The Unofficial Apple Weblog has a play-by-play going on here. Obviously, if you’ve previously unlocked/jailbroken your iPhone, don’t do this update until you’ve got confirmation that it’s been jailbroken, as well.

On a more editorial note, does anyone else think it’s slightly odd/interesting that it’s referred to as being ‘jailbroken’? As if it’s being ‘freed’ when you perform the jailbreak? Fascinating.

Another thought, as it seems to be easier and easier for the dev crews to jailbreak the newer firmwares, do you think maybe Steve Jobs has his hooligans setting that up. Any other phone gets a firmware update, it’s slow news. The iPhone, however, hits the front page of most sites, and has the tech world wondering how long it’ll be until it’s jailbroken. Personally I think it’s a BRILLIANT way to keep the hackers entertained, techies attentive, and everyone else interested.

ACU’s CIO Kevin Roberts recently returned from Cupertino where he presented the school’s ‘Connected’ initiative to Apple Execs, as well as leaders from Harvard, Yale, MIT, Duke, and others. They’ve put together this whole ‘Connected’ video, showing just how the university plans to use mobile connectivity to enrich students’ lives and the learning process.

The coolest part isn’t the iPhones, it’s the ideas behind them, and how they’re using advanced mobile devices to help students learn. I think it’s fascinating.

I’m really beaming right now. How cool is this.

BeamMe.Info securely asks for a user’s mobile number and sends the information via SMS. The webmaster never sees the mobile number, and it’s not stored anywhere, since there’s no registration or anything. Very easy for readers, with no barriers other than an SMS-capable handset.

Standard SMS rates apply to receive the SMS, so readers don’t incur large costs. However, for the webmaster, they’ll be billed per message sent. Rates are mostly <$.20, and are tier-priced according to the number sent. BeamMe.Info also has budgeting built-in, so webmasters can set a monthly limit, and the logos will disappear until either a new month or the budget is increased.

[Via: Textually.org]

There is a free trial period, and interested individuals can cruise over to www.spinvox.com/blackberry to get the full scoop on packages. For the hyper-connected individual with a Blackberry, this is completely priceless, as you can now get your voicemail whether you’re in a meeting, in a library, or anywhere else that’s considered rude to make an actual phone call. Brilliant.

As someone who has completely disabled voicemail on his mobile phone simply to avoid the inconvenience of having to ‘dial in’ to retrieve them, I’d say this new feature for Blackberry users is priceless.

Currently free, and not integrated into the NYtimes.com website, Nick Bilton, the creator, says ad-supported is a possibility in the future. Shifd is built on Adobe’s new AIR technology platform. ShifD is in open beta, meaning you don’t need an invite or anything to sign up and give it a whirl. There’s also a mobile-specific site, with iPhone and Blackberry optimised interfaces that will automatically be delivered based on your device.

They’ve got an easy browser plugin, or you can download the desktop application (Mac and Windows are supported), along with the mobile side. I’ve been using the Google Firefox plugin SendToPhone for a long time now, to quickly and easily send links and notes to myself via SMS, but Shifd seems to make it easier to keep a log of all these little notes. Very nice.

With Nokia’s Nseries handsets on the frontline of cameraphones and the Nokia N82 sporting a 5 megapixel camera with autofocus, Carl Zeiss optics, and Xenon flash, the ability to efficiently process the image with enhanced features is going to be key. Samsung’s G810, which was announced at the Mobile World Congress 2008 and sports Nokia’s S60v3 Feature Pack 1 OS, like the N82, already has an image stabilization feature.

I’ll be anxious to see how Morpho progresses, and if we see more Nokia interest in imaging-related companies.

The Morph will be shown off at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City from February 24th to May 12th, 2008, as part of the ‘Design and Elastic Mind’ campaign. You can check out the campaign’s official website here, and get more info on the Morph in the official press release.

