Mobile Applications – They Just Keep Getting Better
It’s time again for your monthly update on all things mobile and once again we have a variety of exciting mobile applications to discuss.
If you’ve been following the mobile space at all it should come as no surprise that development in this area has been occurring at an ever increasing pace. The expanding use of smartphones is largely to thank for this, especially the iPhone and the new Android based T-Mobile G1.
So without further ado, let’s just get right into it.
G1’s ShopSavvy
Dallas based Big in Japan has unveiled a comparison shopping application for the T-Mobile G1 called ShopSavvy. As one of the winners of Google’s Android Challenge (under the name GoCart), ShopSavvy allows consumers to comparison shop by simply capturing the barcode of any product with the G1’s built in camera. ShopSavvy then uses the barcode information to search the web for the best price on the product both online as well as at nearby brick and mortar locations.
SlyDial
As the name suggests, SlyDial is a mobile application that allows you to call people on the sly by dialing directly into their voicemail. As someone who’s favorite thing about text messaging is that it allows me to communicate short thoughts without the formality of actually making a call and speaking to someone, this has to me my favorite application this month. The SlyDial application is free and currently works with Blackberry, Windows Mobile and the iPhone.
Moodio
While mobile phones with MP3 capability have become a dime a dozen, the ability to access internet radio stations through mobile devices can still be a bit of a challenge, especially if you want to be able to customize your available station options. Moodio is a free service that allows you to do just that.
In fact if your favorite station isn’t currently available you can add it to their list yourself. The only limitation to enjoying Moodio is going to be your service plan. It’s highly recommended that you only use Moodio if you have a flat rate plan that allows for unlimited downloads. Otherwise, this application has the potential to rack up serious charges from your provider.
Voice Search & iPhone
Google joins the ranks of those to offer voice activated search for mobile phones with the latest release of the Google Mobile App for the iPhone. With the free application, iPhone users can simply ask a question of their phone and receive Google search results relevant to the question.
Mobile Maps from Google
The mobile support of Google Maps continues to be improved upon, most recently with the addition of street level views, and will soon be equivalent to the full web version.
The primary limitation at this point is currently that it requires a live data connection in order to access the maps. However a comment made by Maps Guide Tom in this Google Groups thread sure makes it sound like Google might be working on an update that would allow you to access previously stored cached versions when you don’t have an active connection.
Mobile Flash
Driven by the desire to become a preferred platform for the growing market of applications that run on the higher end mobile devices, Adobe has been working on the development of a full-fledged Flash Player 10 for mobile devices. While the actual release could still be up to a year away, at Adobe’s Max conference they revealed working demos for the majority of the major smartphone platforms, including Android — the one major omission still being Apple’s iPhone.
Another mobile update comes to a close almost as quickly as it began. As always, if I’ve skipped over your favorite application please feel free to add it to the conversation by posting a comment.
