Twitxr is a new micro-blogging platform that recently launched by FON, a startup that aimed to make WiFi universal and free. Though FON is not available in some countries due to the restriction of WiFi coverage, but Twitxr is different. Twitxr allowed user regardless where she lives to sign-up, and post update instantly through the mobile phone, laptop, or desktop, with the pre-requisite of Internet connection. It is inevitably that we’ll compare Twitxt with Twitter. As Twitter has developed into a strategic user communication tool, Twitxr is aimed to achieved a differentiation advantage by offering message/update with image posting. One of the features offered by Twitxr is the image can be geotagged, so that your friends or buddies following you will know where you are and what you’re doing. Put an instance, if you’re cooking, post an update and a photo which you and the dish at your kitchen will convince them you’re not doing something else, and you’re serious about cooking. There’s help to explain a proverb, i.e. A picture is worth a thousand words. Given the image and geotagging functionality, for those who do not want to attach image together with an update, Twitxr also provide an option where users can choose post text-only updates, picture-only updates or both. But remind you, after you sign-up for Twitxr, remember to keep your Twitxr e-mail address private, this is for the security reason.

Currently Twitxr is still in beta mode, but successfully released iTwitxr for the iPhone. I believe that we can expect more from them as their technologies develop into mature. To know more about Twitxr, there’s a video clip, as embedded in the below.

Most recent, I saw a lot of new applications have been built around Twitter. These type of applications have greatly taken advantage of the tweets posted by the Twitter users, but two of them I found to be quite unique, especially these two application are in the form of Tweets’ search engine, one is namely as Terraminds, and the other one is Tweet Scan.

Terraminds: It offer mainly the search functionality that allowed an user to query updates or users by key in a specific keyword. Perhaps the search result is not real-time, in other word, you can’t find an update posted by Twitter user that happened to be less than 1 min. And basically, the search results are displayed in order of most recent first, i.e. descending combined with a Twitter user’s photo beside with each update.

Tweet Scan: If compare with Terraminds, the level of search results are not in big contrast. However, Tweet Scan demonstrated some level of differences by adding few more features in the area of Tweets searching. This can be viewed in the form of Twitter Statistics and the offering of Tweet Scan’s iPhone version.

Recently Apple iPhone has generated massive buzz as their users are unsure whether or not to upgrade their iPhones to firmware version 1.1.1. If upgrade, they worried that their iPhones will not work with the older softwares or third-party applications. Enthusiasm over the iPhone has drove an application provider iPhoneSimFree become the first to roll out the iPhone 1.1.1 unlocker and users can now get their iPhones upgraded, working with the WiFi iTunes stores as well as SIM unlock their iPhones. Moreover, their solution enables their users to fix the bricked iPhones and bring their iPhones’ systems back to the older stable version, i.e. 1.0.2.

However, users need to register their IMEIs with iPhoneSimFree server through one of the resellers that are available throughout the regions, and the pricing I read on the web is $100 per license.

The competition of Web hosting industry is stiff, and we always choose a right Web hosting company to host our Websites, or Web-based infrastructure by relying on pricing factor and the hosting facility. Media Temple, one of the well-known hosting company in the U.S. is the first that offered their users to gain access their Media Temple Account through the tiny iPhone. I think their latest move to provide this service is not by coincidence, since the iPhone is selling like hot cake in the U.S.

From the iPhone, a Media Temple customer can buy a domain name, reboot a service, add new email address, submit support ticket, make payment, change password, give feedback, and etc. The control panel is the same as compared to one access it through the desktop computer. This feature could change the Web hosting world, and I expected more hosting companies will follow their footsteps by providing the hosting services for the iPhone users as well.

Note: Media Temple provides hosting services for TagEdge.com.

Last week was the iPhone week, since the iPhone launched on June 29, most iPhone stores in California and New York are run out of stock. According to an article, the shoppers snatched up about 525,000 of the devices at Apple and AT&T stores from last Friday’s launch through Sunday and most of the AT&T 1,800 stores ran out of stock by Saturday. Though a small percentage of customers experienced problems in activating the iPhones, I believed Apple will not allowed these problems to go unnoticed.

I know it’s a bit harsh to say sometimes I’m so confuse of the market research report. Few hours ago, I read a brief introduction of a white paper that stated “only 3% of the consumers have a strong interest in purchasing the iPhone at its $499.99 price point and two-year contract.” This is a new white paper just released from a market research and consulting firm. A moment later, I came across another survey done by HitWise pertaining to the iPhone topic. However, they argued that the volume of US searches for the term “iphone” increased 583 percent in the past four weeks (from the week ending May 26, 2007 to the week ending June 23), as shown in the below picture. Moreover, the keyword “iphone” was ranked as place 131 the most searched for term sending traffic to all US websites in the same research period as mentioned above. Based on the increased web searches on the “iphone” keyword, I trying to convince myself that the surfers are looking for the reasons to buy iPhone. If not, why waste time in doing the web search.

There is a huge differences between these two market research reports. For one is primary data, time-consuming and expensive availability, and the other one is secondary data, web traffic report, timely and inexpensive availability. In my first view, these two firms done the some sort of same research topic, research process may be the same, i.e. collation of data, gaining insights into the potential customers from the questionnaires or the web traffics, and most likely, developing the understanding of likely future behavior. The major difference is HitWise did not mentioned or released what will be the likely buying behaviors of the surfers.

For certain type of reports, we only have two alternative choices: believe it, use it, or “LOSE IT, FORGET ABOUT IT!”

Source: available at http://www.prweb.com/releases/hitwise/iphone/prweb536206.htm, accessed 27 June 2007

With less than 10 days to go before iPhone will be available on sell in the market, most users or developers are now questioning on whether any third-party application can be run or work on iPhone. Though Apple’s answer is yes, and Apple is always Apple, the most secretive company that we know, and would not allowed the developers to know much details about what being built inside the “cool, sweet” iPhone, or its framework, and indeed I’m not so surprise when Apple did not provide the software development kit (SDK) for the developers. It sounds like Apple believed in the support of full Javascript and AJAX functionality is more than enough to build a decent web application, but it’s isn’t.

I do not know the project parameters of Apple on this tiny iPhone, and also it’s looks like a huge project towards iPhone from Apple, but apparently, I don’t think iPhone version of Safari will allow the hot product of Microsoft, i.e. Silverlight plug-in to install on it, not to mention some crazy games developed from using Java, i.e. Java ME.

Update: Just came across the so-called “iPhone Application List,” a nice blog.

“Coming June 29″ is the big promise of Apple’s three iPhone TV advertisements. I really enjoyed watching the videos, especially an user can get their desired things done through a finger touch on the iPhone’s touchscreen. Though it has just got the FCC approval, the announced release date surely would ended the Apple’s stock price, particularly sensitive about the launch in recent weeks, as reported by Reuters. However, a blog has noticed that there is a inconsistency of the icon views, i.e. 11 icons vs, 12 icons that appeared on iPhone. It remind me of “small is beautiful,” maybe Apple is too big now and they’re not paying close attention to the small details and these small details also may “not” end up being very important eventually.

Update: You also can watch the above stated iPhone video on YouTube, as embedded in below.