Holy keee-rist. The apocalypse is nigh because AT&T has opened their network up to VoIP applications running over 3G on the iPhone. In other words, AT&T is now totally cool with Skype running over 3G.

AT&T supposedly just told Apple and the FCC this afternoon that their network is ready for VoIP over 3G for the iPhone, meaning it might take a bit to show up in apps, but the floodgates are open now. And yeah, whoa.

AT&T EXTENDS VOIP TO 3G NETWORK FOR IPHONE

DALLAS, October 6, 2009 – AT&T* today announced it has taken the steps necessary so that Apple can enable VoIP applications on iPhone to run on AT&T’s wireless network. Previously, VoIP applications on iPhone were enabled for Wi-Fi connectivity. For some time, AT&T has offered a variety of other wireless devices that enable VoIP applications on 3G, 2G and Wi-Fi networks. AT&T this afternoon informed Apple Inc. and the FCC of its decision.

In late summer, AT&T said it was taking a fresh look at VoIP capabilities on iPhone for use on AT&T’s 3G network, consistent with its regular review of device features and capabilities to ensure attractive options for consumers.

“iPhone is an innovative device that dramatically changed the game in wireless when it was introduced just two years ago,” said Ralph de la Vega, president and CEO, AT&T Mobility & Consumer Markets. “Today’s decision was made after evaluating our customers’ expectations and use of the device compared to dozens of others we offer.”

AT&T allows customers to download or launch on their wireless devices a multitude of compatible applications directly from any lawful Internet website. Additionally, because AT&T uses GSM technology, the most pervasive and open wireless technology platform in the world, we support customers using any GSM phone that works on AT&T’s frequencies.

*AT&T products and services are provided or offered by subsidiaries and affiliates of AT&T Inc. under the AT&T brand and not by AT&T Inc.

via Gizmodo

AT&T Microcell

Zacks Investment Research is reporting in a matter-of-fact tone that AT&T’s long-rumored, long-desired 3G Microcell femtocell will be hitting some markets “in the next week.” The full list of initial launch areas hasn’t been disclosed, but Atlanta, San Antonio, Seattle and North Carolina are all specifically mentioned; as you might recall, Sprint restricted the launch of its Airave for some time, too, so limited availability out of the gate wouldn’t really come as a surprise. AT&T had no comment when asked about the report, so it’s a wait-and-see game — but if you’re clinging to one bar of service, have hope that help is on the way.

via Engadget

iPhone - Now with MMS from 2002!

AT&T has just announced that MMS — a much-ballyhooed feature of iPhone OS 3.0 — will finally be hitting AT&T on September 25. There’s still no date for tethering, though the company is holding the line that it’ll be offered “in the future.” Expanding on the logic behind the tethering delay, they’re saying that “by its nature, this function could exponentially increase traffic on the network, and we need to ensure that some of our current upgrades are in place before we can deliver the expanded functionality with the excellent performance that customers expect.”

We’re no network engineers, but “exponentially increase traffic” and “AT&T” are two things we don’t typically like to hear in the same sentence — let’s hope the 850MHz, 7.2Mbps, and backhaul upgrades they’re cranking on right now go a long way toward sorting that out. As for MMS, they’re acknowledging that the release “does indeed fall a few days past the official end of summer,” arguing that their support of more iPhone customers than any other carrier in the world made a positive launch experience a bit of a challenge.

Of course, virtually every other phone AT&T sells (and has sold for the past several years) supports the same tech, so this feels like a pretty active admission that iPhone users blaze through data-rich features at a pace that the carrier has been ill-equipped to handle.

Open Source

Tristan Louis gives weight to new term that I like a lot: fauxpen. Faux in French means “false” or “fake”. So fauxpen means fake open. There has always been a lot of that going around, but since the world of tech inevitably contains more of everything, there’s more fauxpen stuff than ever. In his post Tristan issues a fresh warning about some of what he calls “a venus flytrap of technology”. His definitions:

• Fauxpenness: Calling a system or platform open while it is, when more closely scrutinized, under the tight control of its provider.