Technology that exists in the Morph could make its way to the mainstream in 7 years or so. The Nokia Research Center looks beyond Nokia’s existing business and product development to challenge current strategies and to stimulate renewal in the company’s direction. Working closely with all Nokia business units, NRC’s research explores new frontiers in digital services, physical-digital connections, human interaction, data and content technologies, device architecture, and access and connectivity. NRC promotes open innovation by working on research projects in collaboration with universities and research institutes around the world.

The company did not, however, increase its financial projections for the same quarter. Analysts guess this is either because RIM expects to exceed expectations, or possibly simply a slower upgrade trend for the higher-end handsets.

In any case, it definitely shows that smartphone shipments continue to grow, with more and more subscribers picking up a new smartphone.

Kristi Crum, Alltel’s Director of Multimedia Content, says it best, “Through LBS Nationwide Roaming, our customers are able to use a GPS application when it matters most, especially when they are in unfamiliar territory.”

Love it. Alltel might be rather small fish, bringing up the back as the 5th largest carrier in the United States, but they’re sure making waves with their seemingly consumer-focused policies and offers. Keep it up, guys.

Anything that could possibly help Motorola, at this point, is a good thing.

Using the 60GHz frequency, GiFi would be capable of data transfer speeds up to 5Gb over a 10 meter radius. This is like super-powered Bluetooth, here. Possible uses would be a video kiosk, which could send a full-length high-definition movie to your phone over GiFi in a matter of seconds, and then you could stream that to your TV once you got home, or transfer it to your PC for later viewing. The possibilities seem pretty endless.

Via: Phonescoop

I’ve heard reports of people having trouble using certain handsets, but not being able to find the SIM slot is definitely not a good starting point. When was the last time you handed your phone over to a ‘normob’ (no offense, Justin) and asked them to do something rather simple? My favorite is when people handle my N95 and can’t for the life of them figure out where in the world the keys are (you just slide up). I kid you not, it happens on a regular basis.

The service is ad-supported, just like with 1-800-FREE-411′s current offer, with contextual ad placement within the call.

Most of the content is provided thanks to Victoria and Albert Museum, who are excited to be able to offer mobile-savvy users the chance to ‘visit’ the museum from anywhere. You can get more information on your PC at www.MuseumOnTheGo.com or direct your mobile handset to motg.mobi (sadly, no m.website here).

Peter’s list included being able to:

keep my calendar in any of several web-based calendars (Google, Yahoo, Plaxo, and probably a dozen others)

send and receive email using the web (pharbeson [at] gmail [dot] com, by the way)

send SMS using bigfoot.com

maintain a to-do list

view and edit Office documents using Google docs

listen to music

watch videos

back up data (although most of my data isn’t local, so it’s already backed up)

maintain and use a contact list — this is not as well integrated as it could be, but it’s possible

read ebooks

subscribe to and read RSS feeds

subscribe to podcasts (although I listen to them without the browser)

He goes on to wonder just what the benefits of an entirely browser-based UI would really be. Obviously currently there’s a network connectivity issue, but what if that was solved? How much easier would it be to ‘fix’ the UI or customise it to individual users if it was merely a web page?

Relevantis currently works with Nokia, so I’d assume we should start seeing pretty icons with lots of interactivity on Nokia’s mapping software soon. I like this quote from Scott Searle, CEO, “At Relevantis, our goal is to enable advertising that doesn’t feel like advertising.” Full steam ahead with that one, Scott.

On a side note: Finally an ad company with a beautiful, simple, yet compelling website. Compliments to whoever designed their site. i would feel comfortable paying them to help me grab and keep people’s attention.

Search-To-Phone makes it quick, easy, and convenient for consumers to find the best service for a specific category of vendors. To use Search-To-Phone, a caller says what they’re looking for. For example, “I need a florist for my wedding.” Search-To-Phone will contact every matching local business, and within 60 seconds, connect the caller to a vendor ready and willing to help out.

