Loo-Lee.com

Wirefly today announced the Top 10 hottest cell phones for Valentine’s Day 2009. The LG VuCU920, Samsung Rant and LG enV2 top the list, showcasing the increasing demand for smartphones and handsets with advanced features and multi-functionality, including email and music capabilities. In keeping with the Valentine’s Day theme, most of the phones [...]

Have you ever played Lego Indiana Jones on the Nintendo DS?  Well, if not there is a challenge where you have to blow up a balloon, which you achieve by actually blowing into the DS!  Now, courtesy of Korean mobile company Pantech, this clever little bit of technology is being integrated into a mobile phone named - perhaps rather amusingly - the Sky Wind.

Korean software house Fantalog have perfected this system and have called it the Emotion Engine and surprisingly it needs no hardware modification, just an extra bit of software which then measures the (more…)

Post from Dial-a-Phone, UK's no. 1 for Mobile Phones.

In a true testament to human priorities, mobile gaming downloads have increased nearly 20% over the last year - possibly because people no longer have “clients” or “jobs” to distract them from Peggle. The driving force behind the increase is the increase in phone computing power, with the new generation of smartphones actually able to run games worth playing.

The real winner is the iPhone, with one in three of all users reporting that they (more…)

Post from Dial-a-Phone, UK's no. 1 for Mobile Phones.

#1 Last.fm. The official Last.fm client, Personal Radio, is of a caliber even better than I expected from the team that's done more than any other to analyze and interpret the listening habits of music fans on every platform possible. The interface is beautiful, and features all the things you'll find on the site so many have come to love. But this app is more efficiently organized than the website.

The limited space eliminates ads and superfluous options. This app is about rapid access, but cuts no corners. This is meat-and-potatoes Last.fm. Tagging, searching similars, buying on Amazon, creating stations, managing friends, band info, album covers, and everything you could possibly hope for is here. And despite my not participating in much scrobbling (running a little app that keeps track of your taste), Last.fm knows me all too well. I'm constantly falling in love with bands, first listen.

After login, the user is prompted with two options: pre-existing account library, and suggestions. I go for suggestions and am presented with some shoegazey, noise-laden dream pop. Ride's Dreams Burn Down. Good stuff. When it's done, I select "listen to similar artists," and I'm appropriately given Sometimes, by the seminal, My Bloody Valentine. The horror flick ripped that name off, kids. And if movie previews are the only place you've heard it, may the cosmos have mercy on your soul. The album cover displays a red ribbon on the corner, which indicates the band is on tour. Wait... really? Hmmm. Not for me. There's more to the States than California, MBV.

Last.fm plays in the background and stays in the notification bar for easy access. It's great to be able to get back to it so quickly to rate a song that just ended. I don't think this thing scrobbles. But you can vote love or hate on the tracks the app streams.

There is a non-official client in the Market called aLastFM, which functions fine, but was depreciated with the release of an official client. There was a third, that fell below my three star minimum.

Oh man, the Flys. I forgot all about them. Holiday Man is such a fun album. Therein lies the joy of Last.fm.

#3 FlyCast is a full-featured, ad-driven radio solution that offers options you aren't going to find in any other Android app. Over 1500 "channels" are available - featuring live radio and podcast streams. Stations are organized by city, genre, and even bandwidth. For example, when I browsed by city and selected Los Angeles, I found three high-quality streams for those on W-Fi 3G and EVDO, and one standard quality stream for EDGE. FlyCast also offers dedicated access to Weather and Traffic.

There are five buttons at the bottom of the screen: Guide, Search, Favorites, History, and Settings. There is a bar at the top that usually has a back button, and always a quick press to the now playing screen. I like the feel of the window, but I'd prefer some slicker graphics in the content area. Still, FlyCast is a cool app, and can be integrated with your Facebook account.

The version available at the time of this writing is a public beta. Check out Noah's video review here.

#2 imeem. The Android imeem client has been around longer than most (all?) of the programs on this list. And it was excellent from the get-go. The interface the sexiest of all the radio apps, with last.fm coming in a close second for that category. Like Last.fm, imeem also has love/hate buttons so it can learn about your tastes and deliver personalized content.

