The long-awaited follow-up to the game Rolando : Rolando 2 Quest for the Golden Orchid is now released on the App Store!

Buy it here (iTunes link)

Here’s a game you don’t want to miss on your iPhone: Toki Tori. The game has just gone on sale at 80% off the standard price, and is now for a limited time just 1 Euro (regular price is 5 Euros).

Get it here

Today the first build of iPhone OS 3.1 was released to registered Apple developers. No release notes or change notes have been posted, but here’s to hoping that they fix two of my main gripes with OS 3.0.

My issue #1 – Exchange Calendar Invites

Every time you accept a calendar invite on the iPhone running OS 3.0, it sends back a message to the sender that you accepted “Tentatively”. This is a fairly well known issue, and makes the iPhone practically unusable for Exchange corporate users. I would be very surprised if this issue was not fixed in 3.1.

My issue #2 – Can no longer auto lock the iPhone

When I drive my car, most of the time I just have the icon view up to see if someone sends me an email. As of OS 3.0 it is no longer possible to set the auto-lock period to “Never”. The thing is, I can swear that it showed “Never” when I restored my device a week ago. Very weird. Hopefully the “Never auto-lock” will be back in 3.1.

If you like me have been using Mac OSX for many years, you are probably as skeptical as I was to moving the dock to somewhere else on your screen.

Well, today I moved my dock to the top left position of my screen and I must say that it was really refreshing to get the full screen height for work place! Especially when using VMWare Fusion, having the Windows 7 task bar at the bottom of the screen instead of having it placed “just above the dock” made for huge usability improvements when working with Office 2007. Picking the proper application is now tons faster and easier in the Windows 7 virtual machine.

Try it, you might like it as much as I did!

1. Change the Dock location through  > Dock > Position of Left
2. Change it to be aligned to the top using this simple tip

Yesterday Skype for Windows Mobile 3.0 was released, featuring file transfers and SMS message sending. Skype for Windows Mobile 3.0 also features a “killer feature” unique to the Windows Mobile platform: Being able to call any number through Skype over the 3G network!

It is worth noting that unlike Skype for iPhone, [in Skype for Windows Mobile] it is possible to make Skype calls also over 3G cellular networks like UMTS / HSDPA / CDMA-EVDO. Also the file transfer function makes a lot more sense in Windows Mobile as downloaded files can be accessed by any Windows Mobile app – unlike it is in iPhone where each app has access only to its own files.

From msmobiles.com

With current mobile data subscriptions costing just €5 per month in Sweden, being able to call any number in the world for cheap rates through Skype is definitely worth looking at if you regularly have high mobile phone bills! Current reviews for Skype for Windows Mobile 3.0 has been overly positive:

Overall, we found Skype 3.0 for Windows Mobile to work smoothly and retain the feel of the desktop original

From cnet.com

You can download Skype for Windows Mobile here

Lately users have begun to abandon Internet Explorer on a large scale in favor of other browsers from Mozilla, Google and Apple. And the reasons for user’s switching are totally understandible – the competition offers solutions with much better performance and web standards compatibility.

First review rounds of Internet Explorer 8 has proven that the browser is still much behind in both performance and conformance to other competing browser, which results in a less rewarding web experience for the end user.

But what do these results mean in practice? Many web sites now use images with JavaScript Lightbox animation. IE8 takes more time to display these images than competing browsers, even using a 3.2GHz Core i7 processor. Other AJAX applications, including Google Maps, respond worse in IE8. This slower performance extends across the other tests, including the pure JavaScript Sunspider, Google V8 and Futuremark Peacekeeper benchmarks.

From reviews.zdnet.co.uk

So instead of pushing features and performance of their own browser, Microsoft instead on their Get the facts page tries to put the competition in a bad light regarding Security, Privacy and Ease of Use:

From Internet Explorer 8: Get the facts

It’s now time for the next bold move from Microsoft: the Internet Explorer 8 viral ads. These ads are not broadcasted on TV, they are only shown online, probably hoping to get mass viral interest in the browser.

I found these ads to be both weird and disturbing at the same time. They definitely did not make me consider using Internet Explorer 8 instead of Firefox 3.5, they just makes me want to remove Internet Explorer altogether from my virtual machine.

You can find all the commercials over at idsgn.org.

Interesting news about the upcoming version of Outlook 2010:

As most of you know, our motivation for starting the Email Standards Project two years ago came from the release of Outlook 2007. Specifically, because of Microsoft’s decision to avoid using a browser to render HTML emails in place of a word processor. This immediately took standards-based email design off the table, forcing designers to abandon web standards for tables and font tags. You can read our original reaction and the subsequent call to arms that followed.

Since that time, we’ve had the pleasure of working with teams at Yahoo!, Apple, IBM, Google and even the Microsoft Entourage team. However, the elephant in the room was always Outlook. For a time things were looking good and we had the chance to chat with a number of passionate Microsoft employees who agreed with our position on standards and to try their best to improve future versions of Outlook. I’m sad to say, it looks like these efforts failed.

