Mobileography

The Weather Channel has just introduced a long-overdue update to their mobile site, finally making it something worth using.

Some of the features include:

• Hourly Forecasts
• Current Conditions
• Hurricane Central
• Radar and Satellite Maps
• Severe Weather Updates
• Airport Delays
• Pollen Conditions
• Traffic
• Baseball Stadium Forecasts

More information about this update can be found here, or you can pull up the new site on your phone at weather.mobi.

Here is their full press release:

The Weather Channel Interactive (TWCI) today announced a revamped mobile Web site featuring new maps, ski information and a redesign that moves current conditions into the page header. The Weather Channel Mobile Web is one of the top five Mobile Internet Sites and averages more than six million unique users per month, making it the most popular weather resource on the mobile Web according to Nielsen Mobile.

The new TWCI Mobile Web navigation, which highlights current conditions on the page header, was based on customer feedback and usage. Other content such as Pollen Forecast and Boat and Beach information have been moved to more prominent locations in the navigation so that users have direct access to these popular features. In addition, new maps have been added which offer more surface level detail on radar and satellite maps.

Just in time for the heart of ski season, The Weather Channel Mobile has added ski content and conditions including current weather conditions for popular resorts, surface conditions, base depth, new snow, and open lifts. Users can search for conditions at a ski resort based on their current location, state, or country. In addition, weather almanac data including average temperatures, record highs and lows, sunrise and sunset and monthly temperature and precipitation averages is now available.

“As one of the most popular mobile Web destinations, we try to monitor customer feedback and traffic patterns to ensure that the site reflects our customers’ needs,” said Louis Gump, vice president, Mobile for TWCI. “Our new ski section is a perfect example of providing our active, on-the-go users the information they are looking for, in this case even when they are on the ski lift, planning their next run.”

The Weather Channel Mobile is consistently one of the top five mobile Web sites in the US, and offers advertisers a great opportunity to reach active engaged users with unique ad products that include geo-targeted and weather triggered ads. For more information visit http://www.weather.com/mobile.

admin Browsers, Weather Weather

We’ve covered the excellent emTube application before, but now YouTube has released their first official mobile application.

Using this software you can view any video on YouTube, watch your subscriptions and playlists, and even upload directly from your phone.

The only major downside is that it’s available for a very limited number of phones.

• Some Nokia Series 60 phones like the 6110, 6120, E65, N73, and N95
• Some Sony Ericsson phones like the k800 and w880

That’s it. Pretty small list, but I expect it will expand as time goes on. If you have a compatible phone, point it to m.youtube.com/app and let us know what you think.

admin Software emtube, ericsson, Nokia, Sony, youtube

(via Into Mobile) It’s taken a long time, but Windows Mobile 6.0 will finally be available for the Samsung BlackJack, starting this evening at 5PM EST.

Head over to the Samsung update website later today and give your aging BlackJack a fresh lease on life.

admin Hardware blackjack, Samsung, windows mobile

Despite some optimism yesterday, the keynote today offered very little new news for the iPhone.

The 1.1.3 update was announced (and is now available), but that was about it. No 16GB iPhone yet, and nothing about the SDK. The lack of a new iPhone was a bit of a surprise, but the lack of SDK news was pretty big. I certainly expected something about it.

Oh well — at least the MacBook Air looks pretty sweet.

admin Apple, Hardware Apple, firmware, iphone, macworld

(via IntoMobile) According to this supposed leaked document, the 16GB iPhone will launch tomorrow for $499.

In addtion, details of the SDK will be released. Some snippets:

• Applications can be priced from $0 to $7
• Widgets can be priced from $0 to $3
• Developers submit their code to Apple for approval, then it goes onto iTunes
• Developers keep 70% of the money

I wonder if we’ll see the 1.1.3 firmware tomorrow as well? We’ll find out soon…

admin Apple Apple, firmware, iphone, macworld, sdk

Yahoo has just released Yahoo! Go 3.0, and it’s quite slick. It’s available for a lot of different phones and was a breeze to install.

I’ve found it to be a bit sluggish at times, but overall it runs pretty well. Some of the features:

• E-mail – Your standard Yahoo e-mail, but in a nice client.
• Flickr – Upload photos directly to Flickr, though many phones can already do that.
• Maps – Very similar to the Google Maps Mobile, with directions, satellite imagery and GPS support.
• Widgets – Load widgets for eBay, MySpace or choose from many others.
• oneSearch – They call it “mobile search that practically reads your mind.” I’m not sure it’s that good, but it’s quite helpful.

I’m sure there’s more, but I’m still playing with it. Try it out and let us know what you think.

admin Software, Yahoo flickr, google maps, Yahoo

As reported by All About Symbian, Nokia has officially unveiled the US version of the 8GB N95.

It will be available sometime in the first quarter of 2008, for an estimated price of $749.

Read the rest on AAS, or you can read the official press release from Nokia.

admin Hardware, Nokia N95, Nokia

According to AllAboutSymbian, version 15.0.015 of the Nokia N95 8GB firmware has been released.

Early reports show very few new features, but quite a few speed improvements:

• Gallery and search are now much faster.
• Access time to use the internal 8GB memory is much improved.
• A bug fix for the problem that prevented some third party themes from working.

There’s likely some other enhancements in there as well, but that’s what we’ve got so far.

Now if we could get a firmware update for the N95-3, things would be great!

Update – 12:27pm EST – 1/3/08

Also included with this update:

• Flash Lite 3 and Flash video with full support — even in the browser!
• WRT (web run time). This allows you to load widgets to your phone in a manner that looks like normal S60 applications. Nice!

admin Hardware, Nokia firmware, N95, Nokia