For callers, this saves valuable time in having to individually call every entry in the Yellow Pages. For vendors, being listed means they easily get direct, interested phone leads. Search-To-Phone has also been securing deals with search engines, and says that web surfers should begin seeing ‘Find It For Me’ buttons on search results starting in March 2008.

Other features of the N810 include a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, VGA-resolution video calling camera, built-in GPS and 2GB of internal memory, with a miniSD card slot. I use the N810 for most of the posts here on SMStextnews, in conjunction with Maemo Wordpy.

This new color scheme is likely to differentiate between the regular edition of the N810 and the much-rumored WiMax-enabled version. With Sprint planning to launch the Xohm WiMax network in mid-2008 in the U.S., CTIA would be a pretty good venue at which to announce an updated version. Nokia has not been known to offer multiple colors of the Internet Tablets in the past.

CTIA kicks off in Vegas on April 6th, so check back then to find out if Tablet-Guru’s speculation is correct.

Nothing official has been announced, but analysts from Robert W. Baird, Bear Stearns, and UBS have all chimed in at Reuters, saying they believe that Sprint, who has offered its unlimited plan for some time now, will be hollering “How low can you go?!”, possibly going as low as $60/month.

Personally, I don’t think that the carrier will do anything of the sort. It is already bleeding subscribers without replacing them, according to recent reports, and the 2 U.S. MVNOs that started the unlimited craze. MetroPCS and Helio, both run on Sprint’s CDMA network. Thus, dropping the price would only serve to hurt the MVNOs, which is no doubt a solid source of revenue for the U.S. carrier.

It’s yet to be seen if Nokia will have a way to manage N-Gage games on the PC, but I have to say that if they do, I could see that as a HUGE plus for the platform and getting users to purchase games through it. Personally, I think that N-Gage has some huge potential, assuming Nokia actually launches it sometime soon, and they don’t botch it somehow. Unfortunately, for Nokia, software has never really been a big strength.

One thing that I’ve noticed across the My Mobile Day series here on SMStextnews is how each contributor, at one point or another, uses their mobile purely for entertainment purposes. Myself, I use mine to download and listen to podcasts while blogging. When I had a desk job (in one of those horrid things called a cubicle), I brought my iPod along to have a soundtrack for my day.

I love reading the reports all the time about how technology is bad for office workers because it distracts them from important tasks and whatnot. I can think of several days that, without the help of music from a portable device, I would have likely gone bonkers.

I like this quote from Seamus McAteer, Chief Product Architect and Senior Analyst at M:Metrics, who said, “While these devices lend themselves to mobile media consumption, the openness of smart platforms opens up the Internet and frees consumers from the operator deck. To succeed in such a market, game publishers will have to foster new models that may include subscriptions to online gaming communities, ad-funded or subsidized gaming, and physical distribution.”

Physical distribution? Um, N-Gage 1.0 died a few years ago, with that being a major reason. As always, the whole report is here for your perusal.

The service offers advertisers a way to offer focused, contextual ads to consumers when they’re most likely to act on them. With the newly announced ad suite, ads can be delivered based on time, keyword, category, or location. The time one really stands out to me. That means, at 7am in downtown Dallas, I could search for ‘snack’, and be offered a coupon for a nearby donut shop. However, the same search at 3pm might offer me a coupon for a plate of french fries. That’s brilliant! The press release also mentions a situation where someone might search for a car showroom and also be served up ads for local garages and car insurance.

I like this. Privacy hounds may say what they want, but the simple truth is that we’re not going to completely escape advertising, so it might as well be something I’m likely to actually USE, right? You can pick up more information on this MobilePeople company here at their website.

It seems to be something that will be very popular in 2008, existing ad companies *finally* paying attention to the mobile arena, though I don’t know that it’s something that will stick. I suppose the draw is in the convenience from the advertiser’s point of view, being able to cover mobile in addition to more traditional advertising mediums with one company.

On a side note, why are ad company’s websites so dry? You’d think, if I’m going to pay you to grab and hold the attention of consumers, you’d have a completely thrilling website.