From www.email-standards.org

Microsoft has just announced that they will continue to use Word as the HTML renderer in Outlook 2010, and they have also announced that they do not plan to change the rendering engine from the current rendering as it is in Outlook 2007. Where other systems such as OSX use the Webkit engine to present HTML mail, Microsoft has decided that Internet Explorer is not safe enough to display email contents and have instead decided to continue to use their own quite poorly implemented HTML engine in Microsoft Word. Here’s just one example:

“That’s 10 years of progress right there”

Myself I try to avoid both Outlook and HTML formatted emails the best I can. But for those that are stuck with it the Email Standards Project have put together a good looking web site called Outlook’s broken – Let’s fix it. What it does is to capture all Twitter blogs that include fixoutlook.org.

There are already over 23 000 entries in there, so one would hope Microsoft would get a hint from it. Their official reply however was:

(1) For e-mail viewing, Word provides security benefits that are not available in a browser: Word cannot run web script or other active content that may threaten the security and safety of our customers.

(2) There is no widely-recognized consensus in the industry about what subset of HTML is appropriate for use in e-mail for interoperability.

From blogs.msdn.com/outlook

So, what they’re saying is more or less that since the Internet Explorer rendering engine by nature compromises the security and safety of the applications in which it is used it cannot be used for Outlook 2010. Instead they will continue to use a proprietary defined subset of HTML within Microsoft Word that does not at all follow current web standards. Sounds like a splendid plan forward to the next decade!

I just got a newsletter from Microsoft promoting their upcoming Windows Marketplace for Mobile, an AppStore for Windows Mobile devices. Check this out:

What made my mind wonder a bit was the mention of a time limited offer. Now what could that be? Surely it must be something that’s much better than what the other App Stores are offering? Searching through the web site I found the following piece of information:

The application fee for submission of an application is $99. This applies to both paid and free apps. To lower the cost, we are offering a promotion through the end of 2009, in which developers and ISVs will get five free application submissions with initial registration.
From developer.windowsmobile.com

That’s right, a $99 fee for submitting a free application! There were also some interesting limitations in how applications can be packaged.

Q: What is the maximum file size for installation .cab files?
A: The maximum file size for .cab files is 10 MB
From developer.windowsmobile.com

A 10 MB limit can be both an advantage and  a disadvantage.

Those that manage to squeeze in all their graphics files to look good on hi-resolution WVGA displays in a 10 megabyte CAB package will have a definite competitive advantage since they will be among the few companies that can actually use the Marketplace. Personally I am getting quite curious as to what applications will appear in the Marketplace upon launch that fit into a 10 MB CAB file. I am not having high hopes for this launch.

When you are in a phone call on the iPhone, the top status bar extends down on the screen to double its size, to show you that you are in a phone call. Now in iPhone OS 3.0 the top status bar extends also for when Internet Tethering is enabled, which means that we will be seeing a lot more of these “dual height” status bars in the future! This is how it looks like:

Västtrafiks reseplanerare – notice that the top bar is cut off (left – in phone call, right – Tethering enable).

Usually I don’t switch around so much in applications when I’m in a phone call, so I haven’t really spotted this issue in most applications. But now with Internet Tethering enabled I have this double status bar on most of the time I use my phone next to my computer! And wow it’s really amazing to see how many top applications have hard coded screen heights that breaks completely when Internet Tethering is on!

Svensk Almanacka – notice that the bottom toolbar is cut off.

My best advice now for all iPhone developers is: make sure you test for his, especially now when OS 3.0 is out. You can try this either in the simulator by enabling Hardware->Toggle In-Call Status Bar, or on the device by simply enabling Internet Tethering.

Just recently Apple announced the service Find my iPhone that you can use to track down your iPhone if it should be lost. You can also send messages like “If found, please call 112233, $50 Reward” or initiate an instant remote wipe of the device. As shown by this somewhat crazy guy it appears you can also use this service to track down iPhone thieves.

I refreshed the iPhone location and the circle moved, to the corner of the block, and shrunk in size to maybe 100 feet across. I waited a minute and refreshed again. The small circle had shifted southward down Washtenaw.

If it was me I would happily send out a remote wipe to the stolen device and accepted the loss. But not this guy. He chases his phone through a Puerto Rican neighborhood in Chicago. And he even gets it back!

“Have you got it?” I asked as I marched up to the guy, acting far more intimidating than I felt. Our iPhone-pilfering friend apparently works at the sketchy bar, and as he fished around in his bag, he gave a questionable alibi about having found the phone, intending to return it, but being intimidated by “all these scary-looking messages” that kept popping up on the display. “Um, yeah, those were from me,” I replied curtly. He pulled my phone out, totally unharmed, and handed it over. I resisted the urge to giggle.

Interesting story, and I have no doubt we’ll be seeing more similar stories in the near time.