Soon enough, you will be able to voice chat using instant messenger on an iPhone.

(Credit: Dong Ngo/CNET Networks)

Global IP Solutions (GIPS), a company well recognized for its media-processing expertise in IP communications, announced on Monday, August 11, its SDK, which enables Voice over IP (VoIP) applications to be made for Apple's iPhone. This means that developers can now use GIPS' VoiceEngine Mobile, to create real-time VoIP applications, such as games, social networking applications, and, of course, applications for making calls to regular phone lines over the Internet. Soon enough, you will be able to use instant messenger to voice chat with friends on the iPhone, just like you've been doing on your computer for ages now.

Though this is exciting, indeed, GIPS VoiceEngine Mobile will only work with iPhone's Wi-Fi connection and will not take advantage of the new iPhone's 3G connection. This is because Apple has always blocked the use of VoIP on the carriers' data connection; and AT&T, understandably, wouldn't be too happy about supporting something that potentially costs them long distance phone business. We can only hope this will change in the future. For now, in my experience, AT&T's 3G coverage is still too patchy and unreliable to be a platform for VoIP calls, anyway.

Being the inventors of the popular iLBC codec standard (which got approved by IETF in late 2004 and is currently implemented in the iPhone), GIPS' decision today seems a natural move, considering the popularity of the iPhone. According to Apple, more than one million iPhone 3Gs were purchased over the launch weekend; and exactly one month later--today--you can still find people waiting in line outside some Apple stores for the device.

So far, GIPS claims that its voice engines have been downloaded and used more widely than any other voice engine worldwide. GIPS' voice engines enable consumers and businesses to enjoy affordable, high-quality, IP-based communications, even under adverse network conditions.

My hat goes off to Preston Monroe, the developer of iCopy, an online service that adds cut and paste functionality to the iPhone's browser and e-mail apps. As you probably know, Apple's handheld computer bizarrely omits this feature.

Cut-and-paste on the iPhone, via a Web service.

(Credit: iCopy video)

iCopy is a clever hack that lets you select text or a link from a Web page and paste it into another page, or an e-mail. It gets around the lack of iPhone-native copy and paste by sending selected text to a temporary online repository when you "copy," and retrieving it when you "paste." In operation, it's a horrible kludge--it requires a lot of Web page switching and too many visits to the iCopy site to do a simple copy/paste operation. But the fact that Monroe figured out a way to make the Web a giant clipboard in the sky is pretty cool.

iCopy illustrates that while the Web can be employed to do a lot of things that we've formerly thought of as belonging solely in the domain of local computing, it doesn't mean we should do so.

I edit a blog about Web 2.0 apps. It's my job to push the vision of Web-based products and cloud-based resources. But even I realize that local processing has a place. I find it curious that many people I talk to think Microsoft's rumored Midori project, for instance, is a "cloud OS." While there's no question that an operating system written from the ground up today should use Internet resources in a more native fashion than most OSes do today, the change should be seen as one of degree, not replacement.

The Internet can be used to deliver apps and updates, for storage and backup, for social networking and person-to-person communications, and other functions. But for the moment and the near future, you need local processing to maintain speed and robustness of applications, and native graphics capability to present the interface. One of the reasons Web 2.0 apps can work well today is because today's browsers have deep user interface and graphics capabilities, and because they run on powerful local PCs. Many popular Web apps--like Google Docs and Microsoft Live Search Maps--rely on capabilities that were simply not present in PCs only a few years ago.

That's why I continue to refer to Web operating systems like G.ho.st as science fair projects. They're really cool, and they provide glimpses of the evolution of personal computing. Much of what we do on a PC today can be done over the Web. But a lot cannot, at least not well. To deliver the best experience--the best user interface, reliability, collaboration, and so on--smart developers don't force all their apps either onto the Web or the local PC. Today's architectures make distributing applications among platforms easier than ever. They even make it possible for apps to adapt to their environment and redistribute themselves depending on circumstance (see Google Gears). The really interesting upcoming apps and operating systems will not just be hybrid (online/offline), but adaptive.

Meanwhile, if you're interested in how copy and paste might work on the iPhone, check out Proximi's Magicpad, a text editing app that offers cut and paste controls. Proximi has also published video proposing a user interface for general cut and paste on the iPhone. This is the work Apple should have done. Although for all we know, the company has done it already, but in secret.

credit - http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10007275-2.html

If you're too cheap to pay for a personal trainer after dropping two or three hundred bucks on a new iPhone or iPod Touch, Fitsync might be just what you're looking for. This Web application will track and organize exercises, help you put together a solid workout, and log results with a tap or two.

Included are a slew of exercises you can browse through and stack together. There are also recommended workouts you can borrow from others. The application makes use of the iPhone's video-playing capabilities to provide demos of each exercise so you'll know what to do. Most of these are only a few seconds, so they'll load pretty fast, even on first-generation iPhones on a weak signal (which can be typical in most concrete-laden gyms).

As the name would suggest, Fitsync's iPhone app will sync up workout data from your phone to your Fitsync.com account. You can the see how far you're progressing with each muscle group or particular exercise, and even get recommendations for other exercises based on what you've done in the past.

Fitsync is free to try out for 15 days. After that, you've got to upgrade to the $4.95 monthly plan to retain access to the mobile version, though you'll still be able to enter your workout data through the less iPhone-friendly desktop iteration.

Fitsync lets you organize a workout, track it while you're excerising, and even check out demos of excerises--all in one place.

(Credit: CNET Networks)
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