Image courtesy of Flash Magazine

While a true player hasn’t been fully developed and tested, Adobe’s Sr. Director of Engineering did confirm for the first time publicly that his team is “actively developing Flash support for the iPhone.”  No word yet as to how comprehensive the player will be, nor whether it will bring true full-Flash support to the iPhone or if it will be a trimmed-down version.

Gone are the days of the hippie “magic of SprintSpeed” ads that we nailed would fail.

Now, Sprint is trying to promote actual devices by actually showing the features they can perform with. And, to tie into Sprint’s Instinct Product Placement sweepstakes, they made a TV ad that tries to both be a bit corney, but show what Instinct can do.

Instinct Product Placement – High Definition (720p), H.264 (16.5 MB)
Instinct Product Placement – Standard Definition & iPhone, H.264 (16.4 MB)

CTIA, the association for the wireless industry in America, has begun to promote itself to the general public. In a new ad campaign, the wireless industry says “OK” to “whatever America wants next” in wireless communication.

CTIA Ad – Standard Definition / iPod, H.264 (4.9 MB)
CTIA Ad – iPhone, H.264 (5.0 MB)
CTIA Ad – Mobile, 3GPP (1.2 MB)

Sprint CEO Dan Hesse pitches Sprint’s new Simply Everything plan.

Simply Everything – High Definition (720p), H.264 (17 MB)
Simply Everything – Extended Definition (480p), MPEG-4 (5.4 MB)
Simply Everything – iPhone/iPod Ready, H.264 (5.3 MB)
Simply Everything – Mobile, 3GPP (1.2 MB) 

The leading smartphone manufacturer has struggled in advertising its brand in North America. After five years of selling HTC devices through carriers, the company recently began to brand its devices with the HTC brand, rather than a carrier’s generic branding. Such efforts still are not complete, with Verizon Wireless being the last major holdout to endorsing HTC as its own brand. The XV6900 (HTC Touch) makes no mention of HTC on the external hardware.

The initial campaign will focus solely on the HTC Touch Dual. The Touch Dual is considered safe ground for HTC to promote, as it will be the first HTC smartphone intended for unlocked sale in the United States. Promoting other devices such as the HTC Mogul, T-Mobile WIng, or HTC Touch would cause brand confusion. The HTC Shift also has similar brand issues, as the UMPC market is not mainstream to HTC’s sales.

HTC Channel (YouTube)

The addition of voice recognition is one of the first steps for the search company to foster a more natural experience when conducting web searches, a concept commonly known as the “semantic web”, wherein a user would use common language to specifically find information over the entire internet instead of depending on arbitrary categories and being bogged down by tedious searching.

The client allows users switch between text entry and voice commands at will as well as suggesting alternative search terms, and an auto-completion function for text entry.

The updated OneSearch client is now available for download and is currently only available for the BlackBerry, with Yahoo planning to expand the service to 500 total devices by the end of the year.

As the name suggests, WalkingHotSpot works by turning the existing 3G connection on a device into a quick access point by utilizing the available 3G internet access and passing the connection through the Wi-Fi radio, enabling laptops and other Wi-Fi enabled devices to utilize the 3G connection.

This is identical to the WMWifiRouter software we’ve covered at length, the difference being that WalkingHotSpot is only being offered directly to carriers as a complete solution and there are no plans to offer the client directly to consumers, as well as the program being offered for more than one platform.

WalkingHotSpot
TapRoot Systems

Most notable however, is the addition of MMSH 1.1 support. This enables streaming media players to remotely control Orb without the need of a web browser. For example, using free media players VLC or Winamp, you can now change tracks, view music info, play, and pause music… as if the music was stored on your hard drive. This allows you to have your music on one computer in your home, and play it from any computer in your house, or anywhere else in the world.

Read more for the official change list from Orb. To update your existing installation of Orb, log in to mycast.orb.com and click Update Now on the widget that appears in the right-hand corner. Orb must be running and connected to update properly.

If you have issues updating, simply re-download and install Orb from Orb.com.

Released 03/19/2008
• New streaming scheme: no transcoding within LAN when player supports original file format; and when streaming outside of LAN if available upstream bandwidth is higher than encoded file bit rate (all audios, some videos)
• Improved caching of thumbnails for much faster display
• Implemented support for MMSH 1.1 to enable seek, pause and resume functions in Winamp player
• Fixed broken retrieval of Gmail contacts for Orb sharing
• Fixed Wake-On-LAN on Windows Vista
• US only – TV guide now performs daily updates of programs listings for the next following 5 days
• Fixed various Orb startup/shutdown errors, and stream lockups

Engadget Mobile

For those that missed out on the MWC, Phonescoop has a thorough play-by-play video on the updated Samsung user interface demonstrating the new widget system as well as expanded options making this operating system a veritable competitor. TouchWiz is based on the previously rushed release of the Samsung Croix interface that debuted at last year’s 3GSM introduction of the Samsung Armani Phone.

The tool utilized several hacks in the Windows Mobile platform, which essentially converted any Windows Mobile 5.0 AKU3 or above device into a Wi-Fi hotspot. The program was one of the first reliable methods to add 3G access to an iPhone or iPod touch, but did so in a simple, one-touch manner. The application was robust enough to allow for Wi-Fi sharing even while the Windows Mobile device remained in standby mode.

Now however, the application is missing from the developer’s web site. Some forum posts in community discussions cite legal concerns. However, we are not aware of any code that would cause such an issue.

Our analysis points to the developer attempting to re-offer WMWifiRouter as a commercial, for-profit product. The application was developed and supported by the community as a free offering. Small developers faced with extremely high success of free software often attempt to convert the product into a commercial offering. This is further evidenced by the development of WMWifiRouter.com, a site which contains no information other than to offer to sign up for an email to be notified of future updates.

Note: PhoneNews.com cannot verify that this site was established by WMWifiRouter’s author. We urge you to not sign up on said email list as we cannot verify its authenticity. Instead, stay tuned to PhoneNews.com for future updates. See article update for details.

We are offering the final, free version of WMWifiRouter for download, at the link below. This is a Windows Mobile CAB file, enclosed in a zip. Download the file to your PC, extract the archive, and copy the resulting file to your device. Open that file to install into main memory.

WMWifiRouter 0.91 (CAB)
ICS Installer (CAB) – For Windows Mobile devices that have Internet Sharing disabled

Update: Jorrit Jongma, aka Chainfire, the author of WMWifiRouter has contacted us. He has objected to our hosting of WMWifiRouter, but has been unable to substantiate claims that redistribution of the program was prohibited when it was initially offered.

Mr. Jongma did validate that WMWifiRouter.com is his web site. He refused, however, to comment on the conflicting statements regarding legal concerns prompting the pulling of the application. He also declined to comment on the future of the application.

After an analysis of the situation, we have decided to continue offering the final free version of WMWifiRouter, linked above. While developers have a right to prohibit redistribution of free software, they do not have the right to do so after-the-fact. We expect future versions to explicitly prohibit redistribution of WMWifiRouter, and as such, we will only offer older versions (version 0.91 being the last before this change).

We have also fixed an error that prevented over-the-air downloading to your device.