Gizmodo Australia » beta

WinMo 7.0 Might Be In Beta Now, On Phones In April 2010

Rosa Golijan — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 22:30:00 +0000

Windows Mobile 7 might be sneaking into beta right now, based on the LinkedIn profile of a Chinese Senior Engineer at Motorola. I certainly hope this speculation proves true—it means less time living with Windows Mobile 6.5.

Looks like LinkedIn might be working well for Hand Huang’s because his profile certainly caught some attention for this little blurb (emphasis mine):

3. Joining Caesar product development, lead a team to do telephony feature and other applications development. Migrated relative applications from Windows Mobile 6 to Windows Mobile 7

Language: C++
Tools: VS2008, AKU, Platform Builder
Runtime Environment: Windows Mobile 7.0 (Beta)

According to Ars Technica, Huang might not just be fluffing up his resume. The timeframe seems about right for WinMo 7 to hit beta testing since it’s been in development for years and there’d been a search for internal testers in the recent months. The timeline Ars lays out based on this information is that testers would truly be seeing the OS in November of this year, while we would see it out in the wild in April of 2010. The dates are loose and based on rumours, but when isn’t that the case?

The way I see it is that WinMo 7 is pretty much Microsoft’s last hope for a decent mobile OS, so I certainly hope this is true, shortening the time we’ll have to endure Windows Mobile 6.5. [Ars Technica]

Want To Call Up Internode? Check Their Wait Times First

Nick Broughall — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 04:56:11 +0000

Waiting on hold when you need tech support, want to make a complaint or just need to pay a bill is the bane of humanity. That’s why Internode’s new beta service, that lets you check the average wait time for their support lines online is like manna from heaven for Internode customers.

By pointing your browser at their performance website, you can check to see what the average call queue was for the past 24 hours, as well as the average wait time for each type of customer support call..

It’s still in beta, and has obviously only been publicly running for a week or so, because there isn’t a lot of data on the page just yet. But as this service rolls on, there’s only goodness that can come from it. I mean, if you have a non-urgent tech support question, you’ll be able to pick a time when the average wait time is significantly less, based on what you read in the tables on the Internode site. And that can only be a good thing.

[Internode]

Xbox Live NXE Beta Reveals Smaller Game Install Sizes

Jack Loftus — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 18:30:00 +0000

Word from Kotaku is the Xbox Live NXE preview beta thing going on now features smaller game install sizes.
Not one of the more exciting features, sure, but if you’re the type of gamer who enjoys seeing their games boot up a few second fast than usual it’s gravy. [Kotaku]

IPhone 3.1 Beta 3 Is Out

Jason Chen — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 19:31:21 +0000

Developers, go download the iPhone 3.1 Beta 3 OS (and SDK) now. [Apple]

IPhone 3.1 Beta 2 OS Now Lets You Develop Over Wi-Fi

Jason Chen — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:15:39 +0000

iPhone 3.1 beta 2 now lets developers connect their phones to your development machine over Wi-Fi to run Instruments on; useful if you need to use your dock connector on the phone to connect to something else.

Other than this, there are a number of fixes that you can head over to the developer site to check out. [iPhone Dev]

iPhone Beta 5 Odds and Ends: No More MMS, Better YouTube?

John Herrman — Thu, 07 May 2009 08:22:57 +0000

The official script may have minimised it as a maintenance release, but some users are finding out that iPhone Beta 5 contains more than bugfixes. So far: YouTube’s improved, and hacked MMS is no more.

The guys at winandmac say they’ve noticed a change in the YouTube app’s stream handling. Now, instead of defaulting to the low-res OTA version of a YouTube video when connected via 3G, the app plays the high-res version previously reserved for Wi-Fi.

Meanwhile, in our comments and over at the iPhone Blog, AT&T-bound Beta 5 users are reporting that the simple MMS stopgap hack is no longer possible.

It’s only been few hours since Beta 5 burst forth into this world, naked and screaming, so more changes are bound to bubble up to the surface—there are already rumblings that new anti-tethering measures have been implemented, but this hasn’t been confirmed (and may have more to do with new security features in iTunes 8.2 than iPhone OS). [winandmac and the iPhone Blog]

iPhone 3.0 Beta 4 Is Up, And So Is iTunes 8.2 Pre-Release

Jason Chen — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 01:59:29 +0000

The iPhone OS 3 beta 4 release is out now for developers, but you must install iTunes 8.2 (pre-release) in order to get it. Will let you know what’s new once we find out. [Apple]

Screen Recording to Come Baked In to Snow Leopard’s Quicktime Player

Dan Nosowitz — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 22:00:00 +0000

The new Quicktime X Player, which will come with this summer’s Snow Leopard upgrade, has a cool new feature: Like Snapz, it’ll record motion on the screen.

Screen recording has been an option in the Snow Leopard betas, but hasn’t actually done anything until the release of build 10A335 this Thursday. It’s a nice little feature that’ll save Snow Leopard users the need to download an extra program just to handle that one task. [AppleInsider]

New Mac OS X Snow Leopard Beta Released, Run to the Torrents

Jesus Diaz — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 16:38:42 +0000

A new version of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard—labeled 10A335—has hit developers. Apple hasn’t mentioned any new features or bug fixes, however. The Server version—which was released alongside—does come with an easier to use version of Podcast Producer, new spam mail filters in Mail Server, and other niceties.

How To Tether Your iPhone To Your Laptop Over Bluetooth With The iPhone 3.0 Software

Nick Broughall — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 02:30:07 +0000

One of the much wanted features to be made available with the iPhone 3.0 software beta – alongside MMS – is tethering via USB and Bluetooth. Reader Jennifer from Axiom software has sent us a pretty awesome guide to tethering your iPhone to your laptop via Bluetooth for Australians. While we haven’t tried it ourselves (no iPhone 3.0 beta to play with, unfortunately), she claims that it’s pretty stable and works well. Here’s how to do it:

1. Visit http://whirlpool.net.au/wiki/?tag=iphone3.0 and download the tethering file and follow instructions to update your phone, ensuring that you reboot at the end.
2. Once phone has rebooted go into Settings > Network > Internet Tethering > and turn on tethering.
3. Ensure your phone has been paired to your computer.
4. Right click on the bluetooth icon in your status bar and select Join a Personal Network
5. Click Add to add your device. Your iphone should then be detected and then follow the prompts to finish this process.
6. In the list of Bluetooth Devices you should see the iphone listed as an access point. Click on this and then click connect.
7. When tethered correctly a bar indicating the phone is in tethering mode will appear at the top of the iphone screen.

She was using a Vista laptop for the process, but it should still be fairly similar for Macs or XP.

If you’ve got a copy of the iPhone 3.0 beta, give it a go and let us know how it works in comments.

[Whirlpool - Thanks Jennifer!]