Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

If you are headed to the beach, pick up Microsoft’s 10-K filing with the SEC for some light reading.  It’s filled with characters you know and love and their almost comic book struggle to restore peace in the galaxy bring profitability to Microsoft.  If you follow the report carefully, you’ll learn Microsoft is, in fact, a software company.  And what software company doesn’t want to get their applications on the hottest mobile computing device going?

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In the smartphone OS wars (and here I use the term “smartphone” to refer to a phone that is comfortable to get email and internet on only), we are seeing long standing users jumping to upstart Apple; but that is not the news.  The news here is longtime Microsoft Mobile loyalists are taking a good look at where they are and just how green the lawn is over the fence.

Take straight-shooting Gears from Coolsmartphone.com.  His site is a mecca for many hooked on Windows Mobile (WM) for news, tips and tricks.  In a post on Sunday, Gears reflects where Windows is and his take on where things are headed.  Things are not looking so hot to Gears: “ I’m more worried than I was 6 months ago.”

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Gadgetell exclusive: last night I was contacted by a couple of developers, each shut out of the beta program.  Both, I might add, have fantastic application ideas but Apple hadn’t even looked at thier app until yesterday.  Or so it seemed.

Both developers got notification they were accepted into the program.  Word is a couple of weeks and wham, bam, boom - they are in the App Store.

As I’ve said before, I found the launch of the App Store a little underwhelming but do believe it will snowball into some amazing Apps for us to enjoy.  How about you, got an app you can’t live without now?

I also got to thinking this morning, Apple just created a way for them to add productivity to current applications while getting us to pay for them.  Things like a video camera, MMS, copy and paste.  Things that we all think should just be in there, Apple can now collect revenue for.  Nice.  Well, for them anyway.

One question I and others have is if I buy from the App store and then later decide to upgrade to the 3G iPhone, will these apps transfer or do I have to buy Monkey Ball all over again?  Knowing how much Apple likes to sell things, I presumed the answer to be me digging into my pocket again.  But, no!

The consensus seems to be thanks to Fairplay, just like music, you can sync the apps to the new device using iTunes.  This is good news for those with the original iPhone who upgrade to 2.0 and can’t resist playing around with some new applications...it seems as if you can do so without fear of having to buy them all over again once you get a 3G.  And you know you will, every time you access the net over EDGE, you’ll feel slow and the short-bus is honking it’s horn just for you.

Read [Apple forums]

This year’s big winner at the SXSW was Sched.org. Tauted as this year’s Twitter, Sched.org is a simple scheduling app that was developed in a mere 14 hours by Florida developers Taylor McKnight, a 24-year old web designer, and Mehta, 27, an IT consultant.

Last year, Twitter proved to be a success and still continues to be a winner, with its micro-blogging feature. Users are allowed to post and receive simple updates wherever they are via their laptops or phone. And this year, Sched.org proved just the same by posting a more organized schedule of the conference. 

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