iPhone updates find some interesting links including: * Refurbished iPhones * iPhone flirting * Palm’s Comeback * Microsoft Tag iPhone app * Two-factor iPhone authentication and more.
Refurbished iPhones
Best Buy Co., is to be the first retailer to offer refreshed Apple iPhone 3Gs at store locations nationwide. 350 Best Buy Mobile stores are selling the Refreshed iPhone 3G at $149 (US) for the 8GB model and $249 (US) for the 16G model, both require a two-year service contract. New iPhone 3Gs currently retail for $199 (8G) and $299 (16g) at Best Buy Mobile.
Scott Moore, vice president of marketing for Best Buy Mobile says:
“The refreshed iPhone is a great example of the depth of our offering, and clear evidence of why Best Buy is the best place to purchase a mobile phone — where else can you get everything you need to make sure your phone can be utilized to its fullest.”
iPhone flirting
Now there’s a new iPhone application dubbed TrueFlirt that adds an engaging social call-to-action through virtual gifting, flirting and digital communication.
One unique selling point of TrueFlirt is the ability to send fully-interactive virtual “flirts” that combine simple social messages with gorgeous animation.
It’s the incredible eye-candy that fully explains the “flirt with style” tagline, but the fun doesn’t stop here. Animated content and sound respond to tilting and multitouch gestures, providing the sense of flirting with immediacy.
By Christian Zibreg for tgdaily.com
Palm Pre – move over iPhone
Bonnie Cha of CNet reports on the Palm Pre smart phone from Palm.
The smartphone makes multitasking easy with the Deck of Cards feature that lets you scroll through various applications and toggle between them without having to open and close windows. It’s slick, but most importantly, it’s easy. I also think Synergy is a huge player, since it brings all your e-mail accounts and contact and calendar information from various sources into one place. Again, it’s about simplicity and whether you’re a consumer or business user, you have to love that.
Photo, Basic specs of the Palm Pre, Bonnie Cha’s full article
Palm’s Comeback
Marin Perez of InformationWeek says
The handset and operating system look impressive, but the company is facing many challenges if it wants to grab consumers from Apple, Google, Nokia, and Research In Motion.
A few years ago, Palm was the unquestioned leader in the U.S. smartphone and PDA market. But it has failed to keep deliver devices that consumers lusted after, and it has been rapidly losing customers and has posted six consecutive quarterly losses.
Palm’s unveiling of its Pre smartphone and WebOS at CES on Thursday gives the company a decent shot at taking back customers who have flocked to Research In Motion’s BlackBerry smartphones and Apple’s iPhone 3G. The comeback trail will be tough, though, as the marketplace is wildly different from when Palm dominated it.
Full review from informationweek.com (or Print version) Photo
Microsoft Tag iPhone app
Matt Asay of CNet reports:
Microsoft spends billions of dollars each year on research and development, but it got its new iPhone application for the price of a couple weeks of Starbucks coffee.
Microsoft just released its second iPhone application, Tag, and it looks like a winner. Tag lets you create your own bar code and then allows other users to “scan” it with their iPhones, accessing whatever information you may want them to see: your contact information, advertisements, and more.
Full story: news.cnet.com
Two-factor iPhone authentication
iEnigma application lets Apple iPhone users turn the device into a smartcard
Danny Bradbury reported from Macworld in San Francisco
German company Charismathics chose the annual Macworld show in San Francisco last week to launch a two-factor authentication client for the iPhone, effectively turning the device into a smartcard for secure access.
Two-factor authentication is designed to improve security by requesting something the user knows, for example a password, along with something they have – in this case, the iPhone – before granting them access.
Here’s the story , and you can find out more about Two-factor authentication at charismathics.com
