Posts tagged as:

features

Apple iPhone Software 3.0 ‘impressive’

by Admin on March 19, 2009

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Apple took the wraps off the next version of its iPhone software this week, adding more than 100 features for consumers, as well as new ways for developers to create and enhance applications. And the industry analysts contacted by Macworld found the content of Tuesday’s iPhone 3.0 software presentation exciting.

“It’s a pretty impressive release,” said Van Baker, research vice president at technology research firm Gartner. “It further extends [Apple's] lead in terms of the kind of things the platform can do.”

The event, held on the company’s campus in Cupertino, Calif., focused on features for both developers and consumers. Of particular note was a long-promised feature that has yet to see the light of day—push notification.

Push notification lets applications that aren’t open receive notifications when something has changed. For instance, an instant messaging (IM) client could alert you when someone sends you new message, without having the application open.

“Apple just gave developers another good set of reasons to get on the platform,” said Michael Gartenberg, vice president of strategy and analysis for media and technology research firm Interpret. “Apple is making sure that the only platform you are going to get this type of functionality on is the iPhone.”

Another area of great interest to developers was in-app purchases—the ability to sell products from within an app itself. Apple gave the examples of being able sell additional levels for a game or to sell e-books books, all without making customers take a special trip to the App Store.

“With in-app purchases, Apple has opened up a whole slew of business models,” said Gartenberg. “There’s a war going on for the hearts and minds of developers, and now Apple has made it easier for developers to make and sell apps.”

Gartner’s Baker believes that these new capabilities for developers may bring something else come to the App Store as well—higher prices. With more sophisticated programs, Baker thinks that $15, $20, and $25 apps will become much more common when iPhone Software 3.0 is released.

For users, one of the biggest additons was the ability to copy and paste text, a feature previously missing from the iPhone. But the new software also brings support MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service), Spotlight searching, and more. Yet some people think these features should have been there from the start.

“Apple filled a lot of holes with things like copy and paste, but that’s them playing catch-up,” said Baker. And Ross Rubin, director of analysis at market-research firm NPD Group, agreed. “They certainly grabbed a lot of the low hanging fruit that was available in the operating system upgrade,” he said.

However, it would be hard to make the argument that the changes to the iPhone’s operating system are anything but good news for Apple and its customers.

“The extensibility of the device through software is going to be the story in 2009,” said Gartenberg.


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WordPress 2.7 – 20 Must See Features

by Admin on December 5, 2008

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WordPress is quickly becoming the standard software for the majority of blogs.  This fact makes every major release of the software seem like a huge event, but the thing is that this time it is.  WordPress 2.7 comes with a huge number of changes, a good chunk of them making some older plugins redundant. This will be a huge upgrade for all blog owners.

The following lists 20 of the biggest changes coming, but all together there have been over 400 changes to the program this time around. Any way you slice it, there is a little bit of something for everyone in this release.  Take a look through and you’re sure to find something that appeals to you.

Unfortunately this is only available for the blogs on WordPress.com for now, but it will be released for self-hosted blogs on December 10th.

What are the changes you are most excited about?

Comments

Close Comments On Old Posts – Sometimes it just doesn’t make sense to continue letting comments come in on an old post, and it is a favorite trick of spammers anyway. WordPress 2.7 will allow you to close comments on older posts, eliminating the need for yet another plugin.

Comment Paging – Comments broken into pages instead of being a never ending bottom to your post.

Comment Replies From the Admin Section – A feature that has long been needed is the ability to reply to comments from your admin section without having to go to the front end of your blog.

Comment Threading – It’s not just admin comment replies that are getting love, but all comments will now be in a threaded format. Great for those long debates you get into about what “sux” or why someone is a “newb,” at last no one will be confused about to whom you are referring!

XMLRPC Comments API -Support for the XML-RPC protocol which is a simplified API that encodes your comments in XML and transports them via HTTP.

Keyboard Shortcuts For Comments -Once you’re in your comments, you can use the keys j and k to navigate through the comments. Once selected, some of the keys you can use will be “a” to approve, “s” to mark as spam and “d” to delete.

Theme & Plugin Related

One-Click Plugin Installs – Another long time plugin favorite is going the way of the dinosaurs with the introduction of the ability to install plugins from the dashboard.

Plugin Browser – Browsing for plugins, one of the favorite pastimes of many bloggers, will be made easier by being able to do it without ever leaving your WordPress install.

Sticky Posts – There have been numerous WordPress plugins over the years to make a post “sticky” so that it stays as the top post on your front page no matter how many posts you publish after it. The feature has now been built in to the core program.

Updating the Core WordPress – Yet another WordPress plugin finds its way into the core WordPress program. For those users who haven’t used something like Fantastico or Simple Scripts to install their blog, there will now be a more automated way for you to keep up with all of those pesky security updates.

Theme Update API Notices – You will receive updates when your installed themes are updated just like WordPress does now with plugins.

Greater Controls

Batch Editing for Posts – Ever needed to edit the tags for several posts, but couldn’t do it because of the work involved? Batch editing will now allow you to do mass edits of your posts so that you can make as many changes as you want to your blog no matter how old it is.

Column Control – On any management page that shows columns, you will now be able to choose which columns are shown and how.

Ping & Trackback Moderation – With the ever increasing wave of “splogs” trackbacking your blog, there will finally be moderation of them in a more manageable, frame-like format.

QuickPress – Ever wanted to just do a quick post without having to load the entire write page?  Now you can directly from the Dashboard page with QuickPress.

Recent Drafts – There will now be a module on your dashboard to get to your most recent drafts so you can quickly get access to your posts that are in progress.

Other Tweaks

Dashboard and Write Rearrangements – There have been significant redesigns to navigation and general layouts of the dashboard and write pages.

PHPXref – Ever go slightly loopy trying to make sense of PHP files? PHPXref will help you by making PHP into easy to digest documents that you can read through. All of this will be hosted on WordPress.org.

Image Size Tweaks – Thumbnail and Medium commands will stay the same, but Large will now be restricted to 1024 pixels, or the constraints of your theme. If you want no restrictions and post insane sized pictures, you will now be able to select “Full Size” which will post your image at its original size. You will also now see the dimensions for each size next to the radio buttons.

Redundant Coding – Theme authors will be happy to see some changes to the wp_page_menu wrapper that will simplify their coding and add conveniences like making “Home” part of the list.


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