The main screen has four tabs: Featured, Saved, Recent, and Search. Extremely subtle ads grace the screen in such a way that I almost thought "KIA" was a function of the program. The Now Playing screen has Hate, Love, Pause and Next controls, not unlike Last.fm. Clicking the info button will tell you about the band, allow you to add them as a favorite, and find similar stations.

imeem also directs you to purchase from Amazon, should you want to download a song. Oh, did I mention how sexy the interface is?

Click here for the super, ultra, mega-grand finale!

#6 StreamFurious is a Shoutcast/Icecast streamer that can handle PLS/M3U from the G1 stock or Steel browsers. It's pretty basic, but gets the job done. The problem I have with this app is organization. The user is presented with a long list of stations, and there's really no way to categorize or sort them. Still, for those who want a quick, nimble app, and don't want to mess with a bunch of options, SF works great. This is my default client for talk radio. It runs in the notification bar.

#5 Jinzora... Jinzora. Oh, you evil seductress. How, at once, I love and loathe thee. This app is supposed to stream media from your home library to your phone. I got pretty excited about this one because I'm already a Linux user. Properly setting up the LAMP server for Jinzora is a matter of following some fairly simple cut-and-paste instructions. However, dealing with the way Comcast handles IP assignment and the way my router forwards ports, are different matters. It's been a long time since I messed with this stuff.

I experimented, but my cable modem upload speeds are so bad that each change of a setting required me to wait for five minutes while Jinzora client tried to get the media. When it couldn't, I wasn't given any errors or other information, so it was too frustrating to continue. If I had more free time, you can bet I'd have Jinzora running trouble-free... or I'd die trying to make it happen.

There are Windows and Mac servers available, but I did not test either. They may or may not simplify the server set-up process. Unless you have some killer upstream flow, it isn't worth your time. This one is here for the tinkerers. Some of you will fall in love. Some will go mad. When you do, please let me know. I'll give this one another shot when my Mac Mini arrives. If things work out, I'll write a post dedicated to Jinzora. (And possibly switch to FiOS.) I rated this one on concept.

#4 AntPlayer accesses Shoutcast streams. You can search and bookmark your favorite stations, as well as add your own. This is a bare-bones program, which is exactly what some people want. I use it to listen to archived episodes of Coast to Coast A.M., which gives a voice to UFO witnesses and abductees, witches, people who are trapped in the future, the possessed, the haunted, the psychic, the keepers of ancient secrets, victims of government brainwashing, those who travel outside of their bodies, conspiracy theorists, grand conspirators, and people who have been to heaven, hell and Bigfoot's stinky cottage. Search for George Noory or Art Bell. It's a real kick in the pants.

Click here for part 3

Despite the disclaimer in the following paragraph, I'll be sticking with the apps that have achieved three-plus star ratings in the Android Market for this round-up - which is why I'm counting down from eight instead of ten.  If I've missed a program that deserves mention, please speak up in the comments. I don't want to leave anyone out. Not all of the programs listed actually stream radio broadcasts, but rather, other kinds of pre-recorded content. But I think it's appropriate to group them together in this manner. Come on, whaddaya want from me?

Streaming apps generally get a bad rap in the Market ratings - or at least fewer stars than they deserve, thanks to buffering issues. These rarely have anything to do with the app itself. And most of the programs listed in this series access various servers that belong to media outlets, not their own. I'm on Wi-Fi and have pretty decent 3G access, so buffering is rarely an issue for me. My primary complaint is... Why is the speaker on the BACK of my G1? Here we go.

#8 Android Radio (Listed in the market as Web Radio) offers over 800 stations from around the world. A catalog of this magnitude may be appealing for some, but to me, it's intimidating. How am I supposed to navigate through this ocean of off-shoots of branches of forks of sub-genres of genres? The user can rate and favorite stations, but the app does nothing to take your listening habits into account for the purpose of recommending other content.

