However, he got the iPhone to test. He obviously asked for a few recommendations.

I got my iPhone and proceeded to browse through the screens observing which ones I actually used. I thought this might be an interesting exercise for you to read. If time permits, it would be super if you could do the same in the comments as I’m sure I’ll discover some good apps that way.

Here’s my as-I-scrolled list — I’ve put iTunes links to every one:

- Evernote for keeping notes, files, WiFi passwords across multiple devices (not just computers)
- Kindle, from Amazon, to read my ebooks when I’m on-the-go
- Amazon Mobile, for buying stuff that comes to mind (e.g. shoelaces, batteries, etc)
- SocialCam, for shooting video and then sending that video out to Facebook/Twitter
- Posterous, for maintaining my own personal blog/blog for friends/family
- Google+ app is really, really good — you need to try ‘Huddle’
- Spotify, for audio on-demand (tenner a month)
- Find My iPhone, so I can locate the iPhone if it’s lost
- DropBox, obviously — have you got a dropbox account?
- LinkedIn is sometimes useful
- Osfoora, for twitter — my client of choice
- UK Train Times — national rail app, expensive but super useful. Really like ‘next train home’
- British Airways — so you don’t need to ever bother with paper boarding tickets ever again
- Instagram, for snapping cool looking photos.
- Hullomail, for visual voicemail because (so you can always access your voicemails via the app and in your gmail)
- ON Voicefeed is another visual voicemail app, it’s brilliant
- LogMeIn, for accessing your desktop remotely. I use this two or three times a day for getting files and controlling my home machines from wherever I am
- Skyfire — full desktop browsing experience
- Audioboo, for recording audio ‘thoughts’ and sticking them on twitter (also, iPadio)
- Qik Plus, for live broadcasting video straight from my phone
- MIR, the mobile industry review application (just a news feed) that I paid $400 to a chap called Pavel to make
- Shoeboxed, for taking photos of receipts and having somebody else type in the value, company, date etc. so the accountant can download it later on
- OpenTable for booking Gaucho Grill in 10 seconds
- Reeder is a really good Google Reader client
- SoundHound is a billion times better than Shazam — song identification (every time I’ve tried Shazam lately, I’ve got a ‘sorry, dunno’ reply! Hardly ever from SoundHound..
- Sky+, because sometimes — rarely — I want to record stuff from live TV
- Touchnote, for sending my digital photos as real postcards to granny every week. She loves it.
- WordPress, for maintaining the sites on-the-go
- PizzaExpress, because I can’t be bothered with the 60-second faff with the credit card machine. I always pay via PayPal with the app now.

There are plenty more applications I do use, but these ones are most definitely regulars.

What about you? I’d very much welcome a list from you of your *every day* apps. If you don’t have much time, stick down one or two apps in the comments?

what is it?

UCweb is a bit of mobile software that you download to replace your native browser.  similar to opera mini.   However, it has a lot less visibility than opera mini as it has been developed by a Chinese company primarily for the home market and then translated into an english version.  UCweb Technology is based in Guangzhou City in Guangdong and has 210 employees of which 140 are developers – pretty big firepower!

UCweb has some great features including

-a server-side proxy that does a lot of the hard work so that a website can load on your phone

- tabbed pages to allow loading of multiple screens at once

- a download manager for helping to access larger files

- copy and paste functionality

- bookmark management with support for folders and so on – way better than the rubbish bookmarking features of standard browsers

UCweb is available on Symbian, Windows Mobile, Brew, Linux, iphone and Java so works on just about any phone.

WapReview has some fantastic background info and detailed reviews here http://wapreview.com/blog/?tag=ucweb

Why is it interesting?

UCweb has apparently been downloaded 64 million times (!), and usage has grown by 400% every year for three years. That puts it up there with some of the biggest mobile apps out there including ebuddy and Mig33 for example.  However, the company behind the service claim that they only offer the English version to “study user-habits” and are really focused on what they see as the major opportunity – the Chinese market.

China is the largest mobile market in the world and is also home to a massive proportion of handset manufacturing and network engineering and this capacity is now beginning to result in some great mobile software development.  UCweb is one of the first of many innovations we can expect to see coming out of there.

The UCweb browser has loads of passionate fans outside of China.  There is a lively community of developers who build english versions of the latest updates to the Chinese service before they are released by UCweb and build patches and so on to add additional functionality.

Finally, UCweb is part of a much bigger battle going on at the moment in the mobile browser space. Opera Mini, Skyfire and new players like Bolt as well as Firefox mobile are all fighting for market share.  It may well be that UCweb will come from nowhere to grab a big place in the mobile internet and prove that the major web players and Silicon Valley aren’t necessarily going to dominate on the mobile platform.

