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The latest iPhone 2.2 firmware has one hidden feature that should please Japanese iPhone customers: the inclusion of 461 emoji characters.

Emoji are picture characters that are very popular in the Japanese mobile market. One analyst even specifically cited the lack Emoji support as one of the factors contributing to slow sales in the Japan market:

"The iPhone is a difficult phone to use for the Japanese market because there are so many features it doesn't have," says Eimei Yokota, an analyst with MM Research. He said one small but must-have feature that is often cited as a deficiency in the iPhone is the lack of "emoji," clip art that can be inserted in sentences to jazz up emails.

While the latest iPhone 2.2 firmware contains the emoticons, they are not user accessible at this time. The above screenshot was generated by calling the unpublished API. The images are located in a single artwork file in the UIKit.framework.

The clock icon on the left gives you access to your recent emoji, while the other icons give you access to differently themed emoji.

Article by MacRumors

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Today App Cubby released its vehicle maintenance app, Gas Cubby ($4.99, App Store into different iTunes store regions all over the world, with support for international units as well as familiar US measurements.

Gas Cubby is used to track the health of your vehicle, allowing you to not only log your mileage, but also when you refilled gas, or carried out maintenance on your transportation (and how much those cost, too).

Once enough information has been put into the app, it can create sleek graphs for you to track your gas expenses, MPG, service expenses, and perhaps most importantly, gas price. All of this information can be exported to CSV (comma-separated value) formatted email reports.

The app also allows you to keep tabs on multiple vehicles, storing useful information like the Vehicle Identification Number, license plate, and insurance policy data. It can also give you notifications on when to change the oil, or other service reminders (which you can suitably choose to ignore until the right moment comes).

Gas Cubby has a nice interface that offers a bit of its own style alongside what is to be expected from an iPhone app, and the interface design has everything just where you'd want it to be.

Of course, the most significant news is the addition of international units, which adds MPG (Canada), MPG (Imperial), MPG (UK), and a great deal more found within the App Store listing.

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The iPhone 3G has become the top device worldwide for mobile ad traffic, according to the latest mobile metrics report from AdMob.

The company offers banner and text ads to mobile devices, and it said requests from the iPhone have jumped from 28 million in July to 236 million in October. Overall, Apple's handset was responsible for 4.1% of the company's monthly ad requests.

The vast majority of these ad requests come from iPhone users in the United States, where the handset still trails Motorola (NYSE: MOT)'s Razr. This data is solely based on AdMob's network, so it does not offer a comprehensive view of the entire market. But it does suggest that iPhone users are more likely to use their handsets for mobile Web browsing than other users are.

Outside of the United States, handsets from Nokia (NYSE: NOK) and Motorola dominate AdMob's charts. Handsets like Nokia's N70 and Motorola's Razr and Krzr are consistently used to access the mobile Web, according to the company's report.

As more and more customers purchase smartphones and mobile browsers get better, the market for mobile advertising is expected to swell in the next few years. Tevenue is projected to grow from $1.4 billion in 2007 to $10 billion by 2013. But the looming economic recession has some analysts predicting that advertising will be down in general, and the mobile ad market may be hit hardest.

But AdMob remains confident it can thrive, and the company served more than 5 billion ads in October. The advertising network continues to court high-profile clients, and it serves ads from more than 6,000 customers including Comedy Central, Cover Girl, Ford, Land Rover, and Toshiba.

Article by [InformationWeek]

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Recently we were sent a PR email about an iPhone app called BdEmailer. No big deal, press releases about new iPhone applications show up in our box in large bundles every day -- but this one was different. According to the release, the program is the "the first wide email iPhone app that supports client SMTP." That means, in essence, that it duplicates an exact function of Apple's Mail application on the iPhone and touch. That's kind of a huge deal, because up until this point we've been led to believe that this duplication of functionality is one of the company's red flags when it comes to approval. Now mind you, we're not complaining. The idea of having more apps to choose from for doing things like sending email is a great idea, but Apple... what the hell is going on? You refused MailWrangler and Podcaster for similar reasons, yet BdEmailer passes through your review process, SMTP functionality intact? This means one of two things as far as we can tell -- either you've relaxed your policies on duplicate functionality, or you've gotten incredibly lazy when it comes to approving applications. We're inclined to believe it's the latter, as BdEmailer has a fair share of bugs that need working out, but really, people need some clarification here on what will and won't pass -- and moving the goalpost all the time isn't going to help.

By Engadget.

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Everything goes in a very smooth way that we can see the update of Firmware 2.2 is now available for download via iTunes.

iPhone 2.2 Software Update

This update contains many bug fixes and improvements, including the following:

• Enhancements to Maps
• Google Street View
  • public transit and walking directions
  • display address of dropped pins
  • share location via email

• Enhancements to Mail

  • resolved isolated issues with scheduled fetching of email
  • improved formatting of wide HTML email
• Improved stability and performance of Safari
• Podcasts are now available for download in iTunes application (over Wi-Fi and cellular network)
• Decrease in call set-up failures and call drops
• Improved sound quality of visual voicemail messages
• Pressing the Home button from any Home screen takes you to the first Home screen
• Preference to turn on/off auto-correction in Keyboard Settings

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Seem like Wal-Mart can get the iPhone 3G on its list a bit late. If it is a few weeks sooner than this timetable, everything will be better.

Well, it is confirmed that iPhone 3G will be available at Wal-Mart on December 28th in only selected place. It is known that 69 Sam’s Club location will offer the handset as well. If you are willing to get your kid a gift and want to buy the iPhone, you need to tell you kid to wait a few days after the holiday.

[ZoomGadget]

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