What’s new about iPhone 2.0

By Yara Omar, Janus Networks

 

iPhone 2.0, the new firmware from Apple, is scheduled for release this June with whole new set of features for all iPhone and iPod Touch users. Maybe the most important feature is the “App Store” which is a new application that lets users browse, purchase and download the most innovative third-party iPhone applications with a few clicks.

iPhone 2.0 software also offers several new Mail features. Multi-selection is now available to users. They can now select multiple messages and delete them at once or move them in a group which gives much more flexibility when dealing with Mail. Users will also be able to view Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint attachments.  

iPhone 2.0 includes support for Microsoft Exchange 2003 or 2007 Mail Server. The firmware has a new communication protocol, ActiveSync, which enables push e-mail, calendar, contacts and notes. The synchronization process is done over a Wi-Fi or a wireless cellular connection.

The new firmware adds significant security enhancements by using Cisco IPsec VPN. It offers new encryption and authentication capabilities in addition to WPA2 (Wi-Fi Protected Access 2) wireless security. Users will also be able to organize the list of the Wi-Fi networks available to join by preference.

There will be “parental control” for some of the applications on the iPhone such as iTunes and App Store. The firmware adds minor updates to various applications. The calculator has an expanded scientific mode and “Contacts Search” capability is added to the address book. The firmware adds complete language and dictionary support for over 15 different languages in addition to many other enhancements.

 

To contact the author, press@janusnetworks.com

Create, manage and share files on Acrobat.com

By Yara Omar, Janus Networks

Adobe Systems has recently released Acrobat.com Beta; a new website that offers a number of “free” services that many small-business owners and individuals find interesting. They include an online word processor, a PDF converter, a web-conferencing tool, file storage with sharing capabilities.

“Adobe Buzzword”, the online word processor, enables users to write their documents online and let others work on them as well. Users can invite anyone for collaboration, defining their roles (co-author, reviewer or reader).  The processor imports and exports DOC, DOCX, TXT and RTF formats while it only exports to HTML and PDF. Buzzword enables image insertion, bullets and tables and many of the capabilities of other online word processors.

“Adobe ConnectNow” is the web-conferencing tool Adobe offers on the new website. ConnectNow enables chatting with voice and video, screen sharing, video-conferencing, whiteboarding and remote access. ConnectNow could be opened while working with Buzzword in a separate window. For meetings, the attendees do not need to have their own accounts on Acrobat.com and can be just guests.

The website also offers the ability of converting up to 5 documents (Microsoft Word, Excel or PowerPoint documents) to PDF format. There is also a file storage capability for up to 5GB of files that could be shared with anyone.

The full version of Adobe Acrobat 9 will be out next July with a set of new features including the ability to combine various multimedia formats into PDFs. Though these features are not available on Acrobat.com, still the services it offers are very useful to almost everybody once they sign-up there.