• Fauxpen system (or fauxpen platform): a system or platform that claims to be open but, upon closer examination, isn’t. (continue reading…)

µMonitor is a handy iPhone application that allows users to control their uTorrent client on the go. After putting months of hard work into getting the software ready for a public release, the developer Claudio was told by Apple that everything related to BitTorrent has been banned from their App Store.

“We’ve reviewed µMonitor and determined that we cannot post this version of your application to the App Store at this time because this category of applications is often used for the purpose of infringing third party rights. We have chosen to not publish this type of application to the App Store,” Apple wrote to the developer after a 4 month review process.

This is not the first time that Apple has excluded a BitTorrent-related product from its store. In May they also banned an application designed to remotely-control the Transmission BitTorrent client for the same reasons outlined above.

Interestingly Apple has no problem allowing Usenet related applications in their store. myNZB for example is an application that is available from the App Store although it’s similar in functionality to the BitTorrent apps that were rejected.

Despite Apple’s blockade, there is still a way to get µMonitor on your iPhone. Instead of throwing months of hard work overboard, µMonitor’s developer has recently decided to bypass the Apps Store and make the application available to ‘jailbroken’ iPhone users from the Cydia repository.

Thanks to Apple, uTorrent users who want to control their torrent via an iPhone application have no other option than to jailbreak their phone. Detailed instructions on how to get µMonitor working on your phone can be found on Claudio’s website.

via torrentfreak.com

A 15-year old Belgian by the name of Salvatore is the latest victim in a series of mysterious iPhone explosions that have captured the attention of France’s and the European Commissions’ consumer affair watchdogs. Details are scarce for the moment, but according to local news reports the teenager was holding his iPhone in his hand, about to make a call, when the device suddenly ‘imploded’. The incident didn’t cause any serious injuries but reportedly gave Salvatore a headache for a couple of days. He has been promised a free replacement unit by Apple but hasn’t yet received a new phone.

There have earlier been numerous reports of exploding iPhone devices in the United States, United Kingdom and France, with most recently about ten cases having emerged in France where the official competition, consumer affairs and fraud watchdog DGCCRF has now launched an investigation to find out whether the popular Apple smartphone could pose a threat to consumers. Apple, which has sold 26 million iPhones and 200 million iPods to date, said it had been informed of the French cases, but would not comment until it had closely examined the damaged phones.

Update: Apple has now said iPhones turned in by customers in France and elsewhere in Europe with shattered screens showed external pressure that would have caused the cracking. More on Bloomberg and Techmeme.

In one instance, a French teenager claimed he was hit in the eye with a glass shard when the screen of his iPhone cracked up. He said he would seek a full refund and file suit for damages. In another case, Apple came under fire for allegedly asking a young British girl’s family to sign a confidentiality agreement (aka a gagging order) before it would agree to refund her.

Earlier this month, Apple reportedly informed the European Commission that it regards all reported iPhone explosion cases as isolated incidents and have no evidence of a general problem. The European Commission, which has stated that the U.S. technology giant has been very cooperative, has asked all 27 EU nations to keep it informed of any problems under the community’s rapid alert system for dangerous consumer products, known as RAPEX.

(Image via QuickPWN)

via techcrunch.com

Google Maps

Location is one of the features that a lot of the Twitter apps tack on using things like the iPhone’s geolocation services. It’s a cool feature, but not enough people use it. But they are likely to now that Twitter is adding native support for it with a new API.

At first, Twitter is releasing this as a developer preview, co-founder Biz Stone notes on the blog today. This means that third-party apps will be the first to have access to the feature. But Stone also says that support for location on Twitter’s mobile and regular site will come as well. And it’s important to note that the feature will be opt-in, meaning that by default it will be off for users, but if they want to use it, they can turn it on.

And they should, because this is potentially a very powerful new feature. Just imagine if a friend tweets something and you can see exactly where they are when they do it. There are no shortage of location-based services attempting to take off right now, but Twitter already has a huge user base and depending on how developers use this new API, Twitter location could replace or bolster many of them. And that’s good news because the main problem that many of these location-based services have is a lack of users.

Just imagine if a service like Foursquare was able to send your actual location to Twitter alongside the name of the place you are at. That would save the people who follow you on Twitter but don’t use Foursquare the hassle of looking up the location of the place you are at if they want to meet up with you. It’s potentially powerful stuff.

