now, by solar power:
1. Turn Power OFF without removing iPhone from the case
2. Place Solar Case under sunlight.
3. Built-in battery will be fully charged within 12 hours

Price: $48.00

www.http://mobile.brando.com.hk

Feel like stepping beyond the limits of Apple hardware?

Want a Mac netbook for under $650?

How about an EeePC running Mac OS X?

If you answered "Yes!" to any of these questions, then read on!

At least part of the appeal of the dimunitive EeePC netbook is its hackability -- from Linux to Vista, intrepid hackers have figured out how to run just about everything on the EeePC.

While many would question why you'd want to go to the trouble of installing OS X when there are many Windows and Linux distributions available out of the box?

Maybe you're looking for a challenge. Installing OS X on non-Apple hardware provides plenty of chances to flex those (very metaphorical) geek muscles. 

More at Wired.

Tethering is a feature that allows you to use your mobile smartphone as modem to connect to the Internet or corporate LAN over your carrier's cell phone network.

Unfortunately, Apple has not integrated tethering into the iPhone -- both the original EDGE data network model or the iPhone 3G.

Nor is it (apparently) going to allow anyone else to offer an iPhone tethering app of their own through the AppStore.

Nullriver, which had seen its NetShare iPhone tethering application put up and then taken down from the App Store for no apparent reason, appears to have gotten a definitive answer on where Apple stands on the matter.

A recent posting to the company's blog reads:
Looks like Apple has decided they will not be allowing any tethering applications in the AppStore. As such, NetShare will not be available in the iTunes AppStore. We are seeing a lot of similar reports from various developers who's applications were abruptly removed and banned from the AppStore without any violations of the terms of service.

This is all unfortunate news for the iPhone platform end-users. 

Talk about free enterprise!

More at PDAStreet.

And thanks to TUAW.com for the graphic.