Considering that's the direction the big dogs are headed, I'm not sure Android Radio has much of a chance. The interface is decent, and there are some nice features. But I can't see many folks forking over $1.99 to unlock the app when superior programs are freely available. This program includes the ability to access lyrics and record music to your own media library, which may be worth the Paypal purchase to some. Not me, though. My apologies to the creator; you deserve something for your work. I hope you get enough support to continue developing the program, and to implement new features.

Android Radio buffers a lot of material at startup. This probably minimizes problems later on in the stream, but it might be a bit excessive.

#7 Nagare is the ultimate DIY radio streamer. Enter an address that contains Shoutcast or Icecast streaming audio, and Nagare will play it and remember the address. That's it. Light, functional. There isn't much there, so there isn't much to say. But that's just what many of you are looking for.

Click here for part 2

As we all know, the iPhone has thousands of apps for productivity, multimedia, news gathering, finance, and other mature, sophisticated pastimes... blah, blah, blah. But if we were all so refined, there would be no need for games and fart apps. Thank goodness that's not the case.

So in the spirit of crude amusements, let me tell you about one of the odder bits I found in the App Store: Esteem Aid. According to the product page, its simple premise is that "some of us just need a shot in the arm to get us going." So when you need a little pick-me-up, you just shake the phone, and the display shows affirmations and compliments designed to boost self-esteem.

I know what you're thinking: "What kind of loser — ahem — I mean, poor soul would need this type of artificial flattery?" Well, apparently that would be me, because I downloaded this thing, and now find it to be one of my favorite free apps this week.

Actually, I first looked at Esteem Aid because some of the messages are downright hilarious.









The program fishes around in your contacts and attaches names to messages like "Aunt Esther thinks you are hot" (which is both funny and mildly disturbing). The strange thing is that even the straight compliments — such as "You are AWESOME" and "Keep up the good work" — do put a smile on my face, which makes me feel good. And my self-esteem is just fine, so I can't imagine what this could do for those who really need the pep talk.

I trolled the Customer Reviews section just to see what others thought of this weird little program. I think my favorite comment has to be the one titled "Good with food," which said, "I held it in front of a submarine sandwich and it said, ‘You're my hero,' so it seems fairly accurate."

As for me, I'm indulging in off-label use as well — like as a punchline or gag when I'm with friends. I even defused an argument by shaking all the love out of this thing until we both burst into laughter. Okay, so it's not a groundbreaking app, but simple things can sometimes be fun. And with 60+ "esteem-boosting messages," there's plenty of corny entertainment to be had.

Regardless of your personal viewpoint regarding the company, let's come to a general consensus: Apple revolutionized the concept of a wireless telephone; and furthermore, set the bar for any and all manufacturers, present and future.  Competition is on a whole new playing field as a result.  The concept of applications is taking off, and individuals are quickly realizing that their iPhone may hold them over for more than two years, thanks to a number of applications that make life easier, and cost less to boot.

Albeit a bit late to the wireless game, Dell has always sought to capitalize on the industry's latest trends, and the idea of offering a smartphone is nothing new to them they've been working on it since 2007, according to the Wall Street Journal.  Competing directly with Apple's iPhone 3G and Research In Motion's BlackBerry line, the devices would come in a range of styles, and would be offered on the Windows Mobile and Android platforms.  When I first read this, the thought of the two operating systems running on one device crossed my mind; however I believe they are referring to various configurations that will be offered.

At any rate, it is good to see healthy competition.  According to sources familiar with Dell's plans, the devices may launch as early as next month.

Well, well, well, what do we have here?  2009 is certainly shaping up to be a great year for device launches on T-Mobile, and it looks like a new Sidekick will be sliding into the lineup.  Sporting a fresh redesign, it will offer 3G and GPS connectivity, along with a 3.2 megapixel camera, 3.2-inch WVGA screen and a microSD card slot for expansion purposes.  Social butterflies, worry not according to the leaked product fact sheet, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and YouTube Mobile will all be readily accessible from the device.  Bloggers are also covered, as the phone is said to offer a "blog publishing, editing, and management client."

Check out the fact sheet below for more information on what is sure to be an exceptionally popular device on T-Mobile.

 

 via SlashPhone