Digital Biographer™

Seven dollars (USD $7) is the price you need to pay to free your iPhone without apparently “jailbreaking” it. This is the price of software that will allow you to download iPhone apps on your computer, and transfer them to your device with an iTunes-like interface, without pushing you into deep geek territory.

This is the exciting claim that comes with Swiss developer Ripdev’s release of InstallerApp and it seems likely to be a huge hit. It’s a Mac app (but coming soon for Windows) with “Pusher” software, that RipDev says can install Installer.app on your iPhone without “jailbreaking” it, so you can use Apple’s approved AppStore, alongside InstallerApp simultaneously.

The app supports Cydia, a popular installer for jailbroken iPhones, but does so, according to Ripdev, without making a mess of your iPhone’s file system or replacing any system libraries, as Cydia does, and you need Intel processor and OS X 10.5 Leopard or above. InstallerApp supports first generation iPhone and iPhone 3G, but not iPod touch as yet.

One $7 license lets you sync up to three iPhones and gives you access to free updates and email tech support for one year, and Ripdev even promises to support iPhone 3.0 shortly after the new software is released and jailbroken.

>> Check out InstallerApp now.

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I was checking my blog statistics just the other day, and found an unfamilar link to a story I’d written in January. I clicked through to find that Koollage, which produces a mobile version of my blog, had linked to my blog from their ‘press’ page, and someone had recently followed the link to my original story

But I was also intrigued to find that the widget version of this blog shows that is has been viewed 12,553 times since January 2008, when it was set up. That’s 12,000 visitors that never showed up on my web stats - rather more than I’d anticipated! The power of the mobile web is getting greater every day - and although this site is already optimised for viewing on iPhones, I see all of those stats through the wonderful Clicky.

The size of our audience is missing…

I think there’s a market for the company who can figure out a way to measure and pinpoint the ‘hidden traffic’ that comes to blogs and news sites through through widgets, RSS feeds syndications, friendfeed references and so on. These figures are not insignificant, certainly for a little blog like this, and knowing where an audience is coming from always helps when you’re working to address that audience - quite apart from simple curiosity.

Koollage Widget for Digital Biographer. Koollage were featured this week at DEMOFall08 in San Diego, and the beta version of their product is now open to the public.

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Do you know how many iPhones are out there? Millions of them.

Do you know what your web site looks like on an iPhone? Really?

Well, this web site looks pretty good, thanks to a great WordPress plugin called WpTouch. It automatically formats this web site’s content with an Apple-inspired, full-featured theme when my visitors are using an iPhone or iPod touch.

2.0, digital biographer, mobile, mobile search Apple Inc, image, iPhone, mobile, mobile browser

Does your web site work well on portable devices? Or does it work at all? Mobile search (and specifically mobile search for local content) is growing rapidly, so your visibility and LEGIBILITY will be more and more important.

The iPhone currently the subject of much frenzy and queueing as the 3G Version goes on sale today, has an advantage over most mobile browsers with its high resolution screen at 160 pixels to the inch, as opposed to a more common 96 dpi for an LCD computer monitor, and has an easy to manage zoom facility, so one can view any website fairly well - but do you know what your site actually looks like when it’s viewed?

iPhonemy.com is an elegant, simple site that allows you to answer this question - you can download free software (for Mac users) or have a screen shot of your site viewed on this software sent to you. For WordPress users, there is also a link to a plugin that automatically senses when an iPhone or mobile phone is viewing your site, and displays your site with a specific mobile-friendly theme.

It’s worth remembering that a mobile phone is also a wallet - and it’s always there, and almost always switched on… Informa Telecoms & Media predicts spending on mobile advertising as a whole to reach £5.6 billion by 2011.

What does your site look like on an iPhone? Find out at iPhonemy.com Web Site
>>

2.0, brand, mobile, mobile search Apple Inc, Browsers, Handhelds, iPhone, Mobile phone, Smartphones

I have just turned the Digital Biographer blog into what I call a BlogPod in around five minutes with the amazing Koollage service.

The results: you can see below - and you can subscribe to the feed of my Koollage BlogPod, Embed it in your own pages, and of course absorb its contents elegantly on your mobile phone. It looks especially funky on an iPhone, with horizontal and vertical versions specifically to take advantage of the iPhone’s ability to use both formats.

An elegant feature is the ability to conduct a search within the Koollage Editor, and then select search results content added from blogs, including images. Although there might be copyright issues involved in this, fair use is obviously allowed. One of the interesting elements buit in is the ability for readers to add comments to any page in your Koollage content (and you get an email with this comment immediately), and to make your Koollage a group application, meaning that others can collaborate to create and update the content with other Koollage associates.

The service is still in beta, so has a few edges to knock off and features to tidy, but as you can see, it works, it’s very nicely designed, and it’s likely to be very viral. The site where you can join and create Koollage Pods for free, is also a growing community, so you can search for other users and their Koollage Pod (Plog) creations.

I for one can see the travel industry getting excited about using this - a City Guide Koollage of Hotels, Restaurants, and Transport Services made available to travellers hitting the ground at an airport makes sense… and a mashup with a Maps / GPS application would appear a logical move for what is obviously a very mobile application.

What uses you can see for this way on enclosing and displaying information?

Related Story: 12,000 of our Blog Visitors are missing…

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