.

The iPhone, the Google Phone, Firefox 3.0 and more.

The week of August 27th, 07 started with the big news of two companies coming out over the weekend with software to completely unlock the iPhone. One of those companies iphoneunlocking.com, a subsidiary of UniquePhones (www.uniquephones.com) has released a video showing the software unlock in action with an iPhone running normally on the T-Mobile network. Needless to say that the lawyers at AT&T - the required carrier to use the phone in the US - went into action immediately and sent stern letters to the companies that came up with the code. Marshall Sponder at Webmetricsguru.com had this comment that summed up the sentiment of most people still holding on from buying the iPhone: “My guess is that most people who buy and iPhone want to get rid of AT&T.”

Meanwhile, a story reported by Informationweek.com, announced that Verizon Wireless callers have sent more then 10 billion short messages in the month of June alone. Now, wasn’t just a couple of months ago that the majority of the media was complaining that sms was not a U.S. phenomenon and that lots of startup businesses that were built around the delivery of sms went belly-up because of this wrong notion! It’s time to revisit those business plans because like i have said previously and based on my own experiences, sms messages are an important part of the cell phone revolution and that slowly and surely, U.S. based customer will start to understand and integrate these small and quick messages/alerts into their way of living. Let the market decide how it wants to use them and supply service based on that demand. I know from my own experiences how much short messages has reduced my cell phone bill and allowed me to conduct non-essential transactions and business on the go, without formality.

More and more talk is being generated about the upcoming Firefox 3.0 version, due out sometime later this year. One of the more interesting developments is the upcoming Malware Detection code that will be included in the release. Alex Faaborg on his blog “User Experience Design at Mozilla”, details a lot of the GUI enhancements to expect and adds “Similar to how Firefox 2 blocks Web sites that are potentially going to try to steal your personal information, Firefox 3 will block Web sites that we believe are going to try to install malicious programs on your computer. Mozilla is coordinating with Google on this feature.”

Over at Realtechnews.com, Alice Hill mentions the patent-pending first Corvette-shaped PC from Compucar. Among other things under the hood of this baby are a Genuine Intel P4 processor w/Hyper Threading (up to 3.8GHZ), 2.5″ or 3.5″ SATA Hard Drives up to 400GB, 80mm Ultra Quiet Cooling Fan and Silent Low Profile CPU Cooler (whisper quiet). At a suggested price of $1,750 US, it may seem pricey for just a computer, but who would buy this as their first PC? This is sqarely aimed at the gadget fans for whom that price is a bargain compared to what they usually pay for souped-up game PC’s. Let’s not forget that the Compucar LLC computers also come in 16 different models to choose from including the 70 Boss Mustang, the 69 Camaro Z-28, the 2003 T-Bird, and many more.

Finally, one story that is just starting to become reality is about the long-rumored upcoming Google Phone (coming early 2008 apparently). Webmetricsguru.com makes a compelling case for why the introduction of such a device would not only disrupt the current status-quo in the U.S. with the monopoly of the major wireless carriers and their unfair lock-in contracts and feature-crippling practices, but it would also totally revolutionize the way we look and the cellular phone (or it should be another name completely: the communicator), at communicating, at interating with others both with presence and through web-based visual means, and redefine a completely new class of devices. They’ll call it a cell phone for a while at first - just to educate and entice users - but it is definitely more then a cell phone. It’s perhaps the first attempt at a truly universal communicator, something that could be a precursor to the famed Start Trek communicators/locators. If the 700 MHZ spectrum bid that Google is going to bid on to control is another clue into perhaps what is to come.