You can download UCweb at mjelly which is a directory of free mobile downloads and other stuff at mjelly.com and m.mjelly.com

These are from the new version of Skyfire — version 0.9. They’ve really been innovating since I last took a look. The brilliance with Skyfire is that it gives you a ‘proper’ desktop browsing experience on your handset.

There’s many a time when you’re out on the road that you JUST NEED to have a proper web connection. Whether it’s because the site you’re trying to view has been built by neanderthals who wouldn’t know a mobile browser if it bit them on the arse — or if you simply need full fidelity flash/video without scrolling all over the place, Skyfire is most probably what you need.

It’s the sort of thing you definitely should try out.

This next version is nigh on completely new for the N and E Series Nokia handsets too. Look out for a much nicer installation and a lighter weight install.

Want to check it out? http://get.skyfire.com.

Up and coming mobile phone web browser by Skyfire has just made its debut in the UK, lighting up the heavens along the way.

Said to have a PC-esque browsing experience, their newest web surfer enters its beta rollout stage over ‘ere. *cough* *about time* *cough*

Boasting decent flash comparability and faster than Opera like speeds, it comes along with support for Symbian and Windows Mobile.

All with most of the web page’s compression work done at their server end, it’s much like another mobile web browser in that respect.

They’ve already successfully rolled out their beta in the USA and Canada, with the UK version now having added customisation with the likes of the BBC and eBay.co.uk on the front page.

Just to highlight their commitment to these fair isles they’ve opened up a data centre, just to locally improve page loading times. This is something Opera has yet to do in this country, so bully for them.

We’ve also seen some footage of speed tests of late against that other browser with the results being very hot indeed. Dan also bumped into them at the Symbian Smart phone show this year; check them out on MIR Show – Week 43 – Skyfire Secrets.

Or try it at http://get.skyfire.com/ and let us know your thoughts on the matter.

Continuing our coverage from the Symbian Smartphone Show — we’ve got vids from Trutap, mobile developers Fluid Pixels and a bit of a secret exclusive from Skyfire.

If you’d like to get this vid direct to your handset in 3GP format — or if you’d like it piped directly to your iPhone in proper sexy iPhone format, or if you’d like the near HD quality version, it’s all available via our RSS feeds.

Strike it from your memory. Screw it, with bells on.

You can’t actually get the beta, if you’re in the UK, Europe or anywhere other than America. Which is one of the dumbest things that Skyfire has dreamed up. In the email I received from their truly efficient PR, there was a note about a text message being sent to American numbers only. I didn’t dream think that this actually effected the actual sign-up process. No one would be that stupid.

Or so I thought.

I’m particularly annoyed because I look like a total arse, proffering invitations to Mobile Industry Review’s readers — the vast majority of them, serious Nokia-heads, keen to see what Skyfire was on about. I’ve begun writing to everyone that’s emailed me asking what I was thinking publishing, to quote one reader, ‘such drivel’. ‘It doesn’t work outside America??’ and ‘Skyfire = dumb’, are another quotes.

It’s a pretty shit hot browser. But it’s — like UIQ — heading for the way of the dodo, if the American-centric mindset is going to continue. It needs to be implemented now. Not tomorrow, not next week and not in 6 months. Limited patience.

We should, I think, follow Skyfire’s example. If you’re not in America, ignore it. If you are in America, get an iPhone.

If you’d like to try the S60 version of the game-changing browser, Skyfire, then read on.

We’ve got 100 invites to beta test the browser. Interested? It’s *definitely* worth a look. Head over to this address and enter the code SMSTN when prompted.

In case you’re in need of a prompt:

Skyfire Labs, makers of the popular Skyfire mobile browser which allows users to access the full PC web from their mobile handsets, announced today a private beta of the Skyfire browser for the S60 platform.

With full Flash support as well as Ajax and all other Web 2.0 standards, the Skyfire browser delivers a full desktop experience of the Internet to your mobile phone, at blazing fast speeds. The secret to Skyfire is in the clouds. Using proprietary technology, Skyfire’s servers do all the heavy lifting, and send the full web impression to your phone in the blink of an eye. Because the majority of the processing is done on Skyfire’s end, the end user experiences less wait time, less power consumption and less data crunching on their handset.

Of all the mobile browsers on the market today, Skyfire is the only one to support all Web 2.0 standards, including full support for Flash. Because of this unparalleled support, Skyfire users can watch their favorite YouTube or Hulu.com videos, or check Google Maps without having to launch a separate application, like on the iPhone.

And get ready to experience this: