Killer iPhone App

The 3G iPhone is out today (so are the junkies who camped outside the Apple store).

Last month we reviewed if it was worth doing the “switch-over” when the new iPhone comes out (read here). Along with the release of the iPhone today, Apple will be opening the doors to the online Application Store — which is accessible on iTunes. Music, games, films, and software for your phone will all be available on iTunes, similar to how you sync your iPods. The good news is, even if you have a first generation iPhone, you can still use the store.

I just found out that Alon, our attorney here at Starworks, has created an application for the iPhone. His firm is called Exparte Staffing, and the application is called BILLBULL. It’s a “billing and time-keeping” application. Users can keep track of any time-related task for a client or employer, and then email the info to your personal or corporate account.

When tapped, the icon on your iPhone home screen will take you to a list of your clients where you have the option of selecting specific (and customizable) tasks to track. Once a task is selected, BILLBULL begins to time the specific work done for each client. BILLBULL can also do weekly standard timesheets. Users can also add notes to each field if necessary, or even manually log hours.

Alon is the Founder and president of Exparte Staffing, which was one of the first agencies to go paperless for timekeeping. All of their employees clock in and out online. I asked Alon why did he have the need to add ANOTHER application to an already saturated market?

His response: “I always struggled with finding the best place to jot down my time. Calenders didn’t work, post-its get sloppy, and I don’t want to carry a journal. I looked around for software and there was absolutely nothing that was easy to use that could also be carried with you wherever you go. The iPhone was the perfect solution.”

BILLBULL will be available exclusively through iTunes for $9.99. Who would have thunk Starworks could do more than fashion?
J

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For further questions, contact Alexis Acosta at 917-477-9631 or email aacosta_nycpr@yahoo.com.

Your Perfect Home in Cyberspace

Yahoo! Mail has almost maxed out on users (over 250 billion worldwide, woah!) making it nearly impossible to create your desired email address. Enter the next generation of Yahoo! Mail - ymail.com and rocketmail.com

ymail.com is a brand new domain under the Yahoo! umbrella and will offer millions of new and unique email addresses. rocketmail.com on the other hand is considered “vintage” Internet as it was one of the very first free Webmail services which Yahoo! acquired in 1997. RocketMail is back for new users to enjoy!

So if John1645abc@yahoo.com isn’t your cup of tea, head over to Yahoo! Mail to create your new and perfect email address.

How The Web Was Won

I just spent a good chunk of my morning engrossed in Vanity Fairs BRILLIANT walk through Web History 101. It’s a “Web Exclusive” with intimate podcasts and articles.

(The Founding Fathers: Leonard Kleinrock, Paul Baran, and Larry Roberts)

The story of the internet is not that old when you think of it. In fact, these prestigious men right here helped make this gift you see as you’re reading my blog right now. The irony behind the whole thing is that the Internet was developed out of the necessity to communicate during War. This humble small crew ended up creating the glue that is holding the planet together now — artistically, politically, superficially, financially, etc, etc. etc. The feature “How The Web Was Won” covers the entire trajectory beginning with the germ of an idea to the bumpy road that lied ahead.

(Link found above to read these chapters for “How the Web Was Won”)

The seed: Soviet missiles aimed at the USA. It was the Cold War. Telephone lines and shortwave-radios weren’t good enough. Scientists began to foresee a connected world exchanging information. AT&T fought the idea. They laughed at the notion of “packet-switching”. Why would they care? There was no money in it. The only way to network was through old-school mainframe computers, and the personal computer had not been invented yet. Thank God they slept on it, because onwards came the term “World Wide Web”, the entrepreneurs, the years of fighting for independence from commercial and governmental controls.

Speaking of… Gore was obviously not a creator of the internet but it is very vital for all of us to know that the story doesn’t stop at the creation. While he was a Tennessee senator in the 1980’s, Gore was crazy defending the idea “networking” (free from the governments hands). In 1991, Congress passed the “Gore Act” — which was the High-Performance Computing Act defending the web as a privatized, commercialized place. But back to the building blocks. These were some great quotes found in the article…

(Al Gore)

“I get credit for a lot of things I didn’t do. I just did a little piece on packet switching and I get blamed for the whole goddamned Internet, you know? Technology reaches a certain ripeness and the pieces are available and the need is there and the economics look good—it’s going to get invented by somebody.”
–Paul Baran, an electrical engineer, conceived one of the Internet’s building blocks, “packet switching”

Click here for Paul Baran’s podcast

“When I had this idea about building a network—this was in 1966—it was kind of an ‘Aha’ idea, a ‘Eureka!’ idea. I went over to Charlie Herzfeld’s (arpa’s director) office and told him about it. And he pretty much instantly made a budget change within his agency and took a million dollars away from one of his other offices and gave it to me to get started. It took about 20 minutes.”
– Bob Taylor left NASA to become 3rd Director of arpa’s (Pentagon’s Advanced Research Projects Agency) computer-science division.

“We looked for a name for several weeks and couldn’t come up with anything good, and I didn’t want yet another one of these stupid things that doesn’t tell you anything. In the end Tim said, Why don’t we temporarily call it the World Wide Web? It just says what it is.”
– Robert Cailliau, who along with British scientist Tim Berners-Lee in 1991, introduced the World Wide Web, via CERN (one of the world’s largest physics laboratories based in Geneva)

“You just happen to be at the right place at the right time. Once we went public, everyone—everyone—had a new idea. We basically created the late-90s boom in technology stocks, and it became out of control, as you know.”
– Jim Clark, Entrepreneur/Silicon Graphics founder who partnered with Andreessen to create Netscape Communications.

Click here for Bob Metcalfe’s podcast

“At the beginning there was a different attitude than today. Now everyone is concerned about making money, or reputation. It was different then. We all wanted to help one another. There was no competition, really, on most things. It was a total open flow of information. There were no games. There are so many others who did equally good work, and their names are just forgotten. We were all a bunch of young whippersnappers.”
– Paul Baran

Photographs by Christian Witkin

The New iPhone

Twice as Fast. Half the Price.

(The new iPhone will be released July 11th. It’s 2.8 X faster than the last one actually!)

I’ve been hooked on my Blackberry for practical work reasons (my office is all on Blackberry system with Contacts), so I skipped the first model and prayed that the second one would woo me. Anyway, the new one is coming July 11th. Here are the latest reasons to consider this fine specimen… (although I still prefer my Blackberry keyboard to iPhone’s touchscreen keyboard).

New things I found interesting:

• “Contact searches” is improved.
• Now Microsoft Exchange docs can be accessed better (solves my Blackberry/Contacts connectivity issues in my office)
• New buttons: “bulk”, “delete”, “move” can move around tons of documents easier.
• Ability to save your images to your Photo Library is easier.
• Better Calculator toys.
• Useless to me but outstanding they did this — new Asian languages (Japanese, Chinese)
• Hardcore Battery Life: Standby can exist for up to 300 hours now. Talk time goes up to 5 hours. High-Speed Internet Browsing goes up to 5-6 hours. Video can be seen for up to 7 hours. Audio can be heard for up to 24 hours.
• Built-in GPS — BEST REASON TO BUY THIS NEW ONE. No more getting lost while driving internationally!

If I haven’t commented on Steven Jobs’ world domination enough, here’s more: he’s rollin’ out these new iPhones to 70 countries now (sealed up with all those deals locked in place with local carriers). Like Mr.Jobs said at the new keynote speech: “Next time you’re in Malta, and you need a 3G iPhone, it’ll be there for you.”

Total = Starts at $199!!!!!

And now, after my amateur 2 cents, I’ll end with words from our Starworks techie friend, Sir Jack Furious. I was curious if it was worth breaking up with Mr.Blackberry, and flinging with Mr.iPhone … and here’s his words. Over and Out.
J

(Some new iPhone models come in white too)

iPhone review
Written by Sir Jack Furious
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Unless you have been under a rock for the last day you probably heard the announcement of a new 3G iPhone. So let’s talk mobile phones, and there’s really only two types of phones that you need to know– Apple iPhone and any Blackberry (sorry Nokia n95/96 lovers!). I’m definitely not going to talk about a Google-Android-based phone until we actually see them in the wild.

So first up is the Blackberry. The major reason you would ever really want a Blackberry is because of BlackBerry Messenger or Enterprise email. It has research in motions killer applications. It’s also why there are millions of crackberry addicts around the world.

That leaves Apple’s iPhone as the last one standing. It has superior multimedia and internet browsing capabilities to anything in the market. Another factor is rethinking it as your music carrier. Who really uses their Blackberry to listen to music? Sure you can, but you don’t. The iPhone is an iPod, and soon-to-be very capable gaming platform (once the games get released) along with everything else it does.

Now a good thing just got better. The just announced iPhone has basically doubled its bandwidth speeds with that 3G chip. The phone now has the ability to push email to the phone just like blackberry and Microsoft offerings. As for the Apple iPhone now, it has that technical edge now which puts it head-and-shoulders above anything else. Plus it looks fantastic. The form factor has changed a little — it now has a plastic back that is more rounded. It looks like it might wobble when set down on its back.

Here’s the best part of the new Apple offering — Its a price drop. Black or white (8GB and 16GB) are now $199 and $299 respectively.
-SJF