iPhone World

There are a number of rumors going around about just what Apple will be announcing on January 27th. iPhone OS 4.0 and 4G device, the Apple Tablet, and possibly the most noteworthy, is that an “inside source” claims that the iPhone will finally be liberated from the clutches of AT&T, at least exclusively.

Who will Apple call on to run with the ball now? Verizon? T-Mobile? Or will we begin seeing legitimately unlocked iPhones begin to surface? Will current AT&T customers run in droves to escape, even at the cost of early termination fees?

The other big speculation is that OS 4.0 will finally feature the ability to run applications in the background. Will it actually happen? If it did, it would be a step in the direction of finally allowing iPhone owners the control they deserve over their devices, rather than only what Apple thinks you can handle.

One thing I’ve learned since I began following Apple news, is that they do not ‘leak’ information, and the rumor mill is rarely inaccurate. Apple is a media machine. Event after event, blogs all over the place speculate about what Apple is going to announce. Key bits of information always manage to make themselves known, and the rumors always seem to turn out to be true.

What do you think? will OS 4.0 be announced? Will background applications finally be a reality? Will iPhone users finally be free to choose their own carrier? Will the 4G iPhone sport dual mode GSM / CDMA? Stay tuned Wednesday, same iPhone time, same iPhone channel.

A while ago I offered a chance to win an invite to Google Wave via Twitter. Unfortunately, due to the rather low number of followers so far, the response was, well, zero. Just by the law of averages, based on the number of visitors IPW gets, at least some of you have to be dying to get your hands on an invite. So I figured it was time to mention the offer here on the blog. Not only do you get a chance to win, you also help spread the word to those who haven’t heard of us yet.

So here’s the deal…

Over on the right you will see the new Follow Us badge. Simply click that, sign in if needed to your twitter account, follow us, and re-tweet our tweet for this post. For those of you reading this from the feed, there is a follow us link at the bottom of the post.

For this contest, I have 20 Google Wave invites to give away. I haven’t fully decided yet, but the winners will be chosen in one of two ways:

1. Randomly
2. Based on a comment left stating what it is you intend to use your Wave account for. The service is still fairly new and I’m sure there are a lot of people that aren’t quite sure what it is, or what it might be used for. If you really have no idea what it is all about, then say so, and consideration will be given for you as well.

Being that I haven’t decided yet, I would suggest just going ahead and leaving that comment, either here or via Twitter (Just make sure to include @iFoneWorld if you do it on Twitter). The winners will be chosen next week.

If you don’t have an interest in Google Wave, it could still be beneficial for you to follow us because when this contest is over, I will be giving away invites for Google Voice and Ribbit Mobile, which I’m sure much more will have an interest in.

Good Luck!

So it’s been quite a while since the last post I know. The problem is I always have more to say on a topic than I have time to write it. Postings will hopefully be resuming opting for a brief write up if that’s all I can manage, with later edits to get out everything there is to say.

Now on with the post!

Facebook published an update today that claims to add push and contact synching. This is great news as both of these are long overdue. Unfortunately, after installing the update, both features seem to be MIA. There is no prompt to allow push notifications when launching the app, it doesn’t appear in the notification settings, or in the app options (all 2 of them). Likewise there is no option that I can find to sync contacts anywhere. All in all it looks as if there are no changes whatsoever in this update.

I call FAIL.

Not wanting to admit defeat I uninstalled the Facebook app and re-downloaded it. After signing back in I was finally greeted by the push approval dialog, as well as being able to locate the options in the settings app now. The notification settings allow you to choose to receive alerts for Messages, Wall posts, Friend requests & confirmations, tags, events, and comments so if you are getting flooded with notifications you can tweak it a bit.

It was not immediately apparent that synching was now available as it only shows up if you are viewing your friends list. There are a number of apps available for synchronizing your contacts with Facebook, I believe all of which are not free so this is a nice addition also. It is fool-proof to use and “just works”, but does not offer as many features as some of the 3rd party apps, such as displaying and resolving conflicts, or providing the option to manually match contacts to friends.

There also seems to be an addition that is not mentioned in the updates, which is the ability to change the feed you are viewing. Any feeds you have defined within the site are available in the app.