Are there privacy implications? Sure, but that’s why it’s important that this feature is opt-in, at least for now.

via Twitter Can Now Know Where You Tweet .

Facebook 3.0 iPhone app

Facebook for iPhone version 3.0 will hopefully soon be made available through the iTunes App Store, but lead engineer Joe Hewitt has apparently already graced the team over at Appadvice with an early look.

Check out their review for more details, but here’s the gist:

- A new home screen (see first screenshot above) which will offer the ability to customize i.e. add boxes to the default start screen

- A better ‘News feed’: much more complete overview of status updates from your friends, but still lacking the ability to hide/unhide them from inside the app

- Videos (as expected): uploading video supposedly works like a charm, but you still can’t watch Facebook videos unless they’re actually hosted on YouTube (and likely other video hosting platforms as well) and simply played from inside the app

- Events (as expected): includes the ability to RSVP, but you can’t visit the complete event wall, which is unfortunate

- Pages: you can search for, view and interact with pages using Facebook for iPhone 3.0

- Photos: you can create new photo albums, upload photos to any album, zoom into photos and change your profile picture

- Communication: you can quickly or call people straight from the Friends page

- Improved ‘liking’ feature

- Notes, including the ability to edit them

- Notifications: much better, link directly to comments which you can respond to

- Messages you are typing will be restored if you quit the app or are interrupted by a phone call

Here’s to hoping for a quick green light from Apple.

via Sneak Peek At Facebook for iPhone 3.0 .

I Love iPhone

A recent customer survey (of only 200 customers — what are these surveys getting away with only 200 respondents?) claims that the iPhone 3GS has a 99% satisfaction rate. A full 99% of 200 polled iPhone customers claim that they are satisfied with their purchase, while 82% of them claimed they are “very satisfied.” That’s higher than previously, too: previous versions of the iPhone got a 73% satisfaction rating. You’re probably not surprised by this, but guess what? People love their iPhones.

What don’t they love about them? 8% said the phone wasn’t compatible with their company’s IT infrastructure. 41% still say the battery life isn’t long enough for their tastes. And a little company called AT&T has drawn the most ire: 55% of respondents say the AT&T network was the worst feature of the iPhone 3GS. So there you go. This just in: ten of eleven Twitterers I just surveyed do like ice cream. That survey is probably just as shocking as the iPhone one, which is not much.

Still, quite a deal Apple has. Your product has almost unanimous satisfaction from customers, and the worst thing about it… is the fault of a completely separate company. Good deal indeed.

via TUAW

We are just past of a year since the App Store launched and there are more than 60,000 applications released for the iPhone and iPod Touch. When we wrote our 2008 year-end app wrap-up, we had just surpassed the 10,000 app milestone. In early June 2009, the store reached 50,000 apps. At present, we are looking at a staggering 300 new applications being released every single day. How does the average iPhone user find the gems in this deluge?

Unfortunately, the process is entirely overwhelming for the average iPhone user. The bulk of consumers use iTunes’ Top and front page listings. Since placement on the top lists is derived entirely from unit sales, there is a disturbing skew towards the $.99 applications. This not only discourages big developers from putting high budgets and serious resources towards development of really useful applications and games, but also does a disservice to us, as iPhone users. If all we see are ninety-nine cent gimmicks and toys, how will we realize the true potential of our device? Apple attempts to offset this with editor’s picks, but this simply isn’t enough to make sense of the App Store.

There are new third party services and tools coming onto the scene to help show how to best navigate the App Store. AppVee has been doing in-depth reviews of applications since the launch of the App Store and will soon celebrate our one-year anniversary with nearly 1,000 video reviews of the top applications. We’re often asked if we are overwhelmed with the number of applications currently released and the number we are capable of covering. The answer is no. 90% of apps currently out there are of no use to anyone. There are a massive number of clones, one-off gimmicks, volumes of books and reference material, and a never-ending supply of uninteresting games. So, we try to act as a filter for consumers, directing them to what is worth their time and money.

The following is a round-up of TechCrunch’s top picks so far this year: